Travel Broadens the Mind

So they say. In fact it was said to me just the other day when the 'Lonely Planet' guide people stopped by and asked if I wanted the Tavern in their book on Tasmoania.  The offer was quite good; photos and a blurb; details of the Ales on offer etc. I just had to stump up some moolah. 

I didn't. 

Anyway, even though they stood in the P&B quaffing fine drink they could not quite get the location on their map. 

They are 'tops in the field', they assured me. Asserted more like. But they are but one in a long line of travel guides dating back to the Greeks. Before the 21C guides the most famous and long lived guides were The Baedeker Guidebooks

These were German, but everyone who was anyone - and that meant English, of course, used them. A potted history was explained by another lady in the bar.

Laura Freeman, a fine gal.

An Englishman on holiday in Spain a century ago found a country with little to recommend it. Waking up on the first morning and consulting his guide book, he would have read the following description: ‘Spain is a bleak and often arid land, with few traces of picturesqueness.’

The towns, the guide continues, 'are wreathed in tobacco smoke' and the cafes are ‘very deficient in comfort and cleanliness’. The guide further warns that the service from waiters, chambermaids and porters is generally very slack and that the traveller should always count his change.

In the Spanish countryside there is great danger of highway robbery, while in the cities the police will arrest anyone they can lay their hands on.

The railway carriages and omnibuses are so filthy that a clothes brush, a duster and some insect powder should always be at hand. As for the national sport of bull fighting, it is ‘the most unsportsmanlike and cowardly spectacle’ a civilised man will ever see.

This is the account of Spain given in the 1914 Baedeker Guide. These small, red books, bound in leather, were the first recourse for an Englishman abroad in the late 19th and early 20th century.

I came, she told me, to Baedeker through my maternal grandfather, who amassed a collection of more than 130 of the red guides. He was possessed by a particularly keen sense of wanderlust, even into his 80s, and bought many hundreds of antique travel books.

The tone of the Baedeker guides is informed, detailed, authoritative — and riotously, unguardedly rude.

Alongside the city maps, ferry time-tables, and guides to churches, monuments and museums, there are unforgiving comments on the ‘natives’ a traveller might have the misfortune to encounter.

This was well before Political Correctness, 'Inclusion' or 'Tolerance' and therefore a typical German bluntness was to the fore and it was rather appealing to the English, whom it must be remembered were Anglo-Saxon. Saxons having migrated from what is now Germany. 

The Spanish are indolent, the Greeks filthy, the Italians dishonest and the ‘Orientals’ as stupid as children. The guides reflect an imperial attitude that would be unthinkable today.

For a century, Baedeker — founded in 1832 by German publisher Karl Baedeker — was the indispensable guide to Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

He prized himself on the accuracy of his books and was once discovered keeping count of how many stairs there were to the roof of Milan cathedral by placing a coin on every 20th step. He wanted his readers to know exactly how far they would have to climb.

By the outbreak of World War I, 992 editions of the guides had been published, covering Europe, Russia, North America, India and the Middle East.

After Germany, Britain was the biggest consumer of the books. 

It was the red Baedeker, small enough to fit in an overcoat pocket, which the British took as protection when they ventured abroad.

Today, many people know of Baedeker through reading or watching the film adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View. In the opening chapters, our heroine Lucy Honeychurch (played in the film by Helena Bonham Carter) finds herself in Florence without a Baedeker.

The guide is supposed to be a shield against Italian passion and without its protective influence, Lucy finds herself being kissed by an Englishman made hot-blooded by the Tuscan sun.

Far more dangerous these days. You could lose your head in such parts.

The name was also made famous by the Baedeker Raids of World War II when the Germans targeted bombing campaigns over English cities such as Bath, Canterbury, and Norwich, singled out for their architectural beauty by Baedeker’s Guide To Great Britain. The aim was to depress morale by destroying our Regency terraces, cathedrals and medieval streets.

In return, the RAF razed Leipzig, demolishing the Baedeker HQ.

Reading the guides today you are struck by how patrician they are in their view of the world. These are books for travellers from the two great European imperial powers: Britain and Germany.

In an age before political correctness, it was possible to be really very rude indeed about foreigners. It is not just the Spanish who are liable to run off with your change. In Italy, according to my grand-father’s 1912 guide, extortion is the national hobby and begging the national plague. Customs officials unfailingly pilfer your luggage and the cab-drivers, boatmen and porters are insolent and rapacious to ‘an almost incredible pitch’.

The guide explains that while the ‘evil sanitary reputation of Naples’ is often exaggerated, it remains a filthy city. The southern Italians, Baedeker explains, believe the ‘brilliancy’ of their climate more than makes up for the dirt.

Travellers are advised to stay in hotels with iron bedsteads as these are less likely to be infested with the ‘enemies of repose’ — Baedeker’s dainty euphemism for bedbugs.

Still, the guide cheerfully concludes, things have improved greatly since the cholera epidemic of 1884, though travellers are advised not to order oysters as they have been known to cause typhus.

Greece is worse. The bedclothes at the inns are full of ‘fleas, bedbugs, lice . . . and other disgusting insects, winged and wingless’. You cannot even console yourself with a glass of wine for the Greek vintages are universally ‘insipid and weak’.

Tangiers market in Morocco is ‘an indescribable mass of Oriental humanity’; and in Egypt, any traveller who comes into contact with the natives ‘should avoid rubbing their eyes with their hands’.

You couldn’t get away with that in a Dorling Kindersley guide today.

Mind you, the Lonely Planet has annoyed a few nations in its short life at the top.

Indeed, some of Baedeker’s advice will appal modern sensibilities. In Syria, you are advised to ward off stray dogs with an umbrella and in Egypt it is acceptable to hit a cab driver with your walking stick.

You are, however, advised to ‘sternly repress’ the urge to prod a donkey with a stick to encourage it to gallop. (The original owner of my grandfather’s 1914 Egypt guide, a C. Crampton from Harrogate, put an emphatic ‘X’ in the margin next to this advice.)

Overall, the poor Egyptians are given a hard time of it. The average native, explains Baedeker, is ‘no more intelligent than a child’.

Baedeker is not just guilty of terrible racial stereotypes. 

He also has a very dim view of the capabilities of women.

A female traveller is a delicate creature who cannot possibly manage certain activities. When it comes to climbing Mount Vesuvius, for example, a man may do it on foot, but as this is too ‘fatiguing’ for ladies, they are advised to take the train. I can say with great satisfaction that I managed it perfectly well as a 13-year-old schoolgirl.

Few countries escape Baedeker’s censure, although the Dutch are grudgingly admired for their cleanliness: ‘Spiders appear to be regarded with special aversion and vermin is fortunately as rare as cobwebs.’

Germany, of course, is beyond reproach. 

But what of Great Britain?

Certainly, we fare better than some countries. ‘As compared with Continental hotels,’ explains the 1927 guide, ‘British hotels may be said as a rule to excel in cleanliness and sanitary arrangements.’

So far so good, though the guide adds that some hotels can be tolerated by gentlemen, but certainly not by ladies.

Our cuisine is inferior and monotonous and the national dish, the guide remarks disparagingly, is tea with chips and steak.

As for the British themselves, Baedeker observes that the country is ‘a place of parsons, puppy dogs and peculiar people’.

After World War II, Baedekers disappeared from British shelves. Other guides such as Dorling Kindersley, the Lonely Planet and Time Out took their place.

Then, in 2007, the series was relaunched. The red covers remain, but they now come in wipe-clean, plastic jackets. Practical, but with none of the romance of my grandfather’s red leather hardbacks.

In tone they are indistinguishable from other guidebooks. There is nothing to match Baedeker’s sniffy comment on visiting large towns in England: ‘We need hardly caution newcomers against the artifices of pickpockets and wiles of impostors.’

Nor are they as evocative as the originals — for there are passages of lyrical description amid the scorpions and bedbugs. The scenery of Southern Greece, for example, is celebrated for ‘its mountains, its deep-blue gulfs and its clear, ethereal atmosphere which brings distant objects close to the beholder and robs shadows of their depth and gloom’.

While I don’t advocate a return to the days when Edwardian guides advised travellers to wash their hands if they so much as touched a foreigner, there is something refreshing about Baedeker’s acerbic comments on the food, hotels and manners of foreign climes.

This week, many of us will return from August holidays in France, Spain and Italy rather wishing someone had warned us that the local taxis smell like goat sheds, that the paella will make you desperately ill and that you cannot get a decent cup of Earl Grey anywhere in the Mediterranean.

I hazard that things have not changed much at all.

Travel well. Pack plenty of good Ale. Be quite rude to the natives as you can rest assured they will be rude to you. In some parts they will cut your head off.

Just why this crazy Multiculturalism has taken root is beyond understanding.

Pax.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2733416/The-riotously-PC-travel-guides-The-informed-detailed-authoritative-unguardedly-rude-Baedeker-Guides.html 

Ruining a Good Arguement

We like good arguement in the Tavern. It can cause people to dig deep and find the roots of  'Ishoos' (as some insist in calling them) and defend their positions with facts, logic, deduction - and some passion.

But there are those that care little for the first three and cause ructions with the last. Franz Kafka was not the first and won't be the last to examine the bugger-factor, the messing with the mind and reality. It spoils the fine ales as well as ruins lives.

We live in an age when some people seek to overturn reality and substitute their own neuroses and psychotic demands. The social fabric falls apart, worn down from being rubbed the wrong way. 

We have 'surrogate' motherhood where babies are grown to 'spec' by poor women in under-developed countries and rejected if not up to scratch by the wealthier couples in developed ones. 

At the same time we have marriage being systematically destroyed, babies murdered in the womb by the million and homosexual couples demanding to be parents in a 'family'.  

And it is all touted as 'Good'.

We have Courts of Law that dispense with evidence and examination and rely almost entirely on ideology and accusation. Some are misnamed 'Family' Courts where the destruction of the family is the main aim. Not that it is stated that way. Instead they have the Hitleresque mantra, "in the best interests of the Children", while depriving those children of their parents or worse, taking a child from an innocent and loving parent and handing it over - with large sums of money - to liars, perjurors and false accusers. The lawyers and the State launder the money.

This, too, is touted as 'Good'.

Another 'good' is having someone with a grievance against someone else, for some trivial slight usually, taking action against other people who have nothing to do with the event. 

They go to 'Tribunals' where huge sums of money are awarded. It is 99% women complaining about 'harrassment'. The accused harrasser has usually been accused of doing precisely what the 'employer' has told him (always a him) NOT to do, but the employer is held responsible. The Shareholders have to pay.

That is YOU, as most large businesses are owned by shareholdres who put money into insurance, banks and superannuation who do most of the investing in those businesses.

It is for your own 'good', it seems. 

It is Zozchial Justitz.

We even have people 'in high places' calling Islam the 'Religion of Peace' while our TVs are full of mayhem, murder, calumny and barabarism, all emanating from that evil creed.

As it is, so has it been.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; 
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; 
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 
21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes  
And clever in their own sight!

Isaiah 5.20

Wendy was in the bar delivering her cool, calm, collected thoughts about the current trends in public discussion, with the usual supects lined up for identification. 

Wendy McElroy is a feminist and welcome in the Tavern.** (I bet that suprised you.). A Canadian and quite well published, she has always followed her own path.

"kafkatrapping" 

The term "kafkatrapping" describes a logical fallacy that is popular within gender feminism, racial politics and other ideologies of victimhood. 

It occurs when you are accused of a thought crime such as sexism, racism or homophobia. 

You respond with an honest denial, which is then used as further confirmation of your guilt. You are now trapped in a circular and unfalsifiable argument; no one who is accused can be innocent because the structure of kafkatrapping precludes that possibility.

The term derives from Franz Kafka's novel "The Trial" in which a nondescript bank clerk named Josef K. is arrested; no charges are ever revealed to the character or to the reader. Josef is prosecuted by a bizarre and tyrannical court of unknown authority and he is doomed by impenetrable red tape. In the end, Josef is abducted by two strange men and inexplicably executed by being stabbed through the heart. The Trial is Kafka's comment on totalitarian governments, like the Soviet Union, in which justice is twisted into a bitter, horrifying parody of itself and serves only those in charge.

Kafkatrapping twists reason and truth into self-parodies that serve victimhood ideologues who wish to avoid the evidence and reasoned arguments upon which truth rests. The term appears to have originated in a 2010 article written by author and open source software advocate Eric S. Raymond. 

He opens by acknowledging the worth of equality before the law and of treating others with respect. But, he notes, "good causes sometimes have bad consequences." 

One such consequence is that tactics used to raise consciousness can veer "into the creepy and pathological, borrowing the least sane features of religious evangelism."

Raymond offers various models of how kafkatrapping operates. He calls the two most common ones A and C.

Model A: The accuser states, "Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of (sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression...) confirms that you are guilty of (sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression...)." 

Harking back to The Trial, Raymond explains how the novel's plot parallels the structure and purpose of the accuser's nonargument. No specific acts are named in the accusation, which makes the claim unfalsifiable. 

The vague charge constitutes a thought crime, which also makes it unfalsifiable. As with The Trial, the process seems designed to create guilt and to destroy resistance so that you become malleable. Indeed, "the only way out ... is ... to acquiesce in his own destruction." 

Even if you are innocent, the only path to redemption is for you to plead guilty and accept punishment. Ideally, for the accuser, you even come to believe in your own guilt.

Model C is a common variant on the same theme. You may not have done, felt or thought anything wrong but you are still guilty because you benefit from a position of privilege created by others. 

In other words, you are guilty because of your identification with a group such as "male," "white," or "heterosexual." The accusation makes you responsible for the actions of strangers whose behavior you cannot control and who may have died long ago. 

Raymond writes, "The aim ... is to produce a kind of free-floating guilt ... a conviction of sinfulness that can be manipulated by the operator [accuser] to make the subject say and do things that are convenient to the operator's personal, political, or religious goals." 

To be redeemed, you must cease to disagree with your accuser and condemn your entire identity group.

What happens when an accuser confronts someone in the same identity group to which he or she belongs? For example, one woman may question aspects of politically correct feminism being presented by another. An entirely different phenomenon occurs. Obviously, the questioner will not be encouraged to condemn herself for being a woman or to excoriate all women. Instead, she will be defined out of the group.

This has happened to the growing numbers of women, who, like Wendy herself, have blown the whistle on Feminism.

This is called the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. It occurs when someone is confronted with an example that disproves a universal claim. The British philosopher Antony Flew described the fallacy, which he also named. One day Hamish McDonald reads an article in the Glasgow Morning Herald which reports on an attack by a sex maniac in England. 

Hamish declares aloud, "No Scotsman would do such a thing!" The next day, the Glasgow Morning Herald reports on an even worse attack in Scotland. Rather than reject his original statement, Hamish exclaims, "No true Scotsman would do such a thing." 

Thus, conservative women like Sarah Palin are not true women; blacks who question the validity of 'white privilege' cease to be viewed as truly black.

Other techniques are often associated with kafkatrapping. (Note: For a tactic to be true kafkatrapping, it has to involve an unfalsifiable claim.) 

Associated techniques that prove your guilt could include:

• Requesting a clear-cut definition of what you are charged with – for example, homophobia;

• Pointing out an injustice committed by the accuser's identity group;

• Applying a single standard to everyone, e.g., refusing to accept that blacks cannot be racist;

• Expressing skepticism about any aspect of the victimhood ideology, including the plausibility of anecdotal evidence;

• Being ignorant of or uninterested in the subject;

• Arguing against the ideology;

• Saying "some of my best friends are X."

Kafkatrapping would seem to be a win-win situation for an accuser. And, in the short term, this may be true but its 

long-term impact can be devastating.

A movement becomes widespread because its voice is truth – at least, largely so – and its demand for justice is valid: For example, homosexuals have been hideously abused through much of history.

Hmmmm. Quite an assertion, but with little evidence. And when compared with normal, everyday heterosexual men who have been slaughted in wars down the ages and totally destroyed by Family Courts for half a century now, the average homosexual has been mearly inconvenienced. 

When a movement discards the truth and justice that made it grow and favors abusive attacks instead, it is in decline. The abuse also quashes any productive discussion of real issues. Raymond observes, 

"manipulative ways of controlling people tend to hollow out the causes for which they are employed, smothering whatever worthy goals they may have begun with and reducing them to vehicles for the attainment of power and privilege over others."

A separate problem arises if the accuser honestly believes the kafkatrapping. A woman who believes all men are oppressors is unlikely to cooperate with them in a good will attempt to solve social problems. 

She is more likely to seek a position of dominance over men, which she justifies in the name of self-defense or as a payback that is her due. 

This heightens tension between the sexes and obstructs sincere attempts to resolve problems. 

A kafkatrapper true believer becomes increasingly isolated from people who are seen as "the enemy" because they disagree; 

the true believer becomes increasingly unable to even communicate with or have empathy for a broad spectrum of people. 

The kafkatrapper 'wins' the argument but loses a shared humanity.

- See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35550/Wendy-McElroy-Beware-of-Kafkatrapping/#sthash.ITtg3Ve5.dpuf

**Wendy herself falls into Kafkatrapping quagmire. She insists on holding onto the label 'Feminist' even though she is a 'self-made' woman of great intellect, honesty and integrity. It is a minor flaw with major consequences. 

I, personally, like her anyway and raise a tankard with her.

Pax.

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)