From a news story in about March of 2002 and a comment by me on the Solar Guard bulletin board

BEGINNING; NOT ENDING

Rush Limbaugl read an article in early '02 that went something like this: Several scinetists have come to the conclusion that eveolution was all over becuase the Western way of living has proven successful at insulating us from the forces that shaped us biologically. Rush Limbaugh, Mike Savage and some other rightists denounced this . They should have welcomed it as the ultimate vindication of the pro-growth, pro-technology and pro-capitalist implications. Now, to my point of view on this;

What do these things have in common? they point to the unique human trait as that of a rational faculty. And the United States fits in as the nation founded specifically upon the rational principles of the Enlightenment being the repository of Western ideals and values. When you think of the United States, the things that come to mind are: freedom, capitlaism and Yankee ingenuity. Now place the statement about the "end of evolution" against the background of these items. Do you see a pattersn?

There are several off-shoots of this gestalt. I have said that if the Western mentality falls, it takes the species with it. By Western mentality, I meant specifically the US as a nation, living by the principles of the Enlightenment. Insulated from the shaping forces and therefore, without the means to re-evolve, the species will die out, unable to meet the needs of living in the "natural" world. Could Man re-adapt? To my knowledged, nature give what it gives ONCE.

The other off-shoot is that HUMAN evolution, that is, the evolution of the psychological being is just beginning. We are at a choice point and a choke point. The choice point is that we can live guided only by Reason, meaning that we can no longer live as the animals, by mere physical means guided by "instinct" but now must choose what we do. It is a choke point because there is no other choice than between living as a fully human species or falling by the wayside as 60,000 species do every year.

As I have said, this is a beginning. It is the beginning of 5D Man the oringinal, well-known four dimensions of x,y,z,t and now the dimension of mind. Not the stuff you hear about on Art Bell or Psychic Buddies, but the problem-solving and creative potential moving to the fore in the shaping of the species and its future. It will also launch the era of psychohistory as an active area of knowledge.

In 1968, I proopsed that card-punch machines be made so that they put the data on a screen before going to the Hollorith cards so that the material could be edited before hitting the coardboard, I figured we had teletype and closed circuit TV so why not just marry the two? I was considered a mad visionary. Look what we have now.

The future comes up very faxt. (end of original text. The following was added 15, June

What Rush, Savage et al seem to be trying to do is to preserve their religion-based cosmology. To do this, they are willing to go all the way to Egypt to immerse themselves in the main river there. AND in so doing, they throw away the ultimate vindication of the values and ideology they profess so loudly.. Back in the late ' 60's and early '70's, I used to hear "Conservatives" rail agains "Godless Communism" , which they considered the antithesis of Western values and ideology, and I would ask myself, "If Communism weren't ' Godless' would these persons think it's OK?" I have my answer.

The reaosns for that are these: First, the clash between evolution and religion is the clash between reason and mysticism; specifically between accepting something after due dilligent consideration or blind faith.(the kicker here is that the better theologians NEVER said that the existence of God ought be taken on faith, in fact, Aquinas said that it were better for a man to not believe than to believe on faith. What was to be taken on faith was to be done so only after the existende of God was rationally demonstrated and the goodness thereof rationally proven.) Second the "end of evolution" doctrine points to a secular, man-based (through the use of the faculty of reason) cosmology of human development. Third it points to the validity of the natural rather than supernatural view of the order of the world. One might say that, in terms of religion, this hypotheses denies evolution and asserts the validity of the theological definition of the soul; the intellect and free will. The answer is "no", for it accepts the necessary pre-condition to the doctrine of evolution, Secular Natrualism and places the "soul" in that context and therefore, makes this formerly purely religious concept its own. There is also this, For the last 400 years, religion has been on the ropes-in decline amoug those able to understand the world. Why? If you came down with a case of the Deadly Galloping Krakabi Fever, who would you see first; a doctor or a cleric? The Twitchell case some 14 years ago, where the parents of a toddler chose Christian Science over medicine led to the child's death where medicine would have easily saved the kid's life settled that for anyone with a moiety of his marbles. Now, there are some who say they would do both. This is a royal cop-out and dishonors the person as a hypocrite for trying to have it both ways. Besides which, if the person is a grownup, he or she would know, subconsciously which of the two gives him the luxury of doing the other. The fact is, the mind of Man has done more to extend life and make it better than all the preachments and witch-hunts and other "solutions" offered by religion. The further up go the rockets, the further back goes Heaven. That's the truth. If this God or gods were all powerful why do doctors cure lymphoma and not preachers? After all, they are supposed to have the inside track with the Powers that built it all, control it all and can do with an act of will what is yet undreamed of by Mankind. In other words, when the chips are down, science comes through and prayer just doesn't cut it. Religion has done one vital thing right, It has offered an ethics-based schema for human behavior but at the risk of having it be the case that if there is no deity, then the whole thing falls flat (and THIS is why the "conservatives" struggle against the superiority of a secular system to the point of compromising the separation of religion and government at the cost of national integrity). Hewever the virtues of morality are stll best served by the secular view. Honesty is BETTER because by it, the person holds to the position that the world exists outside his being, that this world consists of some things and not others and the the mind and behvior must conform to that notion. The secular view is also stronger. It works whether or not deities exist AND it can bridge the gap between believer and infidel in such a way that they can work together without having to keep one eye on the other and one hand on a weapon. But this is what the conservatives are willing to throw away. They forget that in the '70's the atheistic Objectivist and Libertarian movements made an alliance with them, coming to their defense from attacks by the liberals who had them with one foot in the grave and the other on an oil slick. To those who say that the United States was founded on Christian principles, why did it have to wait 1789 years yet only a century had passed since the beginning of the Age of Rason which Religion fought bitterly? Hmmmm.... Also the Western values PRECEEDED and were grafted onto the Middle Eastern religion that was Christianity (did not Christ say "I will set brother against brother"? in some speech or other: Hrmmff SOME family values! which is curious because somewhere else, he said "A house divided cannot stand". What is up with THAT?).

But why would conservatives throw away the Western values? Any values are lower on the "food chain" than the premisies upon which they were founded.. That means, they are closer to specific concretes than overarching principles so that if one's values clash with one's higher level pricniples, it's the values that get tossed under the bus. This is a psycho-epistemological process, not an ethical one. That means that in order to salvage one's integrity, one abandons the lower-order items that conflict with the higher order ones, regardless of which is correct. The alternative is to re-think or "check" ones premises. This is not usually done for a number of reasons, the most common being that one did not come by ones higher order premises through a rational process but rather, they were put in at an age before one had the faculty or experience to definee them in a rational frame of reference or even have a grasp of the issues involved. This was not usually done with evil intent, in fact, just the opposite. Nonetheless the process was short-circuited. This is why a rational, world-centered cosmology is essential to a system that supports Western values. The movement that eventually became modern liberals was an amalgem of intellectuals, politicians and religious persons of the late nineteenth century. And look where it is today. Having to choose between the Western values and the garbage that it is spewing now, its members made their choices, subconsciously and many times over many years, rejecting what did not fit their premises and worldview and became pro Marxists and even worse. So now the Conservatives are following the same path of ideological evolution and surrendering the same values only it took them another century, but the pattern is still the same.

Now the real kicker: With whom have Rush, Savage et al thrown in their lot? The saying goes that Nature abhors a vacuum. Now, the "Conservatives" choose to psychologically abolish science and capitalism (as the forces that ended physical evolution). The best they could hope for in terms of social systmes is a vacuum. but nature abhors a vacuum. the anti-capitlaist niche already has occupants. Do you know who they are? Beyond that it has been the New Left that has, since the early '70's been violently anti-science. seeking to replace it with shamanism. Eastern mysticism and Wicca. so that niche is occupied. To fit in that uber-niche, the Conservatives have to join forces with those two. But that ought be no problem as thy are all mystics at the core of their beings. Hey Rush, lift the moggot infested hair of your dope-smoking Environmentalist Wacko fellow-traveller and see what future he represents. Hey Doc Savage. look closely at your Red Diaper Doper baby, with whom you have tacitly formed an alliance and guess his attitude on language, borders and culture. And both of you don't tell me that you do not want to join that commune. You have nowhere else to go.

This also asks a question: Can the United States fall? A person I know keeps saying after one social shock after another that the Republic will survive. I imagine that this was said of Rome in 425 CE.. The demonstration of the shallowiness of this person is that he has a PhD in History. If what is left of capitalism is scrapped then where will the money be made to power the research and pay for the goods and services needed to fuel the economy? With the fall of reason, how will we maintain the knowledge base needed to keep the technology needed to sustain a continent-spanning nation: the roads, trains, radio, television and telephone lines and frequencies? Or to combat our enemies who wish to obliterate or dismember the nation? With the values that created and maintain the social structure where will go the reason to fight for those things we hold true like you can make your life better through effort which provides the human driving force? With all this gone. What is left will probably be two groups of constantly warring mini-nations, each run by local despots separated by a Steepe that was the Midwest, from Minnesota to Montana on the North and Alabama to the New Mexico-Arizona border on the South. The United States and the Soviet Union were two unique nations. Ulnlike the others which were founded on geographical, racial or linguistic foundations. These two polities were founded on principles. When the Soviet system collapsed the situation reverted to the state of affairs before Russia spread the Revolution, there having been pre-existing nations. For us, the ideals came before the nation. Before that were British and Spanish colonies and before that, a vast wilderness. Neither of those two options exist now

ADDEMDUM 2006: if you read "IRAQ: No Phobia" You will see how we got into the postion we are in. Please note that it is the same persons that I am writing about that provided the intellectual cover: That is beat the war drums and spread the thin layer of bullbleep in the rightist culture. NOw you have several Iraq war veterans and Reagan's secretary of the Navy running for office as Democrats

Here is what we have to look forward to:

In other words, we'll be busted and weak before at least two powerful enemy forces. Militant Islan amd Communism.

ironically, it is the stridently self-proclaimed defenders of the United States, believing their own propaganda, who will have brought down the United States, having conceded every one of their enemies' major premises without knowing it. And it is the enemies of the principles of this nation, in the name of the highest values of this nation, who will think they are being bested by a bunch of "Neanderthal right-wingers", not realizing that they are the obverse side of the same counterfeit coin.

I think it's about time to start thinking of a post-Uniteed States world.