Walk Your Talk

If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values.  They're hobbies.

 - Jon Stewart

The Intolerance of Politically Correct

Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate.
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But this pointlessness is exactly the point: Political correctness makes debate irrelevant and frequently impossible.
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If a person who is accused of bias attempts to defend his intentions, he merely compounds his own guilt. ... There is no allowance in p.c. culture for the possibility that the accusation may be erroneous.
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It is true that liberals and leftists both want to make society more economically and socially egalitarian. But liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace. (So, for that matter, do most conservatives.)

The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to.

The modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones.
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Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree. The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal.

Source: New York Magazine, Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say by Jonathon Chait


Interesting perspective of someone from the left (Chait), talking about people that are even further left than he is. Also, a brief glimpse at the comments section of the article shows the irony in that some (many?) people obviously did not understand the points that Chait was making, because they are doing the exact things that he lambastes.

I first heard about this article from Albert Mohler's podcast, The Briefing. He talks about it here from 6:58 - 12:10.

Potent Quotables

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."
Source: Brainy Quotes

"Referring to the market turmoil in Europe over the need for tax and spending reform, Simpson said: 'We are the healthiest horse in the glue factory.'"
Source: Fortune

- Alan K. Simpson (Sept. 2, 1931 - Present), former U.S. Senator

Misunderstanding of a Crisis (Church of England)

"Furthermore, as Ross reports there is a perfect storm arriving fast on the horizon with aging congregations. The average age of an attender at a Church of England service right now is 61 and many congregations have averages far above that.  'Another ten years on,' said one of the leaders, 'some extrapolations put the Church of England as no longer functionally extant at all'.  That actually means they are looking at being extinct in less than a decade.  Andreas Whittam Smith, another Anglican leader there at the general synod said that the Anglican church now faces a demographic 'time bomb,' which should be seen as a 'crisis'.  Well, if a church leader is going to define their current problem as a demographic time bomb, then they are going to look for a demographic solution.  But the churches problem, when it comes to the Church of England, is not a demographic crisis.  The demographic crisis followed a theological crisis.  This is a church that has been in a theological crisis for the better part of a century.  We're talking about a church that began accepting unbelief into it's clerical ranks, among it priests and it's preachers and it's leaders almost a century ago.  And it's now reaping the bitter harvest of allowing itself to become secularized.  And the demographic crisis comes down to this: there is no reason for a secular society to attend any kind of worship in a secular church."

- Albert Mohler
The Briefing 9/30/2014 (18:08 - 19:25)
Quoting from: Ageing Church of England 'will be dead in 20 years' - The Telegraph

Capitalism

"We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us."

  - unknown (often misattributed to Vladimir Lenin)

Debt Ceiling Shenanigans

"Even though the steps are called “emergency” measures, they have become employed so routinely during recent fiscal standoffs that Congress often waits for the emergency steps to be exhausted before beginning negotiations on raising the borrowing limit."

Source: The Wall Street Journal, House Debt-Ceiling Plan Would Ban ‘Emergency’ Measures

America's Response To 9/11

"...the decision to respond to 9/11 as an act of war rather than a crime was arguably Washington's greatest foreign policy blunder ever."

"...going to war was the only way they [Al-Qaeda] could possibly become the "holy warriors" they imagined themselves to be. It was, quite frankly, America's military response to 9/11 that created al Qaeda as a military force and legitmised [sic] its bogus claim to the mantle of being called "holy warriors"."

Source: Al Jazeera, Obama's Crackpot Realism and the Real Crime of Edward Snowden

The majority of this article is actually not about Edward Snowden, nor should it be.  I think that the author added Snowden to the articles title merely because articles about Snowden are in vogue at the moment.  It would have been better had the author left him out entirely as I feel like the author is conflating two issues merely to get more people to view/read his article.  ...Isn't that trolling?

FYI: The article is not worth reading
Disclaimer: I make no claims implicitly nor explicitly as to agreeing or disagreeing with the above quotes.