damnable conservative brownshirts

a guest post and alert from linda douglass, to whose white house office you may forward any health-care-reform disinformation advertised by your sucker conservative brownshirt nazi scum-friends. that disinformation, of course, includes accurate quotation of the president.

anyway, here is her alert on the looming fascist menace, as posted by iowahawk:

Know Your Town Hall Mob Agitators!

By Linda Douglass
Deputy Assistant Under-Minister of Truth
White House Health Care Task Force

Greetings citizen! By now you may have heard scattered rumors of state and party officials encountering reactionary resistors at local health care reform information programs. Do not be alarmed, for our 5-year plan for citizen health proceeds without delay. Remain stalwart! The truth can be told at last, that these so-called "protests" are merely the desperate rear flank mob actions of dead-end bandits and saboteurs in the pay of enemy insurance agents.

Pay them no heed, for these outside agitators in no way represent any threat to our great patriotic push forward for increased citizen heathfulness! These well-dressed prep school gangsters of reaction seek only to frighten and demoralize and intimidate you, with their confusing "facts" and hob-nailed Sperry Topsiders. Unfortunately they are joined in conspiracy by a well-financed network of unlicensed blogs and talk radio traitors, who exaggerate their numbers and percolate disinformation -- even cleverly staged YouTube videos of an impostor President Obama saying "quotes"!

Remain strong, citizen, for the day of their comeuppance is near! Patriotic spontaneous volunteers from MoveOn.org, Organizing For America, HCAN, SEIU, AFSCME, ACORN, NPR, and MSNBC have all pledged independent grassroots efforts to spread the word about the health-hating tricksters and their transparent astroturf agitation campaign!

You too can help by remaining ever-vigilant for health traitors in your local sectors. But beware: though small in number the state health reform enemy is clever, and well trained in subterfuge and disguise by his monopolist paymasters. Your job is to recognize his signs, and report any fishy-seeming protest or blog activities to me or other official authorities within the Health Care Truth Ministry. Here is a visual training course to help you in the execution of this important patriotic duty.

At the Health Care Town Hall

We have taken great care to insure that the site and times of local sector health care town hall meetings are known only to a specially-selected cross section of ordinary grateful citizens and responsible media outlets. Yet, in some cases, saboteur mobs have infiltrated and ruined the 11 PM news footage. Until we can find the fifth columnists who are leaking this classified information, it is important that you alert security forces to possible organized infiltrators before they enter the building and disrupt the applause sign schedule. Please study the following photos:

Here we see typical everyday hometown American citizens freely expressing their spontaneous health care opinions in an uncoordinated manner. Note the fine grassroots sanserif display font typography of their signs, spontaneously designed for maximum television legibility. Note that these citizens have coincidentally chosen their signage to color-match with their t-shirts. This will help independent grassroots organization leaders locate the citizens to distribute town hall seat assignments and bus departure schedules. You may also note that these hometown neighbors are carrying spontaneous chant cards.

Truly, this is Democracy in action. By contrast, let's look at this set of photos:

Behold the face of infiltrators and saboteurs, citizen! Look at the surly anti-American anger and carefully practiced dishevelment. Note that their signs are scrawled, fiendishly tricking cameramen into closeups. All are expertly handmade, an expensive graphic design luxury only affordable to their puppet masters in the drug and insurance cartels. Note these mobs are so well paid for their agitation that they actually arrived in their own cars and expensive non-matching t-shirts. Fishy? You bet! Report them at once!

Online

Spotting potential health care traitors online at first seems trickier than in person, until you remember that behind every opponent site lies a web of anti-patriotic conspirators. Often these sites will mask their treachery behind a clever veneer of "sarcasm" and "CBO data." A careful Google Image Search may be helpful in determining his true loyalties. First consider this photo of a random blogger.

Note how gaily he smiles behind the wheel of his decadent sporting-car, an obvious bauble provided by his oligarch masters in the pharmaceutical and blender industries. "Whee!" he seems to sing, blissfully ignorant to the plight his 47 million uninsured co-citizens. Calm your rage at his heartless insolence citizen -- his tune will soon change!

And what of this blogger?

The days of your deviltry are numbered, well-dressed running-dog lackey of gangster insurance plutocrats! You and your $250 suit are now entered into our monitoring data base!

In addition to reporting suspected health care blogoteurs, it is important to remind your fellow citizens to practice "safe surfing" when looking for health care reform information. Links to approved, citizen-driven, spontaneous grassroots websites can be found at Organizing for America, Health Care for America Now!, and ACORN. Until further notice, all other health care opinions are considered hostile disinformation from highly coordinated state enemies!

In Your Home Sector

Rooting out the deceptive web of anti-health propagandists must not only take place at our town halls and on line. If we are to defeat the forces of reaction, we must expose and isolate these sinister elements in all local sectors. Be alert and report all telltale signs of membership in secret Republican cabals: elite extremist plutocrats...

Extreme Texans...

religious extremists...

Southern gun extremist...

and extreme religious gun extremists.

All are potentially dangerous, so report first and do not try to confront. Most of all, keep your eyes alert for the most diabolical cabal standing in the way of our great push forward for your health!

That is all, citizen! Remain steadfast in your grassroots vigilance, and a healthy tomorrow will be yours!

on the attributes of God

[the following is something I've meant to write about for a while, so here goes]

truth. love. mercy. justice. these are human words that we use to describe ideals our world approaches, but never quite reaches. and since it is humans that utter these words, different people consider these ideals to mean different things: when one man speaks of mercy, another hears its absence. the ideals represented by these words vary wildly from person to person, leaving us with a question - whence good?

this question does not have a definite answer attained by human means. the most we can do, unassisted, is to note the appearance of a 'natural law' that usually holds in the heart of man.* this 'natural law' usually takes the form of a moral substrate, giving rise to the basic presuppositions that lead even many atheists to hold their moral reasoning in high regard. of course, conscience is not binding and so this 'natural law' may be rejected (by choice) and replaced with a new substrate ["without immortality.."], but the rejection is still present.

we then have a potential (but otherwise unbinding) definition of the good, namely that afforded by 'natural law.' but if it is a choice to reject natural law, it is also a choice to affirm it, and so the 'good' is only a signifier of one's choice. such a definition is then weak (but not meaningless), providing a moral realisation of the starry light kant gives as its partner.

the same holds for all purely human notions of ideal qualities.

but we are not bound to the purely human - for God has revealed Himself to mortal man! on the basis of revelation, without which we could not know anything outside of our experience, we have knowledge of God from God. that knowledge leads us to know God's perfect love for us and how we have rejected Him, choosing sin and death over Love and Life Incarnate. there is therefore an infinite gulf that only God can remove and not by the works or human love we can attain, for the gap is infinite and even the best of our love is tainted with death.

it is into this despair (under the power of sin) that Christ and His Gospel enters: that He came to remove our separation from God and reconcile us to Him, that He came when we were yet in rebellion, that He came knowing that He would die at our hand, and that He was resurrected into eternal glory (for our death and sin has no power over Him). glory be to God!

through the justifying work of Christ, we have received the mercy and pardon of God. amen.

---

as we pair these words - justice and mercy - we realise that our human notions of the good must be subsumed by the Absolute and Actual, realised in the person and attributes of God. 'natural law' must bow before the Source of Law and so must we. and so it is here, in the triune God, that we find the origin and definition of the Ideal. it is here that we find perfect Truth and perfect Love dwelling in absolute unity. it is here that we must look to know Justice apart from self-righteousness and Mercy apart from empathy. and it is here that we learn that these Ideals are not realised in isolation.

the perfect Love of God is accompanied by the root and knowledge of perfect Truth. that Truth does not bind the Love of God, nor does His Love blind Him to His creation. He sees all and loves all, and if He saw any less His love would decrease as it only loves an avatar of the creature before Him. in turn, if He loved less, His vision would become constrained by hardness.

so it is with God and so it is with His children. knowledge esteemed above love will harden a man's heart, but the opposite will blind him and render his love meaningless. this dialectic does not hold in pairs, but in full generality: the fullness of Love is inextricably linked to Justice and Compassion and Righteousness and Power. all of these attributes are only rightly understood in God, and it is there that they are only rightly understood in their union.

and so - called by God, reconciled by Christ, and led by the Holy Spirit - we imitate God and Christ and learn Ideals from His Hand. as He develops His attributes in us, we are continually linked to Him, lest we consider our love or justice to have any value or life apart from His covering work in us. He thus covers us with His righteousness, teaches us how to love as He does (and then covers it yet again), and instructs us in the way of justice. in this, He keeps us close from the temptations away from Him back into self-righteousness and poison.

we are not good on our own merits, but on His. in turn, the person (and its attributes) He grows in us must not be rooted in us, but in Him. that He does this in the present is His promise, accompanied by His present indwelling.

again, glory - glory! - be to the God who does and is all this! may we ever be connected to Him as He is, and not merely as we conceive Him. amen.

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*if you disagree, steal and wreck a foucault-fan's car. observe the results.

stimulus

"'Decide Yourself who was right: You or the one who questioned You then? Recall the first question; its meaning, though not literally, was this: "You want to go into the world, and You are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which they in their simplicity and innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they dread and fear -- for nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom! But do You see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after You like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest You withdraw Your hand and Your loaves cease for them." But You did not want to deprive man of freedom and rejected the offer, for what sort of freedom is it, You reasoned, if obedience is bought with loaves of bread? You objected that man does not live by bread alone, but do You know that in the name of this very earthly bread, the spirit of the earth will rise against You and fight with You and defeat You, and everyone will follow him exclaiming: "Who can compare to this beat, for he has given us fire from heaven!" Do You know that centuries will pass and mankind will proclaim with the mouth of its wisdom and science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin, but only hungry men? "Feed them first, then ask virtue of them!" -- that is what they will write on the banner they raise against You, and by which Your temple will be destroyed. In place of Your temple a new edifice will be raised, the terrible Tower of Babel will be raised again, and though, like the former one, this one will not be completed either, still You could have avoided this new tower and shortened people's suffering for a thousand years with their tower! They will seek us out again, underground, in catacombs, hiding (for again we shall be persecuted and tortured), they will find us and cry out: "Feed us, for those who promised us fire from heaven did not give it." And then we shall finish building their tower, for only he who feeds them will finish it, and only we shall feed them, in Your name, for we shall lie that it is in Your name. Oh, never, never will they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: "Better that you enslave us, but feed us." They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves. They will also be convinced that they are forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels. You promised them heavenly bread, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, eternally depraved, and eternally ignoble human race? And if in the name of heavenly bread thousands and tens of thousands will follow You, what will become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not be strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Is it that only the tens of thousands of the great and strong are dear to you, and the remaining millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, weak but loving You, should serve only as material for the great and the strong? No, the weak, too, are dear to us. They are depraved and rebels, but in the end it is they who will become obedient. They will marvel at us, and look upon us as gods, because we, standing at their head, have agreed to suffer freedom and to rule over them -- so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free! But we shall say that we are obedient to You and rule in Your name. We shall deceive them again, for this time we shall not allow You to come to us. This deceit will constitute our suffering, for we shall have to lie. This is what the first question in the wilderness meant, and this is what You rejected in the name of freedom, which You placed above everything. And yet this question contains the great mystery of this world. Had You accepted the "loaves," You would have answered the universal and everlasting anguish of man as an individual being, and of the whole of mankind together, namely: "before whom shall I bow down?" There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. But man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable, so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it. For the care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something before which I or some other man can bow down, but to find something that everyone else will also believe in and bow down to, for it must needs be all together. And this need for communality. of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and called upon each other: "Abandon your gods and come and worship ours, otherwise death to you and your gods!" And so it will be until the end of this world, even when all gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols. You knew, You could not but know, this essential mystery of human nature, but You rejected the only absolute banner, which was offered to You to make all men bow down to You indisputably -- the banner of earthly bread; and You rejected it in the name of freedom and heavenly bread."

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our conception of love and compassion is often at war with Christ's.

property and community

viewed from a christian perspective:

"property is owned by the individual" - idolatry of the self.

"property is owned by the community" - idolatry of the community, that is, of every self.

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there are idolatries, self-contradictions, and both.

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any secular political system will allow idolatry. from the christian perspective, we must therefore ask if such a system allows the self a free choice between idolatry and submission to God in the various expressions of life (worship, money, time, work, &c). if that system maintains..
- an individualistic view on property: the self clearly has such a choice with respect to that property.
- a collective view: that choice is removed; the self at once has everything, and nothing.

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finally, self-contradictions should not be enthroned as defining presuppositions.