Oh wistful night of a million suns.
Spawn dancing shadows from nameless orbs.
Through stellar darkness light years are thrown.
Perchance dark grace our sun or moon
And primal night fire my heart drum.
Oh wistful thoughts of a million souls
Spawn dancing shadows from nameless histories.
Through unconscious darkness years are thrown.
Perchance dark grace our I or other.
And primal projections fire my loves.
Gathering together within we move sometimes apart, sometimes mingled but always we move together. We who are not yet the murmur of leave’s praise for wind or morning shadows setting the world afire with renewed hope. We who dance together silently with words filling the night with songs. Once we delight, I knew a place, we were a place. I hear the places we were and are and will be. Even the place where our songs have ceased, the place that knows us no more, especially that place, moves with our inner delight. Our laughter reverberates in sun-filled cathedrals and finds crevices we know not.
The strands of her long, silky hair
Flow across my night sky
Caressing and tickling my demons
My barely lit moments
Woven as her tapestry
Stretched across this ghostly horizon
Long lost to soothing incantation
As the forgotten gods
But marking this buried treasure
And measuring this glorious once
She wakens and rises
To meet me
In my dreams
————————————————————
Dreams of fire wrapped joy
Of earth sobbed pain
Of sky soared home
Of water drenched fear
Of places never seen and rooms never known
Of faces familiar and not
We sink from their moments
We crawl from their concerns
Our logic and history find no place
As we open our eyes to another morn
And shake off another night
And yet still, somehow
We carry our night worlds
Into all our day lights
————————————————————-
Where do the gifts of promise and light fall
When they fall from our skies?
The children that never grew old,
The loves that died in their youth
Where do you go?
What heaven do you light?
Perhaps you fall as seeds into an other earth
And there spawn futures we’ll never know!
Revision History December 2007
Original
Revision 1 August 30, 2010
Section ii)
Revision 2 August 31, 2010
Section iii)-(1)-(c), (d), (e) and (g)
Revision 3 September 1, 2010
Section iii)-(1) – much of section 1 has changed
Note: These thoughts have been loosely formulated and as such will probably change a lot over time but, for me, that IS philosophy.
—————————————————————————————————————————–
Some time ago I was reflecting on those I know that have gone into professional philosophy. I always admired that profession but I also observed a conundrum at work in the act of being paid to be a philosopher. It appears that the need to publish and receive acclamation from one’s peers produces a timidity on the part of scholars; a stifling of creativity; a reluctance to think out loud and invite dialog without knowing where it will go or even if the course one has set on is valid at all. Perhaps this is something Socrates may have hinted at with regard to the sophist. In any case, in the interest of playful philosophy or perhaps tragic philosophy I have written a partial outline of some new avenues post Heidegger that may at least be given in the spirit that was Heidegger’s robust and creative thought albeit, without the intellectual vigor…
From the end of the lecture “Time and Being”…
“What remains to be said? Only this: Appropriation appropriates. Saying this, we say the Same in terms of the Same about the Same. To all appearances all this says is nothing. It does indeed say nothing so long as we hear a mere sentence in what was said, and expose that sentence to the cross-examination of logic. But what if we take what was said and adopt it unceasingly as the guide for our thinking, and consider that this Same is not anything new, but the oldest of the old in Western thought: that ancient something which conceals itself in a-letheia? That which is said before all else by the first source of all the leitmotifs of thinking gives voice to a bond that binds all thinking, providing that thinking submits to the call of what must be thought.
The task of our thinking has been to trace Being to its own from Appropriation – by way of looking through true time without regard to the relation of Being and beings.
To think Being without beings means: to think Being without regard to metaphysics. Yet a regard for metaphysics still prevails even in the intention to overcome metaphysics . Therefore our task is to cease all overcoming, and leave metaphysics to itself.
If overcoming remains necessary, it concerns that thinking that explicitly enters Appropriation in order to say It in terms of It about It.
Our task is unceasingly to overcome the obstacles that tend to render such saying inadequate.
The saying of Appropriation in the form of a lecture remains itself an obstacle of this kind. The lecture has spoken merely in propositional statements.”
Martin Heidegger
With this in mind…
a) A Possible Heideggarian Resolution (a sketch) – Phenomenology Revisited
i) Definitions
(1) Being when used here is Ontology, the study of Being as predominately meant by Heidegger
(2) being(s) when used here refers to ontic, particular beings
(3) Sorge (Care) is the temporal structure of Dasein’s throwness
(4) Dasein is the ontological level of human being
(5) dasein(s) is the ontic, individual human being
(6) existentiell pertains to individual understanding of oneself `along the way’ B&T, pg 33
(7) traditional ecstasies is the thrown ontological structure of dasein as `ahead of itself’, the `back to’ and the `alongside’ (ontically future, past, present)
ii) Martin Heidegger’s monumental work Being and Time provided an incredible analysis of Dasein (the `there’ of being, human being). Fundamental to Heidegger’s analysis of the Being of human being is Sorge. Sorge is the structure that constitutes Being temporally in its thrownness. Heidegger calls this `ecstasies’ (Greek root combining ek—`outside’, with stasis—`to stand’). The traditional ecstasies is Dasein’s `ahead of itself’, the `back to’ and the `alongside’. This is not an abstract theory about how Being might be thought. Sorge is thought from facticity. Facticity is the practical observations (phronesus) of how humans beings are in the world (Sorgensumsicht). In Being and Time, Being is thought from the ground up where `ground’ is how dasein (individual human beings) experience their being-in-the-world, and pre-cognitively understand Being. This structure is at the core of Heidegger’s analysis and should beg the question, are there any other important experiences of temporality that dasein experiences that are decidedly different from the ones Heidegger discusses and yet, structurally significant for Being? If so, could this impact the `turn’ of Heidegger in which Heidegger himself puts his earlier work, Being and Time, in question? It seems that as Heidegger looks more and more at the nothing from which Dasein is thrown what comes to the fore undermines any possibility for truth (aletheia) and his decisive notion of the possibility for authenticity is cast into a deep and bewildering darkness – Ereignis. This outline is a preliminary sketch and thought experiment into how Heidegger’s analytic might be phenomenologically adjusted to account for Ereignis. In order to do this, two new temporal `ecstasies’ are introduced “Nothing Time” and “Dream Time” and the traditional understanding of ‘ecstasies’ is modified. Much of Heidegger’s traditional analysis will still stand in what is called “Awake Time” but differences will be investigated. Note – The two new ecstasies are first given ontically as existentiell `experiences’ of dasein and then suggestions are made as to why this may be thought as ontologically significant with regard to the temporal ecstasies of Dasein.
I would also add that Heidegger never finished his project of Being and Time. While the final division of Being and Time was never written, Heidegger did leave notes about what it would contain. Heidegger was an Aristotelian scholar. He thought of Aristotle as the first and vastly misunderstood (vis-à-vis the Latin and Christian reading of Aristotle and the misreading of ousia) phenomenologist. However, Heidegger did take exception with Aristotle on the notion on time. He referred to his conception as the common conception or vulgar conception of time. This is time thought in terms of ‘now’ moments. He thought that time read through Aristotle was thought in terms of the ecstasies of being-present (parousia). I would content that if a phenomenologist wants to factually about the temporality of dasein you would have to think about how we experience temporality. We certainly have an experience of the future, the present and the past but these are not the only way we experience temporality. Why wouldn’t we as after the temporality of dreams? Why wouldn’t we question the temporality of dreamless sleep? Could it be that these common experiences give us a hint of where Heidegger may have gone in the final division of Being and Time? Could this lead us in the direction of ereignis?
iii) Three Important Temporalities of Dasein
(1) Nothing Time – “Whoever sees God dies. In speech what dies is what gives life to speech; speech is the life of that death, it is “”the life that endures death and maintains itself in it.”” What wonderful power. But something was there and is no longer there. Something has disappeared. How can I recover it, how can I turn around and look at what exists before, if all my power consists of making it into what exists after?” The Gaze of Orpheus, Literature and the Right to Death, Maurice Blanchot, page 46
(a) The temporality of “nothing time” is what dasein experiences under anesthesia. The patient remembers counting backward and opens their eyes to find they are in the recovery room. The temporality of “nothing time” is what dasein experiences when they close their eyes momentarily to sleep and open them to find that the entire night has passed. This happens more with children. [Note: This could actually be called dreamless sleep. In the stages of sleep every night there is REM where dreams occur and there is deep sleep which is the “nothing time” spoken of here. It happens every night but because there are other stages of sleep the example is clearer from what was given.] The phenomenological experience of this temporality is nothing, no duration. It strikes one as having been only when one awakes from it (if one does). The experience of nothing time is only recognized after it has passed and only tangentially. It gets pieced together as a radical disjuncture epso facto. Worldhood is non-existent for nothing time. There is no retreat of beings. Neither is there any awareness, much less a subject that even recognizes nothing time.
(b) For nothing time, Sorge as constituted as ‘primordial time’ (pg 277 B&T), as traditional ecstasies, is non-existent. The entire existential structure of Being with its ontic manifestations is null. While death may be the possibility for (pg294) the absolute impossibility of Dasein, nothing time cannot be ‘ahead of itself’ or ‘towards and end’. It can only be surmised when dasein rises again into Being, when it’s roused as Sorge .
(c) Ontically, in nothing time, there is no responsibility or decision, accountability is an absolute impossibility. There is no such phenomenality as being-towards-nothing-time as in being-towards-death as Dasein’s ownmost possibility (page 294). However, it is non-relational in a way that even being-towards-the-end is not. Being-towards-the-end is an existentiell possibility of Dasein. Nothing time is not a ‘sway’ of Dasein but a rupture, a black hole that the everydayness of Dasein must cover over. It is an existentiell rupture of dasein. The throwness of dasein as void is highlighted by nothing time. The possibility for dasein as nothing is shown (aletheia) from the ontic capacity for dreamless sleep. Nothing time points to the steresis of Aristotle as semblance.
[Note: “Heidegger says that the basic category of steresis dominates Aristotle’s ontology. Steresis means lack, privation. It can also mean loss or deprivation of something, as in the example of blindness, which is a loss of sight in one who by nature sees. Steresis can also mean confiscation, the violent appropriation of something for oneself that belongs to another (Met. 1022 b33). Finally, Aristotle often calls that which is held as other in an opposition of contraries a privation. Heidegger will point out in his later essay on Physics B1 that Aristotle understands this deprivation as itself a kind of eidos. Thus, steresis is the lack that belongs intrinsically to being. According to Heidegger, with the notion of steresis Aristotle reaches the pinnacle of his thinking about being. Heidegger even remarks that Hegel’s notion of negation needs to be returned to its dependency on Aristotle’s more primordial conception of the not.” Heidegger and Aristotle The Twofoldness of Being by Walter A. Brogan, page 19]
(d) There is no authentic ontology that can be thought from the ontic of nothing time. Nothing time is the radical exteriority that cannot be captured ontologically except as inauthentic. Being has no foot hold in it. There is no light or clearing that can be cast into it, there is no ‘in’ or ‘out’. It can be posited or gleamed only after the fact (inductively) in its recovery into being as only a false ‘not’. As steresis, the time of nothing time is an absolute achrony, an in-between. A false synthesis is only made possible from the falsity of the ‘not’ of awake time (discussed later) of “Being”, as lichtung (clearing) within Being. Being can only totalize nothing time as its light must rise from itself with no penetration into the event horizon of nothing time. For nothing time all information is lost and can only be recovered on it’s hitherto. Nothing time is the absolute zero degrees Kelvin of Dasein. From the light of Being, nothing time is the temporality of mysticism. Nothing time is not ‘my’ time. Light (lichtung) and its absence (apousia) can only change it (totalize it), it cannot capture it. It cannot even be thought as nothing without covering it over. Nothing time as third person, an it, is already a reductio ad absurdum, a covering over of what is aimed at.
(e) From the clearing of Being, nothing time is what is meant by the inauthentic (verfallen) form of time known as the ‘now’ moment. This ‘vulgar concept of time’ is the semblance, the covering over of sheer exteriority that undoes dasein. Dasein assigns an everyday notion of time to it’s (nothing time’s) non-existence. Thus Dasein escapes into a supposed linear succession of ‘now’ moments to account for the radical rupture of itself. The ‘now’ moment, the present, is the in-between being-towards the past and the future. It is kairos, fullness of the moment of being that being can never own, that eternally escapes Being. The ‘now’ is not chronos as Aristotle thought in Physics IV. From the beginning, the covering over is shown by the Sophists that took over kairos. Nothing time can never be recalled only hinted at by induction (epagoge) without light or its ‘not’. It is interesting to note that the ontic of nothing time has no ontological category. This is something that Heidegger would think would violate the whole notion of ontic and ontological. The contradiction is due to the fact that the ontic experience of nothing time can never be captured by the light (lichtung) OR ‘not light’ without eradicating it, totalizing it. The type that is indicated by the finite and the ‘not finite’ (infinite), the mortal and the ‘not mortal’ (immortal), nature and ‘not nature’ (the divine), master and ‘not master’ (slave) is not of the same type as the facticity of nothing time and the rupture of ontology. If the equivocation of these two types is maintained then an essential (wesen) differance (allusion to Derrida) is recuperated back into the canonical narrative of metaphysics. The anarchistic break of metaphysics is lost and taken back into the semblance (phainomenon) of Logocentrism. There is no authentic ‘showing’ of the ontological from the ontic in the case of nothing time.
(f) [possible avenue] Nothing time makes possible the erasure of the trace (deconstruction). The rupture of ontology makes possible the violence of the arche. [Ereignis actually opens the way for post modernism but this analysis may not only give resolve to the Heideggarian dilemma but also give some voice to the concerns of deconstruction, viz. the dynamic of the play of multiple texts.]
(g) [possible avenue] Need to explore how metaphysics, Being as suspended from nothing, is related to nothing time.
(h) [possible avenue] Since nothing time leaves an ontological rupture in Being it opens up Being to the possibility of radical alterity, an alterity that is not even yet an ‘It’. This rupture may allow the kairos of the Other. As such, the radical alterity, the achrony of the he or she that Levinas points toward. The covering over, the neutralization, is the primal violence that eradicates the other. It steals the time of the other as ‘my time’. It sublates me and other. This is the averagness of Das Man. The gap opened in ontology may hold open the possibility for Ethics. In this sense, the Ethical cannot be derived (i.e., from ontology). The radical disruption of the ontic and the ontological in this case is maintained as the Ethical. If this rupture is not maintained then the light (and its ‘not’) becomes the techne of production, the origin (arche) of Being, and Aristotle’s beginning ends in the quiddity of technology, standing reserve; all have become the foundry of nihilism, alienation is the telos of human being. The Decision is narcissistic alienation or the opening Levinas has made, Ethics. [This also depends on the discussion below about how all of these temporalities coalesce with each other. It needs to be fleshed out more here.]
(2) Dream Time – “The void that hollows out is immediately with the mute and anonymous rustling of the there is [ilya], as the place left vacant by one who died is filled with the murmur of the attendants…The there is [ilya] fills the void left by the negation of Being.” Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, Emmanual Levinas, page 3 – 4 “…it is no longer this inspiration at work, this negation asserting itself, this idea inscribed in the world as though it were the absolute perspective of the world in its totality. It is not beyond the world, but neither is it the world itself: it is the presence of things before the world exists, their preservation after the world has disappeared, the stubbornness of what remains after everything vanishes and the dumbfoundedness of what appears when nothing exists. That is why it cannot be confused with consciousness, which illuminates things and makes decisions; it is my consciousness without me, the radiant passivity of mineral substances, the lucidity if the depths of torpor. It is not the night; it is the obsession of the night; it is not the night, but the consciousness of the night, which lies awake watching for a chance to surprise itself and because of that is constantly being dissipated. It is not the day, it is the side of the day that day has rejected in order to become light. And it is not death either, because it manifests existence without being, existence which remains below existence, like an inexorable affirmation, without beginning or end – death as the impossibility of dying.” The Gaze of Orpheus, Literature and the Right to Death, Maurice Blanchot, page 47
(a) The temporality of “dream time” is what Dasein experiences during sleep. Dream time has a feel of duration but there is no traditional ecstasies, no sense of a stretch of time. Dream time is the temporality of writing and the infinite rearrangement of signs. Dream time has Worldhood but without Logos. It is as if Being were cut into a million pieces and thrown into the wind. It is the time of Ilya. Sense and meaning are random and arbitrary; there is only apeiron (chaos); as logic is a random sign so is contradiction. Logocentrism is meaningless. It is as if emotion, profundity, language, history, desire, hate, fear, anxiety, responsibility and decision are all random ‘symbiotic’ syntax. Profound sense and confusion simultaneously reign supreme. The ‘there’ and the not-‘there’ are simultaneously present. The temporality of dream time is disjointed and without consistent narrative. It is multiple narratives without coincidental temporalities. Temporalities without synchronicity, without unity although they can whimsically play at this. Dream time is broken and when dasein awakes can only be remembered, if at all, in pieces in the mode of interrogative. Dream time does not concretize human experience. It only floats human experience randomly. [Dream time is the necessary `symbiotic’ underside of Being. – reminiscent of Blanchot, Scene of Writing. It is the necessary `unconscious’ for `conscious’, the mystic writing pad. Research suggests that hypnosis engages the dream time activity of the brain. This activity operates normally in waking life, i.e., when people drive cars, listen to Bush ;-), etc. It makes people susceptible to suggestion, i.e. marketing, politics.]
(b) Dream time is the temporality of writing, the time of the poet, the representation of the artist (Salvador Dali).
(c) For Being, Dream time is what is meant by the inauthentic form of time known as ‘everydayness’, the possibility to be lost, fallen from ones ownmost, confused and set adrift, the possibility for the random. [It seems to give a phenomenological basis for `everydayness’ – the Das Man is a dream, inauthenticity has its structural roots in this new ecstasies.] However, Being can recover dream time as possibility (i.e., for authenticity), to wake from sleep. [Actually, this more of the hermeneutic of dream time from the perspective of Being (awake time).] It is a temporal contrast to the traditional ecstasies discussed by Heidegger.
(d) In deconstruction, dream time is the possibility for the self-destruction of any narrative. The seeds of the texts demise are always “there” and in its margins. The narrative is understood in the awake time (spoken of below) but the counter texts and other texts are recessed into the temporality of dream time.
(3) Awake Time – “Only an entity which, in its Being, is essential futural so that it is free for it’s death and can let itself be thrown back upon it’s factical “there” by shattering itself against death – that is to say, only an entity which, as futural, is equiprimordial in the process of having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take over its own thrownness and be in the moment of vision for `its time’. Only authentic temporality which is at the same time finite, makes possible something like fate – that is the say, authentic historicality.” B&T, page 437.
(a) Much of this analysis is already done in Being and Time as Sorge. [Note: Need to flesh out confusions of these temporalities here in Heidegger’s analysis.] His analysis concerns itself primarily with awake time. This is the temporality of Sorge (Care). The traditional ecstasies that constitute “the phenomena of the future, the character of having been, and the present” B&T, page. 377
(b) Nullity is a confusion of the traditional ‘ecstasies’ and nothing time.
(c) Everydayness is confusion the traditional ‘ecstasies’ and dream time.
iv) The Overlap of Temporalities
(1) Heidegger’s traditional analysis of ecstasies is the convergence of the ‘ahead of itself’, the ‘back to’ and the ‘alongside’ are primarily the analytic of awake time. Equiprimordial to Heidegger’s traditional ecstasies is nothing time and sleep time. With the addition of these fundamental temporalities to Heidegger’s analysis the analytic of Dasein can find a firmer post-turn and post modern footing. Just as the three traditional ecstasies Heidegger discusses converge as the temporality of Dasein with each retaining its own specificity so too does dream time and nothing time converge as ‘equiprimordial’ with the other three. They retain their uniqueness as well. They cannot be absorbed into the analytic of Sorge because they violate the basic structure (i.e., ‘ahead of itself’, the ‘back to’ and the ‘alongside’) of the traditional analytic.
(a) The new analytic is not de-severance as Heidegger discusses with regard to spatiality. De-severance brings region near and far. However, just as the convergence of the tradition ecstasies can give way to the ontic notions as ‘living in the past’ or ‘living for the future’ or ‘living in the now’ so too can the equiprimordial ecstasies of dream time and nothing time give way in awake time to the temporality of the work of art or the mystic relation with (secret) God.
(i) Much like calculus with differentiation and integration
(2) These `not’s are all seated in the temporality of awake time, Hegelian idealism.
(a) The ‘not’ of awake time is nothing time and dream time.
(b) The ‘not’ of dream time is the nothing time and awake time.
(c) The ‘not’ of nothing time is dream time and awake time.
(3) The overlaps
(a) Nothing time and awake time in the mystics, in deconstruction (as trace), in Levinas (as Other given by the face of the other), in poetry (as radical distance), in religion (as in-effable, the God of unknowing)
(b) Nothing time and dream time in Dali
(c) Nothing time, awake time and dream time confused as the history of metaphysics
(d) Dream time and awake time in Levinas’ analysis of insomnia
(e) Awake and dream time in lucid dreams
(f) Ontology as phenomenology, dialectic of space (Hegel), as metaphysics
(g) Ontic/Ontological, authentic/inauthentic, metaphysical/exteriority – all can be analyzed in terms of these three temporalities
v) Other temporalities
(1) There are other temporalities that bound and overlap the new analytic of Dasein. The other temporalities gird, underscore, make possible the ontic and ontological conditions for Being and allow the new analytic of Dasein. This is not meant as an objective present-at-hand lapse into a confused metaphysics and mere theorizing. This needs to be worked out but any temporal analytic of Dasein and Being must itself be worked towards a completeness that includes overlapping albeit less influential and varying temporalities of wesen (environment). These temporalities cannot be dismissed out of hand or ignored; they ‘ripple’ into the very fabric of Being.
(2) Types [If phenomenology can find another connection with science other than the one Heidegger gave viz., correctness, propositional correspondence viz. the metaphysics of presence (present-at-hand and idea for Plato) it may be that science can add some authenticity to Being and structural agreement in phenomenology or… not. The criticism against Heidegger and nature’s exclusion may be overcome]
(a) Quantum
(b) Nature/Life/Evolutionary
(c) Geological
(d) Astronomical
(3) De-severance Overlaps of other temporalities with Dasein.
(a) TBD [How would this work? If the work of Levinas de-centralizes the totalitarian aspects of Being viz. the face of the other, this could be seen as a Copernican type revolution in the Heideggarian analysis not to think Being as present-at-hand but to think the relationships between Being and Ereignis.]
vi) All of the temporalities previously discussed are meant by Ereignis. [Much work remains to be done here]
(1) The turn of Heidegger, the gap from Being and Time to Enowning are brought about by the gaps in the traditional analytic found in Being and Time. The work of Being and Time is too rich and has impacted philosophy too much to simply dismiss. However, the gaps in the analytic even lead Heidegger to question the whole analytic in Being and Time.
(2) When metaphysics confuses these temporalities [i.e., nothing time, dream time and awake time] we get such notions as ‘abstract’ [i.e., not ‘grounded’ in awake time] and ‘concrete’ [i.e., ‘grounded’ in awake time], ‘profound’ [i.e., the lichtung, light of Being in awake time] and ‘mundane’ [i.e., the underside, night of Being in awake time, can’t fit in logos/logic], ‘real’ [i.e., awake time, logos] and ‘illusion’ [i.e., dream time].
(3) Aletheia unconceals but requires dream time to cover over [dream time is the concealment and from the ‘perspective’ of awake time the root of semblance] – it is concealment in awake time.
(4) Metaphysics requires nothing time. [see What is Metaphysics]
(5) For Hegel, idealism requires the dialectic of temporalities. [i.e., the ‘not’ that overcomes the contradiction of thesis and antithesis so that it can re-instate them both into the higher level of synthesis requires awake time for the contradiction to stand, for Ideas to eternally reinstate/inscribe themselves into history/logos. This may give some sort of phenomenological basis for a ‘perspective’ of Hegel (??)]
…
Any thoughts, ideas, contributions or simple mockery would be appreciated…Mark
An acquaintance of mine told me several years ago that the Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Being from Louisiana, I thought that was not the way I remembered it. I was 8 at the time so I thought I would go back and look at the historic data. On face value he certainly had a valid case to make.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 Signed into law by President Johnson on July 2, 1964.[1]
Here are the actual vote totals:
Totals are in “Yea–Nay” format:
The original House version:[2]
Cloture in the Senate:[3]
The Senate version:[2]
The Senate version, voted on by the House:[2]
However, after looking into it further I discovered the votes by region – northern versus southern. Here is how that looks:
Here are the actual votes split by party and region:
Note: “Southern”, as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. “Northern” refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
Totals are in “Yea–Nay” format:
The original House version:
The Senate version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
After seeing this it came back to me why I thought the Republicans opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The reason I remembered it this way was because all the Southerners I knew switched parties from Democrat to Republican after that vote. The Democratic Party in the Deep South largely became Republican in the years that followed. It seems that Civil Rights raised a demon, the cry from the dying pangs of ghost of the Civil War. Apparently, the Southern Democrats blamed their party for enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and seemed to have found a new and welcome home in the Republican Party. This is why I associated the Republicans with opposing the act – everyone I knew while growing up that opposed it were Republicans – now.
[1]^ Dallek, Robert (2004), Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President, p. 169
[2]^ a b c King, Desmond (1995). Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government. p. 311.
[3]^ Jeong, Gyung-Ho; Gary J. Miller, Itai Sened (2009-03-14). “Closing The Deal: Negotiating Civil Rights Legislation”. 67th Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association. p. 29. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
Did I tell you I bought a sailboat?
Did I tell you I live in Caribbean night?
Adrift, enveloped
By big bosomed women.
Inviting, beautiful.
Women that do not know my name
And invite me to do the same.
Adrift, enveloped
By dark tropical seas.
Inviting, beautiful
Seas that do not know my name
And invite me to do the same.
Did I tell you a sailboat brought me
Through Caribbean night to tell you
Live.
In this case, evil is not meant in the sense of religious evil or theistic evil but in a humanitarian sense. Religion and God(s) have always found a way to justify war. War is evil because it is not a zero sum game. Only those that have emotional distance from war can treat it like a zero sum game. Distance allows folks to fashion a marketing campaign to justify war. Death affords no distance. The life of the innocent child killed in war is never brought back to life. The family lives in the hollow catacombs of their child’s death until they die. The tragedy can’t be made right; it is absolutely irrecoverable and irrevocable. Women, children, the old, friendly fire, collateral damage is not a number that is offset by the `would have’ number, the number that `would have’ died without the war. There is no erasure of tragedy for those that have lost loved ones. There is only the empty void where a life used to be. There is no just war; only a necessary war. The marketing of a just war is a huge rationalization for evil. Only those devoid of the emotional impact of war can deem it glorious. The tragic loss of a loved one to war is organic. No amount of words can overcome the inert downward pull of that pit. Only ignorance and emotive indifference can once again renew the call to fight the glorious battle. Was Iraq and Afghanistan necessary? Was our country going to be over-thrown by these thugs? No. Did we suffer tragic loss in 911? Yes. Will our killing rampages in the world change our tragic loss? No. We tell ourselves by cleverly crafted tomes that we will prevent more loss of life by our action and thus, justify our wars. By killing others we create a `greater good’. What is that `greater good’ in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan? We have created many more enemies all over the world and given Al Qaeda a recruitment bonanza. Even our old friends have more ambivalent or even negative relations with us now. We killed more of our young people now than were killed in 911. We killed hundreds of thousands of non-enemy combatants (babies and kids to start with). All the discussion of a `just war’ does not offset or equalize the tragic loss of one child. It only provides an easy escape for those that would perpetuate this tragic loss. If you perpetuate war you are as guilty as if you pulled the trigger on the baby. You can tell yourself otherwise but your justice rings hollow. In the ears of tragedy, your defiance to allow the full weight of your rationalization to indict your personal responsibility is absolutely detestable. Your good has become evil, a humanitarian evil. You have become part of the problem not the solution and the more you deny and justify, the more you create the problem once again. War is a black tar baby that every generation has resolved to leave behind only to re-entangle us again. We create a new generation of patriots and a new generation of patriot haters. Go ahead, hold your ears and scream of my evil intentions but evil begets evil and graves only cry for more graves. Until you live with the gravity of your ideas on a daily basis you have yet to live in the reality of tragedy. Don’t tell those of us who live that on a daily basis that justice has anything to do with erasing our loss. Don’t tell us your virtuous intentions give us emotional buoyancy or offset our organic reality. You only soil yourself in our view. Go ahead gather your warmonger friends and have your death parties all over the world but no one can silence the hellish voice that you perpetually resurrect in your violent zeal. Peace does not come from war, only death and tragedy. Perhaps evil is necessary in extreme times but no one should take any pride or glory in evil unless one is evil.
What is it we do not like about Marxism? Is it the lack of motivation to create real value? What is the practical difference between a government based economy and a credit based economy? When money is free, money has no value. If Capitalism or Marxism is in the business of bankrupting value there is no difference with regard to the disruption of production. Why extol the virtues of Capitalism when it enslaves folks to getting more debt/credit to pay off last month’s debt/credit? Any influx of capital that is so large no one could ever spend it, even in the form of endless credit, will squelch motivation, reduce productivity and motivation – it reduces value. Don’t think for a second that capitalism is inherently immune from `what the bad guys do’ or that government is the only way to bring an economy to a grinding halt (to repackage a quote – those that do not learn the lesson of recent history only welcome it once again) – private enterprise can just as easily conjure up all the practical evils of the dreaded Marxist ideology.
Fallacy of Omission:
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When anti-abortionists cite the Gallup poll below…
“More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time”
take a look at the whole Gallup poll:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/More-Americans-Pro-Life-Than-Pro-Choice-First-Time.aspx
– you will see that since 1976 the averages have not really changed: approximately 20% suggest that abortion should not be allowed under any circumstances (currently 22%), 70% to 80 % since 1976 believe that it should be allowed in all or some circumstances (approximately 25%, currently 23%, suggest it should be allowed under any circumstances). This trend has not changed. Therefore, when folks describe themselves as “pro-life” they obviously do not mean that they are hard liners who do not approve of abortion under any circumstances.
Fallacy of Contradiction:
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Here are excerpts from a discussion with Erin Manning, a hard core catholic advocate of anti-choice and an associate of radical right, extremist Rod Dreher.
“It is high time to stop pretending that we do not know what this nation of ours is allowing—and approving—with the killing each year of more than 1,600,000 innocent human beings within their mothers.”
“…on the death penalty, I accept Catholic teaching” which in effect means it is acceptable as a “last resort”. She also stated, “I don’t generally support the death penalty in most instances, and also recognize a strict and limited definition of justifiable self-defense killing and just war.”
…need I add more?
An example of a loaded question:
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“At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?”
Rick Warren, Saddleback Church – `question’ for candidate Obama
To me, that asks the question, “When is a fetus considered human and as such get human rights?”. What I hear in that question is, “When does [human] life begin?” For those that are pro-choice a baby and a fetus are different. “Baby” necessarily means “human” since a baby exclusively belongs to the category “human”. There are no “babies” that are not “human”. If the question is, “Do “babies have human rights?” – The answer is of course they do because they necessarily belong to the category “human”. If this is the question, it turns out to be a very uninteresting question since it is a necessarily true, logical syllogism:
A is B.
B is C
Therefore: A is C
All babies are human
All humans have human rights
Therefore: All babies have human rights
If this is the real question, it is an insult to Obama’s intelligence since denying it would mean you can not comprehend plain logic (otherwise known as stupid).
Here is the insidious part – anti-abortionists are really using code to plainly state (to the initiated) – you are a demon, you are evil because you kill babies and deny them human rights. Those that are pro-choice do not think they are killing babies but anti-abortion code insist that they are and deny them a response that is something other than believing anti-abortion OR killing babies. In effect, if you are not pro-life, you are a demon. This forum was “suppose” to have the appearance of objectivity and fairness but as evidenced in this description it was a setup – just another opportunity to preach to the choir at the expense of someone with another legitimate point of view. IMO, Republicans have been very successful employing this type of technique. It usually just takes a little thought to show the clay feet on your evil demons.
Worse Than Fallacy:
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The defense attorneys for the killer of Dr. Tiller, a Kansas doctor that performed abortions in Kansas, claim that the murder was a “Moral Murder”. So these folks think that they can commit or condone or rationalize the murder of Dr. Tiller based on a kind of reverse moral murder – they think they are protecting babies.
Also, the Catholic Church has sanctioned capital punishment and “just” wars. In this case, god has appointed a person to carry out his work – therefore, it is not murder it is an act of god. So, these zealots think that god appointed this guy to kill Dr. Tiller!
It is ironic that Erin has regularly called pro-choice folks (and me) Nazis (Rod has never censored Erin for this). The anti-abortion folks use it freely to describe you if you believe any kind of abortion should be allowed. They say that you are a “baby-killer” and sanction your murders with your morality. They claim that you commit genocide sanctioned by the state.
For your information the Nazis quickly banned abortions for the genetically pure and deemed it murder of babies.
Are you starting to see how this works? If so, take it to the voting booth.
Unfortunately, Rod is a remote cousin of mine and someone I enjoyed debating with until he started lying about me to stop the debate. It used to be that lying was not Christian but things change I guess.
While blogging at:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon
on a thread called:
Cardinal Egan: “I know what I saw.”
The full thread address is:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/10/cardinal-egan-i-know-what-i-sa.html
Rod Dreher has been a commentator at the National Review Online and the Dallas Morning News for many years. He also writes in other conservative columns. He has vehemently opposed abortion rights and is an extreme right-wing, conservative Catholic. The blog mentioned above shows the picture of a fetus and references an article by the Catholic archbishop of New York. In the thread there are also many more graphic pictures of aborted fetuses. In the thread I argue with some of these folks about pro-choice. If you read the thread you will see that at one point Rod accuses me of calling the person I’m debating with a fascist. He censored the thread and asked me to leave the discussion. I love to debate and have done it for years. I have never called anyone a fascist which I regard as losing an argument. Rod made this up, lied, so he could justify censoring the post. The context of this post can be seen in the thread (apparently, the comments have been disabled now) but in summary Erin is trying to push the argument for choice into an extreme position characterized by, why not genocide if abortion is legal? Here is the post that was censored:
“Erin,
Many of us have principles and the vast majority of us are not into genocide. I think we have decided to kill innocent humans already born by democratic vote in Iraq and Afghanistan if you voted for Bush anyway. You may have found some way to excuse yourself but many of us in this country and in Europe hold you responsible. I did not condone those wars nor would I condone any killing of human life. I would agree that there are times when it is necessary but we should be repulsed by it (if we really are human). You seem to be content to setup your own straw men to argue with but no one has even remotely stated what you said. If you can push the argument in that direction you are right but most of us get off that train before it gets to the station. Genes are not human life neither are cells. Humans make decisions regularly about the viability of human life, i.e., capital punishment, “just” (or unjust) wars, euthanasia, etc. Where the lines are drawn is always up for discussion. There are no absolute, clearly defined rules for how we make those decisions. Again, you have participated in making life and death decisions already if, for example, you voted for Bush. I could just as easily push the argument to ludicrous extremes by asking you why you think you and your representatives are entitled to kill innocent women and children on Iraq and Afghanistan. Is life and death a decision that you and your representatives made for others without their consent and without any culpability on their part? The answer is obviously, Yes. Therefore, according to you, if you draw the line at certain folks and not others why not ‘ol dad and inferior races? Can’t you see how shifting the argument into all or none can equally indict you as well? If drawing these lines make us guilty then we are all guilty – you too! Your innocence is feigned at best and hypocritical at worst. In any case, very few of us want to take joy in these decisions and fashion a fascist, god-philosophy about who lives or not. To insist that one has to go to that extreme to do what all of us already are doing (whether we want to admit it or not) is to ignore the reality of the situation and engage in a dialog with yourself. Maybe you can find a neo-Nazi group to have that discussion with but making the rest of us parrot those extremes is really only to discredit your argument. I think most people know the difference between extreme ideologies and reasonable ideologies. When you push it as far as you like you become a McCarthy and the rest of us walk out of the room. I know you have lots of ways of justifying your intolerance but I, for one, hold you accountable and refuse your simplistic argument style. Those of us that are pro-choice have principles that we believe are just as valid as yours. We do not like abortion and would not think of becoming genocidal maniacs – that is really all about you Erin.”
Erin has also moderated this board and is very involved in the Republican, anti-abortion movement. I saw at least one person that already protested the censorship (but it may be censored by now as well). Beliefnet is a good, impartial site dedicated to fair and open discussion of religious, political and social issues. Rod only runs one small portion of the board (crunchycon). If you are interested in protesting this censorship I would invite you send a post to the link above (only email and screen name required) protesting censorship on this site from the right or engaging in the topic of the thread yourself. Let’s take action in whatever small ways we can folks!