I was still feeling that way when I read gcotharn’s comment (I was a little late) and then read the “coverage” by outlets such as WaPo, NY Times, LA Times. These articles were more mentions than articles and seemed designed to read more like “yes, yes, we know Obama got caught on a hot mic saying this, yada, yada….but really, you think this is important and serious???!! Get a life!” At least that’s how they came off to me. Maybe I’m just completely cynical at this point, but have most people in this country turned into mindless zombies, at this point — either as a result of the MSM’s manipulations or their ridicule of anything suspect President Barack Obama does. They used to call Clinton Teflon? It seems to me that if a space alien were to land, they’d wonder who this “God” O. is and why would anyone dare question a word or action emanating from this being of perfection.

When does it stop? But then I listen to pundits, and ordinary people babble themselves silly defending the man or proclaiming what a great President he is and why would anyone even consider changing the status quo, and I start to question my own sanity. Is it me? Maybe it is. Am I “just one of THOSE conservatives” always looking for the negative in what Obama says and does?

I have to say I feel like I’ve been expending a lot more energy trying to figure out what the heck he’s done well or right, and why anyone possibly has any kind of positive opinion of his performance in the Presidency, never mind his character or likeability. And damned if I have a hint of a clue what is going on in all these other people’s minds. I sort of feel like I’m going through 2008 Presidential campaign redux and I’m just not hearing the Pied Piper’s tune that seems to be enchanting all these other people.

I agree that some psychologists are idiots, but I certainly see value in attempting to understand how people develop and function. I just don’t take every thing a psychologist says as the ultimate truth.

“We have to be very careful in stating our own values while giving them time to adjust to the dramatic changes they have experienced.”

What the hell does that mean? I think it means what I call feedback. But feedback occurs rather quickly and doesn’t preclude us from “stating our own values” unitl adjustment occurs ie., learning from it. Feedback shouldn’t take that long. Should be very quick.

And “values.” I don’t have “values.” Not values in the sense that I have “freed” myself from God and now make all my own little rules.

I have life given to me by God. It is not mine, inherently, I possess it as a steward. And truth, although I see not all of it, can be at least known enough to live honestly. I have faith, a better faith than James, that I can know truth because Truth has created me and spoken and still does speak. Because my life, your life, each of our lives speaks back to us, giving us feedback upon what works. Try free love (adultery). See if that works! Feedback is truth and the abstraction of that simple principle by Harvard dons of The Mystical Group notwithstanding, feedback is much more pragmatic than anything William James ever did.

The purpose of examination is to compare our actions against right or wrong. And if you don’t even believe in an objective right or wrong, what’s the use of any examination?

Don’t waste your time on William James. His is a circular path of educated nonsence. He spawned Rorty and Leary. Ick. Psychology. I can’t think of any subject more human effort has been poured into with less result. All the time poured into the education of psychologists and all the time and money spent on their “healings” could have been better spent on oragami. There’s a subject now.

Finally, I’d like to hear what you think of the N. Korean’s escape from that hellhole. We have all been told that we are little pyramids with our physical needs comprising the base and moving up to “spiritual.” That each of us is not that, that we are an integrated object much more complex, much more mysterious, is my position:

For you fashioned my inmost being.
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I thank you because I am awesomely made, wonderfully: your works are wonders – I know this very well. My bones were not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes could see me as an embryo, but in your book all my days were already written; my days had been shaped before any of them existed.

I’ve just ordered Escape From Camp 14. From the reviews I have read, it sounds like the ultimate example of being dehumanized and the difficulties of trying to find your human instincts when you are free. I remember reading and seeing stories about the orphanages in Romania and Ukraine where many of the “caretakers” seemed inhuman to me. It seemed as though the communist system had done everything possible to rob people of the ability to care about helpless children, whether by keeping them in abject poverty they could do little to alleviate or by making any move outside the rules a crime punishable by death. These people will have to learn how to handle freedom. To a lesser extent this is probably also true of many Russians. Like for some East Germans, the security of the old way retains its appeal and even in the old system they had individual achievements and experiences of which they are proud. We have to be very careful in stating our own values while giving them time to adjust to the dramatic changes they have experienced. We have to try to walk in their shoes and remember that each has travelled a different road.

This just adds a major item to the list of evidence that Hussein’s intentions are malign, hostile to America.

That statement is, I think it fair to say, one with which Obama would heartily concur, if only privately.

That statement also reveals such a fundamental lack of understanding of malevolent aggression as to render the holder of such a view as unfit for leadership. It is also a damning indictment of the electorate who voted for him and the MSM that withheld information critical to evaluating his fitness for office.

Obama recently instructed the National Security Council to undertake a study that could result in U.S. nuclear weapons reductions of up to 80 percent, which would lower our nuclear weapons to less than China’s.

“The reduction of American military power to a state of strategic inferiority”

If reelected, there’s little doubt his agenda will include all of Artfldgr’s succinct summary of the left’s goals for America’s decline.

Are you frightened. You should be. I know what hunts you.

What is ever needed in any fight: courage, skill, and willingness to die but first as Gen. Patton so aptly stated willingness to make the enemy die first. All you pacifict Ghandi wanna be’s are welcome to create a moat with your bodies.

Give your life dear.