David Warren - Feb 13 2010

Why is abortion so popular with women who would never dream of having an abortion?

This is among the questions I’ve been asking myself for years, while trying to understand what motivates people to vote the way they do. Again and again I see examples of people voting to the left of their actual convictions. At the bottom of it, I often suspect they vote not for the effect of government programs on themselves, but what they will do for other people. Yet this does not mean they are altruistic.

The classic case is “tax the rich.” Very few people are in favour of having their own taxes raised, or their own spending regulated. But if a politician will assure them that he is going to put taxes up on everyone above a certain income, he is sure to generate some enthusiasm among those below it.

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TH2 - Dec. 2, 2009

I. BACKGROUNDER. Modern Western society in an obvious downslide to all–out nihilism. Not so much a violent nihilism, as in the Nietzschean atop the alpine mountain summit, defiantly standing against that always unnamable oppressor represented by an omnipresent leaden sky. Rather, it is a quiescent type of nihilism, suave and self–complacent in a way, as if a battle has been fought and won, and that now is the time to rest and revel. Without question, this casual denial of values and morality in the twenty–first century is most immediately traceable to the 1960s Counterculture Revolution. It is evidential of the victory of a loud rebellion whose exponents, now beyond middle age and established, wield positions of no minimal influence in modern society. From the media and the entertainment industry to education and politics there is an unvoiced acceptation that says all values are relative, that truth is an anachronism, and that morality to any minimal degree is a barrier to personal liberty.

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Richard Owen - October 22, 2009

Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people”, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said yesterday that Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation” felt by the “large part of humanity” that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making.

Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.

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Alan Stang - October 29, 2008

As I write, little more than a week remains before E-Day, on which most Americans will vote. Nerves are being fearfully wracked. Even people who are usually somnolent say they can’t take the stress. There is a real danger that, unaddressed, the frustration of choosing between a Communist illegal alien raised by a Communist sex pervert and a POW traitor who is a Soviet front man could lead to an epidemic of Acid Reflux Disease or even an outbreak of Restless Leg Syndrome.

The purpose of this modest piece is to reassure you. Stop tormenting yourself. Further self-flagellation is pointless. Your next President has already been selected. Didn’t you know? Sure, go ahead and vote if you like, if you have nothing else to do, if you don’t mind standing in long lines between Obamatron morons and McCrud zombies, but enjoy the reassurance of knowing that the powers above Ponzi Paulson and Helicopter Ben Bernanke and Co. have already made their choice.

He is Zbigniew Brzezinski. What? Who? Is this some kind of Polish joke? Sadly, it is not. The lustiest enjoyer of Polish jokes in my experience was a remarkably gorgeous Polish lady I knew many years ago in the Bay Area. Every couple of years, I would come through on a speaking tour and she would press me for the latest Polish jokes I had heard. Again Zbigniew Brzezinski is not one of them. He is not just a victim of partial vowel deprivation.

In 1970, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a book entitled Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York, Viking Press). Let’s browse through it to find out what Zbigniew is. Zbig dedicates the book to Ian, Mark and Mika, his kids. A nice touch, don’t you think? He’s a family man. Starting on page 72 of my Penguin edition, he explains “why Marxism represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man’s universal vision.”

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Peter Joseph is naive, and has been swayed by one after another “teacher.” In the first Zeitgeist - a Hegelian concept coined by Johann Gottfried Herder of the Bavarian Illuminati - he was obviously enamored with ‘Acharya S’ and her occult Theosophical “secret tradition” interpretation of ancient history. In ‘Addendum,’ he has found a few new (solution-oriented) gurus of the same ilk.

The one-time New Age Theosophical Christ-Maitreya, J. Krishnamurti — thrust upon the occult, Utopian socialist underground at the beginning of the 20th century by Theosophy head, Fabian socialist Annie Besant and pederast-Freemason, C.W. Leadbeater — begins and ends the film. For something that purports to espouse “a modern, non-superstitious based understanding” of the world, well, let’s just say that it is hypocritical and deceitful not to even identify the theosophical current throughout both films, or the outright socialism of the latest. Though Peter Joseph hasn’t admitted his Theosophical debt, at 1:35:37 he tips his hand by the obscure mention of “intellectual materialism” - a term used by Blavatsky herself in Lucifer magazine (also, see here for another theosophic source) - and touts the “true divinity” of Man (1:48:25). New Ager aka “economic hitman”-Perkins has experienced the seething energies of Lucifer as well. At 1:43:07 he talks of the bliss of connectedness and our “God spirit,” while an “Illumined” man makes a gesture with his hands of a triangle in front of the sun.

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