[MD] Quality decline

[Arlo Bensinger]

Allow me to correct a few of your distortions.

[Platt]
The  BBC passage and the Wikipedia entry are completely at odds both 
in meaning and tone.

[Arlo]
Regardless, there is nothing in the Wikipedia entry that contradicts 
the short BBS passage. Strauss believed the "individual liberty" 
invariably led to nihilism, and suggested that humans need myths 
(true or not) to live by. The two prominent ones adopted by the 
neoconservatives were "religion" (read "Christianity" stripped of its 
meaning but retaining its power of control) and "the nation" (read 
"the Glorious and Divine Manifest Destiny of the Moral States of America").

But as long as we are disputing "tone" in the guise of "bias", let's 
be fair and say that Wikipedia has garned its share of criticism. How 
do we know, for example, that the Wikipedia entry is not erroneously 
biased "to the right"? Maybe the "tone" of the Wikipedia article 
represents bias on the part of the neocon who wrote it?

Instead of playing the bias game, I encourage people to check out 
both the Wikipedia and the BBC report on Strauss. Since they are not 
contradictory, except perhaps in tone of reverence, what's the harm?

[Platt]
What then is your program for "How we should live?" I'm sure you have one.

[Arlo]
Ah, yes "Arlo is Pol Pot". I've been wondering when that little trick 
would be rolled out. No matter how many times I comment on this, it 
keeps getting funnier to see you roll it out as if it is some "fresh" 
obversation. When all else fails, "Arlo is a commie who wants to 
abolish freedom" seems to be ready to drop.

Yet, despite the absurdity, I'll bite. Arlo has only one idea for 
"how anyone should live". And that is "Good". I encourage a 
Campbellian approach to myth because I see things pointed to by these 
metaphors that are beyond the reach of "literal tongues". But I 
ignore the exoteric dogma, the "power and control" of the myth 
leveraged by the neocon agenda. Instead, I point towards the esoteric 
foundations. As in my recent exchange with Ron about the Genesis 
story. The end to this is that I care not one whit by which "names" 
or "metaphor" one uses to point, so long as the pointer is a "good" 
one, and that is determined by the individual as to how it relates 
value and meaning to their lives.

[Platt]
No. Moral but misguided.  "Just as the intellectual revolution 
undermined social patterns, the Hippies undermined both static and 
intellectual patterns." (Lila, 24).

[Arlo]
Ah, but it was precisely this movement away from social and 
intellectual patterns that MADE it the moral movement. From LILA, the 
hippies were "a moral revolution against both society and 
intellectuality. It was a whole new social phenomenon no intellectual 
had predicted and no intellectuals were able to explain." The 
misguidedness came when after morally rejecting both static social 
and intellectual patterns, they mistook biological for Dynamic Quality.

This is clearly articulated by Pirsig. "The Hippie rejection of 
social and intellectual patterns left just two directions to go: 
toward biological quality and toward Dynamic Quality. The 
revolutionaries of the sixties thought that since both are 
anti-social, and since both are anti-intellectual, why then they must 
both be the same. That was the mistake."

There is no mistake here. The morality of the hippie movement was 
precisely because, and this is according to Pirsig himself, it moved 
away from social AND intellectual patterns. The only mistake was the 
confusion between biologic and Dynamic directions.

But we have been down this road too. All you offer in rebuttal is 
about how static social and intellectual patterns are necessary. And 
perhaps they are. But that does not dispute the fact that the 
morality offered by Pirsig to the hippies is specifically because of 
its rejection of these. Instead, Pirsig points out "Just as the 
intellectual revolution undermined social patterns, the Hippies 
undermined both static and intellectual patterns. Nothing better has 
been introduced to replace them." This was the subsequent problem. 
NOT that static social and intellectual patterns were undermined (the 
hippies were morally sound in doing so), but that they were unable to 
offer anything "better"... because of their BIO/DQ mistakedness.

[Platt]
As usual, an unsupported claim, proving my point.

[Arlo]
I have called your distortions in context every time. All anyone has 
to do is peruse the archives to see that.

Now a biggie. The "liberalism" thing.

Jos had commented on how the word had changed its meaning.

I had retorted saying "This usurption of words leads us to forget 
that it was liberalism that gave us the liberty we enjoy today."

Platt's claimed I should reread this, that I had "quoted at length 
about how liberalism was the party of individualism and freedom."

Okay, I am rereading it. I asked you to tell me where I said anything 
about "a party"?

[Platt]
You pick up on one word to distort the meaning of the whole. Again, 
you prove my point.

[Arlo]
So tell me then how you interpret my original small sentence to be 
somehow "how liberalism was the party of individualism and freedom"?

You can't. And you know I said no such thing. Anyone who can read can 
see my single sentance has nothing whatsoever to with a "party of 
individualism and freedom".

And this comes on the heel of your initial claim, that my one 
sentence "has omitted  how the meaning of the word liberal has 
changed in modern America".

And again, you know this is entirely untrue, since my comment was IN 
REPLY TO how the word has changed its meaning. Indeed, in my sentence 
I specifically say "this USURPTION OF WORDS".

So we have, in summary, a comment I made about the change of the use 
the word, and a passage showing "liberalisms" original meaning. You 
retorted that I had ignored that the word had changed. A claim 
laughable in its distortiveness. But I can forgive you for misreading 
and skipping my actual words. So I point this out. Then you reply 
that my sentence was about how "liberalism was the party" of some 
such thing. I asked you to show me where in what I said you get that from.

And all you can do is reply with a Pee-Wee. When the distorter gets 
corned he calls the other a "distorter". Sad. But redeem yourself. 
Take my original post and show me where  I say anything of the sort 
of thing you distortively claim. You can't, of course. So I am sure 
all I'll get is some other distortion to try to cover the last. Or 
another Pee-Wee.

[Platt]
I know you don't care about insulting others you disagree with.

[Arlo]
No, I don't care about calling your vile and evil rhetoric, when you 
engage with it, for what it is. Its an embarrassment and should be exposed.

[Platt]
As for using the same terms to describe another, since when do you 
reserve certain words for your exclusive use? I call that arrogance 
of the first order.

[Arlo]
I care not one bit about what words you use. What I've pointed out is 
the rhetorical tactic of responding by deflection, the Pee-Wee.

Now I am off for a short ride through the mountains to the north, and 
then a ballgame. Toss out all the distortions and Pee-Wees you want. 
Make Limbaugh proud.