This essay is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for the conservative-minded. It is not for anyone who believes in keeping things the same. It is not for any person who is incapable of a 'paradigm shift' -- who is plastered to the wall of his or her own paradigm philosophy and/or religion right now, and who cannot peel himself off of it to look at the world from a new perspective.
According to Otto Rank (a psychoanalyst from Freud's time who spent much of his time studying 'creativity'), creativity is all about making new integrations, new syntheses, and in the new vernacular -- new 'synergies'.
I am from a Protestant background although I have not been a practicing Protestant/Christian since my childhood. Still, I am not immune to my recent impulse to both 'deconstruct' and 'reconstruct' religious and biblical principles.
Questions like... 'How can I harmonize Christianity and Humanistic-Existential philosophy (and/or more particularly, Nietzschean 'anti-Christian' philosophy in a spirit that both sides might find acceptable? To ask such a question, and better, to find a possibly workable answer, is from my perspective, The Search for 'The Holy Grail', or in my newly created vernacular -- The Search for a 'Dialectic Divinity'.
In my most recent spurt of creativity, I have found a whole host of new potential dialectic divinities -- arrived at by fusing together in a 'dialectically united way' the special individual properties, and polar characteristics of opposing philosophies and/or energies.
Can religion and humanistic-existentialism by united? In a word -- 'yes'.
Can politics and religion be united? If they are united by the principles of humanistic-existentialism, then, 'yes, they can be'.
Can Christianity and Daoism be united? In Hegel's Hotel here, yes, indeed....It is just another example of 'negotiating, integrating, synergizing' a new dialectic conceptual product that -- if it works well enough -- can be construed as another 'dialectic divinity'.
Let me start by integrating Hegelian philosophy into Christianity in a way that 're-interprets' the whole concept of 'The Holy Trinity'.
For me, Jesus Christ emulates the Spirit of Humanism -- which includes 'groundedness', 'stability', peace, tranquility, harmony, earth and water, 'compassion', 'generosity', 'caring', 'empathy', 'altruism', 'loving'... -- and the Eastern Spirit of 'Yin'.
Contradistinctively, God emulates the Spirit of 'Existentialism' -- 'freedom', 'independence', 'boldness', 'assertiveness', 'evolution', 'change', 'passion', 'air', 'wind', 'fire', 'Creativity'... -- and the Eastern Spirit of 'Yang'.
Rather than viewing both God and Jesus Christ as essentially the same deity, I view God and Jesus Christ as 'two polarized deities, emulating opposite energies' that when fused together can be viewed as the essence of 'Humanistic(Jesus Christ)-Existentialism(God)' or a 'dialectical divinity' or 'The Holy Spirit' -- and which, when incorporated into the spirit and the behavior of man -- gives us the final point of the triangle in 'The Holy Trinity'. This is what I call a Christian rendition of Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Thus, the total package of what I am synergizing here might be viewed as 'Hegelian Christianity', and a type of 'Nietzschean Christianity' where man expresses himself boldly and assertively while at the same time caring about, and for, others...
Let us not forget that allegedly, Nietzsche's last act before he went insane was a most 'Christian' act -- he ran across the street and threw himself in front of a whip that was aimed at a man's horse.
Existentialism is not compatible with the Christian principle of 'self-denial' and 'self-submission'. Nor is it compatible with the Christian principle of 'Original Sin'. Both of these ideas, Nietzsche objected to -- and rejected. Dissociated himself from.
However, in Nietzschean Christianity -- as constructed and proposed by me -- man stands up for himself, asserts himself, expresses himself, evolves himself in fresh and creative ways -- and, in so doing, emulates God as one of his two main polar role models in an 'internalized or introjected dialectic divinity' (the other polarized role model being Jesus Christ).
Internalizing 'the yin' of Jesus Christ, and 'the yang' of God, in a balanced, harmonious manner, man internalizes 'The Holy Spirit' -- or in Hegelian terms, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' -- and by doing this, man becomes the last part of 'The Holy Trinity'. In this fashion, The Holy Spirit, or The Phenomenology of Spirit, becomes a Western version of The Daoist 'Path'. When we step away from The Holy Spirit or The Phenomenology of Spirit, and start to chase after 'greed' or 'power against people' or 'revenges' or 'violence' or 'war'.....then we are walking away from 'The Hegelian-Nietzschean Christian-Daoist Path'.
This is the spirit of Hegel's Hotel and DGB Philosophy-Psychology.
Have a great day!
-- dgb, November 11, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...
Are Still in Process....
Sunday, November 11, 2012
What Is The Phenomenology of Spirit? New Integrative Concepts, New Synergies: How Politics and Religion Might Be Connected: 'Hegelian Christianity', 'Humanistic-Existential Christianity', 'Christian Daoism', 'Dialectic Divinities', 'The Holy Trinity' and 'The Holy Spirit' Re-Interpreted -- and The Potential Influence of These New Concepts on Ethics, Politics, Business and Economics, Marriages...
Friday, November 09, 2012
Post-Election Thoughts on The Failure of The Republican Party and The Tea Party: Part 1 Religious and Political Extremism
If you want to talk about the failure of The Republican Party -- and one of its main derivatives -- i.e., The Tea Party -- a good place to start is this question here: Should politics and religion be connected at all?
If we were to canvas all the different opinions and beliefs of the American people relative to their religious and/or non-religious viewpoints, we would undoubtedly get a very wide spectrum of viewpoints indeed.
So when a politician comes out and espouses one particular religious viewpoint, he or she is probably going to get 'the agreement' a particular 'subset' of 'believers'; and probably, at the same time, get an equally, or much larger, subset of 'non-believers'. The more radical the politician's religious viewpoint is, the more likely he or she is to alienate a high degree of potential supporters -- and civilian voters. I would not suggest that any politician use the words 'God' and 'rape' in the same sentence. That is likely going to be morally repulsive for most people to listen to -- not to mention political suicide.
My belief is that, from a pragmatic political perspective, it is probably best keeping the subject of religion out of politics altogether. However, herein lies the Catch-22 for The Republican and The Tea Party: they are built on a strongly religious base that, when taken too far, can alienate The Republican and The Tea Party from a huge chunk of potential American voters who might otherwise like many of The Republican/Tea Party's political ideas. Like bringing down the deficit. And balancing the budget.
The Tea Party could have been a huge success if its philosophical and political principles had been fused together by the right group of modern day political philosophers who were significantly basing their ideas upon the ideas of The American Constitution (which was put together by another group of very smart American and European political philosophers).
.................................................................................................................................
Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, The Republican-Tea Party never successfully put a full -- and highly reasonable -- political platform together, branded and marketed it, but instead, eventually became negatively stereotyped and branded as a party of religious extremists and Republican hard-liners. Down goes The Tea Party. And with it -- The Republican Party too. Religious extremism and hard-line Republicanism will never win an American election any time soon. The American people have already experienced the effects of that type of Republicanism at least once in recent memory -- Bush's Regime -- and will probably not be in a hurry to vote into office any brand of Republicanism that smacks or smells of 'Bushism'.
More flexible, intelligent, moderate, creative, democratic Republican voices need to be more loudly heard. The hard-line Republicans will continue to lead the Republican Party to their collective demise -- like lemmings over a cliff -- until they are basically silenced and no longer seen to reflect or represent the interests and principles of The more 'centralist and moderate' Republican Party as a whole, both in the eyes of the American people, and before that, in the eyes of The Republican Party. Extremism rarely takes you to anywhere other than your own self-destruction. In fact, this is a Hegelian principle. Paraphrasing Hegel....Every idea, theory, principle, characteristic, platform...carries with it the seeds of its own self-destruction. And this self-destruction usually arrives at 'the extremist fringes of the original idea'....
My theory of quasi-mythological-deist-spiritualism includes at its core....the idea of...
'Dialectic Divinities'....
When dialectic opposite parties engage each other in creative, synergetic, respectful, humanistic-existential, debate....the outcome can be a 'dialectical divinity'...
Like 'yin' and 'yang' in harmonious balance with each other....
Apollonianism and Dionysianism in harmonious balance with each other...
Like men and women in harmonious balance with each other...
Like Republicans and Democrats in harmonious balance with each other....
Like The United States of America...
United....and not divided....
-- dgb, Nov. 9th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain,
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are Still in Process...
If we were to canvas all the different opinions and beliefs of the American people relative to their religious and/or non-religious viewpoints, we would undoubtedly get a very wide spectrum of viewpoints indeed.
So when a politician comes out and espouses one particular religious viewpoint, he or she is probably going to get 'the agreement' a particular 'subset' of 'believers'; and probably, at the same time, get an equally, or much larger, subset of 'non-believers'. The more radical the politician's religious viewpoint is, the more likely he or she is to alienate a high degree of potential supporters -- and civilian voters. I would not suggest that any politician use the words 'God' and 'rape' in the same sentence. That is likely going to be morally repulsive for most people to listen to -- not to mention political suicide.
My belief is that, from a pragmatic political perspective, it is probably best keeping the subject of religion out of politics altogether. However, herein lies the Catch-22 for The Republican and The Tea Party: they are built on a strongly religious base that, when taken too far, can alienate The Republican and The Tea Party from a huge chunk of potential American voters who might otherwise like many of The Republican/Tea Party's political ideas. Like bringing down the deficit. And balancing the budget.
The Tea Party could have been a huge success if its philosophical and political principles had been fused together by the right group of modern day political philosophers who were significantly basing their ideas upon the ideas of The American Constitution (which was put together by another group of very smart American and European political philosophers).
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Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, The Republican-Tea Party never successfully put a full -- and highly reasonable -- political platform together, branded and marketed it, but instead, eventually became negatively stereotyped and branded as a party of religious extremists and Republican hard-liners. Down goes The Tea Party. And with it -- The Republican Party too. Religious extremism and hard-line Republicanism will never win an American election any time soon. The American people have already experienced the effects of that type of Republicanism at least once in recent memory -- Bush's Regime -- and will probably not be in a hurry to vote into office any brand of Republicanism that smacks or smells of 'Bushism'.
More flexible, intelligent, moderate, creative, democratic Republican voices need to be more loudly heard. The hard-line Republicans will continue to lead the Republican Party to their collective demise -- like lemmings over a cliff -- until they are basically silenced and no longer seen to reflect or represent the interests and principles of The more 'centralist and moderate' Republican Party as a whole, both in the eyes of the American people, and before that, in the eyes of The Republican Party. Extremism rarely takes you to anywhere other than your own self-destruction. In fact, this is a Hegelian principle. Paraphrasing Hegel....Every idea, theory, principle, characteristic, platform...carries with it the seeds of its own self-destruction. And this self-destruction usually arrives at 'the extremist fringes of the original idea'....
My theory of quasi-mythological-deist-spiritualism includes at its core....the idea of...
'Dialectic Divinities'....
When dialectic opposite parties engage each other in creative, synergetic, respectful, humanistic-existential, debate....the outcome can be a 'dialectical divinity'...
Like 'yin' and 'yang' in harmonious balance with each other....
Apollonianism and Dionysianism in harmonious balance with each other...
Like men and women in harmonious balance with each other...
Like Republicans and Democrats in harmonious balance with each other....
Like The United States of America...
United....and not divided....
-- dgb, Nov. 9th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain,
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are Still in Process...
Thursday, October 04, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Ethical (Employer-Employee-Customer-Environment Valued, Humanistic-Existential) Capitalism vs. Narcissistic (One-Sided), Unethical Capitalism
Capitalism affects everything we think, feel, and do -- and in this respect capitalism has to change.
More specifically, capitalism has to return to a base and a foundation of 'good ethics' and 'fairness'. The other 'brand' of Capitalism that we are seeing more and more every day -- narcissistic (one-sided) manipulative Capitalism -- will simply not sustain itself. It has bred a 'culture of narcissism' -- which includes a culture of exploitation, manipulation, deceit, distrust, disloyalty, betrayal, and paranoia.
This is not rocket science. If you betray, deceive, and/or treat a customer or an employee unfairly, the customer or employee is going to think, feel, and behave differently towards you. In the middle of this 'triangulation' of new thinking, feeling, and behaving is going to be the key element or essence of resentment-anger-rage. And one way or another, that is going to come back on you, the betrayer, the manipulator, the deceiver. If you don't fall into this category, then you are doing things 'right' -- you are practicing 'ethical capitalism'. If you do fall into this category, then you need need to seriously look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself if the 'end justifies the means'. In the business world, we have built -- and/or are still in the process of building -- a corporate-industrial society based on the unsustainable characteristics of deceit, betrayal, manipulation, distrust, and disloyalty. And it works both ways -- employers deceiving employees, and employees deceiving employers. Anger, resentment, alienation -- carry the day -- government-wise, and corporately, 'everything is broken'. People, in general, no longer trust the 'bill of goods' that their politicians, their cable and internet providers, their banks, their telephone companies, their oil companies...are selling them...
Over-spending at the top of the food chain, in the upper echelons of government power, are being compensated for with 'serious spending cuts' at the bottom of the food chain, among those citizens who are going to feel it first, and feel it worst. The same civilians who are paying $24 for every politician's pension (to every $1. that the politician chips in on his or her own pension) are themselves experiencing reductions -- and even cutoffs -- in their own pensions. What we used to be eligible for at 55 or 60, in a few years we may not be eligible for until we turn 67. Which means that for many civilians who have worked hard all their lives, they simply won't be retiring unless or until they are 'forced' out of the workforce.
Cable and telephone companies 'seduce you with lures' that tell you, that you are going to 'save money' for more and more services...they 'hook you'....and then 'they eat you alive'.....you sign a contract (which should be illegal because they are generally designed to 'hide' crucial information that you won't find out about until you 'try out your new service' and/or you get your first or second bill online, or in your email, or by mail only to find out that your bill has just jumped from its usual $150 to $700..... And you ask yourself, 'What did I miss? Did the salesperson tell me something that I didn't hear?' And 'the corporate design' of the whole situation was that you weren't intended to get 'the bad news' until after you signed the contract....
I could go on and on...hidden bank charges coming from every direction, every account....
Mortgage deals that involve 'easy payments' in the first couple of years -- and payments that will leave you 'homeless' after the 'back loaded interest rates' kick in...
Are these just cases of 'caveat emptor' -- 'buyer beware'....
Or is there something really insidious going on here that is destroying the whole infra-structure, the whole fabric, of our society?
Unless we 're-set' our 'ethical values' to take away the 'lures' and 'hooks' that involve 'exploitative, manipulative tricks', capitalism in North America is going to collapse -- from the bottom up....until even the people in the highest echelons of power start to collapse with the collapsing infrastructure and the lower classes below them...
Capitalism requires ethics to sustain itself -- plain and simple.
The more ethics becomes non-existent -- or becomes a 'twisted, distorted, one-sided type of narcissistic ethics' -- in the face of depleting resources, and greater and greater credit liabilities -- the faster the collapse will happen. It has already well begun.
And even the psychotherapy profession needs to sit up and take notice...Because the tell-tale signs, and a cross-section of the affected people, will be entering your offices every day....And in this regard, the psychotherapy profession needs to be a part of the solution to the problem -- not a part of the problem.
Capitalism needs to be like a circulating lake and river system -- with money essentially being the economic nutrient that needs to circulate all over the lake and river system -- from the owners and employers and upper class, down through the middle class, and the lower class -- with each economic class being able to sustain itself.
When you have a 'blockage' -- a 'dyke' or a 'beaver dam' that stops the free and fair flow of money down through each economic class -- because of greed and bad ethics at the top of the food chain that 'cuts off the circulation of the lake and the river to all its different parts' -- and/or alternatively, 'cuts off nutrients and oxygen to all the peripheral parts of the body' -- well, you get what might also be called 'gangrene capitalism'.
That is what we have today.
Gangrene capitalism.
-- dgb, Aug 12, 2012...
.....................................................................................................
I like Adam Smith. I like Ayn Rand. I like making money as much as the next person. But you don't have to read Karl Marx and Erich Fromm for very long to realize that Capitalism -- Narcissistic Capitalism in particular -- can have some very nasty self and social side effects. Or maybe they are the 'main effects'. Collusion, corruption, price gouging, price fixing, betrayal of the customer, betrayal of the employee by the employer, betrayal of the employer by the employee, lack of integrity, lack of ethics, alienation, distrust, a deadened spirit....
What this all comes down to is whether you really care about the customer, co-worker, employer or employee you are working for or with -- or not....This is the essence of the difference between Narcissistic Ethics and Capitalism vs. Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Ethics and Capitalism -- caring about the person you are dealing with -- or not. Are you really trying to help them? Or do you give one iota how much you hurt people in your pursuit of money? In the end, it comes down to this question and this question only: Do you have a set of ethics and integrity that shows that you care about the people you are doing business with -- or do you not?
Narcissistic Capitalism breeds betrayal bad will, and distrust of the customer and/or co-worker, employee, employer whereas DHE Capitalism and Ethics breeds co-operation, good will, and trust in the other.
Money changes everything. It enters the picture as a heavy potential 'conflict of interest' factor -- in narcissistic capitalistic ethics the goal is to maximize profitability and income even at the expense of betraying the customer and/or co-worker, employee, employer...which is in effect robbing the social, economic. corporate, and political world of good will, trust, and co-operation...Instead, a broadening world of bad will, distrust, and paranoia seep in, or rush in, to take its place...And this is the world we live in... dgb, Aug 8, 2012
From one of my favorite mentors...Bob Dylan...
It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), 1965
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.
Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.
So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, ma, i'm only sighing.
As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind it's gates
But even the president of the united states
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, ma, i can make it.
Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.
Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, ma, to live up to.
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say god bless him.
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.
But i mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, ma, if i can't please him.
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares propaganda, all is phony.
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, i scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, i have had enough
What else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, ma, it's life, and life only.
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/bob_dylan/its_alright_ma.html ]
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.
Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, ma, to live up to.
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say god bless him.
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.
But i mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, ma, if i can't please him.
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares propaganda, all is phony.
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, i scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, i have had enough
What else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, ma, it's life, and life only.
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/bob_dylan/its_alright_ma.html ]
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/its-alright-ma-im-only-bleeding
From: Corrine Graham <corrine@livecitizen.us>
To: dgbainsky@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 10:28:07 AM
Subject: Would you consider sharing this with your readers?
To: dgbainsky@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 10:28:07 AM
Subject: Would you consider sharing this with your readers?
Hi David
I have been trying to reach you over the past few weeks to let you know about a contest LiveCitizen is hosting that I think will appeal to your readers. LiveCitizen is a social networking platform that encourages users to voice their opinions on current events and political hot topics.
The contest is called fix*us and the goal is to get citizens to share their solutions to one of five different topics that our country is currently facing. At the end of the contest one winner per issue will be chosen and awarded $1,000 to the charity of their choice.
I've put together a social media news release with all the contest details as well as video and information on LiveCitizen. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/LiveCitizen
This is OUR country and we don't think that politicians are the only ones who should have a say in how it's run. If you have any questions let me know, I'd love to see your post if you decide to share your solution.
Best,
Corrine
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Asking Hard Questions To Leading Authorities on Muslim Americans, Religious Liberty, and Interfaith Relations
Hi David
Many Americans remain confused about Islam and Muslims in America in the wake of anti-mosque protests, anti-Shariah legislation and related controversies. Starting at 7:30 pm EST tonight, we¹re hosting a town-hall style program where a live audience and online viewers will have an opportunity to ask hard questions to leading authorities on Muslim Americans, religious liberty, and interfaith relations.
I believe you and the readers of Hegel's Hotel: American Politics...DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics... will be interested in sharing, watching, and discussing:
http://myfellowamerican.us/newseum
I would love it if you could share the webcast and post or tweet about it. If you do, please let me know. And please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much.
Daniel Tutt
Project Director,
My Fellow American
Twitter: @usmuslimstories
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MyFellowAmericanProject
Web: http://myfellowamerican.us
Many Americans remain confused about Islam and Muslims in America in the wake of anti-mosque protests, anti-Shariah legislation and related controversies. Starting at 7:30 pm EST tonight, we¹re hosting a town-hall style program where a live audience and online viewers will have an opportunity to ask hard questions to leading authorities on Muslim Americans, religious liberty, and interfaith relations.
I believe you and the readers of Hegel's Hotel: American Politics...DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics... will be interested in sharing, watching, and discussing:
http://myfellowamerican.us/newseum
I would love it if you could share the webcast and post or tweet about it. If you do, please let me know. And please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much.
Daniel Tutt
Project Director,
My Fellow American
Twitter: @usmuslimstories
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MyFellowAmericanProject
Web: http://myfellowamerican.us
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Opinions on The American Republican (GOP) Race, 2011...
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. -- Thomas Jefferson (How appropriate and up-to-date! -- dgb)
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? -- Thomas Jefferson (Gotta like that one...dgb)
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-- Thomas Jefferson
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
-- Thomas Jefferson (As long as my neighbor doesn't attack me for saying something different -- dgb).
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
-- Thomas Jefferson
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
-- Thomas Jefferson
It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
-- Thomas Jefferson (Especially when what you know is good for you in the long run is going to hurt you a lot in the short term. -- dgb)
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
-- Thomas Jefferson (That would leave about 95% of business owners and CEOs out of a job, as well as bankers, investors, advertisers, and a lot of politicians -- and I have probably just scratched the surface...dgb)
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
-- Thomas Jefferson (Global Capitalism in a nutshell. -- dgb.)
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
-- Thomas Jefferson
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
-- Thomas Jefferson
No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
-- Thomas Jefferson
One man with courage is a majority.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
-- Thomas Jefferson
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
-- Thomas Jefferson
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Google Brainy Quotes, Thomas Jefferson for these and other Jefferson quotes...dgb
....................................................
And now, from the more general...to the more specific...as pertains to the present Republican candidate race in 2011...
In my opinion, the two best Conservative/Republican thinkers inside or outside this election race are Donald Trump and Ron Paul. Mitt Romney continues to try to patrol a very 'wide centrefield' that makes you ask whether he is dedicated more to his own political and economic ideology or to his 'electability status'.
Trump and Paul remain consistent to their Capitalist and Conservative ideals which is probably what America needs more than anything else right now -- as long as these 'ideals' include all of America, and not just the upper 5 percent...
Paul seems radical at first take, but he's not really. He's just 'a good, old fashioned, Conservative, Republican, Capitalist. No bullcrap. He tells you the way he believes it...Some of the Republican 'flip-floppers' and 'avoiders' and 'abstractionists' are falling by the wayside of public opinion...which is a good thing...
Paul calls it the way he sees it...America can't or won't get out of debt by printing more and more money, nor by going deeper and deeper into debt...
The spending has to stop...there is no other way that you are going to get yourself out of debt unless unless you tax the American people until they have no money left...or unless private and public income starts to soar again which will only happen when American manufacturing jobs that are now located in all the cheapest jobs markets in the world -- which unfortunuately, does not include America -- come back home. And for them to come back home again, all 'free -- and unfair -- trade agreements' -- have to be dismantled. All these free trade agreements have put America at a gross disadvantage in terms of 'labor issues'. Either labor prices have to crash to meet global competition in countries like China, Mexico, South Korea, India, South American countries...where labor practises are often oppressive, dehumanizing, and would set back American labor practices 100 years...Or, again, these 'allegedly free trade agreements' -- which are only 'free' to the global capitalists who can take advantage of them -- need to be dismantled, and 'protectionist tariffs' would have to be re-instated in their place.
As Trump boldly stated, you don't see Japan buying American Chevrolets...Why is the rest of the world allowed to maintain their 'nationalstic protectionist policies' while America and Canada are not? It would be easy to blame Reagan and Mulroney for the beginning of the The Free Trade Agreement, but no President or Prime Minister since has tried to rescind it...Why? Because it benefits the Global Capitalists who have helped to finance and keep these Presidents and Prime Ministers in power...
Obama made waves about The Free Trade Agreement when he first came into power....but those waves were quickly squashed...and there has been no mention of The Free Trade Agreement since by most political and/or economic men in power...except a very vocal Trump in a CNN interview a few days ago...
Obama came into power at the worst possible time...a time when the American debt was skyrocketing...and he wanted or still wants to bring in his new medical policies....Socialized medicine -- i.e., medicine for the poor as well as the rich, and medicine that doesn't not bankrupt a certain proportion of Americans -- is a good thing, just not necessarily the right thing to bring in at the right time, when the country as a whole is 'drowning in debt'...
And the American people, I do not believe, will ever forgive Obama for doing what he said -- or at least implied -- he wouldn't do: bail out the robbers on Wall Street which is why Wall Street is being 'occupied' right now...
The American people were led to believe by Obama's strong and charismatic campaign speeches that Obama had the strength and courage to stand up against 'American political and economic corruption' -- the lobbyists in Washington, the collusions and crooked back room deals both in Washington and on Wall Street...And that hasn't happened... In fact, there was not only one but two Wall Street Bail Outs under Obama's watch...Payments to the robbers on Wall Street with 'public chastisements not to do it again'...No one went to jail...Some very guilty CEOs and top executives could have been held accountable for what happened, either arrested on fraudulent charges, and/or left to try to 'swim in their own self-created bankruptcy'....But instead, they were given 'billions of taxpayers dollars' to make their banks and mortgage companies 'solvent' again, while the rest of America that got 'ripped off' had to 'eat their own financial losses'
Where is the 'free market' -- and 'invisible hand' -- justice in that Wall Street fiasco? Adam Smith is turning over and 'vomitting' in his grave...He...and I think Jefferson...never did trust 'bankers', told us to 'watch them closely', not to let them have a 'free, unadulterated, narcissistic licence to do whatever they wanted to do'...and if anything, it was perhaps the American government, under an earlier President, who initiated these 'manipulative, back-end loaded, exploding mortgages'..
'Let's get more people into their own homes -- even if they have to evacuate them, or we have to evict them, when they can't meet their rising interest levels deeper in the contract.'
Wow -- that was certainly a brilliant idea, but certainly not for these new homeowners. American Capitalism at its narcissistic -- best or worst -- depending on your perspective. Great for the bankers and mortgage companies at first -- until they had a financial disaster bigger than Hurricane Katrina on their hands...
I like Trump, and I like Paul, because those two tell us what they believe, do not mince words, and do not squirm in their respective seats under pressure, and hard questions...
Question to Trump: How do you get Americans working again?
Answer by Trump as I can recall it, with my own extension: Well, the first thing you have to do is to stop American manufacturing companies from leaving America...Bring back American manufacturing companies to America by re-introducing tariffs (25%) on on imported goods (and services). Stop getting financially ripped off by countries all around the world. America used to be the most powerful financial company in the world. Now, it is practically the laughing-stock of the world. Why? Because other countries 'rip us off in business and economic negotiations' and we continue to let them do it to us, without so much as a wimper... 'International political correctness and niceness' has led to 'national business and economic disaster within America'. And America is being internationally manipulated all the way to national bankruptcy...
That is what practically every American politican is afraid to say...
And Trump wasn't afraid to say it...
I believe that Paul would probably echo much the same opinion...
Those are the only two opinions that I hear these days...
That I believe have the capability of actually pulling America out of debt...
Another four years of the same or worse type of 'internationally politically nice ideology'...and it will probably be too late to fix anything...at least in America...
I like Obama's 'Enlightenment Ideals'... I think that Obama 'turned soft' on a few things that he shouldn't have -- like 'The Free Trade Agreement' -- and overall, I just do not believe that Obama has the 'right type of stuff' to turn America's financial situation around and put it back on track again....You can't just keep spending and printing money...
............................................
If I have been a little 'loose' on my generalizations, understand that I believe that there are still some very ethical businessmen out there conducting business who I have the greatest respect for -- especially when they are good to both their customers and their employees...The sad -- even tragic -- part is that I believe that such businessmen are becoming fewer and fewer between...It's like 'do what the greedy, the colluding, and manipulative are doing lest I be left behind...Which reminds me that I left out a couple of quotes that I need to go back and look for...' -- dgb
...................................................
And back from the more specific to the more general in terms of two more anecdotal quotes from another one of our most famous political-economic predecessors...
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. -- Adam Smith
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature. -- Adam Smith
.......................................
-- dgb, October 30th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? -- Thomas Jefferson (Gotta like that one...dgb)
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-- Thomas Jefferson
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
-- Thomas Jefferson (As long as my neighbor doesn't attack me for saying something different -- dgb).
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
-- Thomas Jefferson
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
-- Thomas Jefferson
It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
-- Thomas Jefferson (Especially when what you know is good for you in the long run is going to hurt you a lot in the short term. -- dgb)
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
-- Thomas Jefferson (That would leave about 95% of business owners and CEOs out of a job, as well as bankers, investors, advertisers, and a lot of politicians -- and I have probably just scratched the surface...dgb)
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
-- Thomas Jefferson (Global Capitalism in a nutshell. -- dgb.)
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
-- Thomas Jefferson
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
-- Thomas Jefferson
No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
-- Thomas Jefferson
One man with courage is a majority.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
-- Thomas Jefferson
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
-- Thomas Jefferson
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Google Brainy Quotes, Thomas Jefferson for these and other Jefferson quotes...dgb
....................................................
And now, from the more general...to the more specific...as pertains to the present Republican candidate race in 2011...
In my opinion, the two best Conservative/Republican thinkers inside or outside this election race are Donald Trump and Ron Paul. Mitt Romney continues to try to patrol a very 'wide centrefield' that makes you ask whether he is dedicated more to his own political and economic ideology or to his 'electability status'.
Trump and Paul remain consistent to their Capitalist and Conservative ideals which is probably what America needs more than anything else right now -- as long as these 'ideals' include all of America, and not just the upper 5 percent...
Paul seems radical at first take, but he's not really. He's just 'a good, old fashioned, Conservative, Republican, Capitalist. No bullcrap. He tells you the way he believes it...Some of the Republican 'flip-floppers' and 'avoiders' and 'abstractionists' are falling by the wayside of public opinion...which is a good thing...
Paul calls it the way he sees it...America can't or won't get out of debt by printing more and more money, nor by going deeper and deeper into debt...
The spending has to stop...there is no other way that you are going to get yourself out of debt unless unless you tax the American people until they have no money left...or unless private and public income starts to soar again which will only happen when American manufacturing jobs that are now located in all the cheapest jobs markets in the world -- which unfortunuately, does not include America -- come back home. And for them to come back home again, all 'free -- and unfair -- trade agreements' -- have to be dismantled. All these free trade agreements have put America at a gross disadvantage in terms of 'labor issues'. Either labor prices have to crash to meet global competition in countries like China, Mexico, South Korea, India, South American countries...where labor practises are often oppressive, dehumanizing, and would set back American labor practices 100 years...Or, again, these 'allegedly free trade agreements' -- which are only 'free' to the global capitalists who can take advantage of them -- need to be dismantled, and 'protectionist tariffs' would have to be re-instated in their place.
As Trump boldly stated, you don't see Japan buying American Chevrolets...Why is the rest of the world allowed to maintain their 'nationalstic protectionist policies' while America and Canada are not? It would be easy to blame Reagan and Mulroney for the beginning of the The Free Trade Agreement, but no President or Prime Minister since has tried to rescind it...Why? Because it benefits the Global Capitalists who have helped to finance and keep these Presidents and Prime Ministers in power...
Obama made waves about The Free Trade Agreement when he first came into power....but those waves were quickly squashed...and there has been no mention of The Free Trade Agreement since by most political and/or economic men in power...except a very vocal Trump in a CNN interview a few days ago...
Obama came into power at the worst possible time...a time when the American debt was skyrocketing...and he wanted or still wants to bring in his new medical policies....Socialized medicine -- i.e., medicine for the poor as well as the rich, and medicine that doesn't not bankrupt a certain proportion of Americans -- is a good thing, just not necessarily the right thing to bring in at the right time, when the country as a whole is 'drowning in debt'...
And the American people, I do not believe, will ever forgive Obama for doing what he said -- or at least implied -- he wouldn't do: bail out the robbers on Wall Street which is why Wall Street is being 'occupied' right now...
The American people were led to believe by Obama's strong and charismatic campaign speeches that Obama had the strength and courage to stand up against 'American political and economic corruption' -- the lobbyists in Washington, the collusions and crooked back room deals both in Washington and on Wall Street...And that hasn't happened... In fact, there was not only one but two Wall Street Bail Outs under Obama's watch...Payments to the robbers on Wall Street with 'public chastisements not to do it again'...No one went to jail...Some very guilty CEOs and top executives could have been held accountable for what happened, either arrested on fraudulent charges, and/or left to try to 'swim in their own self-created bankruptcy'....But instead, they were given 'billions of taxpayers dollars' to make their banks and mortgage companies 'solvent' again, while the rest of America that got 'ripped off' had to 'eat their own financial losses'
Where is the 'free market' -- and 'invisible hand' -- justice in that Wall Street fiasco? Adam Smith is turning over and 'vomitting' in his grave...He...and I think Jefferson...never did trust 'bankers', told us to 'watch them closely', not to let them have a 'free, unadulterated, narcissistic licence to do whatever they wanted to do'...and if anything, it was perhaps the American government, under an earlier President, who initiated these 'manipulative, back-end loaded, exploding mortgages'..
'Let's get more people into their own homes -- even if they have to evacuate them, or we have to evict them, when they can't meet their rising interest levels deeper in the contract.'
Wow -- that was certainly a brilliant idea, but certainly not for these new homeowners. American Capitalism at its narcissistic -- best or worst -- depending on your perspective. Great for the bankers and mortgage companies at first -- until they had a financial disaster bigger than Hurricane Katrina on their hands...
I like Trump, and I like Paul, because those two tell us what they believe, do not mince words, and do not squirm in their respective seats under pressure, and hard questions...
Question to Trump: How do you get Americans working again?
Answer by Trump as I can recall it, with my own extension: Well, the first thing you have to do is to stop American manufacturing companies from leaving America...Bring back American manufacturing companies to America by re-introducing tariffs (25%) on on imported goods (and services). Stop getting financially ripped off by countries all around the world. America used to be the most powerful financial company in the world. Now, it is practically the laughing-stock of the world. Why? Because other countries 'rip us off in business and economic negotiations' and we continue to let them do it to us, without so much as a wimper... 'International political correctness and niceness' has led to 'national business and economic disaster within America'. And America is being internationally manipulated all the way to national bankruptcy...
That is what practically every American politican is afraid to say...
And Trump wasn't afraid to say it...
I believe that Paul would probably echo much the same opinion...
Those are the only two opinions that I hear these days...
That I believe have the capability of actually pulling America out of debt...
Another four years of the same or worse type of 'internationally politically nice ideology'...and it will probably be too late to fix anything...at least in America...
I like Obama's 'Enlightenment Ideals'... I think that Obama 'turned soft' on a few things that he shouldn't have -- like 'The Free Trade Agreement' -- and overall, I just do not believe that Obama has the 'right type of stuff' to turn America's financial situation around and put it back on track again....You can't just keep spending and printing money...
............................................
If I have been a little 'loose' on my generalizations, understand that I believe that there are still some very ethical businessmen out there conducting business who I have the greatest respect for -- especially when they are good to both their customers and their employees...The sad -- even tragic -- part is that I believe that such businessmen are becoming fewer and fewer between...It's like 'do what the greedy, the colluding, and manipulative are doing lest I be left behind...Which reminds me that I left out a couple of quotes that I need to go back and look for...' -- dgb
...................................................
And back from the more specific to the more general in terms of two more anecdotal quotes from another one of our most famous political-economic predecessors...
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. -- Adam Smith
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature. -- Adam Smith
.......................................
-- dgb, October 30th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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