Curtis Dahlgren
What the heck just happened? (part 2)
By Curtis Dahlgren
"They say the world has become too complex for simple answers; they are wrong." — Ronald Reagan
TOO MUCH MATERIAL. That's why I've been procrastinating on this week's column. To get the right approach, I went back 5 years to "Top ten things to pray for in 2006" (June 30, 2006). Here are a few more excerpts from that column (one of my "best of"):
"The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideals — a trial of spiritual resolve . . .
"Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged . . .
"If we ever forget that we are a nation under God, we will have become a nation gone under."
Those were all lines spoken at various times by President Reagan, the great communicator and comforter (one week after Aurora, we can use all the comfort we can get). And before I forget it, I'd recommend Post-traumatic Stress counseling for the survivors and their families.
" WHY DID HE DO IT?" is the question that is all the rage. Professionals and pundits alike have given their answers (Brian Ross thought for sure that the shooter was a Tea Partier). No one but on one has asked whether the shooter's problem was — too many years in college? BUT — in an article about China's forced abortions — maybe the USA TODAY this week unknowingly fingered a totally ignored answer: the value of human life is no longer sacred in the society at large!
[If asked, most college students today wouldn't be able to define "sacred" — which means "regarded with reverence, or, dedicated to a diety" (something President Reagan understood so well). ]
China aborts about 13 million babies a year — a majority of whom are females — and about 1.3 million of the abortions are forced by the government. However, before we get TOO righteusly indignant, let's not forget that our own government can't even see fit to stop partial-birth abortions! And it is in the process of forcing the Christian community to pay for abortions, the promotion of abortions abroad, and sterilization, and so on and so on.
"It is not without significance that [in 1920], when Hitler was just starting his career, the 'life devoid of value' slogan was launched from a different source [Academia]. Evidently there is such a thing as a spirit of the times which emanates from the depths of economic-historical processes." — Dr. Fredric Wertham (in "The German Euthanasia Program; Excerpts from 'A Sign for Cain'"; Macmillan, 1966)
ZEITGEIST. That's what we're talking about. "New paradigms." Situational ethics. "Evolving standards of decency." Relativity (i.e., the mores of all the educational institutions in which the Colorado shooter had been steeped). Not to mention "self-esteem" to boot.
Now I don't have any degrees in psychology or sociology. I've never had a $26,000 grant to go to grad school like the shooter (the money for his guns came from the government, not the Tea party). But I have something else: Seventy years of living and working for a living. Plus I lost 8 friends in a shooting, and had known the shooter for 20 years.
Perhaps the Colorado shooter should have aspired to being a welder or a farmer, or even a miner rather than a "neuroscientist." Social life and career both going badly? Combine that with over-inflated self-esteem and you have a mixture like gasoline and fire. My friend the shooter also had social and career problems, and was also "intelligent" (though maybe not quite so much so as he thought).
My friend had been "teased" by peers in his school days, but the'victim card' doesn't cut it. The most "disadvantaged" American is better off than the most pitied person anywhere else in the world (see Syria, for example). And as for "intelligence," William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote:
"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more."
By the way, my outrage-of-the-week is that "pundits" were outraged by a statement by a Romney aid concerning America's close relationship with the English people; it was treated as "offensive" — an almost racist "gaffe." HUH? I just recently wrote all about our English heritage. My grandparents all came from Sweden, but grampa Dahlgren got a start on a farm owned by some English who had beaten us Swedes to the Promised Land.
That was essentially the term Jefferson used to describe America, and his trinity (small "t") was Newton, Bacon, and Locke — Englishmen all. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) said:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Only the greats like the Einsteins have an inkling of how much they don't know(contrary to today's kids, many of whom believe they're the most highly evolved generation to ever live).Here's an excerpt from the Preface to my book "Massey Harris 101; a letter to generations X, Y, and Z":
"It will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to a commencement speech in the last ten years to know that a spirit of elitism has been fostered among students — and deliberately — by politicians . . .
"Not so well known is the fact that many professors pander this same line to their classes . . telling them how smart, how well educated they are . . .
"The words of politician and professor combine to reinforce the usual late-teenage ignorance; students of this age already assert their self-superiority. In short, too many professors pander to their audience and help the student to believe what his feelings of inadequacy have led him to assert: that he is smart and educated, that youth equates with eternal wisdom, that age equates with obstinacy and wrongness, and that the past has no lessons for the present."
Your boat is always at the center of your radar screen and your car is always at the center of your GPS, but this does not mean that you are the center of the Universe (to paraphrase Michael Savage).
[Conservatives are writing books faster than we can read them, but that's not a bad thing. I would again recommend Ann Coulter's "Demonic" if you're still confused by the Colorado shooting. The shooter was obviously more of an Occupy Wall-streeter than a Tea partier. Case closed.]
P.S. "The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." — William Hazlitt (1778-1830), "Political Essays" in the Times newspaper
That pretty much sums up the thinking of those old DWEEBs (dead white English boys). And with the history of Western Civ under attack from Academia:
The more we lose the "love of liberty," the more we lose the love of LOVE.
[More to come.]
© Curtis Dahlgren
August 2, 2012
"They say the world has become too complex for simple answers; they are wrong." — Ronald Reagan
TOO MUCH MATERIAL. That's why I've been procrastinating on this week's column. To get the right approach, I went back 5 years to "Top ten things to pray for in 2006" (June 30, 2006). Here are a few more excerpts from that column (one of my "best of"):
"The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideals — a trial of spiritual resolve . . .
"Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged . . .
"If we ever forget that we are a nation under God, we will have become a nation gone under."
Those were all lines spoken at various times by President Reagan, the great communicator and comforter (one week after Aurora, we can use all the comfort we can get). And before I forget it, I'd recommend Post-traumatic Stress counseling for the survivors and their families.
" WHY DID HE DO IT?" is the question that is all the rage. Professionals and pundits alike have given their answers (Brian Ross thought for sure that the shooter was a Tea Partier). No one but on one has asked whether the shooter's problem was — too many years in college? BUT — in an article about China's forced abortions — maybe the USA TODAY this week unknowingly fingered a totally ignored answer: the value of human life is no longer sacred in the society at large!
[If asked, most college students today wouldn't be able to define "sacred" — which means "regarded with reverence, or, dedicated to a diety" (something President Reagan understood so well). ]
China aborts about 13 million babies a year — a majority of whom are females — and about 1.3 million of the abortions are forced by the government. However, before we get TOO righteusly indignant, let's not forget that our own government can't even see fit to stop partial-birth abortions! And it is in the process of forcing the Christian community to pay for abortions, the promotion of abortions abroad, and sterilization, and so on and so on.
"It is not without significance that [in 1920], when Hitler was just starting his career, the 'life devoid of value' slogan was launched from a different source [Academia]. Evidently there is such a thing as a spirit of the times which emanates from the depths of economic-historical processes." — Dr. Fredric Wertham (in "The German Euthanasia Program; Excerpts from 'A Sign for Cain'"; Macmillan, 1966)
ZEITGEIST. That's what we're talking about. "New paradigms." Situational ethics. "Evolving standards of decency." Relativity (i.e., the mores of all the educational institutions in which the Colorado shooter had been steeped). Not to mention "self-esteem" to boot.
Now I don't have any degrees in psychology or sociology. I've never had a $26,000 grant to go to grad school like the shooter (the money for his guns came from the government, not the Tea party). But I have something else: Seventy years of living and working for a living. Plus I lost 8 friends in a shooting, and had known the shooter for 20 years.
Perhaps the Colorado shooter should have aspired to being a welder or a farmer, or even a miner rather than a "neuroscientist." Social life and career both going badly? Combine that with over-inflated self-esteem and you have a mixture like gasoline and fire. My friend the shooter also had social and career problems, and was also "intelligent" (though maybe not quite so much so as he thought).
My friend had been "teased" by peers in his school days, but the'victim card' doesn't cut it. The most "disadvantaged" American is better off than the most pitied person anywhere else in the world (see Syria, for example). And as for "intelligence," William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote:
"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more."
By the way, my outrage-of-the-week is that "pundits" were outraged by a statement by a Romney aid concerning America's close relationship with the English people; it was treated as "offensive" — an almost racist "gaffe." HUH? I just recently wrote all about our English heritage. My grandparents all came from Sweden, but grampa Dahlgren got a start on a farm owned by some English who had beaten us Swedes to the Promised Land.
That was essentially the term Jefferson used to describe America, and his trinity (small "t") was Newton, Bacon, and Locke — Englishmen all. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) said:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Only the greats like the Einsteins have an inkling of how much they don't know(contrary to today's kids, many of whom believe they're the most highly evolved generation to ever live).Here's an excerpt from the Preface to my book "Massey Harris 101; a letter to generations X, Y, and Z":
"It will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to a commencement speech in the last ten years to know that a spirit of elitism has been fostered among students — and deliberately — by politicians . . .
"Not so well known is the fact that many professors pander this same line to their classes . . telling them how smart, how well educated they are . . .
"The words of politician and professor combine to reinforce the usual late-teenage ignorance; students of this age already assert their self-superiority. In short, too many professors pander to their audience and help the student to believe what his feelings of inadequacy have led him to assert: that he is smart and educated, that youth equates with eternal wisdom, that age equates with obstinacy and wrongness, and that the past has no lessons for the present."
Your boat is always at the center of your radar screen and your car is always at the center of your GPS, but this does not mean that you are the center of the Universe (to paraphrase Michael Savage).
[Conservatives are writing books faster than we can read them, but that's not a bad thing. I would again recommend Ann Coulter's "Demonic" if you're still confused by the Colorado shooting. The shooter was obviously more of an Occupy Wall-streeter than a Tea partier. Case closed.]
P.S. "The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." — William Hazlitt (1778-1830), "Political Essays" in the Times newspaper
That pretty much sums up the thinking of those old DWEEBs (dead white English boys). And with the history of Western Civ under attack from Academia:
The more we lose the "love of liberty," the more we lose the love of LOVE.
[More to come.]
© Curtis Dahlgren
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
