mild-mannered scholar by day, raging anti-socialist by night

 
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Have a great Thanksgiving Day everyone! I'm headed out for a brief holiday and then it's back to the definitely-no-time-for-blogging grindstone.

posted by Bernhardt Varenius at 11:22 AM | Link

 
SOCIALISM IS YOUR FRIEND!

Blame Bush explains why:

Look at it this way:

You go to the pie shop and realize that you only have enough money for one slice of pie. Then in walks Bill Gates who proceeds to buy all the pies and leaves you standing there completely pieless. Is that fair? Why does he get all the pies? Shouldn't he be made to share some of his pies instead of hording them all? Socialism says "YES, everyone is entitled to a piece of the pie! For now on, all pie shops will be under the control of The People, and The People will decide how to distribute the pies fairly and equitably."

Imagine a world where, instead of walking into a pie shop and hoping, PRAYING you have enough money for one itty bitty little piece of pie, you simply put your name on a waiting list for the priviledge to go before a special commitee, who will carefully determine how deserving you are of pie, and will then give you a slice of pie FOR FREE!!!!! Never again will anyone have to pay for pie, and never again will one man be able to horde ALL the pie. No more will people compete to get more pie than their neighbor. Everyone will be entitled to exactly the same amount of pie, with the exception of the People on the Pie Committee, who will get extra pie because they wear party pins.

How do you get a party pin? Well, you have to join the Party, and that will cost you a fee of 100 pies. Then you have to be approved by the party leader, MOI, and I don't like the shape of your nose. In fact, I think you're being greedy by coming around and asking for pie all the time when the People are starving in the streets. "I want pie! I want pie! ME ME ME ME ME!!!!" You are putting your needs above the needs of The People, and that just won't do. Your selfish attitude is harmful to The People, and you're the reason everyone is starving. It's because of YOU that there aren't enough pies to go around. The only way we're going to make this a perfect Socialist Utopia is if we put a stop to big-nosed, pie-stealing scum like you sabotaging the system! THE PEOPLE MUST BE CLEANSED OF YOUR DISEASE!!!! GET ON THE BOXCAR!!!! NOW!!!!

So the next time some right-wing extemist asks if you're a socialist, just smile and say, "I like pie".

posted by Bernhardt Varenius at 11:12 AM | Link

 
VARENIUS' LAWS OF SPIRITUALITY

First Law: Those who claim to be spiritually advanced, aren't.

Second Law: If a religious system merely affirms what you are already doing, run from it.

Third Law: Ecstasy without content is a dead end.

Fourth Law: An awareness of evil does not entail an actual understanding of it.


(Inspired by the bad example of this guy.)

posted by Bernhardt Varenius at 2:45 PM | Link

 
RICHARD PIPES: FATHER OF THE NEOCONS?

Sam Tanenhaus, author of Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, has a good article exploring renowned historian of the Soviet Union Richard Pipes' influence on neoconservative foreign policy. Richard Pipes, father of the controversial Middle East expert Daniel Pipes, had a major role in shaping the more confrontational stance toward the Soviet Union that ultimately became ascendant during the Reagan Administration:

But if Pipes's politics alienated many in the academy, they won him an attentive audience in Washington, particularly among those convinced, as he was, that the USSR was at once a menacing regime and a vulnerable one. It should not be merely "deterred" or "contained" but defeated in a war of attrition that would pit America's flexible democracy against what Pipes deemed "a rigidly conservative regime that had more in common with the absolutism of a Nicholas I than with the utopian fantasies of 19th-century radicals." The United States should strike where the enemy was weakest -- Russia's decrepit economy, its flagging national morale, its submerged dissident culture.

During the Ford Administration Pipes entered circles that read like a Who's Who of the neocons in today's Administration: Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle. Tanenhaus shows how the strategy and experiences of Pipes seem to still be at play among this group in today's War on Terror.

posted by Bernhardt Varenius at 12:03 PM | Link