"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;....",

"and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

My greeting for trolls

• "Why are you so stupid!?"
• "Why are you think you're so smart!?"
• "Why are you so racist!?"

The shadow of a troll

"...The reason I found myself back here is because I happened to remember the fun we used to have, you posting bullshit on the internet, me pointing out how it makes no sense to anyone with an unwashed brain, and you refusing to learn anything at all -- the blog isn't about learning, after all, it's about proselyting everything you "know" to be right...."

"...how many times are you gonna lean on the pronoun "joke," Van?"

"...But if you hadn't yet realized my account was a spoof on yours, you've got some catching up to do, Van ..."

"...Speaking of profile pictures, you positioned yourself in front of your impressive library of all the books from which you've read one line and immediately misunderstood the entire text -- the same library you use in every single image of yourself: this blog, the poorly made advertisements to the confusing "talks" you give, now this recorded podcast...."
, and,
"...Re: your likeness: is this some soft admission of a body image issue? Is that why you're still using a 20-year old profile photo? Or why your house only seem to have one room?..."

"...sure seem to want to present yourself as an intellectual -- while spending all your time attacking the people who actually put in that work..."

"...You're very good at assuming you're smarter than/more correct than everyone in the room;..." and that "...You immediately continue this self-superior vanity by saying that you were immediately more informed than ALL OF WRITTEN ACADEMIC HISTORY..."

"... when the questions a friend asked me about the statements of knowledgeable authorities that I'd been repeating & defending as if they were unquestionably true, led me to recognize that... they just weren't so. And worse for those labels that I'd taken pride in wearing, once I began following those questions that he'd raised, it didn't take long to realize that those authorities I was turning to next, for help in defending the first ones with, weren't any better..."

"...your impressive library of all the books from which you've read one line and immediately misunderstood the entire text..."

"That's not fair, we teach students how to engage in critical thinking! This was just a case of responding to a perceived injustice!"

"Yes. You teach thinking as a skill, as a technology to be utilized where its useful in much the same way as a cordless drill is, and laid aside where not, in much the same way a slave is taught useful skills. What you don't do, is educate a person into understanding and caring about what is good and worthwhile, and how to recognize and behave in accordance with that, in every aspect of their life. IOW: Education."

Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you: The 'Critical Thinking' of a he/him/his college professor:

"Hi, Van!

I think the fun back-and-forth is over for you, but I can't help but point out a fun little inconsistency in two posts two weeks apart from 2021. I wish I had done more back then to challenge the silliness of your arguments, rather than just attack the obvious false statement that no social studies textbook excludes information on Jefferson being a slave owner.

Aaaaanyway. I noticed that in this post you offer an amuse bouche of your silly theory on diversity that you were nearly brave enough to read aloud in a room of your peers. God I wish that would've happened and I could've been there. You're very good at assuming you're smarter than/more correct than everyone in the room; but incorrectly white-mansplaining racism in the classroom to a Black teacher with a PhD in education is especially misdirected.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanywayyyyyy. In this post you say that diversity is a given between "any three" Americans, but that valuing this diversity is "unAmerican" because "to value diversity as such in America, is to value what divides one person from one another, and to focus upon that will rend them apart through the failure to focus upon what there is that is present to each of us which could and should bring us all together as one." VERY interesting to see the "Classic AmErIcAn liberal" argue for such a collective emphasis here. It's sorta counter to almost everything you say. Hell, you don't even identify as a "classic liberal" anymore, because classic liberalism actually respects every individual's right to self-knowledge and self-guidance. Your new label is as liberal as the Nazis were socialist.

Not only is emphasizing "what should bring us all together as one" counter your whole schtick, it ALSO contradicts your attack on "inclusion" from that stupid speech that never was. You say there that inclusion is bad, because it's "a collectivist term which is not urging the use of good manners in welcoming and including everyone, It explicitly means recognizing only those traits that are approved of as being representative of a group (which is itsell bigotted at best), and entails actively condemning any individual choices that vary from those Inclusive Identities."

So, let me get this straight: inclusion is bad because it doesn't honor individual traits, only those shared by the group? Yet diversity is also bad, but ONLY WHEN it... honors individual traits instead of those shared by the group? What the fuck?

"...I wish I had done more back then to challenge the silliness of your arguments..."

"...a lady who claimed that she was 'raised a good conservative', and was shocked, shocked I tell you, when she left the backwoods of Missouri and went away to college and discovered that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. We were also treated to a speech by a student currently in the 12th grade, who also claimed that she never knew that Thomas Jefferson had owned slaves until someone outside of school enlightened her..."

"... your silly theory on diversity that you were nearly brave enough to read aloud in a room of your peers. God I wish that would've happened and I could've been there..."

• What we're led to expect when Diversity is promised, is a sense of ‘Everyone is invited!’, but what we immediately experience is the population being divided up into 'protected classes' (few concepts are more un- and anti-American than that) like "... BIPOC, non-Black POC and gender fluid, non-binary, two spirit...", etc, while unprotected classes and those 'adjacent' to them are found wanting and are increasingly excluded from polite discussion.
• We see Equity promising more fairness, but what we immediately get are quotas that require unequal treatment in order to force equal (meaning: 'equal' + penalty points) outcomes where all the tall poppies are cut down to an 'equitable solution'. 
• We see Inclusion promised as “Welcoming”, but what we immediately get are lists of words & actions deemed to be non-inclusive and potentially offensive to some marginalized classes, and so power will be used to exclude them and fix the 'injustice' through enforced conformity of speech and action. IOW: ‘this is what *democracy* looks like!’
• What we see is that DEI appears to be all about Race & *whiteness* - don’t let the enemy choose the battlefield for you to fight on – it's a trap! DEI is about power, and race is just the most convenient means of seizing more of it

" ...VERY interesting to see the "Classic AmErIcAn liberal" argue for such a collective emphasis here. It's sorta counter to almost everything you say....."

"...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

"...contradicts your attack on "inclusion" from that stupid speech that never was..."

Just for fun: W.E.B. DuBois comparing the variations of how both Communism & Nazism implement Socialism

"...You say there that inclusion is bad, because it's "a collectivist term which is not urging the use of good manners in welcoming and including everyone..."

No Rousseau!

"...If a legislator begins using their particular will to guide the laws of the land instead of the general will of the state's subjects, they are no longer in a way Rousseau argues is good..."

Yes - it is a fact that right there on the surface in black & white, Rousseau says the Legislator should align with the General Will of popular opinion.
No - That does not in any way ensure 'liberty', or express concern for individual rights (it damns them with faint praise for 'human rights' (which mask the collectivist's repudiation of them)), it only ensures that those who don't bother to understand what words and concepts mean and must mean when put into practice (and restrained how?), jeopardize themselves and everyone else, by blinding them to the disaster that will follow from putting those words into practice, as its supporters excuse those failures on technicalities.

"...whereas in this primitive state, as there were neither houses nor cabins, nor any kind of property, every one took up his lodging at random, and seldom continued above one night in the same place; males and females united without any premeditated design, as chance, occasion, or desire brought them together, nor had they any great occasion for language to make known their thoughts to each other. They parted with the same ease..."

"... with love arose jealousy; discord triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed to the gentlest of all passions.."

"... The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows..."

"...This sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd, is that whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals, in order to constrain by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move..."

"...The hatred of bad faith and tyranny burns in our hearts along with the love of justice and the fatherland. Our blood flows for the cause of humanity. This is our prayer, these are our sacrifices. This is the cult we offer you...."

"...the metaphysical firewall of God-given inalienable rights ..."

"...means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free;"

Truly revolutionary thinking!

• a thing cannot both be and not be in the same time and context (Law of non-contradiction)

1. that all terms must be clear and unambiguous,
2. that premises must be true,
3. that conclusions must follow from those premises;

Pro-Regressive.

• Rousseau's idea of liberty: "... whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free;..."
• Heritage President Kevin Roberts wrote on the need to "...require many on the right to reconsider some of their unquestioned maxims", which he offers support for by quoting from the character of the psychopathic assassin Chigurh: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
• Replying to the charge that he's importing Gramscian thinking into 'The Right', Christopher F. Rufo replies: "We can find utility in Gramsci's analysis of intellectuals, elites, institutions, culture, folklore, hegemony, etc., while rejecting his Marxism. Your argument seems to boil down to a form of word association, in which anyone you label "woke" is somehow beyond consideration..."

• Ibrahim Kendi writes: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
• Sargon of Akhad: "The problem is that reality as we experience it might indeed be radically subjective, and until you can demonstrate that it isn't, then we are in a bind, aren't we?", and that "The critical theorists have been philosophically demolishing us for more than half a century. We have to get ahead of them."
• Christian Nationalist Doug Wilson, claiming to support American constitutionalism with a theocratic Christian Nationalism where "... a Protestant nation I think is capable of having carveout spaces for Roman Catholics and even for Jews...", although "...Catholic church bells would be okay, but a parade in honor of the Virgin Mary carrying an image of the Virgin Mary down Main Street. No."

fauxYuri's game theory:

"...game theory can be compatible with moral realism. In fact, it can clarify why moral rules and strong institutions matter..."

"I don't think so. An A.I. or a sociopath might be able to use game theory to blend their actions in with those of society, and it could generate stats to help them get away with that, but it can't clarify why moral rules matter, for the same reason why the A.I. & sociopath would try to use it to blend in - neither they nor it have any comprehension of right & wrong as understood by moral realism. Appearances can be deceiving, but they won't make unlike things, the same."

" Is game theory applicable to playing games? Sure. Can using game theory's calculations help you win games? I presume, so. Should you use game theory's calculations to win games of Scrabble? Chess? Poker? If you use game theory to answer that question, then IMHO you've either intentionally or unintentionally misapplied the word 'should', and so have lost the thread."

"Level 3: formal analysis of strategic interaction. Once aims, motives, incentives, and rules are specified, what patterns of conduct are likely to follow? This is the level at which game theory operates."

"Madison stands in the same line of realism. If men were angels, no government would be necessary"

Game theory did not invent that terrain. It formalized part of it.

So the objection runs: the model may not explicitly deny richer moral reality, but it still trains the mind to see politics through a narrowed lens.

That is a serious objection, and it deserves a direct answer.

"...Every analytic discipline foregrounds some features and backgrounds others. A legal brief does not capture the whole life of the parties...Yet none of these is therefore false or subversive simply because it abstracts."

"game theory, branch of applied mathematics that provides tools for analyzing situations in which parties, called players, make decisions that are interdependent...."

"...In fact, game theory was originally developed by the Hungarian-born American mathematician John von Neumann and his Princeton University colleague Oskar Morgenstern, a German-born American economist, to solve problems in economics. ..."

" Courtenay Turner @CourtenayTurner If that’s true then why are the game theorists so invested in hollowing out realist metaphysics? Because they explicitly say metaphysics must be redesigned to create a “scaffolding” that serves (science) their model! They need to erode the foundation so they can build models without the pesky confines of reality!! That’s constructivism!"

Liberty is not how free you feel. It is the structure that determines what you are allowed to do when the people in power disagree with you.

A free society is not defined by good intentions or popular outcomes. It is defined by constraints, specifically constraints on coercion. Liberty exists where force is limited, predictable, and constrained by rules that apply even when the outcome is inconvenient.

This is where modern conversations go wrong.

We are told that liberty must bend to emergencies, to fairness, to compassion, to safety, to progress. Each demand sounds reasonable in isolation. Together, they form a logic that treats freedom as optional and power as inherently benevolent.

That is backwards.

Power is never neutral. It always accumulates. It always seeks justification. Liberty is the counterweight, not because people are angels, but because they are not.

A society committed to liberty assumes that individuals are capable of making decisions for their own lives and accepts the discomfort that comes with that reality. It tolerates failure, inequality of outcomes, and disagreement because the alternative is centralized control backed by force.

Liberty does not promise perfect results. It promises something harder and more valuable: responsibility.

When people are free, they own their choices. When they own their choices, they learn. When they learn, progress becomes organic rather than engineered. That process is slower than mandates and messier than plans drafted by committees, but it is resilient in ways top down systems never are.

History is clear on this point. Societies that prioritize liberty innovate faster, adapt better, and recover from mistakes more quickly than societies built on control. The reason is simple. Decentralized decision making allows error correction. Centralized power does not.

Defending liberty requires discipline. It means saying no to policies you personally like when they require coercion. It means tolerating speech you dislike. It means resisting the urge to outsource moral responsibility to the state.

Liberty survives only when people understand what it actually is.

Not a feeling. Not a slogan. A framework that limits power so that human beings can live, choose, build, fail, and try again without asking permission.

That system is fragile. It does not defend itself.

It only lasts if people do.

"...What is striking, is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid.

Wilson and his colleagues summarized their findings this way: “The untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself....”

"...We reach for a donut the same way some study participants reached for the electric shock.

Is it a surprise that we turn to celebrity gossip or Facebook again and again? Anything seems better than an uncomfortable feeling. Coping works for a few minutes, but then we reach for a distraction...."

"...Western Civilization didn't catch on because of its answers... those are still being argued about more than 3,000 years on... but because of its questions, and its method of comparing your answers to reality, and pursuing the questions which those answers lead to. Questions such as:

• What is real and how do we know it?
• What is Good? Why should we care?
• How can we recognize what is not Good?
• What is a Good life?
• What is Happiness?
• Should what is Right and Wrong, guide our actions?
• What is Beauty?...What is Truth?...What is Justice?
• What does it benefit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?

Ask the right questions, and your listeners [even if that listener is you] will question their own answers, and reality will do the rest...."

"...As the old year slips out and the New Year opens up, it's a particularly good time to ask questions that have to do with what is timeless... lest auld acquaintance with them should be forgot. And while it might not seem so, on the surface, these questions we've been asking most definitely involve issues that are timeless - see if you can see how. For instance: Where do you think you fit in, in today's world, are you Pro-Progress, or Pro-Regress? Are you for the Rule of Law, or the Rule of Rules? Are the 'Big Ideas' of Western Civilization something you think much about, or do you mostly shrug them off and just kinda make a snap judgment on various news stories that happen to flit into your view, now and then... and then forget about 'em? Or are you one of the many of us who don't see the point of considering such questions at all, especially not in the midst of the current events raging around us today - ''I'm not getting sucked into THAT mess!'? I hate to cast a pall upon the coming New Year, but I have a sad suspicion that what most people think doesn't matter, isn't going to matter much longer.

Can anyone really think that the precious snowflakes on our college campuses, or the SJW (Social Justice Warriors) brigades in our streets who are openly advocating to eliminate the Freedom of Speech, or 'unbiased' newscasters talking openly of how those they violently disagree with are 'enemies of the state', can anyone really think that these types are going to be tolerant towards those who say 'Oh, I don't pay attention to that stuff' for much longer? How much longer? And when that vocal 'majority' refuses to allow others the choice to either disagree or evade deciding, what do you suppose is going to be the reaction of those who do disagree with them, and what options will they have to do so?

Will the one side have any option left open to them, but to take the other side at their own words, as being their enemies?

No, the time is coming where all will have to decide, one way or the other, where they stand on these issues, because they are what is driving our current events, and your place within them, and brushing them off cannot remain an option much longer. Each person is going to have to choose what they support, and what they will reject. But for those who haven't been paying attention, those - Left, Right, Libertarian and the target rich Moderate center - who've been coasting along on the strength of their snap judgments on this and that - what are they going to base those decisions upon?..."

"Try to notice: Right before you reach for the habit you want to break, do you experience an uncomfortable feeling that you are trying to distract yourself from?

You won’t break a habit if you are not comfortable with being uncomfortable...."