Comments on The Belmont Club,"The wisdom of Bill Maher

wretchard
I wonder sometimes if he isn’t really just smart enough to realize how lucrative it is to be dumb.
So smart parents who dream of big things for their children should advise them to choose the right role models. There is a three step program for success here.

1) Work hard in High School but be sure to devote enough of your time to organizing a series of fund raising drives (Colleges react to the prospect of future fundraising like Pavlov's dogs) and organizing (In a nod to the Wasp heritage leadership is still prized over productivity) volunteer projects for approved special victim classes. The elusive illegal alien lesbian disabled minority Aids patient needing tutoring is the gold star project but demands patience and a good set of binoculars to locate.

2) Once you are in Harvard things get better as you can focus on balancing the various networks you will depend on in the future.

3) After graduation be sure to get photographed wearing a diaper (for Maher it is a virtual diaper, but still) and run around declaring that preselected targets are evil and stupid. Then just watch the money and power role in.

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While at university I had a job handing out visitor passes at the medical complex. Usually I was posted at the entrance to the Lying In Hospital, where a neighborhood youth was hired to share the desk with a student employee. One day I opened the desk drawer and saw some tracts that someone had left there. As I closed the drawer I smiled and Terry (odd that I remember his name since I have a terrible memory for names) asked me a little sharply, "What's the matter "LifeOf"? Don't you believe in God?" My reply was, "Terry, I only worry if God believes in me."

john lynch
When smart people are wrong they are disastrously wrong
More damage is done by the immodest overachievers seeking to prove themselves then by the talented who fail to do their bit. The most dangerous man in the world is the Petty Officer 3rd Class who decides to fix the nuclear power plant to prove himself smarter then the Chief thinks he is.

Mongoose,
No one over 30 with a sound mind, spirit and soul can hold such idiotic notions of oneself
That is why healthy men need women, to have someone who can laugh at us and say, "You are kidding, aren't you? Because the answer is NO"

Otherwise you end up like the Jack Nicholson character in Carnal Knowledge. Liberal Narcissism is a form of sexual dysfunction I suspect. A craving for power to replace what is lacking inside.

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Bill Maher demands to be told exactly how much smarter he is then the rest of us before he will love us. (with language lesson)

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wretchard
(who proposed 3 axioms in seeking the meaning of the world)
May I propose a Fourth Axiom?
4. If at any time when determining this "meaning" you hear music connected with the Monty Python team, stop. Go out for a long walk and a sit down dinner. Then try again.

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Two thoughts from Winston Churchill apropos this topic. I am not researching the quotes for precision here.
1. Democracy is a terrible system but is better then every other system that has been tried.
2. All your illusions about Democray can be cured by a 5 minutes conversation with the average voter.

Aristotle broke political systems into three categories each of which had an ideal and a degenerate state. The ideals were Democracy, Aristocracy and Monarchy. Each in turn degenerated into Mob Rule, Oligarchy and Tyranny. Maher and company think they are the Platonic Philosopher KIngs. Aristotle pointed out that even in Greece that had a culture that exhalted the "beautiful and the good" the best aristos became merely the few oligos. We now have the worst of all three degenerations of politics coming together. A mob lead by a thuggish self appointed minority ruling arbitrarily.

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Syd,
Always trace your ideas back to reality.,
In the Navy I was taught that every instruction, directive or order must begin by citing all the sources of authority that grant legitimacy to the document. For example an order instructing the crew as to the Uniform of the Day would reference the Area Commander's orders, the Fleet Commander's orders, Commander Naval Surface Forces Pacific's instructions, Chief of Naval Operations Instructions, Naval Regulations and the Uniform Regulations.

Every Bill passed by Congress should include a clear statement as to where in the Constitution is found the authority for Congress to pass that law. Such a reference could serve as an instruction to the Court in how to handle an challenge to the law if it came before the court on appeal. Congress has the power under the Constitution to give the Court such instructions and limits. That is one reason why the doctrine of Judicial Review that has produced the Imperial Court is extra-constitutional. Of course the corollary of that is that if the Bill does not have such a clear statement of enabling authority then it should be deemed defective on its face and void.

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E. Nigma,
The faux intellectual ... believes that by thought (and sarcastic banter) alone he can summon up a new reality.

From The Tragedy of King Henry IV Part I, Act 3, scene 1, by W. Shakespeare:

GLENDOWER

I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR

Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

GLENDOWER

Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command
The devil.

HOTSPUR

And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil
By telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil.
If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,
And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.
O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!

HT/ shakespeare.mit.edu
Quote begins at 10:10, http://tinyurl.com/nnum4n

Infestations of Glendowers have been faced down before.

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M. Simon,
(who thought I was a Navy nuclear engineer)
Not a nuke. Never lived in a sewer pipe. Although I have on occasion glowed in the dark.

bogie wheel,
(who cited left handed compliments, that are really insults)
Sometimes it works.

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:

Get a new people
Fredrick the Great of Prussia, the most Enlightened ruler in Europe of his time, the archetype of the Benign Despot, patron of Voltaire, viewed his nation as an appendage to his army rather then the other way around. The enlightened Left have a similar view of the nation as an appendage of the Welfare State.