Article

2005-07-04 Home Front: Culture Wars

Abraham Lincoln on the meaning of the Declaration

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Crereter Thuting1079 2005-07-04 09:15|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 For me, in this time, reading Abe conjurs up a mental image of contemporaries whom I have come to admire - and for the same reasons I admire Lincoln and Jefferson and Franklin, et al. They all share the awesome ability to, what some might call "craft", though I prefer to think of it as distill complexity down to simplicity - retaining all of the elegance and simple majesty of clear thought - down to truth. I have come to think of these pieces as perfect logic boxes - and if that phrase diminishes the result, please substitute your own. No charts or gimmicks or fudged numbers or trite memery. Just simple, inescapable, unassailable, rational, logical summations of complex issues into a form that, except for those with physical debilities such as ADD or terminal prejudices such as BDS or Moonbatism, even the simplest man or woman can follow, comprehending the whole of it at every step, and see the beauty of an argument well-made and fairly-won.

Though the volume of a million information channels available today might give the impression this ability has been lost to a cacophony of luridly perverse paranoia, self-serving propaganda, and political partisanship, I must disagree. The truth is out there, lol, just heavily masked by the vast mediocrity and outright lies. The test of an assertion lies in knowing the difference between inductive logic and deductive logic. The fools and tools of the propagandists and meme whores and posturing pretenders are purveyors of inductive reasoning. Simplified, yes, to simple-minded, simplistic, solipsism. On the other hand, a perfect modern example of the art which explains this difference beautifully - authored by one of those contemporaries whom I deeply admire - Stephen den Beste. Understanding this difference intuitively is the individual's defense, his armor against the insanity, his filter to separate thejewels of wisdom and sagacity from the trite or malicious.

As I thank Abe Lincoln for this perfect and majestic logic box demonstrating the wisdom of granting equality, I thank Stephen den Beste for giving me the perfect and majestic tool with which I filter out the cacophony and find the less obvious, but equally valuable jewels in today's information deluge. A tool designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, to reveal the difference between shit and shinola. Heh. My sincere thanks to them both.

Posted by .com 2005-07-04 14:15|| 2005-07-04 14:15|| Front Page Top

23:57 Jan
23:46 Jan
23:28 Bomb-a-rama
23:22 .com
23:15 Atomic Conspiracy
23:02 Red Dog
22:31 Spelet Chaiter4591
22:23 Red Dog
21:23 Paul Moloney
21:12 Stephen
21:06 Paul Moloney
21:04 John McClain
20:53 Jackal
20:45 Jackal
20:45 Super Hose
20:41 mhw
20:39 Mark Z.
20:33 Bobby
20:19 ladida
19:56 Frank G
18:45 Shipman
18:39 raptor
18:27 Mike
18:18 Barbara Skolaut