The Unreasonable Man

Excellent article on that, here:

http://www.heraldscotland.com

Well said. Articulate and right.

See here [link].

So, liberal atheists who do not sleep around are intelligent.

Well, what can I say…

In all seriousness, the only surprie to me is the relatively small IQ gap. I would have thought it would be higher. Particularly because atheism is involved, where surely it cannot be very intelligent to believe in imaginary deities. Perhaps this small gap is due to this being a US study: the US has a large pro-religion and anti-atheism bias.

Read this article from a Nigerian newspaper. The use of language is quite poetic. And I love the “nobody saw it coming - not even seers”.

I used to work in Nigeria in the early 80s and I remember being struck by this then. The pictures and article remind me of how it was and show me that apparently not much has changed.

Africa is quite beautiful and I must go back.

Tonight, I feel energized by watching Bill Maher on HBO, saying the things I think. He is funny, irreverent, honest and intelligent.And he gets away with saying things 100 times more bluntly than I ever will!

I feel that with Christopher Hitchens and Bill Naher, I am a voice in the wilderness in not liking the nationalistic Olympic hysteria that surrounds me.

Hey, I like fun too, and watching skiing long jump competitions is exciting, but when I see all these people carrying flags I think “Nuremberg”. Nationalism, of which the Olympics is a clear and excessive example, is a force for evil. Nationalism is the excuse that allowed Mao to kill millions of Chinese. It is the force that enabled Nazism. It causes wars: it has killed as many people as religion.

So to celebrate nationalism, which seems to me the only point of the Olympics, is wrong. Our newspapers’ front pages are all about “Gold!”. Sad.

Now if we celebrated athletic achievement without regard to the athletes’ passports, that would be great.

Or it should be.

Nationalism, as a “people with shared values” is a stupid and outdated idea in 2010. Becasue we live in the same region we must have shared values?

Rubbish.

I had much, much more in common with my English online friend Ian Fuller, who shockingly just died in Bangkok of a heart attack at age 53, leaving his blog up, than I will ever have with anyone religious (meaning 75% of Canada and 90% of America). I had much more in common with Ian than with any socialist, or than with anyone who has never read a book.

And so did Ian’s other friends, from Florida to Bangkok to Manila and beyond.

In 2010, basing anything on geographic proximity is just plain stupid. Hearing Mr Obama and his populist rhetoric, all based on geographic proximity is dumb.

Why should I want to share anything AT ALL with someone whose values I despise, just because he lives 5 miles away from me? In this age of the Internet this is an anachronism.

Young people get it - Mr Obama does not, and it seems to me that very few of our old gray politicians do. Well, their time is over and young people will change the world, thank God.

So Mr Obama, it appears, is the enemy of thinking people, people who have a basic understanding of economics.

He is holding a passionate State of the Union address as I type this. Populist rhetoric is all I hear. Punishing banks “that take your deposits”. Policing to ensure that our “trading partners play by the rules”. Protectionist rules, he means. Talk about “punishing” companies that “send jobs abroad”. Left-wing, protectionist, nationalist, populist rhetoric. “America should be number one”.

And by implication, other nations should be number two, then?

Well, if that is what Americans think, that by sending jobs to Canada, say, or that by buying Canadian products we are “putting America two”, then by that logic we should all want Americans to be number two, or below. With his kind of economic thinking, we will all be poor.

If Mr Obama even means only a small portion of what he says, he is a naif. If he does not, he is a lying politician.

And to think, I was about to write a nice post about America, as the guardian of solid economics. Not so much.

Mr Obama was supposed to leave the economy alone and to abolish things like Guantanamo. Instead, he is ruining the economy and leaving all the Bush-era injustices in place. Very disappointing.

A city of 250,000 in Texas , now has not one single bookstore. So reports CNN.

So. America wants to rule the world, but its citizens espouse 15th century religion, know little about the world, and there are cities of 250,000 without one bookstore.

The prosecution rests its case.

Heard on CNN in the past two days. I know, it is bad to laugh when talking about a disaster like Haiti’s earthquake.. but I cannot resist poking fun at people who do not understand grammar.

“Any equipment that can be carried portably…”

“Dead bodies are starving in the streets…”

I know, stress and all. But also lack of basic education, I fear.

Richard J. Evans finishes his epic biography of the Third Reich thus, and these words reflect what I say time and time again, and explain why this is such a powerful metaphor for the evil that is possible again today and tomorrow:

“The Third Reich raises in the most acute form the possibilities and consequences of the human hatred and destructiveness that exist, even if only in a small way, within all of us. It demonstrates with terrible clarity the ultimate potential consequences of racism, militarism, and authoritarianism. … It poses in the most extreme form the moral dilemmas we all face at one time or another in our lives, of conformity or resistance, action or inaction in the particular situation with which we are confronted. This is why the Third Reich will not go away, but continues to command the attention of thinking people throughout the world long after it has passed into history.”

Exactly. Every time I see unthinking people follow the crowd in embracing idiotic measures just because these appeal to their unthinking sentiments, I think “careful - or there we go again”.

People who say we may not bring up the Nazi comparison when seeing injustice and danger of extremism are sadly mistaken. Not only may we do this: we must.

And that is also why this blog is called The Unreasonable Man.