Rand Paul has likely lost all credibility with militant neocons like Mark Levin for voting in favor of Chuck Hagel, who has made remarks concerning the Israel Lobby's power.
Paul went on Levin's show in January, pledging his love for Israel while recounting his recent visit there, yet he squeezed in one little bit that Israel's embargo against Palestinians in Gaza should be ended because the economic prosperity Gazans would gain from trading with the rest of the world would induce them to attack Israel less. Rand framed it as being good for Israel, so Levin let it pass. Rand was very submissive to Levin's expectations of belief in Israeli infallibility.
But it seems like Paul's vote for Hagel will finalize his expulsion from the neocon talk radio syndicate's realm of consideration in 2016, because actions speak louder than words. Indeed, Paul has nullified any creds he got from his "cheap date" with Israel during his visit. It seems he is thrashing about in vain, trying to adhere to his non-interventionist foreign policy convictions on the one hand, while trying to appease the Lobby with the other.
Christians United For Israel (CUFI) campaigned hard against Hagel. Although not headed by a Christian, CUFI is the standard bearer of Christian Zionism and seeks to exploit the innocence of evangelicals for the good of the Israel Lobby. Evangelicals are more likely to compromise on Chris Christie's recent acceptance of Obamacare than go against their belief that any opposition to Israel or its Lobby warrants a curse from God. So Rand has lost credibility with them.
But Rand has gained points with people like Pat Buchanan who perceive Hagel to be the least militaristic option Washington had to offer, despite his support of sanctions against Iran and drone strikes everywhere.
However, Rand's own father, Ron, opposed Hagel for not being anti-war enough.
You can't please them all.
In any case, it's a shame that evangelical churches and the media at large brainwash people to believe that being conservative means having an unquestioning support of war with Israel's opponents. The best we conservatives can do is spread the truth about the apostate belief of Christian Zionism, the lack of threat from Iran, the reason why America should not start wars to ensure Israel's illegal settlements continue to expand, and the real place where radical Islam is gaining ground: Europe via mass immigration.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Ponytail Man Likens Friendly Sons to Magdalene Laundries
Disclaimer, the author of this post is not a member of, nor affiliated with the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick organization.
If a bunch of Irishmen host a dinner for men, then they want women to be wrongfully imprisoned, according to WILK's ponytail man.
Ponytail man is trying to allege that the same impetus that led the Friendly Sons to be a boys only club was behind the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, which were a cultural tragedy that ruined the lives of many women. This not true.
Magdalene Laundries Background
The documentary Sex in a Cold Climate covers the tragedy of the laundries. After Ireland won its independence from Great Britain in 1922, the new Irish government took over asylums formerly run by the British and converted them into partial laundries. But it wasn't just crazy people who filled them anymore. If a woman got pregnant out of wedlock, or was found to have had sex out of wedlock, or even if she was raped through no fault of her own, she could be sent to the laundries for life. A girl raised in an orphanage who did no wrong could even be sent to the laundries for the "offense" of being pretty. The only way out was either escape or emancipation by someone on the outside, since imprisonment in laundries was actually not bound by any law and was only held together by public shame. Of course, the nuns who ran the laundries worked the women extremely hard and were often shockingly cruel and abusive. Orphanages weren't much better as sometimes priests would abuse girls. A film based on true stories of the laundries is The Magdalene Sisters.
By the way, do the Friendly Sons do any of these things? Obviously no.
Why the Laundries and Friendly Sons are Unrelated
Pony tail man says the laundries and all male gatherings are caused by the patriarchal society. However, there are many things that would seem to play a larger role than male dominated societies.
One would be the strict Catholicism that pervaded Ireland during the 20th century. The idea of Catholic guilt was very strong. It wasn't Catholicism per se behind the laundries because Catholics elsewhere never founded any such laundries in the 20th century* but rather a particular brand of Irish Catholicism involving hyper self-shaming. This shame was practiced by both men and women. If it were exclusion based on sex that caused the laundries to come about, then Why was Ireland the only country to have them? There were plenty of other nations throughout the 20th century where all-male groups abounded, and none of them had Magdalene laundries. Moreover, the Irish Catholic church was not nearly as powerful in the US as it was in Ireland, so this explains why nothing similar arose in America.
Furthermore, Ireland had been oppressed by the British for hundreds of years, and maybe they took it out on their women. Blacks' proclivity to use corporal punishment on their children is often explained as a reaction to having suffered oppression from slavemasters and Jim Crow. Granted, oppression does not necessarily cause people to oppress themselves, but it may dispose them to do so. In any case, Irish in America were never oppressed like they were in Ireland and formed no laundries.
Affirming solidarity between men is not the same as oppressing women. All other things being equal, a group consisting solely of men has more in common than a group consisting of both men and women. There is nothing wrong with a group of men getting together as men, and in fact, there is a healthy masculine camaraderie which helps bring them together as a group. How someone could say this is evil is puzzling. For being a collectivist, Ponytailman seems to exclude collectives of well-off Irishmen from the realm of legitimacy. But I'm sure he'd have no problem with wealthy Arab men meeting among themselves. Furthermore, he would probably have no problem with poor men dining together as men.
Feminists want Power not Equality
Feminists complain that there aren't enough female congressmen, CEOs, judges, etc. But you never hear them complain that there are too few female garbage collectors, sewage treatment plant workers, coal miners, telephone pole wire repairmen, or slaughterhouse workers. They never complain about women missing out on miserable things men have to do--only the things that carry with them prestige or power. So this is why Ponytail man would have no problem with, say, a group of poor factory workers having an all male dinner. The epithet that Mr Ponytail is a Marxist is dead on.
What you can do
If you would like to be a counter-Revolutionary and affirm the Friendly Sons' justification in having their dinner, write them at info@friendlysons.org
_____________________________________
* One might argue that convents were sort of prisons in the middle ages where innocent women were usually sent against their will, but in many places, nuns of that time had slightly more freedom than the nuns of today and enjoyed the privileges of reading and writing which were denied to most men and women at the time.
If a bunch of Irishmen host a dinner for men, then they want women to be wrongfully imprisoned, according to WILK's ponytail man.
Ponytail man is trying to allege that the same impetus that led the Friendly Sons to be a boys only club was behind the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, which were a cultural tragedy that ruined the lives of many women. This not true.
Magdalene Laundries Background
The documentary Sex in a Cold Climate covers the tragedy of the laundries. After Ireland won its independence from Great Britain in 1922, the new Irish government took over asylums formerly run by the British and converted them into partial laundries. But it wasn't just crazy people who filled them anymore. If a woman got pregnant out of wedlock, or was found to have had sex out of wedlock, or even if she was raped through no fault of her own, she could be sent to the laundries for life. A girl raised in an orphanage who did no wrong could even be sent to the laundries for the "offense" of being pretty. The only way out was either escape or emancipation by someone on the outside, since imprisonment in laundries was actually not bound by any law and was only held together by public shame. Of course, the nuns who ran the laundries worked the women extremely hard and were often shockingly cruel and abusive. Orphanages weren't much better as sometimes priests would abuse girls. A film based on true stories of the laundries is The Magdalene Sisters.
By the way, do the Friendly Sons do any of these things? Obviously no.
Why the Laundries and Friendly Sons are Unrelated
Pony tail man says the laundries and all male gatherings are caused by the patriarchal society. However, there are many things that would seem to play a larger role than male dominated societies.
One would be the strict Catholicism that pervaded Ireland during the 20th century. The idea of Catholic guilt was very strong. It wasn't Catholicism per se behind the laundries because Catholics elsewhere never founded any such laundries in the 20th century* but rather a particular brand of Irish Catholicism involving hyper self-shaming. This shame was practiced by both men and women. If it were exclusion based on sex that caused the laundries to come about, then Why was Ireland the only country to have them? There were plenty of other nations throughout the 20th century where all-male groups abounded, and none of them had Magdalene laundries. Moreover, the Irish Catholic church was not nearly as powerful in the US as it was in Ireland, so this explains why nothing similar arose in America.
Furthermore, Ireland had been oppressed by the British for hundreds of years, and maybe they took it out on their women. Blacks' proclivity to use corporal punishment on their children is often explained as a reaction to having suffered oppression from slavemasters and Jim Crow. Granted, oppression does not necessarily cause people to oppress themselves, but it may dispose them to do so. In any case, Irish in America were never oppressed like they were in Ireland and formed no laundries.
Affirming solidarity between men is not the same as oppressing women. All other things being equal, a group consisting solely of men has more in common than a group consisting of both men and women. There is nothing wrong with a group of men getting together as men, and in fact, there is a healthy masculine camaraderie which helps bring them together as a group. How someone could say this is evil is puzzling. For being a collectivist, Ponytailman seems to exclude collectives of well-off Irishmen from the realm of legitimacy. But I'm sure he'd have no problem with wealthy Arab men meeting among themselves. Furthermore, he would probably have no problem with poor men dining together as men.
Feminists want Power not Equality
Feminists complain that there aren't enough female congressmen, CEOs, judges, etc. But you never hear them complain that there are too few female garbage collectors, sewage treatment plant workers, coal miners, telephone pole wire repairmen, or slaughterhouse workers. They never complain about women missing out on miserable things men have to do--only the things that carry with them prestige or power. So this is why Ponytail man would have no problem with, say, a group of poor factory workers having an all male dinner. The epithet that Mr Ponytail is a Marxist is dead on.
What you can do
If you would like to be a counter-Revolutionary and affirm the Friendly Sons' justification in having their dinner, write them at info@friendlysons.org
_____________________________________
* One might argue that convents were sort of prisons in the middle ages where innocent women were usually sent against their will, but in many places, nuns of that time had slightly more freedom than the nuns of today and enjoyed the privileges of reading and writing which were denied to most men and women at the time.
Hollywood Underestimater Reviews Tron Legacy
The uniquely incandescent clothing of characters, vehicles, et al, is what initially lured me into watching Tron: Legacy. I was in the mood for such a rawly reduced presentation of form and light. The film prioritized special effects, and was artful in a stylistic sense. But every action of the characters seemed to be covered with a nonchalantness that didn't allow for a lurid enough presentation for the viewer to digest as meaningful.
However, the saving grace of the film is the female character Quorra, who is the love interest in the plot. Tron Legacy was plagued by all the typical modern Hollywood annoyances: Characters with overly terse speech, a plot choked out by excessively long action scenes, but Quorra offered some relief.
Quorra is a human-like program within the game who has mysteriously acquired a special evolutionary development which other human-like programs don't have. She takes a liking to the main character, Sam Flynn. She displays natural behavior that girls often exhibit when they're around guys they like. These include viewing from afar, giving a lot of eye contact, and prioritizing being together with him. These are innocent female behaviors that Hollywood seems to have tacitly banned in other films. Her damsel in distress quality is heightened by the fact that her life consists of the dark gray drudgery of her cyberworld. In a way, her position of situational weakness and innocence really heightens her ability to love because worldliness and manipulations are absent and unable to block her longing. In spite of her weakness and innocence she is still a smart, strong woman. It is a amazing that a female character who exemplifies feminine virtues such as purity and self-sacrifice squeaked through the Hollywood feminist screen.
Her love-interest, Sam, could have been a little more into her, and the paradigm of her being a computer program sort of gets in the way of a nicer love story. It would have been better if he showed a liking to her earlier in the film. Only when Sam's father avers her equivalence to humanity does he seem to appreciate her. Apparently he is not susceptible to the "indefinable charm of weakness" Oscar Wilde spoke of in women, which Olivia Wilde's character Quorra displays. Anyway, [Spoiler Alert] in the end, she saves Sam, and Sam saves her. Is such a story not the whole point of romantic love? Perhaps a going theme of the movie could be that true love stands alone.
The dynamic of Kevin Flynn and Quorra both being partial yet different creations of Sam's father is interesting as well; almost as if they are his unrelated children of his. The movie will explain why this is so... It is interesting how their romance evolves from a side-issue to almost being the main thing at the end of the movie. But even at the end, it is presented in a sort of distant nonchalantness that pervades the film. Maybe it's supposed to be representative of the indifference people have toward things in a video game world, where one "dies" as often as every minute.
Another theme could be that certain life situations are worth risking it all to escape from. The American Revolutionaries did this in the Revolutionary War. Many people undergo life-threatening surgeries and treatments to get out of horrifying illnesses. This sort of scenario occurs in Tron Legacy.
As a final note, the soundtrack was handled by the House/Techno group Daft Punk. The music often felt like it was building up to something which it never got to, but overall it seemed to fit well with the film.
Ultimately, if you're looking for a movie that doesn't command much but delivers in a few small ways, as in the glow in the dark designs and nonchalant, yet severe damsel in distress element, then Tron Legacy is worth watching.
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