Anniversary of Hungarian Revolt of 1956

October 23, 1956 was the start of the Hungarian revolution against the puppet state set up by the Soviets.  This event followed smaller revolts in East Germany in 1953 and 1956, as well as Khrushchev's famous "secret speech" revealing Stalin's abominable reign as Soviet tyrant.  Up to that point Comrade Stalin had been thought of as stern but kind Uncle Joe, thanks to years of Soviet propaganda, swallowed wholeheartedly by the captives of his empire and free people alike.  Rumors emerged that some of Khrushchev's audience at the 20th Congress went home and had heart attacks or committed suicide, such was the shock of the small peek at the truth K allowed. 

This is the time when many communists left the party in Great Britain, US, Italy and France, for example, not being able to stomach the Russian medicine for Hungarian disobedience.  

 

When the Russian tanks and soldiers entered Budapest on Nov. 4, 1956 to reconquer the country as a subservient state, all pretense of  the fraternity of socialist states was shattered to all who chose not to delude themselves any longer. 

Truth in Advertising or Nanny State Psychosis?

Anyone who turns on their TV these days is soon inundated with hearing a detailed and seemingly never-ending list of the  nauseating side effects of advertised prescription drugs.  This is supposedly due to the FDA's truth-in-advertising requirements to present a balanced picture of the proffered product.  Behind the scenes of course are the rapacious trial lawyers who hope to capitalize on some missed symptom or legal detail to sue the hell out of the drug manufacturers.  Then of course we have all sorts of reality shows from The Dog Whisperer to Dual Survival with their "don't try this at home" or "without the help of a professional" warnings to protect them from those human sharks known as trial lawyers. 

What this really amounts to is a farce and paying homage to nanny state rules instead of using common sense.  Of course if one sees a drug advertised on TV, one has to ask one's doctor for a prescription, and that is where one should learn about side effects.  Every medicine and drug that ever existed has side effects, what is the big deal?  As far as adventure or reality shows demonstrating some obviously dangerous stunt or ordeal, no one with half a brain can claim they did not realize the activity was dangerous, and yes, kiddies, life itself is dangerous, let's just use some common sense and get on with it. 

There is a website that satirizes this sort of side effect descriptions here.  Another site that specializes  in listing outrageous nanny state policies such as San Francisco's ban of  free McDonald's Happy Meal toys, is here.  Another list is here.  I'm afraid we may be headed the way of Great? Britain where the right of self defense has evaporated in the rush to protect the criminals from bodily harm when they are in the act of committing a crime.  Here is one example of what has transpired there.  Apparently things have gone so far in the nutty nanny state direction that some legal authorities are trying to return to a reasonable interpretation of the law.  

The riots that England experienced a while back were out of control because everyone except a few Turk or Pakistani immigrants knew it was against the law to offer resistance to people who entered their neighborhoods to break, steal and set fire to everything.  In fact in one instance when a policeman took action during a melee it was to attempt to arrest an immigrant who had successfully beaten off some rioters in his street.  Luckily he was pulled away from the cop by his friends.  Meanwhile it was normal for other cops to just look on at the rioters without moving a muscle.   You can't even defend yourself with a letter opener or brandish anything that could be used as a weapon to ward off would-be thieves or assailants. 

Country Joe - Section 43

It's amazing these guys named their group after a couple of cutthroats who made their living by murdering millions of their fellow citizens,  Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung ("the revolutionary moves through the peasantry as a fish through water) and nobody called them out about it.  Of course under either one of those dictators the Fish would have been quickly fried as bourgeois degenerates.  But of course the whole hippie movement was blissfully ignorant of real history and therefore supported the Communist North Vietnamese, who upon victory sent a million South Vietnamese to concentration camps. 

More Worldly Wisdom

Some texts giving further explanations of maxims cited here:

127.  Grace in Everything
’Tis the life of talents, the breath of speech, the soul of action, and the ornament of ornament. Perfections are the adornment of our nature, but this is the adornment of perfection itself. It shows itself even in the thoughts. ’Tis most a gift of nature and owes least to education; it even triumphs over training. It is more than ease, approaches the free and easy, gets over embarrassment, and adds the finishing touch to perfection. Without it beauty is lifeless, graciousness ungraceful: it surpasses valour, discretion, prudence, even majesty it-self. ’Tis a short way to dispatch and an easy escape from embarrassment.

253. Do not explain too much.
Most men do not esteem what they understand, and venerate what they do not see. To be valued things should cost dear: what is not understood becomes overrated. You have to appear wiser and more prudent than he requires with whom you deal, if you desire to give him a high opinion of you: yet in this there should be moderation and no excess. And though with sensible people common sense holds its own, with most men a little elaboration is necessary. Give them no time for blame: occupy them with understanding your drift. Many praise a thing without being able to tell why, if asked. The reason is that they venerate the unknown as a mystery, and praise it because they hear it praised.

294.  Be moderate in your views.
Every one holds views according to his interest, and imagines he has abundant grounds for them. For with most men judgment has to give way to inclination. It may occur that two may meet with exactly opposite views and yet each thinks to have reason on his side, yet reason is always true to itself and never has two faces. In such a difficulty a prudent man will go to work with care, for his decision of his opponent's view may cast doubt on his own. Place yourself in such a case in the other man's place and then investigate the reasons for his opinion. You will not then condemn him or justify yourself in such a confusing way.

Quotes from Gracian

Number 152
Never have a Companion who casts you in the Shade.
The more he does so, the less desirable a companion he is. The more he excels in quality the more in repute: he will always play first fiddle and you second. If you get any consideration, it is only his leavings. The moon shines bright alone among the stars: when the sun rises she becomes either invisible or imperceptible. Never join one that eclipses you, but rather one who sets you in a brighter light. By this means the cunning Fabula in Martial was able to appear beautiful and brilliant, owing to the ugliness and disorder of her companions. But one should as little imperil oneself by an evil companion as pay honour to another at the cost of one's own credit. When you are on the way to fortune associate with the eminent; when arrived, with the mediocre.

Number 192
Peaceful Life, a long Life.
To live, let live. Peacemakers not only live: they rule life. Hear, see, and be silent. A day without dispute brings sleep without dreams. Long life and a pleasant one is life enough for two: that is the fruit of peace. He has all that makes nothing of what is nothing to him. There is no greater perversity than to take everything to heart. There is equal folly in troubling our heart about what does not concern us and in not taking to heart what does.

#152 above seems to indicate a certain ruthlessness and conniving activity, why should it matter if a companion is flashier or smarter than ourselves?  I suppose we should look at it from the outsider's point of view, as in a movie, in this way we would see the other guy or gal soaking up all the attention of the people we have to live and work with, giving them the impression we are less capable by comparison.  So if this sort of association is continued for a long time, we are sure to lose the respect of others who matter most in our life, even if it is unfair and absurd.  

#192 shows  a Stoic bent, that is to say, let us not worry about that which we have little or no control, but concentrate our attention on that which we have some measure of power to effect the outcome.  It is also Stoic in its emphasis on the value of peacefulness and tranquility.  So here we have a softer side of Gracian's ideology.

The 48 Laws of Power

This book by Robert Greene doesn’t exactly say so, but is a modern restatement of Gracian’s aphorisms with the addition of historical examples to show the consequences of transgression of each law and its of its observance.  For example, 1. Never Outshine the Master…now that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Anyway, he does cite Gracian for his political subtlety.

Other laws springing from the ones I used as examples from Gracian are:

4. Always Say Less Than Necessary
5. So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard It With Your Life
7.  Get Others To Do The Work For You, But Always Take The Credit
8.  Make Other People Come To You – Use Bait If Necessary
11. Learn To Keep People Dependent On You.
16. Use Absence To Increase Respect And Honor
46. Never Appear Too Perfect

Balthasar Gracian

A Spanish Jesuit, Gracian wrote at a time when the glorious days of Spanish supremacy were coming an end.  He was already looking backward to the exploits of such as Hernan Cortes whom he admired for his flexibility and boldness in unfamiliar and trying circumstances.  In 1637 he wrote a book of maxims often translated as The Art of Worldly Wisdom.  These aphorisms and their accompanying short explanations may seem quite barbed as well as sneaky.  However, whether at a corrupt Court of his day or today's office politics, these sayings still ring true.  A few examples: 

    5  Make people depend on you.
    7  Avoid outshining your superiors.
  19  Arouse no exaggerated expectations when you start something.
  75  Choose a heroic ideal.
  97  Obtain and preserve a reputation.
117  Never talk about yourself.
127  Grace in everything.
163  Never--out of sympathy with the unfortunate--involve yourself in their fate.
172  Never contend with someone who has nothing to lose.
187  Do pleasant things yourself, unpleasant things through others.
228  Do not be a scandalmonger.
238  Know what is lacking in yourself.
253  Do not explain too much.
278  Avoid notoriety in all things.
282  Make use of absence to make yourself more esteemed or valued.
294  Be moderate in your views.
297  Always act as if others were watching.

One could go on and on, at first one wonders, is this guy totally cynical, or is his attitude actually realistic?  One gets the impression that here all ideals are internalized and in the outer world one sees oneself pitted against unscrupulous as well as ignorant and self-indulgent characters who would treat one as trash if they could get away with it.  One has to know oneself as well as others without illusion to survive. 

Gun-Free Zones

The Left has reacted in a typical hysterical manner to the NRA's proposal to place  armed policemen or guards in our schools.  See for example this masterpiece of absurdity from the Huffington Post, claiming this idea will turn our schools into gulags! It is pretty obvious Biden will not include it in his recommendations.  So here is another proposal to match the nanny state obsession with symbolic safety: Make the White House a Gun-Free Zone.  Here is the article from Powerline.  I think it's a great idea.  

The New Utopia

I finally found a readable website copy of this 1891 document written by a popular writer of the times, Jerome K. Jerome  (here).
This was before H. G. Wells story "When the Sleeper Awakes," and must have been known to Wells.  It uses the premise of a Rip Van Wrinkle figure who awakes to find a few centuries have passed by, and his sleeping body has been protected and taken care of by the authorities.  

Wells by the way went on to revise his story later in 1910 and called it simply The Sleeper Awakes.  Despite being riduculed for some of his other crazy socialist utopian novels, this one follows a more dystopian path, and the lot of the workers is just as bad or worse as in the evil days of capitalism.  So we have to give Wells credit for being able to look at a subject from opposite points of view.   It would appear The New Utopia's dismal forecast of a socialist world order influenced the famous socialist Wells into imagining just how far things could go wrong when the power of the State is unchecked.

Jerome's short story draws some conclusions from egalitarian socialist theory: the majority decide everything and the minority have no rights, everyone has to dress and eat the same, superior physique or intelligence is stunted to prevent superiority, families are banned, babies are raised in public nurseries and schools until age 14, and everyone has to live in barracks so no one is better off than anyone else.  The incentive of parents to work hard to create  better circumstances for their offspring is seen as a great evil now overcome.  

What is interesting is the many similarities found here with Zamyatin's We (1921), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1931), and George Orwell's 1984 (1949). It is believed Zamyatin's benighted socialist future was directly influenced by Jerome's story, as it follows many of its ideas.  Huxley could have been influenced by We, and Orwell certainly was.  In all of these works, the State is all powerful, individualism condemned; stark regimentation is the order of the day, and freedom of thought suppressed.  Huxley supposes a society dosed in epicurean pleasures will make people surrender their liberty, while Orwell presupposes a harsh North Korean-like society soaked in fear will do the trick.  

These works show the direction social engineering projects are headed.  The nanny state concept that today results in ridiculous actions as suspending a 6 year old from school for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "pow" is a recent example.  An endless list of such absurdities is on display at NannyState.com (here).
 

Van Jones Out

It is wonderful how how Associated Press can "report" the resignation of Van Jones, a self-declared Communist and Marxist, without mentioning those two words. If Jones had not resigned they would undoubtedly have continued to bury the controversy he aroused, as one after another of his past statements was uncovered. Obviously AP is still acting as Obama's watchdog, under-reporting his flaws and over-reporting his virtues. Even Wikipedia froze editing of their Van Jones article last night, and refused to allow anyone to describe Jones as a Communist.

Of course liberals don't think we should be afraid of Communists in our government anymore...but the obvious response to that is the fundamental hostility of Marxism to a limited concept of government as embodied in our Constitution. Marxist theory presupposes the supremacy of government in all phases of life, until a perfect state of communism arises of course, when society becomes classless and stateless. Of course, until that utopia comes, the iron hand of of the state must be wielded with harsh discipline to obliterate the parasitic bourgeoisie.

One cannot but suspect liberals don't care about the Constitution either, every day they are inventing new "rights" government bureaucrats must insure...the right to force others to provide people with anything that pops into their heads, food, shelter, health care, a job, dignity and so on. As if people were so guileless they had no idea how to go about providing these things for themselves. The only real rights we have are those that do not coerce others into taking care of us, such as the right to free speech and press, bear arms, life, liberty, property, due process and so on. All these other so-called rights are just an excuse to create a super Nanny state run by omnipotent bureaucrats. All powers not granted to the federal government are supposed to be reserved to the citizenry.

The Big O Express Presses on towards Trainwreck

Events may bring about the day when the charismatic demagogue will be shunned by everyone except Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers...unfortunately, this will only come about at the expense of the American people, when the Big O's administration fails to seriously confront Islamic terrorism, and we suffer the consequences. It is only a matter of time now...the clock is ticking...every tinpot dictator is grinning from ear to ear now that the socialist Democrats are running things...a great opportunity for everyone from Kim Jong-Il to the Castro brothers to run amok without fear of American opposition...of course how could a guy who thinks there is a language called Austrian and gives the British prime minister a bunch of unusable DVD's of American movies, have a chance in the real world of international politics?...not to mention his inability to stop apologizing for imaginary American faults every time he opens his mouth while overseas...an empty suit, inflated by the party-line doctrinaire media as the Savior...I guess we deserve what we get...

Get Your Wheelbarrow Ready

In the 1920's it is said Germans had to use wheelbarrows to take their money to the market to buy food, thanks to hyper-inflation...well we might as well get the wheels greased on our wheel barrels, because Obama's war on our economy is in full swing and he is spending money and printed greenbacks like there is no tomorrow...no acceptable tomorrow for our children to be sure...if we or they survive his soft-on-terrorists foreign policy...one wonders if this neo-Carter would even oppose an attack by some rogue state like Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, the list goes on...he wants to make friends with these monsters, and ditch our friends like Great Britain, Poland, Hungary...throw them to the lions in the name of better international relations with anyone who is anti-American...so get your wheelbarrows out and pump up the tire and remove the rust, you are going to need it to get to the nearest supermarket with your worthless dollars very soon...

Election 2008

What is amazing about this election was the ability of the Clinton Democrats to sabotage the economy with the sub-prime mortgage time bomb, which explodes at the end of the following Republican administration, ensuring a new Democratic one. McCain's failure to pin the tail on the donkey due to his populist stance should be shunned by Republicans from now on. And Dick Morris predicts The Great O will win a second term based on blaming his Depression-era first term on the Republicans as well. A great explanation of the liberal inspired sub-prime mess is at a site called Wolf Howling:
Take a look.

Don Camillo books by Giovanni Guareschi

These books of short stories about a village priest in post-war Italy and his nemesis, Peppone, the Communist mayor, are always good reading. Never doctrinal or shrill, Don Camillo is street smart and wily as he maneuvers against the latest absurd power grabs of the local Italian Communist party. There is one moving story called “Christ’s Secret Agent” in which Don Camillo sneaks into an Italian Communist tourist group visiting the Soviet Union. Peppone cannot expose him without getting himself into trouble, so Don Camillo gets to see the reality of the Worker’s Paradise of Russia for himself. In this particular story he secretly performs Catholic rituals for a Catholic family on a commune, in particular an elderly Polish grandmother, in violation of Soviet law of course.

That such simple and harmless acts are considered high treason in a totalitarian dictatorship is highlighted. One recalls the Soviet occupation of Mongolia and the subsequent extermination of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns, to know that this was standard practice in all Communist countries. This is the type of anti-religious program converts like Che Guevara relished and tried to duplicate. Even today Buddhist activity is severely limited in Vietnam, for example, and China regularly clamps down on Christian priests, while putting on a smiley face to the rest of the world.

This site has many Don Camillo stories online.

Another good site on the author of the Don Camillo books.

Pepsi gives USA the finger??

If preliminary reports are true, (see here) it appears Ms. Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, in a speech to Columbia Business School, used her middle finger to denote the USA's role in the world. It appears some of these multi-national companies, though started here, feel they are immune to the wrath of American consumers. They feel it is their job to tell us what supposedly the rest of the world thinks of us. What this really means, is they want to spout off their own opinion. I think Ms. Nooyi should start rewriting her resume.

Demos against investment

Why is it the Democrats are pro-choice when it comes to terminating the life of the unborn, and anti-choice in President Bush's proposal for personal investment accounts in Social Security? The investment account would be completely voluntary, no one would be forced to go that route, yet the Democrats carp and carry on like it's the end of the world. They hate to see government cede any authority or power it already has over the individual, apparently. Their opposition also reveals their anti-capitalist stance. Wall Street is a dirty word in their ideology. I suspect they can't stand the idea of some people getting more money than others from their Social Security payments. They don't want people to risk their money because they might make more than other people. The Demos prefer an egalitarian system in which the government collects our money and doles it out in equal payments to everyone.

Sandy Burglar gets off easy

Sandy Berger's slap in the wrist misdemeanor guilty plea for destroying Clinton administration documents regarding the terrorism threat in the US is pretty outrageous. And on top of that, he now admits he lied about misplacing the documents; he actually shredded them. Whether he was destroying incriminating margin notes or he thought he was destroying the only copies of the documents, we will never know. As I said here before, as pointed out so well by Dick Morris, it is due to the terrible lapses in counter-terrorism during the Clinton years, that these problems have arisen for Bush to deal with.

Maybe we should call him Sandy Burglar. And he was widely assumed to be Kerry's choice for Secretary of State. Such is the caliber of top officials we avoided on November 2 of last year.

Hey, I said it first

Found this on Little Green Footballs.

Here is text:

NEW YORK More than one in four Americans would go so far as to utilize nuclear bombs if need be in the fight against terrorism, according to a national survey reported today by The Gallup Organization.

Gallup asked Americans whether they would be willing or not willing "to have the U.S. government do each of the following" and then listed an array of options.

For example, "assassinate known terrorists" drew the support of 65% of all adults. "Torture known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks in the U.S."won the backing of 39%.

Finally, the option of using "nuclear weapons to attack terrorist facilities" drew the support of 27% of adults, with 72% opposing, which would shatter the taboo on using these weapons militarily since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Experts agree that the power of today's weapons, their range of damage and the peril of drifting radioactive fallout far exceeds the bombs used against Japan. That support has declined 7% since 2001, however.
***
So as you can see, my proposals have been considered and found necessary by approximately 75,000,000 Americans.

Ignoring the Gorillas in the Living Room

Everyone knows N. Korea and Iran's nuclear capacity/ambitions are the most dangerous threats to world peace. And everyone knows the United States has the capability to neutralize those threats in a day's time using its tactical nuclear weapons. And everyone knows this won't happen...but why not??? Communist China could easily bring N. Korea to its knees through closing the border, but does not. Why? Because after all, N. Korea is also a Communist country, albeit bizarrely backward economically. So they dither. So either we make it clear to them we are going to nuke the N. Korean military and allow the South Koreans to liberate the country, or we tell the Chinese Reds we are going to give Japan and the Republic of Taiwan nuclear weapons.

If we can't stop the crazy N. Koreans from spreading nuclear weapons around the world to every mullah and tinpot dictator who hates America, then what's the difference if Japan and Taiwan get them too? I think Communist China would cave in and agree to push the nutty regime in N. Korea to relinquish nuclear weapons pronto, rather than have their age-old enemies across the sea gain the nuclear equalizer.

As far as Iran is concerned, they are obviously hoping the dictator Putin of Russia will provide them with nuclear technology and also protect them from American attack. But if Putin is such a cretin that at his European visit with President Bush, he belligerently asked Bush why the US government fired Dan Rather and the CBS screwups, why should we trust his relationship with a fellow dictatorship in Iran? This guy is totally misinformed.

The only drawback to nuking the Iranian nuclear power plants is that it would probably turn the majority pro-American population against us, given the emotional appeal of nationalism. However, what should we do, sit on our butts waiting for the Iranian people to overthrow their obnoxious fanatical leaders, who would kill as many of them as it took to repress the revolt, or just zap their nuclear facilities once and for all? After all, these nuts make no secret of their desire to destroy Israel as soon as they have the military capability. Do you think we are not close behind on their list?

So the upshot of the deal is: Bush has to clean up the mess left behind by Clinton who wanted to be adored on the international scene rather than make tough decisions. When rogue regimes disregard international law and start spouting nuclear wings, they become dangerous outlaws to be shot on sight. It is the world's duty to destroy these outlaw regimes who starve and mutilate their own peoples, and replace them with freely elected governments responsible to their citizens. Otherwise, some day soon we will get out our maps and have to start scratching out our cities one by one as they go up in radioactive smoke.

Buddhist fireworks

Someone on the buddhist chat line posted a moderately funny joke circulating among conservative blogs recently, concerning bin Laden's rough reception in the afterlife by various dead American heroes and Presidents, and this was one buddhist's response:

"The absolute violence of the aggression imbedded in this post exploded with the precision of colour coded smart bomb of bloodymindedness that dripped with slimy hatred, rotting smelly revenge and poisonous spitefulness so as to engender this response that though positively motivated somehow feels equally infected with aversion and washed with its glorious display of karma...I had to stop to double check that this was indeed being propagated by a member of the Buddhist Organisation and practicing Buddhist....May this be of benefit."

If this sort of purple prose isn't over the top, I don't know what is. If I were the writer, I would save this sort of pulling-out-all-the-stops response to a real event, rather than a harmless joke. When the UN is closed down as the morally bankrupt organization it is and demoed, then go ahead, scream and shout like crazy if you're a liberal. But unfortunately this hysterical style of argument is the norm rather than the exception...many liberals just can't get used to the idea of being contradicted, especially in their safe havens as the universities, major media, foundations and in this case, buddhism.

Being a conservative buddhist is not an easy position -- one's fellow buddhists are all liberal and can't believe you are quite sane, and one's fellow conservatives are doubtful of non-traditional religion, which might be pagan. But I maintain buddhism is inherently politically conservative in its karmically-based attitute that where and what we are is the direct result of our own actions -- no whining allowed. It also embodies the conservative values of justice and freedom for all in its emphasis on compassionate action in the world. The willingness of American soldiers to sacrifice their lives so that foreigner peoples are freed from oppression and tyranny is the highest example of bodhisattva activity.