Steve Re: Masobovinoscatological Epistemology & Tropospheric Anserinoflatus (With apologies to Leo Kottke, but not to Al.)

I’m sure glad that I can use my normal speech in Cyberspace. I haven’t been able to speak thusly since I moved back up from South Texas to again mingle with yankees.

It surely has been enjoyable and educational sampling the Blogosphere smorgasbord. Most often, whatever the content, the thought processes show great depth, the logic and use of facts and data are tied together tightly producing essays of tremendous, persuasive merit.

However, upon further review, in depth analysis exposes the architectural design of 100 story skyscrapers lacking feasible plans for a foundation. (‘Rats right, Rorge..’ The new Spacely Sprockets Building is floating in mid-air.) These essays are constructed offering no foundation concerning providence, teleology, the nature of man, or the nature of the universe. These are the questions that heavy hitters such as Plato and Aristotle attempted to tackle. Of the blogoliterati, I usually expect the unstated presuppositions to include exclusion of providence (closed system), mankind and/or chance controlling the direction and definition of the universe (the measure of all things), and the perfectability of Man (blank slate). These are some pretty profound assumptions, and if incorrect, the purported assertions fail. In addition, any inference of good or bad, any moral tenor whatsoever, can only be based on nothing more solid than mere capricious sentiment.

Basing conclusions on modernist/postmodernist sentiments has been brilliantly illustrated by none other than Senator John Kerry. Apparently his sentiments change every day according to his pragmatism. In reality, that is quite honest. Sentiments, no matter how strongly felt, have the substance of goose farts in the wind. Kerry’s erratic ideologies may appear the musings of the fourth stooge, but is directly analogous to the more sophisticated varieties that one may hear or read elsewhere.

Facts, data, and statistics, embellished by rhetoric, erected through a logic empowered by the sentiment de jour forms an ideology. This man-made ideology, bolstered by lawyers, guns, and money, or by the peer pressure exerted by the democracy gods, shoves its religion down the throats of infidels. But, its god has no clothes and is constructed, not even of silver or gold, but of arbitrary sentiments. One thing is for sure. Any ideology that cannot tolerate the authority of God, can learn to tolerate anything else.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness-- these firmest props of the duties of Men & citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect & to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private & public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are instruments of investigation in courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National Morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington’s Farewell Address, Sept. 19, 1796.

And consider Washington’s humility and understanding of human nature: "Though in reviewing the incidents of my Administration, I am unconscious of intentional error. I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend."

PS 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.