Stone Cold Heart: Beautiful Stone Spirit

The current horror in the middle east has cast a pall over much of the past few weeks, turning hearts to stone. So much hatred. So much sheer evil. It is as though the Pit has been opened and demons are pouring forth.

And it brings the need for a calming Balm for the Soul. Taking sides is a matter of perspective for some and ideologies rise to the surface in the creamy as well as the scum.

So there was I down in the Crypt praying for light in the darkness when the answer, momentarily and for a short while at least, came in the form of Lydja, a lady quite close to me.

She showed me some items she wanted to display in the Tavern for a few days. "Just to bring a little beauty", she said.

I was astounded by what she had to show. 

It is an astonishing world and many of the people who live - and have lived - in it create things of outstanding beauty and delight. Even seemingly impossible things.

I will show some now. A preview of the delights that my customers will gaze at over the next few days. I certainly will.

Bear in mind that the first of these were created by a lad of 23. 

Today's average 23 year old is just 'starting out'. This one was already a master of stone at 23, back in 1841.

The Veiled Virgin

This statue was executed in flawless Carrera marble by the renowned Italian sculptor Giovanni Strazza (1818-1875) in Rome. Other examples of Strazza's work may be seen in the Vatican Museums and at the Archbishop's Palace in Milan. The St. John's Veiled Virgin was described by The Newfoundlander (4 December 1856) as the second such work by Strazza on the subject of a veiled woman.

During the mid-19th century, Italian nationalism was on the rise, and there was a resurgence in nationalism in the Italian arts and music. Strazza's Veiled Virgin is of a piece with this Risorgimento school of Italian nationalist art. The image of a veiled woman was a favourite subject of whole school of Strazza's fellow sculptors, with Pietro Rossi and Rafaello Monti the most important among them.

Often, the image of the veiled woman was intended to embody Italia, in the same manner in which Britannia symbolized England, Hibernia symbolized Ireland, and Lady Liberty symbolized the United States.

There are similar marble busts depicting veiled women in Canada, the United States, Ireland and England. 

None, however, are as meticulously crafted as the Newfoundland Veiled Virgin by Strazza: the facial features and the braids in the hair are clearly visible through the stone veil.


On 4 December 1856 Bishop John Thomas Mullock recorded in his diary: “Received safely from Rome, a beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in marble, by Strazza. The face is veiled, and the figure and features are all seen. It is a perfect gem of art.” 

The Veiled Virgin remained at the Episcopal Palace adjacent to the Roman Catholic Cathedral in St. John's until 1862, when the bishop presented the bust to the Superior of Presentation Convent, Mother Mary Magdalene O'Shaughnessy. Bishop Mullock's sister, Sister Mary di Pazzi Mullock, was a professed member of that community, and later its Superior.

The work of this master is sheer magnificence. Some quite, shall we say, erotic. That is, the ones not carved soley for religious employ. But even then the beauty of virginal womanhood almost shines through the cold stone. To be able to work stone with such delicacy is astounding.

The church had some 'rules' about eroticism. 

Take, for instance Bernini’s, The Rape of Proserpina

This sculpture depicts Proserpina’s struggle against Pluto.  

Bernini did a fantastic job showing us the agony Proserpina feels.  

He carved marble tears on her face as she pushes against Pluto’s face creating creases in his skin.  

The struggle between Pluto and Proserpina, as Pluto grabs her causing indentations on her waist and thigh, is exquisitely detailed.

This sculpture was made for Cardinal Scipione Borghese.  As a Cardinal you are a part of the privileged status known as Nobles. People of the Nobility inherited this status and were often (but not always) wealthy and influential.  Borghese was the Cardinal-nephew to Pope Paul V.  As the cardinal- nephew to the Pope, Borghese had certain advantages.  He became Superintendent General of the Papal States making him a part of The Council of Trent.

The Council’s twenty-fifth decree had a great impact on the catholic art of this era.  It states: “…every superstition shall be removed

… all lasciviousness be avoided; in such wise that figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust… there be nothing seen that is disorderly, or that is unbecomingly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing indecorous, seeing that holiness becometh the house of God. And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop …”(Scipione). This decree condemned many Renaissance and Medieval art styles and iconography.  

This gave Baroque artists the opportunity to expand their art, depicting drama and emotion, including rich color and detail.  After the establishment of the decrees, religious art was not in demand, but secular art by the middle class was.  This gave artist’s the ability to make a successful living, painting non religious portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and sculptures.

Carving 'strands' of stone is incredibly difficult.
One slip of the chisel and.....

Today the art is not lost. While 'old' pieces are famous and usually held in secure museums or collections, 'new' but still magnificent sculptures can be found in China, of all places, where the new wealthy - as well as western wealthies - can order 'bespoke' pieces that are every bit as complex and beautiful.

Even religious.

Pray for Peace.

http://comepraytherosary.org/

Big Moon Watching

A fine crowd on the patio this evening, braving the sprinkings of snow. All gathered to look at the Moon.

We had amongst us representatives from the University of Tasmania and some local 'amateur' astronomers who could speak the same language (although I was able to hear a bit of one-upmanship going on in the jargon department.)

The University of Tasmania has its own Telescope, adding to its claim to be in the 'Top 2% in the World', something which the local Mensa group probably knows more about.  But to be fair, it may well be in the top 2%  in something or other if you count in Ulan Bator Agricultural and Motor Bike Repair College, the Sleaford Tech colonial outpost at Duntroon and the Maharajah Mahesh Yogi University, whose most famous graduate wrote a book about Men being from Mars and Women from Venus.

There were OOOs and AAAHHs as the moon appeared fleetingly from behind the clouds, and several people did swear blind that it was bigger.

Dr Poitr Zygliskinski, the professional chap down in the Uni disabused the throng however, and he had support from Fred, our local amateur star gazer.

"The Moon is no bigger than it was last week", he explained. "Celestial bodies that are close enough to us that we can see them with the naked eye, do not act like balloons", he said, patiently.  "They do not get bigger".

"It is a well established fact, and you can sign up for a degree in it in my department - just put your 'X' here and deposit a 100 bucks - that cheese does not expand.  It has just got a bit closer due to passing meteorites gouging out space from between the Moon and our delightful Tasmania. We have had quite a few lately".

His mini-lecture was almost spoiled by some lout at the back pointing out that some of the wotnots in the sky that we can see with the naked eye do indeed expand,  "and even explode, only a long time passes before we get to see them do it. I read it in one of your pamphlets. They might be balloons", he asserted.

I had to restrain the Bouncer and instead pulled a few extra pints for both.

Another local chap  with a camera took some snaps.

"I am more used to photographing birds" he said. "And Dr Poitr's only gets Radio National, not pictures."

I managed to get nudged whilest taking a snap of my own and only managed to get the snow on the outside dunny. But at least I did catch a possum with a glint in his eye looking on in amusement - just in picture on the left side, in a tree.

All in all, the drink flowed and a fine time was had but the mooning was brief.

Maybe some better mooning next time.

Pax.

Relativity: Things Einstein Missed.

Herr Doktor Professor Albert E has not visited the Tavern, but who knows, if time can run backward he may drop by someday to tell us just how.

Meanwhile after a very long time most of his predictions, derived from careful and frankly quite astounding mathematics, have proven to be spot on.

He followed the rules of mathematics, extending them to match his imagination and vision. He drew conclusions from what was made clear; from what was indisputable; evidentiary.  He 'Discovered' what was previously unseen.

He didn't 'make it up as he went along just to suit his ego'.

He and other scientists have made great progress discovering the Laws of Nature.  Those 'Laws' are derived understandings of how things work. They are not 'opinion', or just so for one person and different for another. 

Einstein was not stupid; many people are though.

His Theories of Relativity relate to Light and Matter, to Space and Time. There are different 'Laws' for the conduct of Life. They, too, are not a matter of opinion nor do they differ from one person to the next.  Not that our modern educators and social engineers want to know that. Or teach it to our children.

We have had a modest handle on the basic outline of 'Moral Law' for a very long time. They are built-in to the human psyche. We discovered them a while back and have been refining them. But still there are those that are so self-centred and narsissistic - and deceptive - that they do not want any 'moral' laws but their own. And they force them onto others. 

But - and here's the deception - they pretend they don't.

Another Professor did drop by; Prof. GREG KOUKL. He has been looking deep into the current ideas of Moral Relativity.

Moral relativism. It sounds so reasonable, so tolerant, and so neutral. But there's a fundamental flaw.

The Myth of Moral Neutrality

One of the most entrenched assumptions of relativism is that there is such a thing as morally neutral ground, a place of complete impartiality where no judgments nor any forcing or personal views are allowed. Each takes a neutral posture towards the moral convictions of others. 

This is the essence of tolerance, the argument goes.

Moral neutrality, though, is a myth, as we shall see. 

"Neutral" Values

Moral relativism has become institutionalized in our education system through different forms of instruction in morality that claim to be values-neutral. 

The most well-known, "values clarification", was developed in the mid-60s by social scientists Louis Raths, Sidney Simon, and others. It became very popular and was widely used in public schools during the seventies and early eighties.

Take note of the deception; the very phrase iteslf is a mendacity. 

The 'lessons' do not seek to 'clarify' anything.

According to Simon, values clarification "...does not teach a particular set of values. There is no sermonizing or moralizing. The goal is to involve the students in practical experiences, making them aware of their own feelings, their own ideas, their own beliefs, so that the choices and decisions they make are conscious and deliberate, 

based on their own value systems."[1]

The foundational assumption of values clarification, however, is not the student's own. The notion that morality is exhaustively described by one's own personal feelings, ideas, beliefs, and values is the contribution of Simon and Raths. 

This is not a neutral point of view, but rather is a particular view of morality called relativism.

It is the view of the blind, or short sighted, or the deciever.  

This leads values clarification advocates into contradiction, as Paul Vitz, professor of psychology at New York University, points out: "The theorists clearly believe that values clarification is good... They criticize traditional teaching of values as 'selling,' 'pushing,' and 'forcing one's own pet values.' But when it comes to the value of their own position, relativism has conveniently disappeared, and they push their moral position with their own sermons."[2]

Greg gave us an insight from his own experience of just how this pernicious philosophy - a sophistry - is driven into our children. 

As parents we have little idea of what goes on in a classroom. It is 'Professional Space' where teachers are free to act upon the minds of our children without our knowledge of just what they are doing.

Yes, many teachers are parents too, but they teach from a curriculum that you and I do not get to examine, and frankly neither do they. Any 'objections' on their part means loss of their career. 

So hear what happens:

Values Clarification in Hawaii

My youngest brother raised his children in Hawaii. At the time, the public school system there conducted exercises in 'values clarification' in which the students were 

encouraged to develop their own beliefs about morality. 

The teacher was "neutral," explaining to the students that it was up to them to formulate their own moral conclusions to these ethical dilemmas.

Can you imagine teaching mathematics this way? Can you imagine teachers telling the kiddies that 2+2 = whatever they want it to be?

Er...... !

The children were asked to solve this problem. An aged man had taken the life of his seriously ailing wife to put her out of her misery. He was being tried for murder. Should he be punished for his "mercy killing," or should he go free?

My brother made a visit to the school to register his concern, but the teacher defended the practice. "We're not pushing our views or imposing our values," he said. "We're careful to let the students know that it's up to them to decide what to do. This is 'value free' instruction. We're neutral."

My brother pointed out that the teacher's approach was anything but neutral. 

"You're telling my children that when they face the hard questions of right or wrong, when they're confronted with the most difficult problems of morality, there are no guidelines. There are no absolutes. There are no rules. You're teaching my kids that when they must decide critical issues of right and wrong, it's simply up to them."

The Value of Cheating

Philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers exposes the moral confusion of values clarification in this true story she relates:

One of my favorite anecdotes concerns a teacher in Newton, Massachusetts, who had attended numerous values clarification workshops and was assiduously applying its techniques in her class. The day came when her class of sixth graders announced that 

they valued cheating and wanted to be free to do it on their tests. 

The teacher was very uncomfortable. Her solution? She told the children that since it was her class and since she was opposed to cheating, they were not free to cheat. 

"In my class you must be honest, for I value honesty. In other areas of your life you may be free to cheat."[3]

Think about this response for a moment. 

Does the teacher's solution follow from the instruction on values clarification she has just given to her students? 

Of course not. 

If the teacher values honesty, then she should be honest without imposing her values on her students. They should still decide for themselves, which they had.

At best, the instructor is stuck in a contradiction. 

When faced with the destructive consequences of relativism, she falls back into imposing her morality on her students--the very thing she's been teaching against.

At worst, the teacher's lesson is that power is the ultimate element in morality, 

that might makes right: 

"I give the grades. If you cheat, I'll flunk you." Technically, this is called the fallacy of argumentum ad baculum, or to paraphrase Mao Tse Tung, "persuasion from the barrel of a gun."[4]

Values clarification is not neutral. 

Vitz points out five areas of bias. 

First, its exercises embody the moral ideology of a small, ultra-liberal segment of America. 

And, frankly, most western, 'liberal' countries too. It is a mental/moral plague.

Second, its values are relative to individual tastes. 

Third, possible solutions to the moral dilemmas posed to students are limited to the most liberal options. 

Fourth, the exercises focus on the individual in isolation from family and society. 

And fifth, morality is construed simply as self-gratification.[5]  

Vitz concludes, 

"It is a simple-minded, intellectually incompetent system."[6]

What are values clarification exercises meant to teach? That there are difficult ethical circumstances in which the lines are not clear and the solutions are ambiguous? We already know that. 

No, these exercises go further. They imply that because some circumstances are ethically ambiguous, there are no ethical certainties at all.

Values clarification aggressively promotes a particular ethical view called moral relativism. 

It uses ethical ambiguities to encourage agnosticism about universal moral rules. By posing extremely difficult problems to children untutored in ethical decision-making, values clarification destroys their confidence in moral absolutes.

Tolerance and Moral Neutrality

One of the alleged virtues of relativism is its emphasis on tolerance. An extremely articulate example of this point of view was written by Faye Wattleton, the former President of Planned Parenthood. 

The piece is called, "Self-Definition: Morality."

Greg quotes. And what is quoted sounds so reasonable and 'right' that most people simply accept it. But read it carefully. 

"Like most parents, I think that a sense of moral responsibility is one of the greatest gifts I can give my child. But teaching morality doesn't mean imposing my moral values on others. It means sharing wisdom, giving reasons for believing as I do--and then trusting others to think and judge for themselves.

My parents' morals were deeply rooted in religious conviction but tempered by tolerance--the essence of which is respect for other people's views. They taught me that reasonable people may differ on moral issues, and that fundamental respect for others is morality of the highest order.

"I have devoted my career to ensuring a world in which my daughter, Felicia, can inherit that legacy. I hope the tolerance and respect I show her as a parent is reinforced by the work she sees me doing every day: fighting for the right of all individuals to make their own moral decisions about childbearing.

Seventy-five years ago, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood to liberate individuals from the 'mighty engines of repression.' As she wrote, 'The men and women of America are demanding that... they be allowed to mold their lives, not at the arbitrary command of church or state but as their conscience and judgment may dictate.'

I'm proud to continue that struggle, to defend the rights of all people to their own beliefs. When others try to inflict their views on me, my daughter or anyone else, that's not morality: It's tyranny. It's unfair, and it's un-American."

This is impressively and persuasively written, one of the finest expressions of this view available in the space of five short paragraphs. 

It sounds so sensible, so reasonable, and so tolerant, but there's a fundamental flaw.

Wattleton's Fundamental Flaw

Faye Wattleton's assessment is based on the notion of neutral ground, a place that implies no moral judgment. Wattleton is not neutral, however, as her own comments demonstrate.

In her article, Wattleton in effect argues that each of us should respect another's point of view. She then implies, however, that any point of view other than this one is immoral, un-American, and tyrannous. 

If you disagree with Wattleton's position that all points of view are equally valid, then your point of view is not valid. 

Her argument commits suicide; it self-destructs.[7]

But then what do we expect of the mind-set that leads an organisation that is antithetical to life itself. If she cannot kill a child before it is born then she will damned well poison its mind and kill its soul in school. 

In fact, Wattleton has her own absolute she seeks to impose on other people: "Fundamental respect for others is morality of the highest order." This is a personal moral position she strives to mandate politically. 

She writes, "I have devoted my career to ensuring a world in which my daughter, Felicia, can inherit that legacy." 

What legacy? Her point of view. How does she ensure this? 

By passing laws. Faye Wattleton has devoted her career to ensuring a world in which 

her point of view is enforced by law.

I don't object to anyone seeking to use the political process to enforce his or her particular point of view in this way. In our system, everybody gets a voice, and everybody gets a vote. We each get to make our case in the public square, and may the best idea win. Because we each can vote, no one can inflict the majority with his point of view (unless, of course, he's a judge).

What is disturbing in Wattleton's article is her implication she is neutral, unbiased, and tolerant, when she is not. 

She is entitled to her point of view, but she's not neutral. 

The only place of true neutrality is silence. Speak up, give your opinion, contend for your view, and you forfeit your claim to neutrality.

As a case in point, in May, 1994, Congress passed a law making it a federal offense to block an abortion clinic.[8] 

Pamela Maraldo, then president of Planned Parenthood, commented to the press, "This law goes to show that no one can force their viewpoint on someone else." 

The self-contradiction of her statement is obvious: All laws force someone's viewpoint.

In Hobart, down in Hilary's Village' a person cannot speak against abortion within 150 metres of an abortuary. If you do, police with guns may come along and take you away.

'Ello, ello, ello: we can't have you taking a moral stand 'ere.

Moral neutrality seems virtuous, but there's no benefit, only danger. In our culture we don't stop at "sharing wisdom, giving reasons for believing as [we] do--and then trusting others to think and judge for themselves," as Wattleton says, nor should we. 

This leads to anarchy. 

Instead we use moral reasoning, public advocacy, and legislation to encourage virtue and discourage dangerous or morally inappropriate behavior.

Faye Wattleton is offering an ethic which, although it sounds fair and tolerant, turns out to be the most bankrupt of all moral systems. It's called moral relativism. 

It's not even tolerant, as Ms. Wattleton makes clear when she condemns those who disagree with her. It sounds persuasive, but it's also misleading and fallacious.

Reaping What We Sow

In the Los Angeles riots of 1992, we watched with horror as buildings burned all over the city. Shops were plundered not by hooded looters, but by families -- Mom, Dad, and the kids-- moral mutants on the shopping spree of their lives, giggling and laughing with impunity while stuffing their spoils into shopping carts and oversized trash bags.

We shouldn't have been surprised. During the L.A. riots these families did exactly what they had been taught. Nobody wanted to "impose" their morality on anyone else, so they learned that values are relative, that morality is a matter of personal preference. 

Make up your own rules, define your own reality, seek your own truth. 

In the spring of '92, thousands of people did just what we told them to do, and civilization burned.

If we reject truth, why should we be surprised at the moral chaos that follows? As C.S. Lewis said, "We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."[9]

Now, for the listeners at the bar who wanted references and supportive texts, he did provide a handout with footnotes. That's what the numbers were for.

You, eavesdroppers will have to go to his own site to see them. Please do.

http://www.str.org/articles/the-myth-of-moral-neutrality#.U-W7I_mSySp

 Greg, by the way is the Founder and President of "Stand to Reason".

Greg started out thinking he was too smart to become a Christian and ended up giving his life for the defense of the Christian faith. A central theme of Greg's speaking and writing is that Christianity can compete in the marketplace of ideas when it's properly understood and properly articulated.  He is an adjunct professor in Christian apologetics at Biola University.

He is welcome in the Tavern.

Now then, little Jimmy. E=MC ...what?  Get it right and you will see the light.

Pax.

Watch in Awe

Occasionally an old Knight turned Tavern Keeper sees in the distance a Knight of such stature that I have to pull my steed to a stop, put my towel down and just look in Awe.

There are dragon -slayers who do not shave and for whom a bath is a rare pleasure. Shining armour denotes a lazy knight, unused to battle. There are  'hairy men' who are all action and little thought, like my Bouncer: all useful muscle and guile. But there are also Captains; Knights who do present well and may well give the enemy a carefully disguised impression of being a bit of a poseur. They are not.  They are as deep as they are broad. They are men of rare Character.

Politics and 'Government' is full of men - and women - who seek out worms and try to convince the voters that he /she is a dragon-slayer when in fact all they are and can ever be is a politically correct wrecker.

Whole Government Departments are populated by drones led by charlatans instead of Charlamagnes. People who ARE dragons.

But along comes a Knight who cares much for the forces arrayed before him. The bigger the better. He revels in his skill and determination.

He will slash and thrust, dismembering the Legions in his way until he gets to the Man or Woman holding the Standard beside the Warlord, and he will cut them down.

He will thrust his lance into the Beast.

We can see such a man in Mr Trey Gowdy.

It is not a name many know, but they should.

Knights no longer look like this.
They can now be found in a suit and tie or with a taverner's apron.

In the modern political arena of America Trey Gowdy is but a 'Representative', in the House of Reps. He is from the tribe of Lawyers. I do not know his provenance but I suspect he has dispatched so many lawyers in his time that the field runs with their blood and he now has his sights on far bigger liars.

Trey drops in like a Paratrooper to lay waste the waste.

The Paras Memorial, UK.

I give you some examples:

For example. A 'Professor' is accorded great privilege in our society. Learned men and women. Highly paid. Governments have pockets full of them. Bought and paid-for. 

The 'absent-minded professor' was once an amusing figure, even liked.  But wheeled into 'Committees' where they can toe the party line......

Toadies and gainsayers. They fall under Trey's sword.


Here he disembowels a Judge. A pleasure to watch.

We give special Privileges to Judges. They are supposed to be above the fray, listening to argument and forming judicious 'Opinion'. 

Then there are the Government Department 'big-wigs' to are a law unto themselves. Princelings over their own patch of desert, where no honour or decency grows. Trey uses his spiked ball on a chain on the aptly named Mr Fink.

As Mr Gowdy, the Knight, says, it is a matter of Character and Morality.

We need more such men.

Pax.

(When we have earned it)

Can a Bigotted, Hateful Person Change?

There are some who frequent the Tavern that say that a leopard cannot change its spots. And that may well be so in the case of wild cats. But what of people? Can a mad person be cured? Can a Muslim or a leftie ever become sane? Can a feminist ever become a constructive human being?

Enough shrinks drink here to confirm that it is very hard to cure a mad person. Several have made a fine living trying. We are seeing a new breed of ex-feminists starting to actually recognise and acknowledge that not all men are rapists and that some might even be quite nice chaps. 

But the polls continually show that almost half and sometimes over half of the populations of most western countries are as thick as the turds stuck up constipated rectums when it comes to political views. They are 'Lefties'. They have delusions of sanity, just as strong as a feminist's delusion of adequacy.

Some can be otherwise quite nice people, when you avoid talking of anying of moment. It is often quite easy to like a leftie when they are sedate. Or sedated.

But it is hard to discuss things with a leftie. They shout a lot. They throw things. At least they do not behead people in the street.  Feminist lefties of course love being naked in the street, shoving their lady parts 'in ya face', and write on themselves - usually disgusting words. But then women are more verbally gifted, they tell us.

The Tavern bouncer has his work cut out ejecting the rowdies and just keeping the ones who we do let stay, quietly conversing with the sane drinkers. Those sane patrons show great Charity! 

And Hope.

And some lefties sometimes do listen when someone can get a word in edgeways, long enough to have his views change a little as Truth sinks in through the cracks. The road to sanity is long and tough.  It is best tackled with the lubrication of Grace.

Mr Danusha V. Goska dropped by, contrite and full of eagerness to tell of his cure. I don't intend to repeat everything he had to say as it was a LOT !,  but can give a fairly comprehensive account from memory. You may have to read all of what he says in the American Thinker.  

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/ten_reasons_i_am_no_longer_a_leftist.html

He had a few very sound reasons why he stopped being a leftie and joined the diminished legion of the sane. 

Every one newly sane person helps.

How far left was I? So far left my beloved uncle was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in a Communist country. When I returned to his Slovak village to buy him a mass card, the priest refused to sell me one. So far left that a self-identified terrorist proposed marriage to me. So far left I was a two-time Peace Corps volunteer and I have a degree from UC Berkeley. 

 I wore a button saying "Eat the Rich." To me it wasn't a metaphor.

That is deep! But whayhey. What light shines through yonder broken window? 

I voted Republican in the last presidential election.

Below are the top ten reasons I am no longer a leftist. 

This is not a rigorous comparison of theories. This list is idiosyncratic, impressionistic, and intuitive. 

It's an accounting of the milestones on my herky-jerky journey.

 Now starts a long list: milestones along a ten mile road. Starting with the easy first steps as a reverse order, looking back and ending with the most identifyable marker of the Beast within.

10) Huffiness.

In the late 1990s I was reading Anatomy of the Spirit, a then recent bestseller by Caroline Myss.

Myss described having lunch with a woman named Mary. A man approached Mary and asked her if she were free to do a favor for him on June 8th. No, Mary replied, I absolutely cannot do anything on June 8th because June 8th is my incest survivors' meeting and we never let each other down! They have suffered so much already! I would never betray incest survivors!

Myss was flabbergasted. Mary could have simply said "Yes" or "No."

Reading this anecdote, I felt that I was confronting the signature essence of my social life among leftists. We rushed to cast everyone in one of three roles: 

victim, victimizer, or champion of the oppressed. 

We lived our lives in a constant state of outraged indignation. 

I did not want to live that way anymore. 

I wanted to cultivate a disposition of gratitude. I wanted to see others, not as victims or victimizers, but as potential friends, as loved creations of God. 

I wanted to understand the point of view of people with whom I disagreed without immediately demonizing them as enemy oppressors.

I recently attended a training session for professors on a college campus. The presenter was a new hire in a tenure-track position. 

Rolling his eyes, Prof. X  (see the article, please) went on to say that he was wary of accepting a position on this lowly commuter campus, with its working-class student body. 

The disconnect between leftists' announced value of championing the poor and the leftist practice of expressing snobbery for them stung me. 

Already vulnerable students would be taught by a professor who regarded association with them as a burden, a failure, and a stigma.

Barack Obama is president. Kim and Kanye and Brad and Angelina are members of multiracial households. One might think that professors finally have cause to teach their students to be proud of America for overcoming racism. 

Not so fast, Professor X warned.  His talk was on microaggression, defined as slights that prove that America is still racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist, that is, discriminatory against handicapped people.

Professor X projected a series of photographs onto a large screen. In one, commuters in business suits, carrying briefcases, mounted a flight of stairs. This photo was an act of microaggression. After all, Professor X reminded us, handicapped people can't climb stairs.

!!! Er.... duh !

I appreciate Professor X's desire to champion the downtrodden, but identifying a photograph of commuters on stairs as an act of microaggression and evidence that America is still an oppressive hegemon struck me as someone going out of his way to live his life in a state of high dudgeon.

(An example of the insanity of the leftie I alluded to at the start) 

On the other hand, Prof. X could have chosen to speak of his own working-class students with more respect.

Yes, there is a time and a place when it is absolutely necessary for a person to cultivate awareness of his own pain, or of others' pain. Doctors instruct patients to do this -- "Locate the pain exactly; calculate where the pain falls on a scale of one to ten; assess whether the pain is sharp, dull, fleeting, or constant." But doctors do this for a reason.

They want the patient to heal, and to move beyond the pain. 

In the left, I found a desire to be in pain constantly, so as always to have something to protest, from one's history of incest to the inability of handicapped people to mount flights of stairs.

9) Selective Outrage

I was a graduate student. Female genital mutilation came up in class. I stated, without ornamentation, that it is wrong.

A fellow graduate student, one who was fully funded and is now a comfortably tenured professor, sneered at me. 

"You are so intolerant. Clitoredectomy is just another culture's rite of passage. You Catholics have confirmation."

When Mitt Romney was the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, he mentioned that, as Massachusetts governor, he proactively sought out female candidates for top jobs. He had, he said, "binders full of women." He meant, of course, that he stored resumes of promising female job candidates in three-ring binders.

Op-ed pieces, Jon Stewart's "Daily Show," Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon posts erupted in a feeding frenzy, savaging Romney and the Republican Party for their "war on women."

This has already reached ludicrous proportions with missiles being lobbed onto the most innocuos supportive statements FOR women. 

I was an active leftist for decades. I never witnessed significant leftist outrage over clitoredectomy, child marriage, honor killing, sharia-inspired rape laws, stoning, or acid attacks. 

Nothing. Zip. Crickets. 

I'm not saying that that outrage does not exist. I'm saying I never saw it.

The left's selective outrage convinced me that much canonical, left-wing feminism is not so much support for women, as it is a protest against Western, heterosexual men. 

It's an "I hate" phenomenon, rather than an "I love" phenomenon.

8.) It's the thought that counts

My favorite bumper sticker in ultra-liberal Berkeley, California: "Think Globally; Screw up Locally." 

In other words, "Love Humanity but Hate People."

It was past midnight, back in the 1980s, in Kathmandu, Nepal. A group of Peace Corps volunteers were drinking moonshine at the Momo Cave. A pretty girl with long blond hair took out her guitar and sang these lyrics, which I remember by heart from that night:

"If you want your dream to be,

Build it slow and surely.

Small beginnings greater ends.

Heartfelt work grows purely."

I just googled these lyrics, thirty years later, and discovered that they are Donovan's San Damiano song, inspired by the life of St. Francis.

Listening to this song that night in the Momo Cave, I thought, that's what we leftists do wrong. That's what we've got to get right.

We focused so hard on our good intentions. Before our deployment overseas, Peace Corps vetted us for our idealism and "tolerance," not for our competence or accomplishments. 

We all wanted to save the world. What depressingly little we did accomplish was often erased with the next drought, landslide, or insurrection.

Peace Corps did not focus on the "small beginnings" necessary to accomplish its grandiose goals. 

Schools rarely ran, girls and low caste children did not attend, and widespread corruption guaranteed that all students received passing grades. 

Those students who did learn had no jobs where they could apply their skills, and if they rose above their station, the hereditary big men would sabotage them. 

Thanks to cultural relativism, we were forbidden to object to rampant sexism or the caste system. 

"Only intolerant oppressors judge others' cultures."

I volunteered with the Sisters of Charity. For them, I pumped cold water from a well and washed lice out of homeless people's clothing. 

The sisters did not want to save the world. 

Someone already had. 

The sisters focused on the small things, as their founder, Mother Teresa, advised, "Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love." 

Delousing homeless people's clothing was one of my few concrete accomplishments.

7) Leftists hate my people.

I'm a working-class Bohunk. A hundred years ago, leftists loved us. We worked lousy jobs, company thugs shot us when we went on strike, and leftists saw our discontent as fuel for their fire.

Karl Marx promised the workers' paradise through an inevitable revolution of the proletariat. The proletariat is an industrial working class -- think blue-collar people working in mines, mills, and factories: exactly what immigrants like my parents were doing.

Polish-Americans participated significantly in a great victory, Flint, Michigan's 1937 sit-down strike. Italian-Americans produced Sacco and Vanzetti. Gus Hall was a son of Finnish immigrants.

In the end, though, we didn't show up for the Marxist happily ever after. 

We believed in God and we were often devout Catholics. 

Being a Catholic m'self, I often bemoan the propensity of Catholics to be Lefties. We are raised to be compassionate but so easily get swayed by 'end justifies the means' rhetoric of the left, and the pseudo-compassion of taxing the Hell out of other people to pay for our charitable works - and claiming the kudos, of course. 

'Zozchial Justytz' is all the rage in some Catholic parishes, as if there were some alternative. Anti-social injustice somewhere nearby?  I'll say there is and it is usually from the left of politics that feed taxpayers' money into Church coffers. 

It has to stop.

Catholics have no business being socialists.  Socialism is just a sneaky little cousin of Communism. To Catholics I always say, "Try being a Catholic".

Leftists wanted us to slough off our ethnic identities and join in the international proletarian brotherhood -- "Workers of the world, unite!" But we clung to ethnic distinctiveness. 

Future generations lost their ancestral ties, but they didn't adopt the IWW flag; they flew the stars and stripes. 

"Property is theft" is a communist motto, but no one is more house-proud than a first generation Pole who has escaped landless peasantry and secured his suburban nest.

Leftists felt that we jilted them at the altar. 

Leftists turned on us. 

This isn't just ancient history. In 2004, What's the Matter with Kansas? spent eighteen weeks on the bestseller lists. The premise of the book: working people are too stupid to know what's good for them, and so they vote conservative when they should be voting left. In England, the book was titled, What's the Matter with America?

Leftists freely label poor whites as "redneck," "white trash," "trailer trash," and "hillbilly." At the same time that leftists toss around these racist and classist slurs, they are so sanctimonious they forbid anyone to pronounce the N word when reading Mark Twain aloud. 

President Bill Clinton's advisor James Carville succinctly summed up leftist contempt for poor whites in his memorable quote, "Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find."

The left's visceral hatred of poor whites overflowed like a broken sewer when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in 2008. It would be impossible, and disturbing, to attempt to identify the single most offensive comment that leftists lobbed at Palin. 

One can report that attacks on Palin were so egregious that leftists themselves publicly begged that they cease; after all, they gave the left a bad name. 

The Reclusive Leftist blogged in 2009 that it was a "major shock" to discover "the extent to which so many self-described liberals actually despise working people." The Reclusive Leftist focuses onVanity Fair journalist Henry Rollins. Rollins recommends that leftists "hate-fuck conservative women" and denounces Palin as a "small town hickoid" who can be bought off with a coupon to a meal at a chain restaurant.

Just a reminder here that Mr Goska uses 'Liberal' in that strange American sense.  It is the US way of labelling Lefties / Labourites / Socialists / yea even unto Mao himself. Yes, Mao was a 'Liberal'.

Smearing us is not enough. Liberal policies sabotage us. Affirmative action benefits recipients by color, not by income. 

Even this limited focus fails. In his 2004 Yale University Press study, Thomas Sowell insists that affirmative action helps only wealthier African Americans. Poor blacks do not benefit.  

In 2009, Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford demonstrated that poor, white Christians are underrepresented on elite college campuses. Leftists add insult to injury. A blue-collar white kid, who feels lost and friendless on the alien terrain of a university campus, a campus he has to leave immediately after class so he can get to his fulltime job at MacDonald's, must accept that he is a recipient of "white privilege" – if he wants to get good grades in mandatory classes on racism.

The left is still looking for its proletariat. 

It supports mass immigration for this reason. 

Harvard's George Borjas, himself a Cuban immigrant, has been called "America’s leading immigration economist." Borjas points out that mass immigration from Latin America has sabotaged America's working poor.

It's more than a little bit weird that leftists, who describe themselves as the voice of the worker, select workers as their hated other of choice, and targets of their failed social engineering.

6) I believe in God.

Read Marx and discover a mythology that is irreconcilable with any other narrative, including the Bible. Hang out in leftist internet environments, and you will discover a toxic bath of irrational hatred for the Judeo-Christian tradition. 

I had to point out that such attitude is now so endemic that even many middle-of-the-road, and quite nice, ordinary people, seem to hate Christianity with a fervour more fitting for the Plague.  Mrs Beelzebub must be rubbing her claws with glee.

You will discover an alternate vocabulary in which Jesus is a "dead Jew on a stick" or a "zombie" and any belief is an arbitrary sham, the equivalent of a recently invented "flying spaghetti monster." 

You will discover historical revisionism that posits Nazism as a Christian denomination. 

You will discover a rejection of the Judeo-Christian foundation of Western Civilization and American concepts of individual rights and law. 

You will discover a nihilist void, the kind of vacuum of meaning that nature abhors and that, all too often, history fills with the worst totalitarian nightmares, the rough beast that slouches toward Bethlehem.

5 & 4) Straw men and "In order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs."

It astounds me now to reflect on it, but never, in all my years of leftist activism, did I ever hear anyone articulate accurately the position of anyone to our right. In fact, I did not even know those positions when I was a leftist.

"Truth is that which serves the party." 

The capital-R revolution was such a good, it could eliminate all that was bad, that manipulating facts was not even a venial sin; it was a good. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. 

One of those eggs was objective truth.

Ron Kuby is a left-wing radio talk show host on New York's WABC. He plays the straw man card hourly. If someone phones in to question affirmative action – shouldn't such programs benefit recipients by income, rather than by skin color? – Kuby opens the fire hydrant. 

He is shrill. He is bombastic. He accuses the caller of being a member of the KKK. He paints graphic word pictures of the horrors of lynching and the death of Emmett Till and asks, "And you support that?"

Well of course THE CALLER did not support that, but it is easier to orchestrate a mob in a familiar rendition of righteous rage against a sensationalized straw man than it is to produce a reasoned argument against a reasonable opponent.

On June 16, 2014, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank published a column alleging that a peaceful Muslim was nearly verbally lynched by violent Islamophobes at a Heritage Foundation-hosted panel. What Milbank described was despicable. 

Unfortunately for Milbank and the Washington Post's credibility, someone filmed the event and posted the film on YouTube. Panel discussants, including Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, made important points in a courteous manner. Saba Ahmed, the peaceful Muslim, is a "family friend" of a bombing plotter who expressed a specific desire to murder children. 

It soon became clear that Milbank was, as one blogger put it, "making stuff up."

I had to interject there. It was more than that. She was paid by a major News outlet to put propaganda and lies and smears. Let's get that right.  Leftists LIE all the time. Her leader is diabolic - the Princess of Lies.

Milbank slanders anyone who might attempt analysis of jihad, a force that is currently cited in the murder of innocents -- including Muslims -- from Nigeria to the Philippines. The leftist strategy of slandering those who speak uncomfortable facts suppresses discourse and has a devastating impact on confrontations with truth in journalism and on college campuses.

2 & 3) It doesn't work.  Other approaches work better.

I went to hear David Horowitz speak in 2004. My intention was to heckle him. Horowitz said something that interrupted my flow of thought. He pointed out that Camden, Paterson, and Newark had decades of Democratic leadership.

Ouch.

I grew up among "Greatest Generation" Americans who had helped build these cities. One older woman told me, "As soon as I got my weekly paycheck, I rushed to Main Ave in Paterson, and my entire paycheck ended up on my back, in a new outfit." In the 1950s and 60s, my parents and my friends' parents fled deadly violence in Newark and Paterson.

Within a few short decades, Paterson, Camden, and Newark devolved into unlivable slums, with shooting deaths, drug deals, and garbage-strewn streets. The pain that New Jerseyans express about these failed cities is our state's open wound.

I live in Paterson. I teach its young. My students are hogtied by ignorance. I find myself speaking to young people born in the U.S. in a truncated pidgin I would use with a train station chai wallah in Calcutta.

Many of my students lack awareness of a lot more than vocabulary. 

They don't know about believing in themselves, or stick-to-itiveness. 

They don't realize that the people who exercise power over them have faced and overcome obstacles. 

I know they don't know these things because they tell me. 

One student confessed that when she realized that one of her teachers had overcome setbacks it changed her own life.

My students do know -- because they have been taught this -- that America is run by all-powerful racists who will never let them win. 

My students know -- because they have been drilled in this -- that the only way they can get ahead is to locate and cultivate those few white liberals who will pity them and scatter crumbs on their supplicant, bowed heads and into their outstretched palms. 

My students have learned to focus on the worst thing that ever happened to them, assume that it happened because America is unjust, and to recite that story, dirge-like, to whomever is in charge, from the welfare board to college professors, and to await receipt of largesse.

As Shelby Steele so brilliantly points out in his book White Guilt, the star of the sob story my students tell in exchange for favors is very much not the black aid recipient. The star of this story, still, just as before the Civil Rights Movement that was meant to change who got to take the lead in American productions, was the white man. 

The generous white liberal still gets top billing.

In Dominque La Pierre's 1985 novel City of Joy, a young American doctor, Max Loeb, confesses that serving the poor in a slum has changed his mind forever about what might actually improve their lot. "In a slum an exploiter is better than a Santa Claus… An exploiter forces you to react, whereas a Santa Claus demobilizes you."

That one stray comment from David Horowitz, a man I regarded as the enemy, sparked the slow but steady realization that my ideals, the ideals I had lived by all my life, were poisoning my students and Paterson, my city.

After I realized that our approaches don't work, I started reading about other approaches. 

I had another Aha! moment while listening to a two minute twenty-three second YouTube video of Milton Friedman responding to Phil Donahue's castigation of greed. The only rational response to Friedman is "My God, he's right."

1) Hate.

If hate were the only reason, I'd stop being a leftist for this reason alone.

Almost twenty years ago, when I could not conceive of ever being anything but a leftist, I joined a left-wing online discussion forum.

Before that I'd had twenty years of face-to-face participation in leftist politics: marching, organizing, socializing.

In this online forum, suddenly my only contact with others was the words those others typed onto a screen. That limited and focused means of contact revealed something.

If you took all the words typed into the forum every day and arranged them according to what part of speech they were, you'd quickly notice that nouns expressing the emotions of anger, aggression, and disgust, and verbs speaking of destruction, punishing, and wreaking vengeance, outnumbered any other class of words.

One topic thread was entitled "What do you view as disgusting about modern America?" The thread was begun in 2002. Almost eight thousand posts later, the thread was still going strong in June, 2014.

Those posting messages in this left-wing forum publicly announced that they did what they did every day, from voting to attending a rally to planning a life, because they wanted to destroy something, and because they hated someone, rather than because they wanted to build something, or because they loved someone. 

You went to an anti-war rally because you hated Bush, not because you loved peace. Thus, when Obama bombed, you didn't hold any anti-war rally, because you didn't hate Obama.

I experienced powerful cognitive dissonance when I recognized the hate. The rightest of my right-wing acquaintances -- I had no right-wing friends -- expressed nothing like this. 

My right-wing acquaintances talked about loving: God, their family, their community. 

I'm not saying that the right-wingers I knew were better people; I don't know that they were. I'm speaking here, merely, about language.

Some bright spark listening did interject at this point with, "Ah, but... if you had a tenner handy would you bet on it?" There were many heads nodding and an "I would" came from the back somewhere. (Give that man a pint !) 

In 1995 I developed a crippling illness. I couldn't work, lost my life savings, and traveled through three states, from surgery to surgery.

A left-wing friend, Pete, sent me emails raging against Republicans like George Bush, whom he referred to as "Bushitler." 

The Republicans were to blame because they opposed socialized medicine. In fact it's not at all certain that socialized medicine would have helped; the condition I had is not common and there was no guaranteed treatment.

I visited online discussion forums for others with the same affliction. One of my fellow sufferers, who identified himself as a successful corporate executive in New Jersey, publicly announced that the symptoms were so hideous, and his helpless slide into poverty was so much not what his wife had bargained for when she married him, that he planned to take his own life. He stopped posting after that announcement, though I responded to his post and requested a reply. It is possible that he committed suicide, exactly as he said he would -- car exhaust in the garage. 

I suddenly realized that my "eat the rich" lapel button was a sin premised on a lie.

In any case, at the time I was diagnosed, Bush wasn't president; Clinton was. And, as I pointed out to Pete, his unceasing and vehement expressions of hatred against Republicans did nothing for me.

I had a friend, a nun, Mary Montgomery, one of the Sisters of Providence, who took me out to lunch every six months or so, and gave me twenty-dollar Target gift cards on Christmas. 

Her gestures to support someone, rather than expressions of hate against someone -- even though these gestures were miniscule and did nothing to restore me to health -- meant a great deal to me.

Recently, I was trying to explain this aspect of why I stopped being a leftist to a left-wing friend, Julie. She replied, "No, I'm not an unpleasant person. I try to be nice to everybody."

"Julie," I said, "You are an active member of the Occupy Movement. You could spend your days teaching children to read, or visiting the elderly in nursing homes, or organizing cleanup crews in a garbage-strewn slum. You don't. You spend your time protestingand trying to destroy something -- capitalism."

"Yes, but I'm very nice about it," she insisted. "I always protest with a smile."

Pete is now a Facebook friend and his feed overflows with the anger that I'm sure he assesses as righteous. He protests against homophobic Christians, American imperialists, and Monsanto. I don't know if Pete ever donates to an organization he believes in, or a person suffering from a disease, or if he ever says comforting things to afflicted intimates. I know he hates.

I do have right-wing friends now and they do get angry and they do express that anger. 

But when I encounter unhinged, stratospheric vituperation, when I encounter detailed revenge fantasies in scatological and sadistic language, I know I've stumbled upon a left-wing website.

Given that the left prides itself on being the liberator of women, homosexuals, and on being "sex positive," one of the weirder and most obvious aspects of left-wing hate is how often, and how virulently, it is expressed in terms that are misogynist, homophobic, and in the distinctive anti-sex voice of a sexually frustrated high-school misfit. 

Haters are aware enough of how uncool it would be to use a slur like "fag," so they sprinkle their discourse with terms indicating anal rape like "butt hurt." Leftists taunt right-wingers as "tea baggers." The implication is that the target of their slur is either a woman or a gay man being orally penetrated by a man, and is, therefore, inferior, and despicable.

Misogynist speech has a long tradition on the left. In 1964, Stokely Carmichael said that the only position for women in the Civil Rights Movement was "prone." Carmichael's misogyny is all the more outrageous given the very real role of women like Rosa Parks, Viola Liuzzo, and Fannie Lou Hamer.

In 2012 atheist bloggers Jennifer McCreight and Natalie Reed exposed the degree to which misogyny dominates the New Atheist movement. 

McCreight quoted a prominent atheist's reply to a woman critic. 

"I will make you a rape victim if you don't fuck off... I think we should give the guy who raped you a medal. I hope you fucking drown in rape semen, you ugly, mean-spirited cow… Is that kind of like the way that rapists dick went in your pussy? Or did he use your asshole… I'm going to rape you with my fist."

A high-profile example of leftist invective was delivered by MSNBC's Martin Bashir in late 2013. Bashir said, on air and in a rehearsed performance, not as part of a moment's loss of control, something so vile about Sarah Palin that I won't repeat it here. Extreme as it is, Bashir's comment is fairly representative of a good percentage of what I read on left-wing websites.

I could say as much about a truly frightening phenomenon, left-wing anti-Semitism, but I'll leave the topic to others better qualified. I can say that when I first encountered it, at a PLO fundraising party in Marin County, I felt as if I had time-traveled to pre-war Berlin.

I needed to leave the left 

I needed to leave the left, I realized, when I decided that I wanted to spend time with people building, cultivating, and establishing, something that they loved.

Poor old Dan slumped over the bar after that long monologue. He really, desperately needed a cool Pint. 

I was pleased to pull one for him and kept pulling the rest of the evening. He had done well. He had given a lot of personal experience.

Another man on the Road Away from Perdition. Always welcome in this Tavern.

Peace.

Pax Dei.

( A small chaser glass to go with your Pint. All photos here are for illustration only. They do not necessarily refer to the passage above or below or to the people discussed. They simply add to the piece. Get you to think. Get it ?)