Happy Independence Day!
Monday, July 04, 2005
It's a working holiday for me this year, but I'll mostly be at the house sipping a home brew at the computer while I work. In the meantime, if you're hunting around for good reading material, I recommend stopping by Capitalism Magazine to peruse Edwin Locke's article on the importance of the July 4 holiday. His last two paragraphs are especially good.
The greatness of America is not an "ethnocentric" prejudice; it is an objective fact. This assessment is based on the only proper standard for judging a culture or a society: the degree to which its core values are pro- or anti-life. Pro-life cultures acknowledge and respect man's nature as a rational being who must discover and create the conditions which his survival and happiness require -- which means that they advocate reason, rights (freedom), and technological progress.Have a great July 4th!
Despite its undeniable triumphs, America is by no means secure. Its core principles are under attack from every direction -- by religious zealots who want to undermine the separation of church and state, and by its own intellectuals, who are denouncing reason in the name of skepticism, rights in the name of special entitlements, and progress in the name of environmentalism. We are heading rapidly toward the destruction of our core values and the dead end of nihilism. The core values and achievements of the West and of America must be asserted proudly and defended to the death. Our lives depend on them.
-- CAV
6 comments:
And what made the holiday perfect for me was the complete success of Deep Impact. Far more rewarding than Chris Burden's bit of performance art in which he stood on a runway with a pistol and shot a pistol at a 747 taking off, and technically far more accomplished to boot, but being the innovative creative genius that he is, I'm sure he'll be ponying up with lawyer in tow to demand credit for its inspiration--a new field of art called "jurisprudential performance art." Why, it's such an inspiring, forward-striding time in which we live! And with any luck at all, NASA will respond by creating "astronomical performance art," in which Chris Burden is shot off in a rocket to impact a near-earth asteroid!
But we could miss the asteroid! Better to aim for one of the the arm of our "old friend," the Milky Way!
Gus
Actually, this is even better!
"[Russian Astrologer] Marina Bai has sued the U.S. space agency [for $300 million], claiming the Deep Impact probe that punched a crater into the comet Tempel 1 late Sunday "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe," the newspaper Izvestia reported today. A Moscow court has postponed hearings on the case until late July, the paper said."
But did she consult her charts before filing?
Gus
Heh. And yeesh. But really, if you look at human history, it's not that remarkable: Some nut said something stupid. What I want to know is whether everyone in the courtroom immediately fell on the floor laughing insanely, wiping their eyes as their sides split. If not, then that's the weird and newsworthy part...though the way things are going, I guess it wouldn't be that newsworthy after all, would it?
And in the matter of "ruin[ing] the natural balance of forces in the universe," what's next? Policing the underside of bridges and the dark sides of trees to prevent illicit urinations that can disturb a neighborhood's feng shui?
Post a Comment