The Unpopular Truth

Censorship of racial slurs

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:40:00 +0000

The question here isn't censoring "racism" -- an ill-defined word -- but whether to censor racial slurs:

I don’t think it’s too much to ask to request that our visitors keep civility in mind and speak using the terms we find make the most sense out of politeness, for example, “African-Americans.”

It won’t kill you to do it, and it ensures your message is expressed clearly without throwing emotional bombs into the mix that are going to drive people away from responding logically.

{snip}

It would be great if other people saw the wisdom in what I’m trying to do here, and would voluntarily comply with civility, so that we don’t need censorship. As we like to say around here: no tyrant exists without a thoughtless population that needed and deserved him.

Human rights and censorship at this blog

I guess to me this was always a given: you can be a foe of diversity without (a) blaming the parties involved or (b) calling them derogatory names.

Similarly, you can be a foe of conservatism without (a) claiming that conservatives are vicious people who simply "don't care about others" or (b) calling them derogatory names like Shrub and Chimpy.

Further, in general, it seems to me that civility is useful because when we violate it, our leaders use that as an excuse for more power and more expensive, arrogant bureaucracies.

I don't write off the idea that at some point we will need to throw out some of the rules wholesale and achieve regime change, but I like the idea of avoiding uncivil manifestations of this like reckless revolutions that hand power to oligarchs.

The question of civility, or need for censorship, is one vital to civilization.

We either get ourselves organized or we require a centralized babysitter.

New Right News (NRN)

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:57:00 +0000

http://news.freespeechproject.com/

For New Right, Conservationist, Traditionalist, Integralist and deep green news.

"The Romance of Conservatism"

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:54:00 +0000

Moorpark, CA. This is the main body of a lecture I delivered at the ISI Spring Leadership Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana, April 14, 2007. This conference focused on the work of Russell Kirk.

In one of the great works of imagination, Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton declared that faith is romantic, that materialism is not only dull but produces a boredom that leads to madness. Humans are born romantics and they can never fulfill their better natures without cultivating an imagination that accepts and embraces mystery.

The romantic lives in tension between what is unchanging and what always changes, between Nature and History, between angels and beasts, between spirit and flesh. But even this is not quite accurate, for while we live in tension between, say, time and timelessness, we also live in possession of both.

We are time-bound and we are timeless. We are spirit and we are flesh. We have a nature and we are products of culture and history.

Chesterton defined romance as satisfying “the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar.” In due course we learn to attach a number of other words to romance: variety, adventure, imagination, and wonder.

What we do not find in Chesterton is a clear, analytical, dialectical clarification of this word, for there is something about the subject that begs for the allusive, the indirect, the language of the mystic or the poet. To define too analytically would produce a most unromantic book about romance. And so to understand Chesterton, to discover the meanings and purpose of romance, we must balance our love of logic and analytical distinctions with an imagination that allows the careful play of words to form constellations of associations.

Ultimately, Chesterton or any other imaginative thinker must show us what we recognize in our own experiences. We must “see” with them somehow. But seeing in this way requires imagination, and imagination is often atrophied in ages of reductive thinking and thin language.

Understanding a thinker like Russell Kirk requires the patience to allow his words to work on you, to cultivate an imagination that sees things in complex and messy wholes rather than in their easily digestible parts. Russell Kirk was a romantic. He was a wise man with the soul of a child, a man comfortable with the familiar while yearning for adventure and surprise. He was a wanderer with a purpose.

To understand better the romantic Kirk, I draw again on Chesterton (a practice that Kirk employed often—using the words of person “x” to explain the ideas of person “y”). Chesterton wrote that “we need this life of practical romance: the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable.”

Now before I attempt to flesh out the meanings Chesterton intends here, I want to note an important characteristic about conservative thought, properly understood. Conservatives reject—more properly, they fear—simplifications. Simplifications are usually a result of isolating something, tearing that something from the whole of which it is a part. Simplification is a form of abstraction.

Conservatives prefer the thing in its complexity, with its integrity, even if the thing apprehended is of such a nature that it is expressed only in metaphoric terms or in a fashion that expresses the necessary tension that keeps the parts together. The faculty that best apprehends these things is the imagination and often the best form of expression is metaphor or even myth.

The romantic rejects the middle as he demands all extremes—he demands the extremes as they were meant to be, bound together. He isn’t interested in some artificial safe middle-ground, he doesn’t see things as left and right, as though ideas fit on some line, the center of which might be located.

Reality might be one thing, but this thing is a multiplicity. The lust to control reality, to give it a simple structure that yields unchanging laws, leads to the negation of human freedom. The lust for complete freedom produces nihilism. But choice, in the context of order, is liberty. (Or, as Chesterton noted, the chief aim of law and order “was to give room for good things to run wild.”)

Order and liberty are distinct things and a philosopher might isolate them conceptually and tout one or the other or he might place them on some continuum from tyranny to freedom and seek the middle ground. But the romantic, the conservative, will see them bound together so tightly that any liberty that is not ordered liberty is just another word for slavery.

Spiritual slavery, which includes being enslaved to one’s most base desires, to be addicted to the satisfaction of easily attained earthly things, is a result of boredom. Boredom is the final and most enervating human disease. It can produce ideological madness, expressed in efforts to remake the world, to deify humans as the authors of their own reality, or it can result in an intense privatism, an indifference to all things public, to all beings outside of one’s pinched world.

A romantic is never bored, for he occupies a world full of mystery and surprise, a reality understood in complex forms, in traditions, in liturgies, in myths, in complex social fabrics that bind humans together in community and that bind communities together across time. To inhabit such a reality is to see in all simple things the wonder of the universe, to see patterns, to feel connections, to relish in the particular, because in the particular one witnesses, but does not possess, the universal.

But if boredom is the source of the problem, what produces boredom? Kirk argued that the lust for power or control disconnected reason from imagination and made reason a servant of the human desire to control. Such an abstracted reason focused on instrumental knowledge, on the power to alter the natural world and, in due course, to alter the human. In order for abstract reason to produce a new earth, a new civilization oriented around satisfying human desires, it has to be radically reductive.

The most obvious reductionists of our time, and probably the most dangerous, are the libertarians. Kirk emphasized their “metaphysical madness” because they have made such a god out of freedom that they have lost all contact with the ground of their existence and the metaphysical source of their freedom. They preach individualism and personal freedom, and while some libertarians might personally connect freedom with larger ends or purposes, their public concerns are to extend to as many humans as possible the maximum freedom of choice that doesn’t materially harm others.

Kirk was a warm friend of freedom, but he was no friend of freedom set free from its context. Freedom with a capital “F” was unattractive to him because it was abstract, cold, uncontained, and without a larger purpose. Liberties (plural) were more to his liking.

A liberty, as Kirk used the word, emerged in a particular historical context to address particular human needs. Liberties were always part of duties, obligations, and even more important, expectations. Liberties that emerge from a long experience, from habits and cultural forms, are part of a much larger moral economy that is reasonably suited to a people. Liberties, understood this way, are not abstract, not disconnected, not due people as a result of some abstract human dignity. They are particular expressions of a particular people.

By contrast, Freedom is a universalist claim, a claim about the human understood abstractly rather than historically. Freedom leads to imperialism—a la George Bush. Freedom is simple, clear—it is a moral slogan that substitutes for the moral imagination.

But what is the moral imagination? Kirk’s great book on the subject is Eliot and His Age, wherein he defined it this way: “the power of ethical perception which strides beyond the barriers of private experience and momentary events. The higher form of this power is exercised in poetry and art.” Well, I’m not sure how well that explains it. Kirk referred constantly to a historical imagination and a literary imagination. Indeed, imagination looms much larger in his work than reason.

Whatever the imagination is, it isn’t always good. Borrowing from Irving Babbitt, Kirk warned about the idyllic imagination—associated most closely with Rousseau and which “terminates in disillusion and boredom.” What all of these forms of imagination have in common, it seems to me, is the capacity to capture something complete rather than in part, to apperceive rather than perceive, to express a synthetic whole that includes ends as well as means.

The moral imagination recognizes that humans have a law that is peculiar to their nature and that the needs for human flourishing are not satisfied by temporal things alone. Human desire reaches toward something outside of time, some norm or universal expression. But because humans are temporal beings with eternal longings, they must live according to both natures.

The moral imagination integrates personal mortal experience, individual spiritual longing, and the developed moral understanding of the ages, into some poetic or mythic expression of the complex moral universe that humans alone occupy. The moral imagination creates works that bear the peculiar shape or color of a specific culture but which reach out to the shared human condition. They are cultural products and they are spiritual products—humans can only escape the limits of their own culture and time by employing the idioms and artifacts of their culture.

The moral imagination helps to express the highest human aims and to identify basic moral and even political principles, but it cannot issue slogans, programs, or ideologies. The moral imagination never loses the balance or tension of spiritual beings living in time, but neither does it eliminate the mystery that ultimately shrouds the most basic truths of our existence. In some ways, the moral imagination gives us knowledge of the mysteries that define us rather than resolve those mysteries.

For Kirk, we moderns can choose to live in cosmic mystery—and engage in the romantic journey of the soul that the mystery provides—or we can deny the mystery, cut ourselves off from the truths available through imagination, and occupy an existence narrowly and simply defined by abstract reason.

Because abstract reason is disconnected from imagination, it does not understand beauty. Efficiency, of one sort or another, becomes its master. The drive to simplify is part of this desire for the most efficient means of organizing our lives. Defending equality simply or freedom simply is much easier to do than to talk of ordered liberty or of spiritual equality. The tyranny of efficiency means that the human goods found in our aesthetic nature, our spiritual need for beauty, are sacrificed.

One of my favorite Kirk essays, “The Uninteresting Future,” (and the companion essay, “Class, Manners, Beauty, and the Shape of Modern Society,” both found in The Intemperate Professor and other Cultural Splenetics) concerns the importance of architecture in cultivating human goods, human happiness, and romance. In this essay, Kirk lamented the “ghastly monotony” of so much modern architecture. In the twentieth century we found ourselves in look-alike houses and in due course, we would have think-alike people. We found ourselves in planned cities—cities built on a scale that swamped human community, turning people into indistinct atoms bouncing about a boring but colossal city-scape.

But why should we worry about our man-made environment so? And now, we are back to very basic fundamentals. Ultimately, all of these questions revolve around Kirk’s understanding of human nature—our nature as seen through the moral imagination. But we are in a bit of a problem given the reductive way we use the term human nature.

To suggest the nature of something is to suggest its fixed qualities, its unchanging characteristics. This understanding tends toward a fixed and universalistic characterization of the human. Add to this tendency the modern obsession to shave away all complicating factors to find the simple, irreducible thing, and we moderns tend to talk about humans as “good” or “fallen” or as possessing “natural rights” or by nature “free beings” or some other such characteristic. But Kirk could only refer to human nature by keeping all the complicating factors attached.

To highlight some characteristics for our purposes, Kirk stressed that humans belong to a particular place and time. This is true of all humans—all humans are cultural beings and so are bound by this cultural inheritance. Humans flourish when they develop affection and attachments to the people, institutions, habits and ways of their immediate environment. Any healthy society will, therefore, produce a vibrant communal life that is rich with memories of the dead, that is concentrated on the rich attachments of everyday life.

Large and homogenous cities disconnect people, failing to provide them with adequate opportunities to belong to those immediately around them and these cities distance people from the tangible expressions of forbearers. The modern city, with its efficient architecture, produces busy workers, people devoted to privates lives, but no tangible associations with things greater than themselves. In other words, a bland and efficient architecture atrophies the very imagination that helps people to find their ancestors, to think ahead to posterity and to recognize their moral obligations before a creator.

So, for Kirk, any hope of coming to understand the complex mystery of universal norms is found in rich and particular cultural forms. Humans can never understand these truths abstractly and therefore they must be attached to the particular forms that aid them in seeing and expressing what we cannot understand fully.

In the end, Kirk’s understanding of conservatism depends on an aesthetic shaped from the sorts of experiences and cultural habits almost impossible to cultivate in modern America. Indeed, one of the unasked questions in Kirk’s works, and a most pressing one for people who want to think of themselves as romantic conservatives, is whether Americans, born to equality of conditions, can really be romantics. If so, how?

Front Porch Republic

Good idea, needs refinement.

Has black metal become "twee"?

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:59:00 +0000

In American English it often refers to a type of simple sweet pop music, but in British English it is used much more widely for things that are nauseatingly cute or precious. It comes from the way the word sweet sounds when said in baby talk.

Someone who is adorably sweet almost too sweet, sometimes hippie like. It's also a spin-off from the indie style they like being unique but not "in your face unique."

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=twee

For all its bluster about being evil, black metal after the Norwegians is the exact opposite.

The genre welcomes any newcomer, and will immediately immerse them in a world where everyone is unique if they use the right combination of trite blasphemous cliches.

It's the only place where you can scream "I want to kill everyone and everything" and get a group hug.

You can also take Garage Band, four chords and a fifteenth-rate imitation of the truth, pop out a demo, and quickly have people calling you a genius.

Even with the imagery of violence and hatred, black metal is very sweet. The black metal Nazis don't mind if you're black, as long as you want to be a black metal Nazi.

Black metallers don't even care if you want to listen to black metal, as long as you're cool with it, they're cool with you.

It's like a big emo community, dedicated to making Satan cute and the apocalypse amusing.

But no one has yet dared use the word "twee" in public to describe it.

Do accept my sincere apologies if my mail does not meet your personal ethics.

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:06:00 +0000

This was the topic of a spam I got today.

It's profundity from the lowest levels of society.

Initially, I thought it was an attempt to defuse criticism by angry people, but I think it's subtler -- an attempt to imply that you're getting a slightly on the wild side deal that most people wouldn't take, silly them!

Do accept my sincere apologies if my mail does not meet your personal ethics.

I am writing following an opportunity in my office that will be of immense benefit to both of us. One of our accounts with holding balance of 15,100,000(Fifteen Million One Hundred Thousand British Pounds Sterlings) has been dormant and has not been operated for the past 8 years.

From my investigations and confirmations, the owner of this account a foreigner by name Christian Marty (Concorde pilot) died in Monday, 31 July, 2000 along with other 109 families in an AF4590 plane crash and since then nobody has done anything as regards the claiming of this money because he has no family members who are aware of the existence of neither the account nor the funds.

I have secretly discussed this matter with a staff the bank and we have agreed to find a reliable foreign partner to deal with. I only have to approve you as the next of kin/will beneficiary and the fund will be paid to you as the beneficiary.

They make it sound great. A bank conspiring to find a dummy body to use to claim an account. All you need to do is send them all your money, because they're going to give you SO MUCH MORE! They promise.

Wikipedia in a nutshell

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:27:00 +0000

Fox news has been known to be one of the many alarmist private news companies that edit and censor Liberal or progressive commentaries in other "news" stations.[citation needed]

Wikipedia

The Modern Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:45:00 +0000

Hilarious/weep:

The Modern Method of Marriage, a Reprise

The following is taken from my own experiences and things people have told me (outside of confession, you’ll be glad to know.) Here goes.

A young man and a young woman meet and have a few dates. They go for a weekend at a bed and breakfast where they bed one another, and then have breakfast. If he isn’t too much of a jerk and she isn’t too picky, they are then an item.

She goes to the doctor gets a prescription and goes on to a more permanent form of birth control. At some time during this stage, the uncomfortable meeting with the parents happens. Everyone is polite and “supportive.”

Secretly the father of the young woman who knows exactly what’s going on, contemplates buying a gun and the mother of the young man begins gossiping with whomever will listen about how her little boy could do better.

After a while, if things hold up, they begin to have the conversation about taking their relationship to the “next level” by which they mean shacking up,
as we used to call it. Now, I think it’s called moving in together.

Mom and Dad buy housewarming gifts in an attempt to, once again, be supportive. They don’t want their little dears to hate them and besides, it’s what everyone is doing these days, so it can’t be wrong. They have vague thoughts about getting married at that point and mom explains to grandma and to friends at church that they are just doing it to save money for the wedding.

At this stage an engagement ring may appear. At some point, when they think about getting the house and the kids, because that’s what you do, they decide to have the wedding. They rent the hall and then go see the priest. He tells them there are four other weddings that day and they respond, “but we’ve rented the hall already.”

Someone suggests a garden wedding if the church is occupied. The priest says we can’t do garden weddings. The young couple begins to complain about how narrow minded the Church is with all these rules and regulations. They eventually pick a date. Then the bottom drops out.

It seems the groom is not Catholic. He was baptized in the First Reformed Church of the Druids, though he never practiced. This means there must be a dispensation for the marriage,another irritating Catholic invention, and the wedding date cannot be confirmed until the dispensation is received. The bride goes back to her doctor, this time for a prescription for Valium. Her mother joins her on this visit.

Finally the dispensation is granted, The groom’s druid will do one of the readings at the wedding, the loans are taken out, the banns are published. Then there is the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. The best man comes to the rehearsal drunk out of his mind, the groom only slightly tipsy.

The bride is furious at everyone for some reason known to her alone. Probably because the groom is far more interested in drinking and watching the football game on his hand held computer thing than he is in gazing lovingly into her eyes in anticipation of the great day. In fact they haven’t been, well... friendly in weeks. It is, after all, football season.

The special day comes, the best man is still drunk, the groom is hung over, no one knew about that interesting tattoo that the maid of honor had way low on her back, now revealed by the plunging back of her dress that is held up only by wishful thinking. Grandma, upon reading the logo of the maid of honor’s tattoo, has fainted.

Somewhere in all this the vows are exchanged, and quite a few of the wedding party receive their first Holy Communion that day, however one of the ushers puts the host in his suit pocket not having a clue what it is. (This actually has happened to me twice.) The pictures have been taken. The noise level in the church reaches that of an English soccer match after the riot has broken out. The children are jumping off the altar and the priest is scowling at everyone. Now on to the pictures in the forest preserve, a “must” at every wedding. There the wedding party is attacked by mosquitoes, one of the children falls into the lagoon and the bride is having a hard time smiling for the photos. The best man passes out. On to the reception.

The bride loses it because the shade of fuchsia in the floral center pieces clashes with the shade of fuchsia in the wedding party’s outfit. The groom adjourns to the bar where the game is on the television. The wedding dinner is served as music is played at a mind numbing volume. Grandma is better now. She has turned off her hearing aid. The priest is seated with the pious relatives in plaid suit coats and leaves shortly after the grace before meals.

The best man makes the toast which drones on about how he loves the groom and one begins to wonder. The college roommate/maid of honor does the same for the bride, going on for fifteen minutes about how she knew the bride would find eternal marital bliss the moment she met her in the third grade and they have been like sisters ever since.

Then at some point, there is a video presentation of embarrassing photos not unlike the ones that are now shown at wakes. The bar opens up again.The music reaches levels that cause blood to drip from some peoples’ nose and ears. The joyous event ends with the bride and groom being the last to leave the hall. They are slow to go up to the room they have rented in the hotel because nothing new or beautiful awaits them there.

The groom promptly falls asleep, being heavily sedated already, and, as he snores away, with his shoes still on, our blushing bride, having shed her dress of virginal white, thinks back on this day, her special day, the most important day in her life, the day she has dreamt of since she was a little girl.

They will stay an extra day at the hotel, but cannot afford the time or money to go on a honeymoon because on Monday they will both be back at work in order to pay off the colossal bill that their special day has incurred.

For some reason, the bride is depressed. Perhaps she is realizing that the high point of her life is now past and the rest of it will be spent with the lump that is now snoring beside her with whom she has never really had a serious conversation, except about the proper shade of fuchsia for the floral centerpieces.

So it is that we celebrate the marriage of Christ and His Church in these enlightened and tolerant times.

St. Lambert's Church via Fumare

I have not laughed this hard in a while, but it's vinegar laughter: our modern condition obliterates all that is holy and replaces it with a crass pragmatism that seems empowering but backfires on us constantly.

Personal healthcare experiment

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:58:00 +0000

From K.S.

I did a little experiment with healthcare yesterday. Didn't really want to spend the money BUT I wanted to know first-hand.

I went to a walk-in clinic (I have an "upper respiratory infection") and said "I'm paying cash."

Waited 20 minutes, saw a PA (BP, pulse etc), she wanted to take blood (cost $50, I said no), gave a little urine, saw an MD, got a prescription -- I asked the cost and he changed to one that was cheaper (by 1/4).

I made an informed decision to skip the blood test, went generic. Saved $50-$75. If insusance was paying, I (and would almost everyone that DID not skin in the game) would have said "Go for it" instead.

Final bill: $214.

I asked the lady at the desk--What if I had run through my insurance (TRICARE) and she said--$446. Why you ask?

Because they can

Additional admin costs at 4 levels for paperwork and phone calls

Waiting for payment causes them additional costs

This is why the Public Option will fail

For basic care, we should have HSA (tax deductible) and a tax credit for the working poor to FUND an HSA. When people SEE the money coming out of their wallet, they ASK QUESTIONS.

Here is a good example: Running a tab in a bar--I pay for each drink so I can keep track of how much I 'm spending. When people run a tab and just put in "on the card," they make LESS RATIONAL financial decisions.

From Facebook.

Vijay Prozak interview on The Right Hand Path

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Metal writer, DJ and nihilist philosopher Vijay Prozak speaks with The Right Hand Path, a metal news source and collection of esoteric but vital metal bands.

Vijay Prozak interview

Dark Legions Archive on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:06:00 +0000

We've finally joined the cretinous social media revolution, but it means easier access to Dark Legions Archive updates and events.

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dark-Legions-Archive/319416595595

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/dark_legions

MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/death_metal_black_metal

Check us out and enter to win a free kidney harvested from a political dissident!

Hypocrisy - A Taste of Extreme Divinity

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:35:00 +0000

Fast melodic riff, then a doubletime stomp, then a breakdown with a Gothenburg riff, than nu-hardcore style rant and blast; repeat in random order. Oh, and I forgot the semi-synthesized "digital whisper" vocals.

It sounds like a punk hardcore band trying to be metal.

It's metalcore. Don't let the melodic death metal riffs fool you: nothing on this album is as structured or complex as real death metal. It's verse/chorus with random riffs thrown in, like a more intense version of Jawbreaker.

Holy shinola this album is bad. Do yourself a favor: stop after "Inferior Devotees."

Hypocrisy - A Taste of Extreme Divinity: "A taste of rancid mold"

The New Hypocrisy Makes Morbid Angel's "Domination" Sound Good

Secondhand to Murder

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:49:00 +0000

I've become a big fan of this writer through her other postings, but thought this one fairly profound:

Hello. My name is Amber Weinacht. My uncle, Ron Weinacht, was murdered August 16, 2009. Although his murder and the events surrounding it are still fresh in my mind and painful, I have something I would like to say regarding this horrible loss that our family has suffered...and it is my hope that by spreading this message, I can create awareness regarding what secondary victims of murder go through.

First of all, please realize that there are virtually no resources out there to help someone who has suffered this kind of loss. Sure, you can go talk to counselors or psychologists, but no one understands unless they have been through it. So, telling your friend or your loved one, after they have suffered this kind of loss, that you are there to help them in any way they need is the best thing you can do for that person.

What we need is support. I received ONE condolence card after my uncle's murder, and that was from the program chair at my school. Not one of my friends sent me anything, very few said a word about it or offered support even though they knew, and no one offered to do anything for our family to help us out in any way so that we could grieve for the one that we lost. I don't know if people are afraid to say something, or if it makes them uncomfortable...but it is not about them...and their being uncomfortable is nothing compared to what secondary victims of homicide go through.

Recognize your friend or loved one's grief! It will not make them uncomfortable at all...in fact, they are dying for it inside but will never tell you. Listen to them when they talk. Some of my best friends never picked up the phone to call me and say "Hey, are you doing ok? I'm here to listen if you need me."

Second of all, do not expect us to get back to life right away. Dealing with someone you know being murdered changes you forever, and that is part of the struggle I think, in trying to come to terms with situations like this. All innocence is lost, even if all that remained before the homicide was just a little or close to none at all, and that innocence will never be regained. It is truly lost forever and life will never be the same.

A counselor told me that it is widely accepted and known through the medical community with counselors and psychologists and such, that it may take up to a year to become fully functional again, and that this is completely normal. Don't tell someone that they are using the murder as an excuse not to function, regardless of what their life was like before, because after losing a loved one to murder, all of their previous problems are compounded by the horrific events that they have gone through. To even suggest this to someone is heartless...and cold.

Something else I have heard from others, is, "Pick your chin up. I've never seen you act like this. You always weather every bad storm you've ever been through." What I want to tell them is that I'm not sure in some ways that the somewhat unnatural death of my own child even compares to the shock of losing a family member to homicide, but I don't. Please be patient with secondary victims of homicide, and watch out for destructive behavior.

Traumatic loss can lead some people into depression, alcohol or drug abuse. Help us find creative diversions. Be there after the first wave is over...because we ride many. Offer help 3 months, or 6 months, or even a year down the road. Remember, the murder for us is only the beginning.

We still have the trial to go through in which we will have to see the face(s) of evil that took our loved one, the sentencing, dealing with media and so many other factors that I probably don't even comprehend yet because for our family, it has only begun.

What most people don't consider are the nightmares we suffer at night...or the fact that normal noises scare the hell out of us...or that every time we watch the news and hear about someone being caught for murder, we get our hopes up only to be crushed when we realize it's got nothing to with our case...or the fact that we live in constant fear for the rest of our family now.

They still have not found the killer(s) in our case. I now sleep with the biggest butcher knife you could imagine above my head on the window sill, for fear that someone will kick down my door too and try to hurt my family. I will be getting a gun soon because I know a little knife is not going to protect us. How odd, to want something so desperately that snuffed out the life of my loved one! I can't even sleep with my window open, because a car door shutting in the parking lot below my window at night makes me bolt straight up out of bed. While I am sleeping, it echoes in my ear like a gunshot. I can't wait for 4th of July to roll around. That should be really interesting. I don't think I'll get much sleep that night.

Another thing to consider is that it does not matter how close secondary victims were to their loved ones or friends that were lost, and that plays no part in the sorrow that we endure day in and day out. I can tell you that in my case, that my uncle, was my favorite uncle when I was little. One Christmas, while very poor, he showed up at a family get together with a huge bag of dolls for my sister and I.

Even as little as I was, maybe 8 years old or so, I knew that he could not afford all those dolls, and that they were probably "secondhand" (and they were) but I realized the importance of his actions, and the selflessness, and the amount of love he had in his heart for me (and all others) then. He had no doubt gone to great lengths to get those dollies! Over the years he separated from the family, and when his murder occurred, I had probably not seen him in a year or so, and right before that I was at the point of seeking out family that has been lost through one family argument or another with other family members, or just life in general.

I had found other members of my family and had reconnected again and seeking out Uncle Ron was next on my list. I wanted to go to his home, and tell him that he was loved, unconditionally by me, and that I remembered those dollies and knew what kind of a person he was inside, but I never got the chance. How traumatic it is to lose those we love and deeply care for especially when we never get the chance to say goodbye...when we lose them in such a traumatic manner!

What has surprised me during this whole process is that through working with Murder Victims' Families For Reconciliation and attending a workshop that they had in conjunction with Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, is that I came to the realization that I do not wish the death penalty on my uncle Ron's murderers or anyone else who kills. Regardless of what they did to him, why would I want their innocent family to suffer the same fate that ours has in the murder of their loved one through capital punishment?

I was standing in front of the workshop debating in a pretend session with a "legislator". The point of the practice discussion was to gain insight into ways to effectively talk to people and tell our story. I was supposed to convince the "legislator" of why they should not push through for the death penalty to be held in state law. While repeating to the "legislator" that I did not want the families of murderers to suffer like mine had, because they, the family are innocent, I broke down in tears as I realized the impact of my statement. I have always been for the death penalty and only through the loss of my uncle through homicide, have

I come to realize what it really means to murder someone through capital punishment. I can see all aspects of it now, and there is no more gray line for me. The cycle of violence indeed goes full circle and it has got to be stopped somewhere. Besides, I would rather have my uncle's killers in prison everyday, remembering their freedom, in turn leading them to remember what got them there in the first place, in turn taking them back in memory to remember my uncle and his face and what they did to him...and I wish the same for all other murderers as well.

I hope that what I have said, can open up discussion for others, raise awareness or bring about questions, and prepare readers for the fact that someday, inevitably, they will probably either directly or indirectly come into contact with a secondary victim of homicide. Do not be afraid to use your voice to tell them how sorry you are for their loss, or to give them a hug or to ask them if there is anything you can do for them.

It is in life's times of greatest sorrow that we realize who our true friends are. Do not forget them and help them to remember their loved ones that they have lost! Something I have considered, which I will do for anyone else now that I meet in that has recently become a victim, is to give them a candle to light. A candle to represent their loved one, and the light that their life brought to this world. A candle that they can watch burn for as long as they want. Something small just to commemorate their loved one. Please do not forget the secondary victims of murder and those who were lost through homicide or the death penalty.

Facebook

A really powerful essay.

A conversation about race

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:03:00 +0000

This movie is causing all sorts of problems. How interesting:

In the interviews, with people who responded to a CraigsList ad, Bodeker makes a compelling case that much of what he calls the "conventional wisdom" about race consists of prejudice--not racial prejudice per se (although Bodeker attempts to frame it that way), but unthinking assumptions about the nature of American society and the racial attitudes of others.

Bodeker probes the interview subjects for contradictions, and finding them isn't hard. They agree that racism is pervasive, but are unable to give a clear definition of the term. He asks them to describe examples of racism in their own lives. They oblige--but their stories are ambiguous or innocuous. The most convincing anecdote turns out to be a case in which a white man describes overcoming his own prejudice. Lane, who looks to be around 40 and is originally from the South, describes a childhood episode in which a teacher warned him not to put his mouth on a water fountain because "black people do that." Years later he was a lieutenant in the Army, and a black fellow officer had run out of water. Lane remembered his teacher's admonition and hesitated to share his canteen. The black officer, noticing Lane's discomfort, offered to drink from a cup. "I said, 'No. You're my comrade in arms.' "

Later, the subjects readily answer in the affirmative when Bodeker asks them if blacks are better at basketball than whites. But when he asks why whites score better than blacks on standardized tests, they insist the tests are biased because they are written by whites. Then he asks why Asians do better than whites. This prompts the following exchange with an older unnamed man of indeterminate ethnicity:

Man: Well, first of all, Asians have 6,000 years of written, literate history behind them.

Bodeker: But you said the tests were made for whites.

Man: Well, they're made for people who think a certain way.

Bodeker: So Asians and whites think a different way than African-Americans do, and Latinos?

Man: (stammers) There are different ways of thinking. Different populations represent those ways of thought and cultural congruences different ways.

The man seems dangerously close to espousing a theory of racial essentialism.

Bodeker presents his interview subjects more sympathetically than he presents himself. Whereas they come across largely as good-natured but confused, he seems bitter and sarcastic. He makes clear that he nurses racial grievances--not necessarily against minorities but against social conventions that he sees as oppressive to whites.

He is angry about the imputation of historical guilt: "I can trace my earliest ancestors here in America to the 1870s, after our Civil War. No forefather of mine ever killed an Indian or owned another human being--ever."

But he also asserts that "America was founded as a white nation," and that "her founding principles, which separate America from all other nations, were also developed by white men, not by a multicultural rainbow." Actually, the founders were almost all British, and their principles drew heavily on British intellectual and legal traditions. But their claim was a universalist one: All men are created equal, not all Englishmen or colonists.

WSJ

There's a bit of sleight-of-hand at the end: the founders of America were white, and unless we can find some evidence otherwise, designed America for other people like them, as people in every culture do. I'm embarrassed for this author to have included the deceptive text in the last paragraph. But the rest of this is excellent.

I haven't watched the movie. I'm not a video person. But this much controversy is bound to help loosen tongues on this issue.

Traditionalist and New Right texts

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:01:00 +0000

http://www.freespeechproject.com/

As a number of older sites have vanished from the net, or have not been updated, the community has needed a place for new right, integralist, traditionalist, conservationist and realist documents.

We've compiled a number of archives and are looking for helpers. Contact Conservationist for more info.

Don't like my internet driving?

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:42:00 +0000

A parody, spin-off or mockery of the "Don't like my driving? Call 1-800-eat-shit" bumper stickers that 10,000,000 people found witty and unique.

Why Jews fear the right

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:53:00 +0000

In Europe in the early twentieth century nationalism did carry conspicuous anti-Semitic strains but except for the Russian far Right those strains don’t seem to be integral to most European nationalisms today. But as Jews overreact to these forms of reawakened nationalism, and even line up on the side of Islamicist immigrants against the native population, nationalist movements of the Right may move again for understandable reasons in an anti-Jewish direction.

Interview with Paul Gottfried

I'd been wondering about this, but it's sensible: nationalism excludes all except the native born, but as those lines have been eroded, it's now a more open camp. Jews who turn against it (a) risk repeating history and (b) act against their own interests, as Islam makes clear its position on Jews.

When great and OK are equal

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Are we just kidding ourselves?

It's pretty clear that nothing of recent provenance comes close to being as amazing as the first Bathory, Immortal, Deicide or Slayer albums.

Even more, since there are now thousands of bands and none really emerge as clear winners, talented musicians are staying away from this genre. You could make a masterpiece and not be noticed, because the fans can't tell the difference between the new crap and something as good as the old.

Sometimes, when new promotional material comes in, I think: "These guys are in on the joke. They know the new stuff is crap and a generation raised on crap can't tell good from bad, so they're making bad and calling it ironic, instead of insisting that good music could exist in this genre."

Apologies to all dozen of you talented bands out there; most of you are B-grade and not A-grade, but I commend you to keep trying.

Quality "art"

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:46:00 +0000

From our friends at DOMY BOOKS in Houston, Halloween "art":

It's not like they expect to pander to your political or social inclinations, thus making you feel better about who you are and by doing so, selling you a basically inferior product. No way, bro.

I am just blown away at the vision and technical depth of this piece. Just blown away. Honest.

Birth A.D. Live in Japan: "Cause Problems" (2:04)

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:43:00 +0000

Birth A.D. is thrash, now called crossover thrash, that sounds approximately like DRI mixed with SOD. Song is "Cause Problems" from Birth of a Nation (2009).

CLAN PESTILENS zine posts 1990 issue free online

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:42:00 +0000

CLAN PESTILENS was a short-lived 1990s zine that put out one issue before perishing. With BOLT THROWER and DEAD HORSE interviews, as well as a short but accurate review of PRONG's "Beg to Differ."

http://www.erickinkead.com/zine/

Labels selling off old-school metal

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:20:00 +0000

Yep, it's official: the old school trend is over, and labels are kicking them out the door for $5 and up a CD.

Now through October 31st, the Relapse Records Mailorder is offering 50% off on all Relapse titles (excluding 2009 releases). So pick up Relapse classics or undiscovered gems at only $6 a CD for a limited time! Check out the sale here

Amorphis - The Karelian Isthmus, Tales From the Thousand Lakes
Atheist - Unquestionable Presence, Piece of Time
Deceased - 13 Frightened Souls, Supernatural Addiction
Godflesh - Messiah
Incantation - Diabolical Conquest, Forsaken Mourning of Angelic Anguish, Onward to Golgotha
Nile - Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka, Legacy of the Catacombs
Pentagram - First Daze Here Too,The vintage collection
Repulsion - Horrified
Relapse singles series -- out of print 7 inches from Incantation, Goreaphobia, Amorphis, Mythic, etc: 1, 3, 4
Suffocation - Human Waste

EVILMUSIC is offering a 60% off "Resurrect the Underground" sale on classic underground black metal and death metal releases.

At the Gates - With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness $8
Averse Sefira - Battle's Clarion $10
Blood - O Agios Pethane $10
Belial - Gods of the Pit Part II $10
Cenotaph - Riding Our Black Oceans $9
Cianide - Divide and Conquer $6
Deceased - 13 Frightened Souls $6
Emperor - Wrath of the Tyrant $10
Graveland - In the Glare of Burning Churches $14
Judas Iscariot - To Embrace the Corpses Bleeding $10
Kataklysm - Sorcery/The Mystical Gate of Reincarnation $13
Mortem - Decomposed by Possession $8
Skepticism - aes $6
Skepticism - Lead and Aether $8
Womb/Disciples of Mockery - Split $10

Century Media has put most of its old-school titles that are still in print on permanent sale at $6:

Asphyx - Last One on Earth $6
Asphyx - The Rack $6
Oppressor - Agony $3

I've ordered from all three and trust them. Sad to see the old school stuff go, because the nu-skool really sucks, but this means that something's gonna replace the nu-skool with something that could be better.

Race and Sports

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:54:00 +0000

Pini Gherson (famous Israeli basketball coach) makes comments on the intelligence of black basketball players in relation to their different colours.

FREE BEER at Birth A.D. video shoot in Austin, TX

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:25:00 +0000

1) BIRTH A.D. is shooting a video, and we need your help to pack the club Headhunters and make it as insane as possible.

2) The shoot is Monday, November 9th, from 7-9pm. BIRTH A.D. will play a short set immediately after, so stick around - we need you for that
too!

3) FREE BEER - when you show up, say you're there for the video. You'll get a wristband for free beer while it lasts, and well drink specials all evening! **you must be 21 to attend**

4) Bring EVERYONE - we don't care if we know you, and we don't care if you don't know the band. This isn't a private party! Come drink our free beer and be in a video! Tell your friends to do the same!

5) Headhunters is located at 720 Red River St, Austin, TX 78701, (512) 236-0188.

Is Europe really so cultured?

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:15:00 +0000

They're so cultured, so well-learned, etc. but their pop music is as dumb as ours and more streamlined toward being utterly basic and awful. True, it's more innocent, but it's also enough to drive you mad. Maybe the problem is popular culture itself, or the idea that getting 4 million people to like anything requires it be dumbed down, or for 500,000 to enjoy Beethoven and the others to try to follow along.

Low IQ and how to descend to that state.

noreply@blogger.com (BLOGGER) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Hat tip to Amren:

For one thing, the results are skewed by a relatively small number of countries with high rates of spanking and especially low average IQs, particularly Tanzania and South Africa -- where about a third of university students reported being spanked a lot before age 12, and where average IQ rates stood at 72. Excluding these countries, "the line would be much closer to flat, indicating little or no relationship," says Dr. Mundfrom.

Attributing cognitive problems in children to spanking is hard enough. But then saying it is a major reason behind the lower IQ of a nation's entire population is even trickier because there could be a new raft of potential causes.

Martin Wells, a statistician at Cornell University, re-ran the statistical test to check whether regional variations in IQ -- which is lower in Latin America and Africa -- could account for the IQ differences Prof. Straus found. After accounting for regional variations, Dr. Wells found the effect of spanking vanished.

WSJ

Rare truths emerge.

And if you want to know how to get to that state, how about a "me first" society that extends equality to so many people that soon it becomes a feeding trough for parasites managed by the lazy and oblivious? A good explanation here.