The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Plant not getting a 'Whole Lotta Love' from Olympic officials
Mike Pechar over at the Jawa Report finds that the organizers of the Olympic Games and the late Ed Sullivan have something in common:
But seeing the story about the changed lyrics brought to mind a different way to approach some of my earlier points about Socialist totalitarianism; an an old passage from Kahlil Gibran came to mind, specifically his treatise on "Love" from The Prophet--which is about passion, depth and meaning. The piece expands upon the richness of the emotion of Love, but it also is very much about looking at life in general in a particular way--or not. It is about risk and reward, where both are seen as necessary. Gibran warns us:
For the brain-dead, maybe.
The Socialist state--and the bureaucracy that drives it--is heartless and soulless. And to achieve Marx's "equality of result", the State must necessarily tend towards removing the heart and soul from life itself. When you lose the desire to reach higher, to become more--the desire to excel and to win, human existence eventually becomes dull and lifeless. In the Socialist state, the mediocrity of the least common denominator becomes the goal--because encouraging and rewarding mediocrity is the only way to achive equality of results, given a world where intelligence, skills, abilities, and circumstances are not equal--and never will be.
In the Socialist state excellence is not rewarded; it is discouraged, dumbed-down or ignored. If you have ever seen the old Spielberg film Joe vs. the Volcano, it perfectly describes the grey "seasonless" world of Gibran's verse. The nanny state is perfectly represented by the factory where Tom Hanks worked before he set off on his journey. Lifeless. No hope of bettering one's self or circumstances. Just the same thing day in and day out. Here is the scene where Hanks decides he has finally had enough of that world:
This is the endgame of World Socialism. This is what everyone from Adam Smith to Ayn Rand to Milton Friedman to F.E. Hayek have been warning us about. In the Marxist twilight zone existence you aren't dead; but you might as well be...
Meanwhile, today people risk their lives every single day to come to the United States. Not because the good life is guaranteed--but because it is a place that makes the good life possible. We live in the only country in the world where people regularly give up everything they have just to get here. And yet we seem dangerously close to electing someone to the office of the Presidency (and re-electing his Marxist ideologue colleagues to the leadership in Congress) whose world view would--given its way--bring us precisely to that point. The Least Common Denominator. The end of the richness of color; the beginning of greyscale in perperuity.
This end result represents everything the Founding Fathers abhorred; everything they wrote our Constitution to protect against. Yet many of my fellow "citizens" would in their ignorance and/or sheer stupidity actually destroy that which has made the United States what it is; in the name of lame platitudes like "hope" and "change" they would throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Is "Big Brother" truly what our citizens want and need? Have we come all this way, only to mutate into an Orwellian nightmare, because some sort of race-based guilt drives some to defer to a smooth-talking Marxist snake oil salesman whose election would be nothing short of a catastrophe for this country?
We simply cannot allow that to happen.
Not that big a deal, right? Yet what it symbolizes is a big deal. The allure of Socialism lies partially in its false inference that it can somehow prevent every human from becoming offended by making it a crime to offend. Of course this is nonsense--the very idea offends me...(Beijing, China) At the Olympic closing ceremonies tomorrow, the mayor of Beijing, Guo Jinlong, will officially hand over the Olympic flag to Mayor Boris Johnson of London, the venue for the 2012 Olympics.
The centerpiece for the eight-minute British showcase segment will be a double-decker bus opening like a lotus flower to reveal Jimmy Page leading a rendition of "Whole Lotta Love," the 1969 Led Zeppelin classic to be sung by Leona Lewis.
Except and without my approval, the original Led Zeppelin lyrics have been deemed too racy, so they are to be revised for the Olympic closing ceremonies.
According to London 2012 officials, Lewis - who grew up in east London close to the Olympic site - requested a change to the song's second verse because she was worried they would not make sense for a female singer.The ceremonies will also include singers and dancers and David Beckham kicking a soccer ball into the assembled athletes in the infield. Set your TIVO.In the original, recorded in 1969, frontman Robert Plant sings, "I'm gonna give you every inch of my love".
But in the version that will be sung tomorrow, however, Lewis changes the words to "every bit" of my love.
The band also agreed to a request from organisers to drop the third verse, which includes similar sexual innuendoes, to fit in to the eight-minute performance.
And just think. Someday, with the help of the Brits, the ChiComs and the Olympics, we'll have a world where nobody is ever offended by anyone.
But seeing the story about the changed lyrics brought to mind a different way to approach some of my earlier points about Socialist totalitarianism; an an old passage from Kahlil Gibran came to mind, specifically his treatise on "Love" from The Prophet--which is about passion, depth and meaning. The piece expands upon the richness of the emotion of Love, but it also is very much about looking at life in general in a particular way--or not. It is about risk and reward, where both are seen as necessary. Gibran warns us:
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,It struck me that the choice described in this passage describes the very essence of humanity that the totalitarian State kills in free men. The choice is to live a life fully, or not. The fear in the passage is the same fear that drives the Left: the fear of failure. In the Socialist world "fairness" drives the "there are no losers here" mentality--it tells all the little boys and girls that everything is going to be all right and tries to "kiss the boo boo". But that is a lie. The world is not a place where everything is "all right". And to perpetuate the myth that it will be is to discourage taking responsibility for one's own happiness--with the false promise that reliance upon bureaucrats can lead to "happiness".
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
For the brain-dead, maybe.
The Socialist state--and the bureaucracy that drives it--is heartless and soulless. And to achieve Marx's "equality of result", the State must necessarily tend towards removing the heart and soul from life itself. When you lose the desire to reach higher, to become more--the desire to excel and to win, human existence eventually becomes dull and lifeless. In the Socialist state, the mediocrity of the least common denominator becomes the goal--because encouraging and rewarding mediocrity is the only way to achive equality of results, given a world where intelligence, skills, abilities, and circumstances are not equal--and never will be.
In the Socialist state excellence is not rewarded; it is discouraged, dumbed-down or ignored. If you have ever seen the old Spielberg film Joe vs. the Volcano, it perfectly describes the grey "seasonless" world of Gibran's verse. The nanny state is perfectly represented by the factory where Tom Hanks worked before he set off on his journey. Lifeless. No hope of bettering one's self or circumstances. Just the same thing day in and day out. Here is the scene where Hanks decides he has finally had enough of that world:
This is the endgame of World Socialism. This is what everyone from Adam Smith to Ayn Rand to Milton Friedman to F.E. Hayek have been warning us about. In the Marxist twilight zone existence you aren't dead; but you might as well be...
Meanwhile, today people risk their lives every single day to come to the United States. Not because the good life is guaranteed--but because it is a place that makes the good life possible. We live in the only country in the world where people regularly give up everything they have just to get here. And yet we seem dangerously close to electing someone to the office of the Presidency (and re-electing his Marxist ideologue colleagues to the leadership in Congress) whose world view would--given its way--bring us precisely to that point. The Least Common Denominator. The end of the richness of color; the beginning of greyscale in perperuity.
This end result represents everything the Founding Fathers abhorred; everything they wrote our Constitution to protect against. Yet many of my fellow "citizens" would in their ignorance and/or sheer stupidity actually destroy that which has made the United States what it is; in the name of lame platitudes like "hope" and "change" they would throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Is "Big Brother" truly what our citizens want and need? Have we come all this way, only to mutate into an Orwellian nightmare, because some sort of race-based guilt drives some to defer to a smooth-talking Marxist snake oil salesman whose election would be nothing short of a catastrophe for this country?
We simply cannot allow that to happen.
