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“I love humanity; it’s people I can’t stand.” It’s a funny old line, attributed to everyone from Albert Einstein to Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” characters. But in a political context the idea behind the humor takes on a much more ominous tone.
Recently I watched a few YouTube interviews of representatives from Just Stop Oil, the British-based environmentalist movement launched in 2022 and described on its website as “a nonviolent civil resistance group demanding the UK Government stop licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects.” Like their fellow climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil operates in decentralized, autonomous blocs with no formal leadership, and their strategy is to force political action on the environment through social disruption.
In practice, “social disruption” means everything from blocking traffic to interrupting sporting events to damaging priceless museum art. Last year Just Stop Oil carried out a days-long series of blockades that snarled British traffic for hours each time. Just last month in west London, a similar traffic protest caused one frustrated parent to exit her car and confront the activists, shouting, “I’ve got a baby in my car and we have to get to hospital!” The protestors refused to let her through. What’s the loss of one baby when you’re busy saving the entire planet?
Also last month, two Just Stop Oil eco-zealots interrupted a tennis match at Wimbledon by throwing orange confetti and jigsaw pieces onto the court, to the accompaniment of loud booing from the disapproving crowd. Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer later stated, “We must protect the right to peaceful protest, but that does not give license to a vocal minority to spoil events that millions of us enjoy.”
In October 2022, two young Just Stop Oil protesters threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery and then glued their hands to the wall below the painting. One shouted, “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” A witness later told The Guardian, “They may be trying to get people to think about the issues but all they end up doing is getting people really annoyed and angry.”
Indeed. Rather than galvanize action about the climate catastrophes they consider to be apocalyptic and imminent; rather than inspire others to join their movement, these tactics have earned Just Stop Oil the boiling enmity of the vast majority of British citizens, who are fed up with having their daily lives turned upside down by (mostly) young eco-hysterics.
The interviewers in the YouTube videos I watched, which dated within the last few weeks, included UK media staple Piers Morgan and Sky News presenter Mark Austin. Morgan often clashes with conservatives but to his credit considers the far-Left environmentalists to be “unbelievably irritating morons.” Austin, in his segment, was far more neutral but didn’t let his guest off the hook.
Both Morgan and Austin did express concern about the issue of climate change, but got straight to asking their guests why Just Stop Oil insisted on using tactics that inconvenienced and angered citizens, and drove away potential allies. It was a basic and legitimate question that millions were eager to have answered, but the activists refused to address it. They repeatedly fell back on fear-mongering talking points about the urgency of their cause. What’s really disruptive, they insisted, is catastrophic climate change. Do you have children? Don’t you love them? Don’t you want to save the planet for them?
Over and over again in their respective interviews, Morgan and Austin unsuccessfully pressed the activists to explain why they didn’t use methods more effective at garnering support. “The strategy isn’t working,” Morgan noted bluntly. One of his two guests, Riz Possnett, was a privileged young trans activist not associated with Just Stop Oil but supportive of their tactics. Her father is a wealthy businessman and Extinction Rebellion supporter. Possnett disrespectfully laughed and cursed throughout her pointless chatter without ever answering. Morgan’s other guest, a “green entrepreneur,” refused to acknowledge Morgan’s point that the world’s biggest polluter is China, not the UK, and that the activists exhibited a “moral cowardice” by not protesting in Beijing or Moscow or Mumbai.
Austin’s guest, a young woman with the improbable name Indigo Rumbelow, revved herself up into a cultish intensity that was more alarming than the hellish climate consequences she predicted were coming any moment now. She shouted that if Austin and his fellow members of the complicit corporate media were “doing their job properly,” Just Stop Oil wouldn’t have to resort to taking drastic action.
Frankly, the reason these activists refused to answer the simple question about why they resort to tactics that alienate potential supporters is because they don’t care about winning people over to their side. Despite claiming that they want to open people’s eyes to a coming global disaster, and that they want masses of supporters to help them confront government offices and disrupt fossil fuel use, the truth of the matter is that they are uninterested in persuading people. They are uninterested in winning hearts and minds. Their aim is to steamroll right over what other people want and to force political change now.
The religious fanatics of Just Stop Oil and their ilk are convinced of the righteousness of their planet-saving mission. Their sense of moral superiority means they have contempt for the average citizen just trying to get on with his or her life. They know that – impending climate doom notwithstanding – people still have to get to work or to the airport or to the hospital, and preventing that is the goal. If a mother can’t get her baby to the hospital in an emergency, well, that’s a small price to pay to save humanity. These environmental revolutionaries want to deconstruct and fundamentally transform our way of life, regardless of how it impacts people, because they’re certain it’s for your own good.
The larger point to draw from Just Stop Oil’s strategy of social disruption is that the Left has commonly professed to be “the party of the people,” when in fact leftists resent actual people. The term “the people” refers to a sort of Platonic ideal of humanity; the Left is comfortable thinking about people this way, as an abstraction. Actual people, by contrast, are real individuals whose variety, complexity, and frustrating ungovernability are troublesome for leftists, who require compliance with their totalitarian agenda.
This is why communist regimes hypocritically adopt populist names like “The People’s Republic of” China or North Korea, yet they terrorize, oppress, starve, and slaughter by the millions the actual people who live in these collectivist hellholes – because leftists view the mass of humanity as simply a means to an end, and that end, of course, is power. People are dispensable. Similarly, Democrat politicians in America pontificate about their concern for “the people” but then push for big-government policies that invariably do more harm than good – because their ultimate mission is not to better the lives of real people but to seize and maintain power, which they then use to continue imposing their utopian vision onto the people – for their own good.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
This is exactly what happens when traditional religion is undermined and the eternal religious impulse is shoe horned into ”secular sacred causes ”. More evidence, if needed, that if god never existed it would be necessary to invent god
Moreover, if God doesn’t exist then the state becomes a kind of all powerful, all knowing God, accountable to no one ; but there’s worse as mere mortals become quasi Gods
Looking at those ”climate activists” who are trans, tattooed and deranged ; this was all predicted by the great H G Wells back in the late 19th C with his dystopian novel ”The Time Machine”
YOUTUBE The Time Machine/ meet the Eloi/ books turn to dust (3mins)
All that’s missing is their stupid ”smart phones”
The Muslims agree with you, traditional religion is necessary, and it is necessary to believe in Allah or else people will go crazy and start attacking each other. A society that believes in Allah is a rational society, right?
Freedom, liberty, and happiness are values based on reality and derived from reason not from monotheism.
“Freedom” in the monotheistic religions does NOT mean the freedom of the individual to pursue his personal happiness, it means the freedom to choose to be the servant of God or be sent to Hell for refusing to serve God. Which means that monotheism leads to the brutality of theocracy.
Traditional Christianity is NOT today’s modern Christianity that has been diluted, leashed and eviscerated by the ascendancy of reason, it is the Christianity of the American Puritans.
“Since man is innately depraved, the Puritans argued, a dictatorship ruled by the elect is required to curb his vicious impulses and enforce the Lord’s commandments. Since wealth, like all values, is a gift from Heaven, men of property are not owners of their wealth, but stewards charged with a divine trust; such men are properly subject to whatever economic controls the elect deem it necessary to impose. God, in short, rules nature; his agents, therefore, rule men.
It has been said — mostly by illiterates and conservatives — that the belief in God is at the base of the American system, and that the United States is the a product of Christian piety. In fact, the religious mentality was NOT the source of this country’s distinctive institutions, but the fundamental obstacle to their emergence. So long as men took the idea of God SERIOUSLY, the idea of America, the America conceived by the Founding Fathers, was not possible.” – Leonard Peikoff, “The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America”
Same old anti-Christian garbage repeated ad nauseum every day. Just the usual arrogant NYC elitism.
Thank God we are not you. The soldiers and Marines in these two videos are the heart and soul of America:
I remember reading about a famous writer, I believe he may have been a famous English poet during WW1, but I’m not completely sure. He definitely served in combat during WW1, I’m almost 100% sure of that.
He wrote that he stopped believing God on the battlefields of WW1. He wrote that every single child (for children is what most of them really were) that he witnessed dying with his legs blown off or his intestines hanging out of his belly, never cried out for God or Jesus, they only cried out for their mothers.
A man’s life, mind, and body belong to him (they are his private property by objective, rational right), they do NOT belong to God, Allah, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, neighbors, tribe, race, or nation.
I don’t much care what he wrote. At least they went. They volunteered.
As usual you base your response on the experiences of one person in the British Army. Or John List, which you try to pin on me by association. Or some long forgotten war in 1400’s in the past history which you revise to suit your effed up narratives.
These kids in the Army and Marines are better and braver than you. You are simply a little elitist selfish NYC coward. You always have been. And they do what they do so that you can be free to be an ungrateful P.O.S.
You will never belong to anything because that seems to be the organizing principle of your little religion. Belong to nothing, care about nothing except one’s self, and care about no one else.
Great life you have carved out.
Tell us about your comrades who believe killing babies make for a better world and why we should respect groomers skippy?
These absurd arguments only demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Left. Having foisted these death jabs on us are we to believe they honor life? Promoting racism where ever they can are we to believe in their humanity? Their lies and mangling of English and history can be seen in Antifa and BLM.
Tell it to the Marines skippy.
All,
” There is a way that seems right to man, but, in the end it leads to death”.
Good mothers are God’s instruments for the care of young babies and children. Do you not cry out for a doctor when you are desperately ill? For water when thirst has overwhelmed you?
Do you really consider a child crying for his mother a reasonable argument against God?
I asked you to point out my inconsistencies. I am return the favor.
Your famous writer who rejected God on the battlefields of WW1 stands in contrast to many who found God there (like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis).
Think, THX, about the presuppositions of what a man believes about God when he rejects Him because his life is awful. He must believe that God exists to make his life safe and comfortable. God is a slave to him to serve him in accordance with his own desires.
There were two famous English war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Both served at the front in France. Both wrote “acclaimed” poetry by the Left because of their endless anti-war monotony. They were in love with their misery. Right up your alley.
They both met at one of the hospitals for the shell shocked. Owen went back and was killed during the final weeks of the war. Sassoon went home and couldn’t shake his war experience. So he took it out on us.
Obviously each had zero effect on anything because another war came along 20 years later. I have known PTSD Viet Nam vets who can’t shake their war. They cope by taking their misery out on the people around them. They should seek help as should you.
There is obviously something about normal people and their religious beliefs that simply can’t abide so you feel you have the right to take it out on the rest of us. You really could benefit from psychotherapy. This site is not the place for you to work out your little issues about God.
You are a thoughtless, cruel self-involved shell of a human.
That crying for mommy stuff is a load of bullshit. No veterans back up that lie. The only people I’ve heard say that have been fake news reporters, without verification, and NOBODY believes them.
No grown man cries for his mommy. Except Tyre Nichols, but that poor kid was a retard.
We need to stop replying to his comments, he’s achieving his goal which appears to be to destroy FPM comments section.
It’s almost as if he wants to rule in hell than serve in heaven.
But I simply can’t leave the field to him.
He maybe destroying it but if he is successful he will have nowhere else to go that doesn’t have a block button. We could always appeal to Greenfield when he comments here to ask the designers of the site to add a block button.
Are you saying that a difference of opinion means the destruction of the FPM comment section?
My goal is to voice the facts and the fact is that Christianity prepared the ground for Marxism, for the American welfare state, for Collectivism, and for Leftism.
The idea of “social justice” comes from Judeo-Christianity. That’s a FACT.
“The roots of America’s welfare state lie in the Populist-Progressive Era of the late 19th century and early 20th century, especially with the Protestant social gospel movement, which held that Christian ethics and “social justice” should drive public policy, including wealth redistribution, trust-busting, graduated tax rates to punish the rich, cradle-to-grave handouts, and missionary-style imperialistic ventures abroad to spread the faith and make the world “safe for democracy.” The concept of social justice, which jettisoned the idea that we actually earn and deserve what we get in life, was first adopted by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s, as drawn from the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.” – Richard M. Salsman
I know that we would all be happier if we didn’t have THX’s constant proselytizing for his unreasonable faith, but if we advocate for his censure, we advocate for an echo chamber. I would ignore THX if he were just stupid – but he is stupid AND passionate. He believes a lie and justifies it with “reason.” He is not lukewarm and belonging to the category whom Jesus spews. We all have our part to play. Intrepid, your part is important. You energetically hate the evil you see, and who knows if your energetic opposition will not play a part?
And there is not one of us who has not been wrong and stupid and unreasonable. THX will live and die on what he thinks is “reason.” That is his god. It is a flimsy god. I want to chip away when God gives me opportunity.
Pressure points: 1) Reason and reality have been with us from the beginning. Reason is a capacity for rational, analytic thought (intelligence). It is distributed unequally among men, and can be used in the furtherance of evil, as well as good.
2) You assume Christianity will bring in “dictatorship ruled by the elect.” Dictators have been the rule since the beginning of time. Good ones were monarchs and bad ones were tyrants. We are no longer a nation (people sharing common land by birth, culture, language), but an empire consisting of many nations. That being so, it is likely that we will, whether we want one or not, eventually be ruled by some concentrated power not unlike a dictator and his cabal. Would it not be better to have one who was Christian, who feared God and understood God expected him to be a servant of the people and promote their welfare, rather than otherwise?
Kynarion Hellenis says, “[Reason] can be used in the furtherance of evil, as well as good.”
You’re NOT understanding what reason is. You’re confusing reason for rationalization, context-dropping, and evasion. Reason and logic are the means and the method of non-contradictory identification of reality.
If you conclude that reason and logic are showing you that you have the right to murder, to INITIATE deadly force against peaceful human beings who have violated no one’s rights, you are NOT following reason at all. You are guilty of evasion, context-dropping, rationalization, un-reason, irrationality, or sheer stupidity.
“When a theory achieves nothing but the opposite of its alleged goals, yet its advocates remain undeterred, you may be certain that it is not a conviction or an “ideal,” but a rationalization….
If, in the course of philosophical detection, you find yourself, at times, stopped by the indignantly bewildered question: “How could anyone arrive at such nonsense?”—you will begin to understand it when you discover that evil philosophies are systems of rationalization.” – Ayn Rand
“Whenever you tear an idea from its context and treat it as though it were a self-sufficient, independent item, you invalidate the thought process involved. If you omit the context, or even a crucial aspect of it, then no matter what you say it will not be valid . . . .
A context-dropper forgets or evades any wider context. He stares at only one element, and he thinks, “I can change just this one point, and everything else will remain the same.” In fact, everything is interconnected. That one element involves a whole context, and to assess a change in one element, you must see what it means in the whole context.” – Leonard Peikoff
You do not dispute my points: Totalitarianism cannot be caused by Christianity because it is the default government from the beginning of time. Further, you show no totalitarian government of evil caused by Christian presuppositions.
Instead, you claim I confuse “reason” with “rationalization.” You, who claim that “Reason is man’s mind,” while I claim it is the capacity for rational thought. Whose definition is true?
So there are two main definitions of “rationalize.” 1) “to explain rationally.” The other is what you accuse me of: 2) to justify one’s behavior by providing reasons that obscure one’s motives.
So expose me! Show the lies or faulty presuppositions of my thinking, as I have done to yours.
My rationalization for what I do is love and pity.
Your rationalization is a desperate attempt to continue to hold a cherished lie. You are enslaved to objectivism even when its unreason is plainly evident. This being so, you EVADE my points and RATIONALIZE desperately in an attempt to believe “reason” that is against reason.
Prove me wrong by dealing with my assertions – with reality. With evidence. With reason.
“Are you saying that a difference of opinion means the destruction of the FPM comment section?”
Well you definitely taken over this thread with your endless B.S. So typical of you.
We are way beyond “difference of opinion” when it comes to your endless uninformed religious bigotry. You spray around your warped sick opinions like a cat who sprays on the wall to mark territory. And then you do the self-righteous pose when you are challenged. You couldn’t find a fact to save your life.
You feel you have the right to insult us, denigrate us, accuse us of being totalitarians, you use guilt by association and pretty much try to hijack the site like you are doing for this article to suit whatever purpose you are on to at any given time.
You are trying to destroy this site by driving people off so it basically can become your little Objectivist playground. I hope they put up a blocking feature so I don’t have to read your drivel.
There are many people I don’t see here any more and I blame you. You are a one man wrecking ball of disinformation, lies, distortions and hate. In short, your a classic propagandist.
“if we advocate for his censure, we advocate for an echo chamber.”
Kynarion, I have been posting here for years, back to the Disqus days when there actually was a block feature. And before the creature arrived. It wasn’t an echo chamber.
It was mainly a conservative site with the usual lib trolls displaying their stupidity. I could always block them. Then they changed formats and that opened the site up to fools like THX. He is driving folks away with his endless psychotic blather. And he knows he can’t be blocked. I don’t see him on sites where he can be blocked.
I will not leave the field to him. Neither should anyone else.
Men have free will therefore history is not pre-determined. At this point in time it is highly likely the West will collapse into a new religious Dark Age within the next 100 to 200 years, whether that religious totalitarian dictatorship is Muslim or Christian no one can tell.
The Jews will be yoked and crushed under either kind. They will be made second-class citizens either way, unless they convert.
Your mistake Kynarion is projecting a future Christian theocracy, a future Christian Dark Age, as consisting of benign, modern Christianity, the American Christianity we have right now, your Christianity. The only kind of Christianity you have any experience with. That will not be the case at all.
Once the West abandons reason, modern Christianity, will also collapse with it. Bringing a return to Puritan Christianity, medieval Christianity, the Christianity of the Dark Ages. The Christianity of Cotton Mather.
At least it won’t be a society of Objectivist drones dispensing radical selfishness.
Thank God you don’t have a crystal ball. You have no idea where we will be in 100 to 200 years. At least you won’t be around to see your beloved imaginary theocracy.
I’ve never seen someone so anxious to be enslaved by something that doesn’t exist.
“Men have free will therefore history is not pre-determined.”
God uses the free will of man to serve His providence. If this were not true, then the ancient Jewish prophecies, given hundreds, even thousands of years before their fulfillment, would have failed. Not one of them has failed.
The life and death of Christ was foretold in detail. The place and manner of birth, his rejection by Israel and acceptance by the gentiles, the place and manner of his death – which was carried out by the free will choices of men — all these things were foretold long before they happened.
THX: “The Jews will be yoked and crushed under either kind. They will be made second-class citizens either way, unless they convert.”
God (Jeremiah 33:23 – 26) “23 Moreover, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: 24 “Have you not noticed what these people are saying: ‘The LORD has rejected the two families He had chosen’? So they despise My people and no longer regard them as a nation. 25 This is what the LORD says: If I have not established My covenant with the day and the night and the fixed order of heaven and earth, 26 then I would also reject the descendants of Jacob and of My servant David, so as not to take from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I will restore them from captivity and will have compassion on them.”
“Men have free will therefore history is not pre-determined.”
No, it is you that is always projecting a future Christian theocracy, because it is you that is trying to pre-determine history. You are so anxious to be enslaved by a non-existent threat you can’t see the Objectivist Skynet theocracy you would condemn us all to.
Fortunately you and your silly acolytes have neither the power or the brains to pull it off.
We will be just fine without you. But thanks for playing “I am your God”.
So the colonists came here to establish man’s mind as supreme and rid themselves of Christianity?
The Puritans came to Massachusetts because they were being persecuted as heretics by the theocracy of the Church of England but the Puritans did not come to America for the secular freedom of the personal pursuit of happiness.
The Puritans came to America for the religious “freedom” to establish their own Christian theocracy. Like I said above, the secular freedom of the pursuit of happiness is NOT what freedom means in the Christian context.
The Puritans could never have founded the United States of America. The Founders were born, raised, and educated in the Age of Enlightenment. The USA is the product of the Age of Enlightenment not the Age of Christianity.
The U.S. was founded by Christians using primarily scriptural principles with Enlightenment principles thrown in. The nation most dedicated to your beloved Enlightenment is France, not the U.S.
You prefer the U.S. because the ascendency of its Christian principles protected it from the tyranny and slaughter poor France endured when overthrowing the monarchy / tyranny.
Objectivism is a parasite. Go to France where they still embrace “reason” as the god bringing liberty, brotherhood and equality.
All religions are fake. Some are just more violent and in different ways.
The leftist are death loving cultists. They don’t love humanity or people. They love to hurt, mutilate, humiliate and kill.
This idea of FORCING the good on people comes from the intrinsic theory of values, the Ten Commandments are an example of the intrinsic theory of values. Observe, that the Ten Commandments are called REVELATIONS and COMMANDS from God, to be obeyed unquestioningly, because they come from God. They are not called “ten moral principles to think about and apply according to your choice and context”, but commands to be obeyed no matter what; to be FORCED upon you.
“There are, in essence, three schools of thought on the nature of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective. The intrinsic theory holds that the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved. It is a theory that divorces the concept of “good” from beneficiaries, and the concept of “value” from valuer and purpose—claiming that the good is good in, by, and of itself….
The intrinsic theory holds that the good resides in some sort of reality, independent of man’s consciousness….
If a man believes that the good is intrinsic in certain actions, he will not hesitate to force others to perform them. If he believes that the human benefit or injury caused by such actions is of no significance, he will regard a sea of blood as of no significance. If he believes that the beneficiaries of such actions are irrelevant (or interchangeable), he will regard wholesale slaughter as his moral duty in the service of a “higher” good. It is the intrinsic theory of values that produces a Robespierre, a Lenin, a Stalin, or a Hitler. It is not an accident that Eichmann was a Kantian.” – Ayn Rand
What a steaming pile of eccentric crap. As usual Rand and you make zero sense.
Only a fool believes that the taboos that civilizations craft through the experiences of thousands of years can be altered by those who use mind altering substances and thus have possession of the “truth.” Every tinpot dictator and lunatic makes these claims. You see them in NYC subways and on CNN all the times, especially on the View.
Pathetic. We’ve seen the results of your wisdom in Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Portland, San Francisco, NYC. Shouldn’t you be addressing your NAMBLA meeting skippy?
So do you advocate a government without force?
Or do you desire that there be no king and every man does what is right in his own eyes?
Bring your presuppositions home where the rubber meets the road.
I advocate a government exclusively and only as a government which is absolutely restricted to the use of RETALIATORY force. That may never INITIATE force against citizens that have violated no one’s rights. I told you this yesterday.
“If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules.
This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government.
A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws….
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.” – Ayn Rand
THX: “They are not called “ten moral principles to think about and apply according to your choice and context”, but commands to be obeyed no matter what; to be FORCED upon you.”
Absolutely not. You are free to disobey.
God is what you objectivists call “super existence.” That is actually an accurate, supernatural term. God Himself says His name is “I AM THAT I AM.”
That being so, you can literally believe the objectivist proverb that “you are free to ignore reality, but not the consequences of reality.”
Which Commandment do you have a problem with, besides the ones which honor God?
The collective is all that matters to Marxists.
All,
Freewill, yes. However, God knows our freewill steps beforehand – omniscience.
Yes.
You touch upon a deep philosophical subject: What is freedom?” What is freedom of the will?” And are we free in anywhere or anytime where God’s “Omnis” pervade everything?
You touch the very place where any rational discussion must begin.
A rational philosophy does not begin midstream with the concepts of freedom and free will.
Reason begins with the evidence of the senses, it begins with identifying existence, that which exists.
A rational discussion of existence does not begin with the supernatural because there is no evidence from the evidence of man’s natural senses about anything supernatural.
The evidence of man’s natural senses indicates only the natural. The logical. The knowable. The perceivable. The demonstrable.
There is no evidence for the supernatural, i.e., that which is beyond the natural, i.e., that which contradicts and violates the natural, such as miracles.
You who speak of “rational” discussion, but who advance mystical, unscientific premises. Observe your foundational premise:
“Existence exists by the grace of existence.”
So, using your own logic, tell me how your “natural senses” and your perception demonstrate the evidentiary truth of your foundational claim?
“ daily lives turned upside down by (mostly) young eco-hysterics.”
They have been brainwashed or paid to protest, probably both.
The hypocrisy of it all never ceases to amaze me, STOP OIL by forcing traffic jams that USE MORE OIL.
The World Economic Forum is implementing the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals via Agenda 2030 which is basically world wide communism.
Here in the states, it seems to be equal parts of: 1) following indoctrination center (school/university) programming 2) the never-ending search to be relevant and 3) not having God in their lives. Each of these precepts feeds off the next.
When a young person chooses not to fill the God-shaped hole in their life, with no spiritual lamp posts to guide the way, they still unconsciously search for a beacon in the dark, whether they want to or not. We can’t help it. It’s in our DNA. We were born to be loved and have purpose. So, that need for relevancy remains, like an itch they can’t scratch, until a dogmatic professor scratches it for them. It doesn’t completely satiate them, but now in their early twenties, it’s been itching for so long. Saving the planet (oh, the hubris) is a good thing, right?
The devilish reversal is complete. They’ve gone from choosing not to worship the Creator to choosing to worship the creation and their own vain imaginings of having the power to “save” it. Insidious.
The ugly truth. Supported by any honest assessment of the evidence all around us right now – whether you are Christian or not. Thanks.
“Ye be like God” pretty much nails it.
“The term “the people” refers to a sort of Platonic ideal of humanity; the Left is comfortable thinking about people this way, as an abstraction.”
Plato is the Great Grand Ancestor of Christian theocracy and modern totalitarianism.
“Hegel would not have been possible but for Kant, who would not have been possible but for Plato. These three, more than any others, are the intellectual builders of Auschwitz.” – Leonard Peikoff, “The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America”
Your life is Platonically pathetic. Just a cheap leftist version of totalitarianism.
Unreason detection: If “the people” refers to a Platonic ideal of humanity and if Plato is the grand ancestor of Christian theocracy and modern totalitarianism, then why is it that Christianity alone recognizes that man is crowned with the dignity of being the only creature on earth made in the image of God? And that from this truth that man’s life is sacred?
Totalitarianism has been the historical rule prior to Christianity.
Secular freedom is not the same as freedom in a Christian context. Secular freedom means every individual is free to pursue his personal happiness, here on earth, for his own sake, for his own benefit. Free of any threats of violence from others, human or divine. Which necessarily means free even from any Allah or Yahweh, free from all other beings, human or divine.
Freedom in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim context means a supernatural God granted you freedom for the purpose of choosing to become his servant or be eternally damned by him. That is in actuality and reality a contradiction of freedom. The freedom to be the servant of God or be sent to Hell if you reject his offer, is not freedom at all, but an offer from a Supernatural Godfather you don’t dare refuse.
“The early Christians did contribute some good ideas to the world, ideas that proved important to the cause of future freedom. I must, so to speak, give the angels their due. In particular, the idea that man has a value as an individual — that the individual soul is precious — is essentially a Christian legacy to the West; its first appearance was in the form of the idea that every man, despite Original Sin, is made in the image of God (as against the pre-Christian notion that a certain group or nation has a monopoly on human value, while the rest of mankind are properly slaves or mere barbarians). But notice a crucial point: this Christian idea, by itself, was historically impotent. It did nothing to unshackle the serfs or stay the Inquisition or turn the Puritan elders into Thomas Jeffersons. Only when the religious approach lost its power — ONLY WHEN THE IDEA OF INDIVIDUAL VALUE WAS ABLE TO BREAK FREE FROM ITS CHRISTIAN CONTEXT AND BECOME INTEGRATED INTO A RATIONAL, SECULAR PHILOSOPHY — only then did this kind of idea bear practical fruit….
What then deserves the credit for the new development — the age-old belief or the new philosophy? What is the real intellectual root and protector of human liberty — God or reason?” – Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America”
You couldn’t find freedom with two hands and a flashlight. That is why you are enslaved to a dead philosophy.
Thus the groomer defends his “rights and desires.”
Your idea free will is fraught with moral, religious and rational contradictions to which you seem impervious.
If free will is the mind choosing without prejudice or disposition, then you must say there is no REASON or MOTIVE for the choice. This removes morality from decision making and defies the truth that all our choices are made for some reason of inclination or circumstance.
So, logically, if free will is the mind choosing BECAUSE of prejudice or disposition, then there is ALWAYS reason and motive for the choice and thus morality becomes paramount.
You consistently equate REASON with GOODNESS and reject any notion that reason is a tool that is used by men in accordance with their motives – for good or for evil.
And this is the crux of almost all your inconsistencies. You spout objectivist dogma, but you do not grasp its deeper implications.
These eco-Nazi Brownshirts are a bunch of ranting, certifiably deranged malcontents. They can’t answer reasonable questions because Climate Change is the biggest scam ever conceived by collectivists looking to loot and control the people.
I could imagine them standing before God pleading their case as one of the few who truly tried to save the planet. I can also imagine God handing them a ticket to Hell and telling them, THAT’S MY JOB.
“Like their fellow climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil operates in decentralized, autonomous blocs with no formal leadership, and their strategy is to force political action on the environment through social disruption.” And what is the true objective of this social disruption strategy? All we hear about are the symptoms of the disease and never the disease itself. The real goal behind all this rancor and vile attempts to undermine social order and create chaos is Marxism. The climate change movement is political and it is anti-capitalist…pro-big government…and it wants high taxes for you to pay for their ideology. Look at the donors behind these groups.
Look at the donors. You will find that hard work (it should be so hard!) is being done right here at FPM.
Excellent column. Unfortunately, the Left’s attitudes, which the column captures so well, extends to all other areas of its belief system. “Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out,” as a very wise man once said.
China and the rest of them just enjoy seeing those Useful Idiots from that stupid Just Stop Oil holding up everything with their stupid protests and idiots sitting in the way and making total pests of themselves and while unfurling their stupid banners with stupid slogans on them which come from Fossil Fuels Oh yes the Hyporacy as well
All those who wish to “stop oil” should be stripped naked and sent out into the world with nothing because without oil, gas and coal that is precisely the condition they would be in.
No Comforts from Home nothing at all to do with Fossil Fuels including the Transportation of Products it sure would surprised these idiots
Talk about “an inconvenient truth”! My reply to every one of these head cases is ‘you go first’. They never will.
The headline could be “The Left Loves People But Hates Persons. (or The Person).” People is a collective. Persons are individuals. The formula for either is “Marx loved the working class but hated the worker.”
Don’t any of these personality disorders have jobs? Or family? Or any life outside of shit-disturbing? If not, then who is paying for them? They have to eat and sleep like the rest of us. Considering the ineffectiveness of their noise (they are more concerned with irritating than winning hearts and minds), I would think the nefarious party behind this is less concerned with saving the planet than with engineering chaos. Sounds almost Hegelian.
I first heard the line opening this article (in slightly different form) in John Lennon’s song I DON’T WANNA FACE IT: “You wanna save humanity/But it’s people that you just can’t stand.”
noting t hat in Europe the Motorists a re getting fed up those Climate Activists and are dragging the jerks out of the way the Just Stop Oil idiots are wearing out their welcome and maybe soon they will kick them out of their Country totally
I’m going to live in a fantasy world, where the idle rich like the Woosters or the clone change fanatics, spend all their time in idle pleasure, with never a thought they should control the destiny of others.
I see no indications that the Left actually loves anything except victimizing other people to torment & destroy their lives. That is what appears to give them great joy. They are drawn to the Communist Bait & Switch scam that gives them acceptance & recognition for banding together in lynch-type mobs to destroy anyone who might stand in the way to them gaining complete control of ‘the masses’ & their ability to torture, control & murder them. Most of these people are psychopaths & hate filled seriously maladjusted individuals, who are happy to find a way to vent their hatred on others & still be accepted by a group. I do not believe that they are capable of love, mercy, compassion, guilt or empathy. Instead they have spent their time learning how to appear charismatic, trustworthy. & manipulate other people.
RE “psychopaths”
By FAR the most vital urgent and DEEP understanding everyone needs to gain is that a mafia network of manipulating PSYCHOPATHS are, and always have been, governing big businesses (eg official medicine, big tech, big banks, big religions), nations and the world — the evidence is OVERWHELMINGLY ROBUST: www.CovidTruthBeKnown.com (or https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html)
And psychopaths are typically NOT how Hollywood propaganda movies have showcased them. And therefore one better RE-learns what a psychopath REALLY is. You’ll then know why they exploit/harm everyone, why they want to control everyone and have been creating a new world order/global dictatorship, and many other formerly puzzling things will become very clear.
The official narrative is… “trust official science” and “trust the authorities” but as with all other “official narratives” …
“We’ll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” —William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime
But global rulership by psychopaths is only ONE part of the equation that makes up the destructive human condition as the cited article explains because there are TWO human pink elephants in the room… and they’re MARRIED.
Without a proper understanding, and full acknowledgment, of the true WHOLE problem and reality, no real constructive LASTING change is possible for humanity.
And if anyone does NOT acknowledge, recognize, and face (either wittingly or unwittingly) the WHOLE truth THEY are helping to prevent this from happening. And so they are “part of the problem” and not part of the solution.
The ruling criminals pulled off the Covid Scam globally via its WHO institution because almost all nations belong to it. Consider signing the declaration at https://sovereigntycoalition.org to exit the WHO
“… normal and healthy discontent .. is being termed extremist.” — Martin Luther King Jr, 1929-1968, Civil Rights Activist