Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
According to Mr. Crowder’s IMDB page, he was born in the summer of ’87. So somewhere around 4:30 when he embarks on this “what the hell is the matter with kids these days” lament, well, that kinda smarts. What in the hell is “pogs” anyway??
See, here is why I can’t get with the legalize-it crowd. Just like with the liberals, it isn’t what they don’t know, it’s that they know so much that isn’t so. The early part of this clip makes the point pretty nicely: You have a perfect right to ingest the herb, but passing nanny laws against your next Big Gulp, why, that’s “probably a good thing, actually” and all the rest of what they were saying there…eh? Come again?
It’s no different from what we’re seeing in a lot of other places — people “knowing” things because, and only because, they’re trying to become members of some in-crowd. And they end up spewing nonsense. Somewhere around the brink of adulthood, I notice people are particularly susceptible to this. It’s particularly popular around that age to pick up on some prevailing and traditional notion of two things that are similar, and display one’s cleverness and rebellious streak by rationalizing some difference. Or vice-versa, to attack a more orthodox notion of difference and start monologuing about similarities. And the problem, of course, is that sometimes when our cultural traditions say two things are different, or similar, it isn’t a very rare happenstance that it turns out this is quite correct. And, once again, the overly-clever rebellious-but-law-abiding youths are caught, with their own identifiable voice-boxes positioned behind absurd, silly things.
It’s embarrassing just to watch.
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You have a perfect right to ingest the herb, but passing nanny laws against your next Big Gulp, why, that’s “probably a good thing, actually” and all the rest of what they were saying there…eh? Come again?
You have a perfectly good point where these particular individuals are concerned. OTOH, you know goddamned well that not ALL marijuana legalization advocates support that particular POV. SOME of us are “of a certain age” and have both the experience and the “wisdom” (which you’re frequently on about) to understand a free society has no business telling its citizens what they can or cannot ingest.
Is all.
- bpenni | 11/28/2012 @ 12:28Okay well if the argument is made based on good old-fashioned principles, we have no quarrel about that. (Although we still disagree, courteously, about the resulting conclusion.)
The point is, when it’s all about climbing on a bandwagon, it all ends up being a bunch of intellectually useless mush. Even the guy being interviewed admitted to that much. Touche.
- mkfreeberg | 11/28/2012 @ 12:30(Although we still disagree, courteously, about the resulting conclusion.)
Yup. We’ve beaten a well-worn path around this particular rose bush and I’m not gonna take another lap. I won’t change your POV and you won’t change mine.
Vive la difference!
- bpenni | 11/28/2012 @ 15:50Ah yes… principles.
Therein lies the rub, no? One of the basic reasons liberals and conservatives can’t effectively communicate. We ask: “of what general principle is this specific case an illustration?” They ask: “what would all the cool people think?”
I know I’ve spent many an unproductive hour trying to corner a liberal into articulating some kind of general statement about how the world should work, and many more extra-unproductive hours trying to grok it out for myself when that inevitably fails. (“Because I’m worried my friends might not think I’m as smart / informed / cool as I think they think I am” is the closest I’ve come, and so that’s what I’m going with).
In the present case, for instance, I’d see the operative principle as “how far does the state’s legitimate right to monitor/control the health outcomes of its citizens extend?” There’s obviously some legit right there — we can’t all take a lobotomy pill that would render everyone ineligible for military service, for instance — but I think it stops far short of pot. If some clever teenager were to then say “well, you should support alcohol being outlawed until pot is legal, then,” I’d consider the operative principle to be “to what extent can we legitimately modify or abolish longstanding institutions in pursuit of a superficial consistency?”
For the liberal, as far as I can tell, it’s “well, I like pot but don’t like other peoples’ kids being fat, so let’s legalize pot but ban Big Gulps. You know, for the children.”
- Severian | 11/28/2012 @ 16:15