Comments Posted By GawainsGhost
Displaying 41 To 50 Of 60 Comments
ALL THAT'S MISSING ARE THE POM-POMS
Who wins this contest?
Hmmm. The Real vs. The Surreal. Now that's a toss-up if I ever saw one.
Hmmm. Poetry vs. Doggerel. Wow, that's a close one.
Hmmm. The IDF vs. Hizbullah. Gee, I wouldn't even hazard a guess.
Hmmm. The Right vs. The Left. Um, let's flip a coin.
Who wins this contest? I wouldn't give a squirt of ant urine for any contest. Who wins this war?
Scantily clad, the Reality Football Cheerleaders scamper out onto the field to lead the world in a cheer.
"Ready? O!K! Gimme a D!"
D!
"Gimme a U!"
U!
"Gimme an H!"
H!
"What's it spell?"
DUH!
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 30.07.2006 @ 10:46
I went to Patterico's site and read the vile comments. All I can say is that they only reflect a severely disordered mind.
This goes to the heart of the problem with the manipulation of language I keep referring to. Robert Frost once said, "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net." What he means by that is "poetry" written without structure, without metre, rhythm, rhyme, is not poetry. You can call it whatever you want, but that does not make it into something it's not.
The same is true of music. Without structure, melody, harmony, it's not music. And the same is true of language. Without structure, grammar, syntax, punctuation, it's not language.
This is why the "progressive" movement to abandon the teaching of traditional liberal arts--grammar, logic, rhetoric--is perhaps the most profound betrayal ever perpetrated on the American people, but especially on children. Without a structure to language, there can be no structure to thought. So by not teaching the structure of language, and more by not teaching how to structure language, the student is left without structured thought and without any way to structure thought. In other words, the student is taught to not think, and even worse is not taught how to think at all.
And we see the results all around us today. In the coarsening of our culture, the vulgarity of our communication, and the degradation of our civilization.
This is no trivial matter. We're talking about our survival as a free people here. And about the future we bequeath to our children, whom we have allowed to be reduced to thoughtless animals and left out in the cold.
John Keats best stated the ideals of high culture in his Ode on a Grecian Urn: "'Beauty is truth. Truth beauty.' That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." When there is no structure to language or thought, when words have no meaning, when truth is no longer relevant, there can be no beauty in anything. Only ugliness. And with ugliness comes all the vulgarity we endure all around us today.
God help our children.
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 28.07.2006 @ 18:02
Here is the information on the absolute best book on the relationship between language and reality. The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, Sister Miriam Joseph, Paul Dry Books 2002. Available through www.pauldrybooks.com.
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 28.07.2006 @ 08:54
To anyone who is interested in learning, but especially those who are home schooling their children (which I strongly recommend), there is no other book more important than this one. As Eva Brann says, "Whoever owns this book owns a treasure."
Mr. Moran.
Continuing our discussion on the manipulation of language, I offer this link to an article on the subject by the esteemed classicist Victor Davis Hanson in today's issue of the National Review: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjI4MWIzODNlYjM3Yzg1M2FiNTEzMWMyNzg1ZDIzNzQ=
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 28.07.2006 @ 08:13
Shocking. Leftists lashing out. It's so predictably boring. Like we haven't seen all this before.
If the Nazis proved anything, anything at all, it's that all notions of superiority are born from an inferiority complex. After WWI, the Germans were pummeled by the rest of Europe. Their economy was ruined; hyperinflation was rampant. They were denigrated, excoriated and made to feel inferior. And out of that morass came Hitler with his notions of Aryan superiority to feed off the frustrations of the embittered masses. And witness how he lashed out.
The same thing is happening on the Left today. They can't win an election anywhere, except in the Northeast and on the West Coast (and even those holdouts are perilous). All their policies, hopes and dreams are being pushed by the wayside as the entire country shifts to the center-right. Their academic frauds have been exposed and are now ridiculed. Their political leaders have become a national joke. And their claim to power--which is all they ever aspired to in the first place--is now tenuous at best.
No wonder they feel inferior. And out of this morass comes the Daily Kos, with his pretence to intellectual superiority. It's no surprise they're all lashing out--they're losing and they know it.
This will all end the same way WWII ended, with the National Socialists utterly defeated and humiliated. The sad thing is though that a lot of people are likely to get hurt along the way.
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 26.07.2006 @ 17:34
REDEFINING THE ALREADY DEFINED
I am sorry, but Terry above just wrote the most stupid sentence I have ever read--"The truth, you see, is the truth only when it is politically true."
WRONG! What is true is that which is real, eternal, unchangeable, and immutable. What was true 10,000 years ago is still true today, because what is true does not change. The truth transcends time, place, culture, ideology. It is itself, and is not dependent on any other.
This simple fact eludes the simple-minded like Terry, who wish to reduce all things to the politically expedient. If the truth were an agreed upon fiction, simply because it was political, there would be no Truth. That is, if a majority agreed politically that 2 + 2 did not equal 4, then 2 + 2 would equal 5. That would be political, but it would not be true.
Let us examine the statement "There is no truth" logically. If the statement is false, then its opposite is true, in which case there is truth. If the statement is true, then no statement could be true, including the statement "There is no truth." Therefore the statement contradicts itself and must be false. Quod erat demonstratum (the thing demonstrates itself): there is truth.
Obviously, elementary logic is far beyond the intellectual capacity of simple minds like Terry's. And this goes to the larger point of Mr. Moran's post. The Left constantly tries to reduce all things to the political, as long as they get to define the terms, without any regard to the truth.
Rereading Terry I am reminded of a quote from William Blake: "The mind that composed this sentence must have been a pitiable, a pitiful imbecility. I thank God I am not like [Terry]."
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 25.07.2006 @ 23:28
This is a great honor. To not only be quoted--and on the same page as Goldstein and Jacoby!--but to be praised by the Great Purveyor of Rightwing Nuthouse himself. I am truly humbled. I couldn't be happier if I got through to talk to Rush Limbaugh.
Of course, now I'm going to have to wake up early and call the Rick Moran Show tomorrow and inquire about my special prize. Something like, oh I don't know, a free phone call to Wide Awakes Radio, perhaps?
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 25.07.2006 @ 19:05
Mr. Moran.
You are on the right track here, but miss the larger problem and true source of resurgent anti-Semitism. That is, the Left, and apparently the Democratic party as a whole, have completely bought into National Socialism and all the totalitarianism it entails. This is why their rhetoric has more in common with Goebel's Big Lie and Orwell's Newspeak than anything else. If they keep spouting multiculturalist dogma, they think it will come to be believed as truth. And they use political correctness to stifle any debate and suppress all opposition.
Given the Nazi origins of National Socialism, it isn't hard to understand why anti-Semitism has returned.
In Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he observes that the reason the Jews have been persecuted throughout history is because they alone retained the faith in the one true God and the idea of Man as in the image of God, while all around the rest of the world descended into animalism, paganism and idolatry. The Left embraces all of these and adheres to National Socialism because it is the most recent and most effective method of obliterating the true faith and the true idea of Man. Thus, the anti-Semitism and its corollary, anti-Christianism.
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 24.07.2006 @ 17:40
A LAZY FRIDAY AFTERNOON MILLENNIAL INTERLUDE
Well, I'm not going to quibble over semantics with you. Whether Franklin "discovered" electricity or invented the lightning rod is beside the point. He also invented the pot-belly stove, the rocking chair, and bifocals. He was one of the more important framers of the Constitution, and that alone gives him more impact on our culture.
Edison, Bell, Tesla only added to the culture. They did not define it in any way comparable to Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, or any of the other framers.
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 23.07.2006 @ 04:20
I would add something. When I was in graduate school, one of my professors (whom I greatly respected) once told me that all of human history could be divided into two periods: before 1798 and after 1798. He was referring of course to the publication of Lyrical Ballads and the Romantic revolution at the end of the 18th century, of which the American revolution was an integral part.
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Paine lit the fire that changed the world we live in. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats lit the fire that changed the literature we read.
Comment Posted By GawainsGhost On 22.07.2006 @ 13:20
