For my own part I hate and distrust reactions not only in religion but in
everything. Luther surely spoke very good sense when he compared humanity to a
drunkard who, after falling off his horse on the right, falls off it next time
on the left. I am convinced that those who find in Christ's apocalyptic the
whole of his message are mistaken. But a thing does not vanish--it is not even
discredited--because someone has spoken of it with exaggeration. It remains
exactly where it was. The only difference is that if it has recently been
exaggerated, we must now take special care not to overlook it; for that is the
side on which the drunk man is now most likely to fall off.

- C. S. Lewis, "The World's Last Night".

And all the pom-pom girls for the "civil rights" movement, etc. etc., etc., etc., may wish to read this passage over and over until it somewhat penetrates even their adamantine noggins.

We must bear in mind that, if Iran does explode nuclear weapons in Israel, the New Class, Liberaldom, the gibbertariat, call it what you will, you know what it is, will never be able to fit such an event into their weltanschauung, their Narrative. You will recall that after 9/11 there were some months during which, conceptually speaking, they all ran around in circles flapping their wings like moonstruck chickens, squawking, "What are we to do? What are we to think? What do they hate us?" before finally settling upon a psychologically-stabilizing displacement activity, of course I mean blaming all the universe's ills on President Bush, who was somehow both a smirking chimp and omnipresent evil force. Major conveyors of news, such as "The Newspaper of Record," the great "Gray Lady," devoted themselves entirely to carrying reports that they felt would make the Bush Administration or the military, even the United States as a whole, appear bad, foolish, or crazy, desperately trying to patch up that Upper West Side Narrative that had so perilously teetered for some dreadful months. Now imagine this reflexive psychic response multiplied by four, sixteen, sixty-four...and yes, that's right, a nuclear bomb going off in Israel leads to the complete crack-up of Western Civilization - as it has existed for the last forty years. The New Class will be utterly unable to function, or even think. And I wonder, at that point, how much of the United States will consent to be governed and instructed by those who are lunatic to the extent they are not merely catatonic?

In Christianity the world is made anew by God's sacrifice and your own Imitation of it; in both Liberalism and Musselmanism, the world is made anew by forcing other people to sacrifice, while you gloat over the results.

"Lying can obliterate the outside event which introspection has already converted into a purely psychic factor. Lying takes up the heritage of introspection, sums it up, and makes a reality of the freedom that introspection has won."
- Hannah Arendt

And what else do you need to know about Academia today?

More dismaying to Mr. Anachronism than the lunatic blitherings of the "Left" is the gloating of the "Right"--terms, by the way, which will soon lose all meaning--over the blithering of the "Left". He thinks of the Bush mini-mes at, say, Free Republic, hefting hosannas to the sky because Howard Dean has delivered himself of some staggering piece of fatuity, or even Mark Steyn apparently relishing the takeover of Europe by howling Musselmans. Yes, let's have an opposition party that couldn't manage a chicken coop and is so utterly bereft of patriotism that it doesn't even know what it is anymore, just that its opponents must be accusing it of not having any - what a wonderful thing this is for the USA, just so long as it means Republicans can stay in power and really get that good old graft machine going and themselves get stripped of anything resembling an idea or an ideal. Yes, let's have mass random slaughters in Europe--we'll start with the Jews again, needless to say--and Fergie in a burkha, and the sickening call of the muezzin from creaky loudspeakers strung along Big Ben, just so long as arrogant EU pismires have received their comeuppance, and Mark can keep most of his syndicate outlets here in the USA. One cannot but refer here also to the sniggering of Steve Sailer over the troubles encountered by the U.S. military in Iraq, because the evil neocons ignored his advice and interfered with other cultures or something. (The only weblogger I can think of who combines blistering criticism of Iraq policy with a serious and sincere desire for things to turn out as well as possible is Lawrence Auster.) It's precisely this gloating that causes one to lose all hope, because for there to be any hope at all one must have men (and even women) of a certain gravity, and grave people just don't do this. (Of course, Mr. Anachronism can in any event hardly be unaware of the several Dark Ages to come...but he does get sucked up into the moment, and Current Events, and the Zeitgeist, and that sort of thing, unless he is careless, and stops to think, and remember....)

I was thinking, what would happen if one were on the Earthquake ride at Universal Studios during an earthquake? Obviously the effects would cancel each other out and your seat would remain motionless. But you would think there was something wrong with the ride and so you would demand your money back, but they would tell you, "No, there was an earthquake while you were on the Earthquake ride."

Obviously, this is a profound metaphor - but of what, I cannot say.

Which reminds me - can anyone explain why there's no such thing as mouse-flavored cat food?

Their snobbery lacks any acknowledgement of reciprocal obligations between the favored few and the multitude. Although they are full of "compassion" for the poor, they cannot be said to subscribe to a theory of noblesse oblige, which would imply a willingness to make a direct and personal contribution to the public good. Obligation, like everything else, has been depersonalized; exercised through the agency of the state, the burden of supporting it falls not on the professional and managerial class but, disproportionately, on the lower middle and working classes. The policies advanced by new-class liberals on behalf of the downtrodden and oppressed--racial integration of the public schools, for example--require sacrifices from the ethnic minorities who share the inner cities with the poor, seldom from the suburban liberals who design and support those policies
- Christopher Lasch, "The Revolt of the Elites," Harper's Magazine, November 1994.

As if Jesus had sought to redeem mankind by nailing others to the cross.

And then, as Orwell wrote, "The truth is that to many people, calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we,' the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them,' the Lower Orders."

Why do whites think they owe anything to people who only want to see them destroyed? Because they are referring to their own narcissism.

What is the conceptual legerdemain by which the bourgeoisie have made it seem progressive to favor cheap labor?

If preference for genetic similarity means nothing, why is inheritance of wealth within a family not seen as an affront to humanity? Because it serves the interests of the wealthy, whilst genetic preference exercised on any larger scale, does not.

O! "Racism!" Far better had it been if, instead of the futile and self-righteous attempt to eradicate all traces of an ineluctable human response, the attempt had been made to cultivate a sort of world-weary good will for those of different races, recognizing an unbridgeable gulf, and living with it in civility. America might have had some hope then.

Frequently an opinion signals one's membership in a higher social class, precisely because it is completely divorced from any objective reality.

The way the world looks to you is not really significant in any larger sense; and if you wish to maintain that your particular point of view is significant in this way, then to be consistent you must insist that the earth is flat. And so much for existentialism.