|
Yesterday's
hero against Evil was The Shadow
|
Listen Now
|
|
In Leon's Opinion
D. Leon Seifried is basically a Libertarian and in an effort to offer differing view points on political issues as well as life in general, we invited him to become one of our regular columnists. He is a veteran of the US Navy, serving in the Vietnam area of the Pacific in the 60s. He has an extensive broadcasting career. He lives in Muskogee and worked at KBIX as well. I don't always agree with D. Leon but I think many of his ideas offer an alternative to the mainstream and therefore, we offer "the other side" by D. Leon Seifried.
Feel free to contact Leon by e-mail as he loves feedback. His email address is leon@jerrypippin.com.
You can read what our commentators have to say on these pages.
What do you have to say? Make your statement on our
Where Did This Stupidity Come From?
03/22/07It has taken some research but I have found the source of the “thinking” that rules America today. It is actually the same source that inspired Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Lenin.
Friedrich Nietzsche is the one who coined the attitude that “truth is relative”. His exact words in one case were these: “What then is truth, a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms. In short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, embellished poetically and rhetorically and which after long use seem firm, canonical and obligatory to a people. Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are. Metaphors which are worn out and without power, coins which have lost their pictures that now matter only as metal no longer as coins.” Of course, most don’t know that ole’ Fred spent the last thirteen years of his life in an insane asylum writing such books as “Why I am so great” and “Why people listen to me."
Even the Spielberg movies “Star Wars” promote the philosophy that “Only a Syth thinks in absolutes.” (Tell me the media isn’t programming us) If there is no absolute truth and all truth is relative, what about that statement? Isn’t it self-negating?
The worst part of truth being declared as relative is that right becomes relative too. In Borneo, cannibalism is acceptable does that make it right? American thinking today though is that cannibalism might be right for them. NO IT ISN”T! It is not right for anyone!
I’m reminded of a description of ancient Rome just before the fall. Cultural historian, Alfred Edersheim wrote: “Absolute right in Rome did not exist. Might had become right. The social relations exhibited, if possible even deeper corruption. The sanctity of marriage had ceased. Female dissipation in general dissoluteness led at last to an almost entire cessation of marriage. Abortion and exposure and murder of newly born children were common and tolerated. Unnatural vices which even the greatest philosophers practiced, if not advocated attained proportions, which defy description.” (Sound familiar? Especially if you consider the likes of Truman Kapoti as a prophet since life now follows art.)
Nietzsche wrote a metaphor in which he coined the term “Superman” describing a ruthless, ambitious man who throws a moral man to his death in order to surpass him and attain success. That is where Hitler got his “superman”. He felt that a purely ruthless person was superior to one with morals.
Speaking of morals, with no absolutes, we have no point of moral reference. Have you noticed that we have managed to moralize politics and politicize morals? In politics we speak of “values”. Nietzsche coined that word.
In politically correct, pluralist America, we have to accept people with questionable morals but value their “values”. What kind of double-speak is that? “To consider morals is to be narrow-minded”. The religious right has made us afraid to speak the truth about anything anymore for fear of appearing like one of them.
Now the liberal left, in order to appear more tolerant wants us to consider a presidential candidate with a belief that considers US to be infidels that must die. Are they nuts? Are there any more countries out there or are we going to have to take this one back? How long are we going to let special interests have the only voice? Why doesn’t a sane person speak out? Why won’t they let a sane person speak out probably should be the question. It’s too bad that William F. Buckley didn’t name a successor.
The Death of Truth
09/19/06How can this be? Who killed it? What is in its place? Why was it killed?
Post-modern thinking hinges on the “fact” that there are no absolutes. I wonder if that statement is an absolute. In absolutist thinking, no opposing truths can co-exist. It’s like the fact that physically, only one substance can exist in one spot at the same time. That is just a physical fact. The same is true about opposing truths. They just cannot co-exist. Admittedly, in India, when two opposing truths apparently appear, the philosophy is to accept them as equal. They don’t struggle with trivia like unchanging truth, to them it doesn’t exist.
When situational ethic became the credo in America, truth began to die. It’s like when Bill Clinton said “that depends on what you mean by is”. What the heck does THAT mean?
Have you noticed the disappearance of the word moral? Now it’s values. We no longer talk about morals. Morals are absolute. Values, on the other hand are nebulous at best. Everyone (even Adolph Hitler) has values and since there are no absolutes, his are as good as mine. Of course, people with this attitude have to step back when it comes to people like Heir Hitler or perhaps cannibals. Their values are that it’s ok to kill and eat people. Since they are comfortable with that, we should be too. Where is the truth in that? The reason they have trouble with that is the moral code within them. There is the rub. To admit that there is a moral code is to admit that there is a moral code giver. That is a truth that is hard to admit for those who want to think that there is no absolute truth. At least accepting opposing facts is a bit more honest than the Ronald Reagan saying, “Well, I don’t remember.”
The fact is that George Orwell was close when he called it “double speak”. The current name for the philosophy is “dialecticism”. To be dialectic is to accept two differing interpretations of the same fact. See, he was right!
This thinking has also pervaded science. How in this world can things evolve to the better in the midst of a devolving stream? No wonder Newton and his theories are being opposed. Anything you don’t agree with can be disproved if you look long enough and reject the obvious.
The only real way this line of thought can be accepted by the public is for them to be ignorant of what this type of thinking has done in the past. Never mind that this thinking has kept India impoverished and overpopulated. It seems that the American education system in intent on producing that ignorance. It is true that ignorance of the past can cause one to repeat its mistakes. History is an ignored subject in the schools of America today. I couldn’t even find one college-age employee in a Hastings video rental store that had even heard of “Mutiny on the Bounty”. How ignorant is that? The story is not only historically true, it’s classic literature. There is a failing grade in both history and literature, (not to mention theatre). Even students in India are educated better. That is why they are getting all the telephone solicitor’s jobs from Americans.
I suppose the thrust of this is that we need to clean house of all the post-modern thinkers (or non-thinkers) in charge of this country and elect Jeffersonians who have this nation’s best interest at heart. It’s for sure that the globalists don’t!
The Immigration Problem
04/03/06There’s no question about it. America has an illegal-immigrant problem.
The problem is not the underpaid American worker; it is that overpaid, greedy people are in charge of America and our immigration policy.
We are told repeatedly that the illegals do jobs that Americans will not do. That is a lie!
Are these jobs ones that have been created after illegal immigrants began coming to America? I don’t think so. They are jobs that Americans used to do and do very well. With these hard working, underpaid laborers, America became the world leader in everything. To say they no longer will do those jobs is absurd and an insult to the American proletariat!
The truth is that so much money is bled off into the pockets of corporate leaders; the actual laborers who produce our products must work at sub-standard pay. If the pay scale of the elite industry leaders were scaled downward, the people who actually produce the products could get the pay American workers deserve. It is such an insult to those workers to say that they don’t deserve decent pay while do-little, bourgeois elite are paid too much to sit at their desk or hob-knob on the golf course with other do-littles.
If illegals were allowed to take the jobs of corporate leaders and politicians, you can bet there would be a more effective guard posted at the border.
Senators and corporate leaders would show up to work to be told that an "undocumented citizen" had taken their desk job and would do their job for less pay. Wouldn't that be a kick? Can you imagine how soon that would be changed? Armed snipers would be posted inside the border to repel the "brown plague" immediately.
California has an extremely bad illegal immigrant problem. You would think that Arnold would know how to handle aliens!
You can bet that if an American citizen began shooting illegals crossing the border, he, the citizen would face the full power and fury of our government. Why!
To equate these illegal immigrants with the Italians, Irish, Germans and other nationalities who entered this country legally and sought citizenship is an insult to them. In fact, it makes them out to be suckers. And since we are a nation of immigrants, that makes suckers of us all. Doesn’t that make you mad? If so, why not?
It would seem that once someone’s collar turns white, illegal immigration for cheap labor is no longer a problem. The only people hurt and hollering are the blue-collar workers of this country. Politicians as a whole are white collar and that makes them exempt from problematic illegal immigration unless they get caught employing illegal yard or household attendants. When one of them does get caught hiring illegal immigrants, his opponents make a big deal about it and suddenly illegals are a problem. What is more insulting is that the general blue-collar public is considered to be the "dogs" to whom the offending bourgeoisies are thrown. Voters are then called upon to solve the "illegal immigration problem" by ejecting the offending politician at the polls.
What an insult! What a joke!
America is not laughing. If they want to inspire a revolution, they should change nothing. "We the people" have risen to overthrow tyrants and we will again. The lie that it can be done at the poles is wearing thinner and thinner.
Something real must be done!
There is no new, better way to say it but, "Workers arise and overthrow the tyrants".
What’s Funny?
Have you watched a British comedy lately? They’re difficult for most American viewers to follow because we’re not accustomed to real comedy on American TV. British comedy is primarily about comedy and there’s the difference. That plus the fact that American education has been ham-strung by special interest groups and the teacher’s union.
Special interest groups have seized control of American television programming to the point that television is more about agendas than entertainment or information. It may have started sooner, but the first really blatant example of this was “All in the family”. For those of you too young to remember, "All in the family" was about a New York redneck that had a few good traits hidden among a lot of bad ones. He had strong familial feelings and a lot of prejudices. He was portrayed as narrow and ignorant and all of his basic traits were grouped as incorrect.
My attention was brought lately to a protest email letter a television viewer wrote to one of the major networks protesting the homosexual and evolution agendas being promoted by network programming. He received a flaming (can I say flaming?) email back from a network programming officer to the effect that he (the protesting viewer) needed to get with the times and stop believing the fairytales from an archaic book of fables (namely, the Bible).
I know that it’s a personal choice but I refuse to call a demographic group with the highest suicide rate “gay”. I still remember the true definition of the word. Furthermore, I refuse the title “homophobic” it’s too much like thcardicat, and the only fear that I have is when I realize that that is the direction Roman society went just before the fall of Rome.
Having raised three daughters, I know what it’s like to be introduced to guys that only wanted into my daughter’s pants. I even confronted one and told him that his existence was in danger if he didn’t leave my daughter alone. If the homosexuals have their way, I couldn’t say that if a sodomite were pursuing one of my sons without being charged with a hate crime. I’ll be darned if I’ll invite a sodomite into my living room to be accepted by my family as a nice, funny guy.
Did you notice that even before it was released, “Humpback Mountain”, or was that “Stumpbroke Mountain” was being praised and there was talk of an Oscar or Golden Globe award for best movie of the year. Come on now, even “Cleopatra” had to be seen by the public before they ever talked like that. Don’t tell me the sodomites didn’t have anything to do with that! They needn’t EVEN expect the movie to pay for itself in the Southwest. I expect that real cowboys will stay away in droves.
After K. D. Lange had sold a few country records, she tried to re-educate the country crowd into not eating beef. They dropped her like a rock. The impact was so great that she couldn’t even make it as a pop singer after that. At least, cowboys have too much integrity to change their deeply ingrained preferences because some celebrity told them to. Good for them!
I fully expect some response to this column because no one can generate hate mail like the “gentle, loving third gender”. My advice to normal people is this, “Don’t touch that, you know where it’s been”.
Circumspect
11/05/05My typewriter has been silent for a while just so I could take an objective view of things. I’m really grateful to Jerry Pippin and his exceptional crew for the freedom not to be chained to a production schedule. Thanks gang.
Now, what I’ve observed during this time is that the “effete corps of impudent snobs” is still at it. In my opinion, anyone who would tell a senator in session to “go f…. yourself” is not above endangering the life of an outspoken opponent’s wife. And yes, I believe the order to expose a loyal clandestine operative of our government was issued in our nation’s second office, if not the first.
Agnosticism has pervaded everything now. The concept that “there is truth but no one knows what it is, so any truth is good enough,” allows those in charge to apply their own versions with impunity.
Unfortunately, it is true that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but apparently, even fiat power corrupts absolutely. Having been the victim of political assassination I know for a fact that it happens and probably much more often than we realize. Those assassinated normally aren’t left with a popular voice and if they do find one, are quickly refuted. What compounds that power is that most people are willing to believe the worst about everyone else. When someone is exonerated, it rarely is given the publicity the accusation was. Why is that? It’s too bad that the proletariat can’t link arms in the same way the bourgeois do.
That sort of takes us around to taxation. If the tax code was simplified and all loopholes and special provisions removed, it could work. The reason everyone runs from a flat tax is that no one believes that it would be applied to everyone. A flat 5% applied to all profit would easily produce more revenue than our present “Swiss cheese” tax code. The same should be true of the whole economy. Why can’t the working class get the same percentage rates on loans or prices in the store as the rich? The answer is favoritism, I know that it’s considered standard business practice to offer perks or incentives, but that is favoritism. The second thousand dollars should be as difficult to acquire as the first thousand; it is not. That is how money grows exponentially. If business transactions were conducted on a flat scale, the playing field would remain flat. If football were played the same way as economics, as one team’s score progressed above the others, the field would tip toward the loosing side. How fair would that be? Tipping it the other way would also be unfair, like a progressive tax code. Removing all the “special” provisions from the code would make a lot more money available to our country. The whole tax and economy could be governed the same; basically, everybody pays the same as everyone else does for everything. I can only imagine how heated the argument could get over that topic. Don’t think the bourgeois would give that one away easily. Actually, I think the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the American Revolution were about that and even though the revolutionaries won, greedy human nature returned everything to the status quo. There has always been a GOP (Greedy Old-money People) throughout the history of mankind. We need real equality and protection from the greedy that pretend to be our benefactors.
It’s too bad that couldn’t have been part of the formula for the American Experiment.
We should also stop the out-sourcing. Enough of our technology has left our borders. I believe that Americans can once again lead the world in invented technology. It’s too bad Nixon gave away the microchip. I do believe that our minds can once again lead out in technology, and anyone, president or not who gives it away should be shot like a foreign spy. It’s time we stopped our elected and business leaders from giving America away!
Don’t it Make Your Red States Blue?
09/02/05
‘Don’t know why we voted for you.
‘Don’t know why you haven’t a clue.
Why did you golf instead of standing to?
Don’t it make your red states blue?
I’m sorry to point it out in a mostly Red country, but why wasn’t the Navy in New Orleans in Katrina’s wake? Why did it take two days to say, “We’re having a meeting to decide what to do.”? Since they were able to order evacuation of New Orleans two days in advance, why did our government wait until after the fact to react? America is the laughing stock of the rest of the world. It specially looks bad in the Muslim world, which sees Katrina as the hand of Allah. What revenge on the crusaders. Allah must have blinded our leaders. (probably, their thinking, not mine) I don’t want to think the delays are based on ethnic cleansing. When our “spiritual leaders” advocate murder on international television, how are we different from the Sunni’s? Someone who would kill in the name of religion is someone who would kill in the name of religion. You can’t get much simpler than that. Are we a reactionary government or what?
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not an atheist. I’m a born again, believer in Jesus Christ. I hesitate to use the word Christian because of the way the name has been sullied. I’m not even an evolutionist. How can evolution work in the face of Newton’s second law of thermodynamics? If everything is going from order to disorder, monkeys must be from us or monkeys are superior to man. Plants do not reflect evolution either. Darwin himself said…”The botanical fossil record is an abysmal mystery.”. Of course, the fact that there are no snams or clails (snail/clams) or any other transitional creatures the “science” of evolution tells us existed, or had to exist. Why are no species still evolving and how did male and female transitional varieties occur at the same time if they occur so seldom? What are the odds of that? Mathematicians tell us the odds are astronomical. Why believe that, when the creation cries out intelligent design. I also believe that if anything, man has devolved. Could any modern man build the pyramids or any of the 7 Wonders with the tools they had then? Get serious!
Don’t tune me out but the Bible says that in the last days men would rather believe a lie. I always wondered how that could be. Now, I know. So don’t confuse me with the God-hating atheist. I believe, just not in men or their “theories”.
I didn’t mean to wax religious on you but I don’t consider that religion. It’s truth.
I’m also not a Democrat. I haven’t been since about two month’s into LBJ’s term. What does that tell you? When Governor Clinton let President Reagan and Oliver north run guns and drugs through Arkansas, I saw that the parties are basically the same and that The Democratic Party doesn’t even remotely resemble the dream of its drafter. That came in the wake of the 1927 Mississippi river flood when the President of the United States went golfing with money people of the day. Does that sound familiar? In the words of a good friend, Jerry Pippin, perhaps this is a wake up call for the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole. We the people need to clean house!
It hurts to know that the Powers That Be laugh when we talk about the power of the vote, but We The People need to make those people laugh out the other end and shove their form of government up their new laugh-holes.
Quo Warranto
(Ancient writ calling on a person to show by what warrant he or she may hold an office)
08/30/05
A personal theory of mine was just proven again. I’ve always contended that the police, although they are there to “serve and protect,” their main purpose is to keep the working class from disturbing the Bourgeois. For some time now, here in my home town of Muskogee, we have ranked high in millionaires per capita. A recent Muskogee Phoenix article about Muskogee’s disproportionate police presence only proves my theory that where you find the most money, you’ll find the most police. When the new high school was built, we went from no police presence in our schools to having them patrolling the halls. That’s because there were so many Corvettes and BMW’s in the parking lot. Of course, most of them are finagled into suburban Hilldale now or nearby Ft. Gibson schools.
The Rush Limbaugh’s of this world need to feel the threat of someone illegally here that is vying for their job at less pay (never mind that the quality is also often less). He would have to be somewhat well-spoken (at least to the general public) and offer his show for less, both to the advertisers and the stations. He would also have to bash anything that isn’t Republican. (Including grieving mothers of war-dead) Do you think that could happen? I don theenk so.
Having our government in charge of the border is like the poor girl with the bully big brother who lifts her skirt for the toughies next door. Nobody respects her and it’s not her fault!
Of course the Bourgeois want the illegals around to keep labor costs low. Why else do you think that it’s so “hard” to patrol one riverbank and yet we have the military force to make sure the rest of the world thinks like we do. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense! They could have done something else like making friends of Saddam like Nixon did the Shah of Iran! Maybe George needs to actually read those historical books he showed off that he was taking with him on vacation.
We need to find some way to get them to hear us. There must be some way we can get more than one or two honest people into Washington that won’t change. Somehow, the water there or something plants a lifetime politician virus in them and they become useless to “we the people”. Oh yes there was Ross Perot, but he and the admiral were a cartoon that scared everybody.
Doesn’t anybody see all this but me? Hey! Wake up!
I don’t think that our sellout representatives even know what they’re doing to us. There must be a bubble around Washington that follows them wherever they go.
Where did a government, "for, of and by the people go?" They tell us, “you have the ballot, vote.” To that I say, let someone decent be on the ballot, not just the “lesser of two evils”. It’s not because decent people won’t run, it’s because the system makes them jump through so many hoops (most of them financially related, imagine that) that they can’t make it all the way to the ballot.
Please, if you have the heart to run and STAY our candidate, step up! The trouble is that most of the thinking people have been one for such a long time and their disgust with a stupid, stupidly run system, that they ran afoul with it and their record precludes their running for public office. Some of them have barely escaped doing time in prison. Don’t get me started on mandatory sentencing for the wrong crimes and eligibility for parole for the ones who deserve mandatory sentences. That’s a whole ‘nuther column.
Disappearance of the Middle Class
08/28/05
Why are Republicans seeing themselves as red? You know, all the Republican voting states were designated as “Red States”. Doesn’t anyone remember the “Red Threat”? What happened to “the Right-wingers” slogan, “better dead than red” or “Red China”? Ah, Red China, that’s it. In the rush to be identified with the Chinese in commerce, the Greedy Old money People (or GOP) are willing to forget minor social differences like oppression of the working class and imperialism.
Wait a minute: I forgot Ruby Ridge, Waco and Kent State. Those events certainly rank up there with Tiananmen Square. I know, Waco happened during a Democratic presidency, and I’m not going to defend or support the socialists, but it did begin during a GOP regime (or should I say presidency) and the two parties are getting indistinguishable.
The fact is that since we have a theoretically balanced society, our governmental policies wind up with a strange Socialist/Fascist flavor. When the Democrats (Socialists) are in power, the government and legal views take a distinct “Left Wing” angle. When the Republicans are in power, they try to leave as many “Right Wing” laws on the books that they can. Ultimately, our legal system is a rather strange mixture which some have called “Conservalib”; my term though is “Socialist/Fascist”. At any rate, it isn’t good for the working class because anything other than true democracy is a system ruled by the Bourgeois elite at the expense of the Proletariat (working people.)
Has anyone noticed the disappearance of the “middle class”? I know that it’s early in the process, but the pay categories between abject poverty and obscenely rich are rapidly disappearing from the American job market. If this continues, our country will be like a banana republic with only the rich and the peons. (Pardon my Spanish)
Why would they do this you might ask. The answer is, that it’s getting too crowded around the luxury counter. Why buy a Lexus or BMW or Hummer if a middle-class worker can save or get credit and drive one too? What good is it to retire in Baca Raton if working class riff-raff can move in next door?
Even jobs like construction. They can’t ship those jobs across the border, but they can let illegal aliens (slip) across the border and steal those jobs. The rich say, “Illegal aliens do jobs that Americans won’t do”. What they should say is that they do work for wages that American workers won’t. That just means that they won’t pay what it’s worth for an American worker to do. At any rate, they successfully lower the pay scale for labor and further divide the classes. If anyone in the working class wants to work, they’ll have to accept what the Greedy Old money People want to pay, or starve.
War is another way to thin out the best of the working class. (Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that!) They only want rejects for workers. Smart workers are a threat to the status quo. (Bourgeois thinking, not mine) That’s why the military is selective to take only the best and the rich manage not to serve. Guess who gets killed off.
I’m sure that rising fuel prices have pretty well thinned out the crowds at the resort areas and don’t think that that is a coincidence either.
It’s too bad we can’t have a government as designed by our forefathers but the elite have a pretty firm grip on that. As I see it, Libertarians have the philosophy that’s closest to Thomas Jefferson’s but they aren’t even allowed on the ballot. Until that is changed, we haven’t a chance.
