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...
Mike Adams is delivering his thoughts about some of the protesters he encountered during a speech he gave at UMass.
Socialists are morally outraged without any source of morality. Finally, there is the brunette girl in the black shirt seen throughout the video. She got up and gave her own speech after mine was over. She was angry and I asked her why. She replied by admitting she was angry because she found my opposition to abortion to be morally “reprehensible” – and she actually did use the word “reprehensible.” It is interesting that socialists believe that God needs to be done away with. Yet they still claim to have a basis for moral condemnation.
I’ve been noticing for awhile that this is a particularly weak spot in whatever argument the leftist types choose to present at any given time. Such-and-such…is…WRONG! And there’s nearly always some other thing conventional thinking would say is wrong, that the leftist insists is not-so-wrong. There seems to be a spectrum of magnitudes of wrong-ness, that is sufficiently complex that the lefty himself doesn’t understand it.
Waterboarding is WRONG! When the bad guys catch our guys they do much worse things than waterboarding…blowtorches to the testicles…amputating limbs…et cetera. And that’s wrong “too,” but not so wrong as to arouse an equivalent quantity or quality of outrage. More like wrong in a tiresome, obligatory, boring sort of way.
They rankle at the idea that a deity might be needed or desired, by anyone, for whatever reason, as a sort of an anchor to such a moral code. As the “N” on the compass. They insist — always angrily — that they don’t need such a thing. And yet they’re left sputtering away that if your family is kidnapped, buried in an airtight bunker, running out of air, and you’ve caught the guy who knows where they are…the morally superior decision is to keep the bad guy comfortable, and let your family suffocate. They’re certain of this. Just like anyone would be, with a mighty moral compass of sorts that doesn’t have the letter “N” on it anywhere.
All we like sheep have gone astray… — Isaiah 53:6
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
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A couple of thoughts: first, many believe that good and evil exist outside of God (see Neitzche’s power=right and Rand’s Objectivism). There are lots of competing schools of thought on this, from populist moral equivalency (which holds that everyone’s morality is equal) to utilitarianism (which holds that the most efficient action is the most moral action or “the ends justify the means”). While, ultimately, I agree that morality is established by the purpose for which we were created, which means that God as our Creator defines our morality, it’s not an easily dismissible issue.
Secondly, I’d been working on some “You might be a liberal material”, such as
If you hate Rush Limbaugh more than you hate Osama bin Laden…
If you define “post-partisan” as whatever Obama does…
If you think that recognizing “shades of grey” makes everything the same shade of grey…
If you think the government is here to give you what you deserve…
If God as your judge frightens you, but Obama as your judge excites you…
If you think that equality comes from government instead of pre-existing government…
What do you think so far?
- JohnJ | 05/13/2009 @ 14:46I think your list does a great job of illustrating the contortions one must perform in order to define morality outside of God. This consistent outcome, in which a mortal, sporting the lofty height of confidence one can only attain by knowing very little, holds a great injury to be “not that bad” while a far less significant one is regarded as “reprehensible.” To my way of thinking, that trend is the clearest, plainest, and least-deniable evidence in the universe encountered thus far, to support the theory that there must be a God. Or at the very least, that we do have a need of one.
I further perceive this to be Rand’s great weakness and Friedrich Nietzsche’s as well: The notion that you don’t need God to form morality. In both cases, the justification seems to be “because I said so.” In the case of the more modern secular types, there’s a whole bunch of Grrrr and How-Dare-You thrown in, but the intellectual justification remains the same. It’s an argument that ends precisely where it begins.
A good illustration of the conundrum is the question we’ve asked before, within these pages and outside, in the world of spoken words and fresh air: If participation in a democratic republic is a Basic Human Right, and a woman’s control over her body is also a Basic Human Right, do I then have a Basic Human Right to vote yes on a law that would outlaw abortions — in such a way that the law might actually pass and become legally binding? It’s so easy to say certain things “must” or “must not” happen when you’re discussing one issue at a time; like building a Jenga tower one block high. But when one ponders multiple issues simultaneously things get sloppy and tricky. Throw in a few more issues, and ultimately you do, indeed, need a God to get it all working properly.
- mkfreeberg | 05/13/2009 @ 15:45“if your family is kidnapped, buried in an airtight bunker, running out of air, and you’ve caught the guy who knows where they are…the morally superior decision is to keep the bad guy comfortable, and let your family suffocate. ”
Some woman at The Corner at National Review actually said that was her position with her family. Suprisingly, or not, nobody at the Corner called her out on that.
- vanderleun | 05/13/2009 @ 16:51I shamelessly swiped it from something I heard on the radio, and actually wrote up already earlier this month. The radio guy, incidentally, was expressing his incredulity over a similar position taken by one of his previous callers (a call which he replayed on the air).
This is an amazing thing. It reads like a “paint myself into a corner” oopsie committed just once in awhile, by one independent consciousness or another, in isolated incidents. But it’s more like a widespread epidemic of crazy.
It seems there are quite a few families out there that may have little or no comprehension of how little they mean to their patriarchs, or matriarchs.
- mkfreeberg | 05/13/2009 @ 17:06I remember the Onion piece on the kid with cancer who wished for more wishes, and the “Make a Wish” foundation had “no choice”. I had said at the time that it was an awesome satire of liberal thinking.
- JohnJ | 05/14/2009 @ 03:28Without a fixed point of reference (God), “morality” is nothing more than subjective personal preferences. This is undeniable and immutable fact. Period, finito, end-of-story.
- cylarz | 05/18/2009 @ 04:42[…] MORAL OUTRAGE With No Source for the Morality …. […]
- Steynian 356 « Free Canuckistan! | 05/18/2009 @ 17:33