Welcome back. I accidentally deleted the previous iteration of this
blog (also called The Passing Parade), to my dismay. And this just as the publication of its existence by the great
Steve Sailer
brought some attention to it. Man, I nearly got 1,000 views! For a
modest hobby blog (updated infrequently), that's like winning Miss America or something.
A friend called up to shout that
"they" had deleted my blog. When I confessed that only my stupidity was
responsible, and not censorship, she laughed and said that she hoped I saved my good posts -
all one of them - then resumed shouting when I replied that no, I didn't
save any; I never save anything. Someone else to whom I told this
shouted that I had subconsciously sabotaged myself (Freudian death wish), as if making
two or three random comments on the internet
per annum were some kind of career for your humble blogger. Why do my friends shout at me? Does that mean anything? Eh, probably not.
Anyway, fired up by the decibels they emitted, I got around to Googling for
cached copies of my posts. I found a few. Of these, only a few are worth
reposting - see below.
Unfortunately, the one good - really good, honestly - post is
non est.
I can't find it. That's the translation I did of Benjamin Franklin's
1751 "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind." If you happen to have a copy of that, I would be most obliged if you would throw it on a webpage and submit the link in a comment
to Sailer's
blog, which should be visited as often as possible.
And
now settle back, way back, and get ready for another two or three
puzzling encyclicals every year...for as many years as my mouse doesn't
stray to the "delete Google account" icon.
**************
So here are the posts I recovered.
I spruced up a few of them. The date of the original post is given.
**
17 July 2009
Stock Tip
Just to show how it's done, here is your Passing Parade stock tip. Actually, it is merely a general industry tip.
The mortuary business: strong buy.
Assuming you can find good
management (and not a bunch of
racists), you would do well to invest in the funerary side of, ulp, life. Why? For all the reasons market yakkers adduce when discussing Baby Boomers. Forget Health Care and Hospitals - look deeper into the future. Rapidly graying Boomers have to
die sometime, and those stiffs will need planting.
I see caskets, headstones, and crematoria as a long-range growth sector. Smart boys could make a killing in it. The opportunity of buying out the Mom-and-Pop gravediggers and putting the whole thing on a corporate basis is there for the taking.
Once the Boomers are buried, might we see an
annum in which Jackie O does
not grace the cover of
Life magazine or equivalent fishwraps? If so, then the future is bright, all in all.
**
07 October 2009
Bahn Frei!
"Share the Road" is insane. The danger of bicycles, tricycles, unicycles and who knows what all traveling the same roads as two-ton cars and weightier tractor-trailers should be obvious even to a child. It seems that if anything works, there is a contingent of wreckers hell-bent on ruining it.
The streets are for passage, not for toys. Toys should be indulged in on private property, or in space alotted to their use in public parks.
Likewise, street festivals, "runs for the cure," marathons, dog shows, and ticker-tape and other parades should be reserved for public parks. To shut down commerce and create traffic jams by playing in the street is the height of inefficiency and idiocy. Most of us were taught to play in yards or in parks, not in the street; the latter is a practice of the lower and lowest classes. Why governments should indulge in this practice is unknown, especially considering the outlay on public parks, the metropolitan examples of which seem to be largely and incomprehensibly abandoned to homosexual buggers and other criminals.
[A good new article on this is
here.]
**
31 July 2009
Thoughts on Gatesgate and Police Power
A policeman should run within the bounds of ordinary science. At every step, his actions should be guided first by his observations. He should not make any wild leaps goaded by his understanding of theoretical statistical probabilities or what happened on "Cops" last night.
The Gates case is simple. A woman says she saw a break-and-enter. The responding officer has grounds to check out the property from its perimeter, not to go on the property. If he sees broken windows or splintered doorjams, or hears untoward noises coming from the property, only then does he have a reasonable basis for going on the property, and then only for the purpose of taking a closer look. If he sees and hears nothing (and seeing two peaceful men chatting in broad daylight on private property is
not grounds for suspecting criminal activity), then he asks the accuser to produce photographs, video, or other concrete proof of her words. Should such be absent, he hangs out for a while, observing the house - mostly to soothe the accuser. He might call headquarters to get a "trouble history" for the house, depending on the neighborhood - for example, are other things up with this house? (If other things are up with the house, then closer investigation might be indicated.) If not, and if nothing happens, he splits.
That's how it has been handled seemingly forever. I can't conceive of any police officer, in all my years, even thinking of handling it any other way.
Immediately a storm of indignant objections blows up.
The objections all follow the form "But, WHAT IF...??"
But, WHAT IF...the house complained of contains some kind of wife-killer who shot his step-daughter?? Isn't it reasonable to conduct a thorough search of that house, including the attic and the basement and under the floorboards, and even call in the Canine Patrol to sniff around for dead bodies? (Can you prove there
aren't dead bodies in there?) Shouldn't an officer demand of the occupants a drivers license, a social security card, two forms of picture ID, all the mortgage papers (originals not copies, with signatures matched), and a drug test as well - all to be on the safe side?
But, WHAT IF...the occupants are terrorists?? You never can tell, these days. Shouldn't the officer call for backup, the helicopter, the tank; and shouldn't SWAT surround the house? There is no such thing as overreaction when the lives of police officers are potentially in danger. Besides, the force has to justify the money it spent on a tank.
But, WHAT IF...the occupant is the skunk who raped that girl - you know, that pretty girl - last week, downstate? And what if he fled here? What if he is hiding out in this house? What if he is using the house as a base of operations for a rape ring, or even white slavery? What if he is in there raping a helpless underage girl right now? ARE YOU JUST GONNA STAND THERE?
Emotions and fantasies don't count as cogitation.
But don't statistics say the average X dude is X times more likely to be involved in Y-type crimes than the average Z dude is? Therefore, depending on the break-and-enter perp description, shouldn't the officer beat on the door and demand ID, and make an arrest if he is greeted with less than joy?
No. Not all X are criminals, nor are all criminals X.
Police officers do not (should not) arrest on statistical trends, but instead on concrete evidence in the specific case they're dealing with. Predicting outcomes on the basis of statistics is legitimate when talking about broad social trends, but that is different from deciding whom to threaten with physical force - unless we want to replace the Bill of Rights with a graph.
Unless he heard gunshots, or heard several neighbors reporting gunshots, or smelled a corpse, or was following up on a missing persons report involving verified threats to some party, or things of that kind, an officer of the law has no factual grounds to imitate the Stasi.
A related fascistic mentality is that of the but-if-only'er. But, IF ONLY...
But if only...the cops had searched everyone coming out of the bar, they would-a found the gun later used in a murder, or would-a prevented somebody from driving boiled and killing that old gentleman everyone likes.
But if only...the cops had arrested everyone driving a white van in X city and given them all a beat-down, later murders would have been prevented.
But if only...we could get rid of the Constitution or what's left of it, and forcibly inject everybody with the right narcotics, they would be healthier and happier. It's for the public good!!!
One frequently detects this mentality operating when one encounters the statement: "If it saves ONE LIFE, it's worth it!" If the legislature outlaws all alcohol, and has anyone manufacturing it gunned down (if necessary), isn't it worth it...if it saves one child?
Why not drop a bomb on a neighborhood where a suspected murderer is said to hang his hat? If we can kill one bad guy, isn't destroying the lives of almost everyone else worth it?
Such, I'm afraid, is the attitude of the typically overzealous Amerinut.
**
11 March 2012
Saturday Thought
Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn't money, for genius seldom gets any. It isn't fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure, for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.
- Arthur Schopenhauer,
Essays and Aphorisms (1876), Vol. 2, "On Philosophy and the Intellect"; translated by R. J. Hollingdale
**
02 May 2011
Notes toward a Theory
[The theme of this post is a cliche, but I had figured that someone ought to set it down in writing again. Most people encounter it in written form too infrequently these days. I have expanded this post.]
[10 October: performed an edit.]
Character-formation is fundamentally based on
G. Character-formation consists of a series of choices, each logically connected to others. If a person tends to make poor choices, then his method of thinking is bad, and
vice-versa. The growing edifice of error that is built by poor thinking (for example, by failing to make logical connections, failing to make sense of things, misunderstanding information, etc.) makes for not only an obstacle to successful test-taking but also a malformed soul. Why do certain people ghost-ride, murder, get in fights over silly things, engage in sexual perversion, decorate their trailers hideously, and have a twisted, creepy personality akin to that of Ed Gein? It isn’t Satan entering their hearts; it's a deficient mind. And the mind of a low-g person is inescapably non-optimal.
Having good character and a bad mind is a mere artifact of a
high-g culture. In such a culture, the stupid person commonly is
policed within a context of norms established by people smarter than
him; he doesn't too often publicize very inappropriate attitudes or habits because the social context doesn’t allow
it. If he publicly wears his pants around his ankles, he is criticized as a “retard,” so he
doesn’t often do it. If he lusts after young boys or girls or farm
animals, he almost never expresses it in word or deed, because of the
clear certainty of disapproval and punishment.
Social order, moral order, and intellectual order are inseparable. And their root is intellectual order, and it comes from within. No social order imposes itself. No moral order imposes itself: before anyone can make any valid and principled moral distinctions (for himself or others), he has to have the intellect to do so.
It should be considered a truism - an uncontroversial commonplace - that such things as morality, imagination, and emotional health are all directly related to intelligence.
Intelligence is not just something you need in school to pass finals. It's something you need in order to live a good life and have a good society.
**
10 February 2012
Penis as Weapon
E. Michael Jones observes that Jewish subversives' crowbar of choice has changed over the past 20 years, from blacks to homosexuals. To oppose the homosexing of America is now considered proof of one's Total Evil - of being Absolutely Wrong (AW) in the same way and for the same reasons that being anti-black and anti-Semitic is AW. The revolution of the culture-critiquers continues.
"The homosexing of America" does not mean lightening the loafers of every man, woman, and child in the country, an impossibility. It means manufacturing consent for regarding sex
per se as the indiscriminate and short-range hole-hopping most characteristic of male homosexuality. Manufacturing that consent is the purpose of norming the merely notional "relationships" or "families" intrinsic to homosexual community (gay and lesbian) as contrasted with relationships rooted in
reproduction. The latter are to be cast into a conceptual and psychological ghetto, perforce undermining the cultural ecosystem necessary for procreation and successful childrearing. As such, the homosexing of America is not more than a late or terminal stage of the Sexual Revolution, which was (and is) a deliberate infliction of an injury on the biological cohesiveness of the mostly gentile population.
For the revolutionists' avant-garde are Jews*. And they are aware that their revolution isn't "good for Jews"; Dennis Prager's
"Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality" shows that fairly convincingly. It's Prager's contention that Western Civilization owes its positive development to a Jewish revolution in morals. It's Jones' contention that the latest such revolution is aimed at undoing Western Civ or colonizing it.
* A small and uncontroversial recent
example: the key sponsors of the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act are Gary Ackerman, Howard Berman, John Adler, and Shelly Berkley.
**
27 February 2012
The Intellectual Case against Iran
Like a drunkard who inadvertently reveals an embarrassing secret, a
hack on Yahoo! Contributor Network recently blurted out the neocon elites' core intellectual argument for starting a war on Iran, a country full of peaceful people. That argument was supposed to remain implicit, never to be brought into the sunshine for examination. But in a rambling screed attacking Pat Buchanan, Mark Whittington
writes:
The Soviet Union during the Cold War, just as Iran is today, was run by murderers and thugs. Yet the Soviets did not launch a nuclear strike at the United States because it knew that the USSR would have been annihilated by the retaliation attack. By that logic, Israel's nuclear arsenal would provide a sufficient deterrent against Iran['s] using whatever nuclear weapons it acquires.
Only [Israel's nuclear arsenal] won't [deter Iran]. Unlike the leaders of the old Soviet Union, THE RULERS OF THE IRANIAN THEOCRACY DO NOT CARE IF THEIR COUNTRY IS DESTROYED IN A NUCLEAR WAR.
There it is, emphasis added. We are to believe that the leadership, secular and religious, of a modern industrialized nation, playing the big game of international diplomacy and power politics for decades, not only wouldn't mind, but also positively craves, being burned up in a fire.
Well, these are crazy Muslims, after all. They believe crazy things. Get a load of this holy quote:
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Wait, that's God's marching orders to
Moses. Never mind.
The hack piles on:
Indeed there is a thread of Shiite Islam that concerns a figure known as the 12th Imam, a mythical personage who will return to bring about the end of the world and a new era of universal peace and brotherhood after a period of war and chaos. A few years ago, the UK Telegraph ran an article that suggested that Iranian president Ahmadinejad is a "twelver" who believes that the advent of the 12th Imam can be hastened. A nuclear war with Israel would fit the bill nicely.
So the
Telegraph ran an article suggesting that Iran's secular* president adheres to a thread that concerns a figure whose advent he may believe can be hastened.
That wouldn't make the cut of a Jim Marrs book, yet it's apparently the neocons' ultimate justification for dropping bombs on innocent people who are in Israel's way.
An A+ in reading comprehension goes to anyone who marked the discrepancy between "the rulers of the Iranian theocracy do not care if their country is destroyed in a nuclear war" and "[they want] a new era of universal peace and brotherhood." If they are destroyed, then how will they enjoy peace and brotherhood?
That miasma of contradictions is less in the head of Dr. Ahmadinejad than it is in mouths of liars (and their shills) who are looking for excuses to expand their very real this-worldly power.
* Note: Someone excoriated your humble blogger for saying Dr. Ahmadinejad is "secular." Well, he is no less secular than, say, Rick Santorum is. I submit in evidence
this from
Foreign Policy magazine, in which is said, among many similar things:
Ahmadinejad and his cohorts in the executive branch of Iran's government increasingly reference secular Iranian nationalism. They recently celebrated an exhibition honoring Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire over 2,500 years ago; they have also been known to castigate influential mullahs for diminishing Iran's greatness, going so far as to encourage the separation of religion from the government. Meanwhile parliament speaker Ali Larijani and his legislative supporters present themselves as adherents to the fundamentalist traditions of Shiite Islam and as true believers in the velayat-e faqih, Iran's system of governance by Muslim jurists. [Emphasis added.]
The upshot of this article, as I take it, is that any Islamic leader's claim to being devout must be regarded with at least as much skepticism as his claim that he is secular. In other words - they're all politicians. And this is clear even assuming that the
FP article isn't biased against Iran's self-defense (which it possibly is). In this context, it's perfectly valid to identify Dr. Ahmadinejad as "secular" in contradistinction to his fellow blowhards.
