THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

MOMMY PROFESSORS RENAISSANCE | 2012-04-13

On Google or in books, you will often find bloodletting, taking blood from sick people, as "medieval medicine."

It was just the opposite.

The whole absurd theory of "balancing humors," of which taking QUARTS of blood out of George Washington when he was dying of pneumonia, was an integral part of what would be called the Renaissance. This was when Europe dumped all the "Medieval" stuff and read the Classical authors of ancient Rome and Greece and became truly civilized.

In fact, bleeding came out of those Classical books. It was THE Classical form of medicine, developed at the height of what the Renaissance would call classical science, the second century AD.

Nobody in the days before Classical learning would have thought you were anything but insane to be taking blood OUT of a sick person.

I have quoted in these annals from the chief physician to Louis XIV, who survived to age 77 despite his doctors. This Great Intellectual denounced all the doctors who said that syphilis was the result of "tiny, unseen animals in the blood that multiply...," in other words as good an explanation of the bacteriological theory of medicine as could be made at the time, before microscopes came out of the Netherlands.

The outraged Mommy Professor who is chief physician to the Sun King sounds very familiar. He roars that these theories do not cite a single "Authority." He has a huge list of German names, all of whom were apparently well known at the time for describing bacteriological disease.

Actually, the Renaissance horse shit is an exact parallel to what we have today. Washington died because doctors still read Latin and used Galen. What they did NOT use was the common sense medicine of the REAL Middle Ages.

In fact, the one example we have of this was Paracelsus, whose cures for battle wound were little short of miraculous in his day. But all his life he was accused of being deficient in Latin. Paracelsus followed his EXPERIENCE with battle wounds and actual survivals rather than quoting Greek Authorities who never saw a bullet wound or even a crossbow wound or serious shrapnel.

So Mommy Professors agreed that he CURE for what was actually the Mommy Professor Complex was MORE Mommy Professor Complex.

Sound familiar?

INNOCENCE IS NO EXCUSE | 2005-03-16

In Britain, if you are accused of "inciting racial violence" -- and if you are white -- telling the truth is no excuse. You go to prison for a year for telling the truth.

In America, if you are accused and you are innocent, you are still financially ruined. The Miranda warning says, "You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one...."

You have to spend every dime you have to fight any accusation. It doesn't matter if the accusation makes any sense.

I got a long lecture from two lawyers on two continents. When I heard the second lecture in the US, it was like deja vu. I spent an hour listening to exactly the same warning from two men thousands of miles and years apart, but they were almost exact copies of each other.

They told me that:

1) I had HURT the Communists, and no liberal would ever forgive me for it, and

2) if I EVER said anything too specific about what I had done in intelligence, leftists would go after me and stay after me.

Leftists NEVER forget.

This was not a Conspiracy Theory. This was legal advice.

There is no statute of limitations on anyone who hurts the left. The left never forgives anyone who hurts the People's Peace-Loving Worker's Democracies (PPLDCs).

You know who the PPLDCs are, the countries that shot people who tried to escape.

Communists.

So after September 11, 2001, leftists kept reminding America that we were responsible for the Twin Towers attack because we had supported Al-Khaida in its fight in Afghanistan against the Soviet invaders.

I can testify that the left fought all support to any Afghani resistance to the Soviet invaders. We had to do some very questionable things to get that aid in.

The left has never forgotten it, and the left has never forgiven it.

These are the same people who would get me if they could. And the way they would get me is to tie me to some really rough stuff that went on during the Cold War.

There is no statute of limitations on murder. A lot of killing went on. I never murdered anybody, but the accusation is all that counts.

They could ruin me. They could ruin thousands of people by theorizing a connection with some of the violence that went on.

It's been decades. They can theorize anything.

Leftists get prosecutors for free. They wanted to get David Duke and they got David Duke to serve hard time. It didn't cost a single liberal a nickel. You paid for it.

But the legal advice, repeat, legal advice I got was that they will destroy me for hurting the Communists.

I'm proud I hurt the Reds. I hurt them a LOT. Which is why I got all that legal advice, repeat LEGAL advice, not Conspiracy Theory.

AND I have none of the protection a good conservative has. Nobody would be more anxious to denounce me than the conservatives I worked with.

So this might give you just one example of the kind of problem people like me face.

Meanwhile, those who read my stuff are busy pushing old books and Rush Limbaugh.

I routinely take chances no sane person would take.

FRANCE - THE BOY IN THE BUBBLE | 2001-05-12

A few years ago, there was a little boy in a bubble in France. As everybody is probably aware, a "boy in a bubble" is a child who is born without any immunity to germs. His body cannot fight bacteria, so he is put in a sterile environment, a "bubble" of plastic, for life.

A boy in a bubble cannot live as long as other people. He is imprisoned for his entire very short lifetime.

Scientists did find a way to get this child out of that bubble. But it involved using fetal tissues.

France had a law against using fetal tissues for medical purposes. So it was a question of using fetal tissues to save the life of a child whom everybody could see and sympathize with, or just throwing the tissues away as the law required.

The only alternative was to let the child die as a matter of principle. This choice was real, and it had to be made.

In the real world, how many people are going to side with the fetal tissues against the little boy? So the child is now alive and free.

According to strict pro-life doctrine, the boy's life has to be expendable. In this view, the destruction of a sixteen-cell fetus is exactly the same as partial birth abortion, where a live child is painfully killed.

It is cruel for humans to have to make make this kind of choice. Possibly such power should not be in human hands. But it is, and it will grow.

In the next century the moral choices we will be faced with will be much, much worse. We must either go Amish or find a way to deal with them.

Most people have no problem when the fetal tissue to be used would be thrown away anyway. But what if the little boy's life depended on PRODUCING a fetus to use to save the child's life?

This is indeed a slippery slope. Once you abandon the absolute pro-life position, you are in very deep water.

As for me, I could never tell the boy's parents that their son would have to die for my principles.

I can only balance the life of a real, CONSCIOUS person (unborn children are conscious) against the life of another real, conscious person. This is called the Golden Rule, and it came from the mouth of Christ.

It is one thing to talk about an abortion for the mother's convenience. But here the pro-life movement wants to prohibit the only way to save a living child's life. THAT IS NOT PRO-LIFE.

And let me return to the big point here

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHOICES WILL BE MUCH, MUCH HARDER THAN THIS.

And let me be absolutely frank. The extreme pro-lifers are perfectly right about one thing: This IS a slippery slope.

Only by adopting the extreme pro-life position can you insist that God protects you from having to make any life-and death, twenty-first century choices.

What I want to know is how other people like me, who must answer to their personal consciences, are going to approach the new century.

Could you say no?

Be sure, because soon you may have to.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, A SMART GUY, BUT AN INCURABLE YANKEE | 2000-12-09

Chris Matthews used to be the main man of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Now he hosts "Hard Ball" on MSNBC. Usually, his talk reflects his knowledge of real world politicking, and is a relief from the silly and predictable comments of the usual media commentators.

But Chris is still a Yankee, and in some ways that's incurable. He said the other day that he would often use big words to confuse Southern congressmen.

He said it worked.

Yea, right. I used that Southern accent gambit plenty on Capitol Hill. You can ALWAYS trick Yanks with it, and I was endlessly astonished at their inability to catch on.

Tennessee Senator Howard Baker was talking to North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin years ago. Ervin said, "Well, I'm just a country lawyer from North Carolina." Baker said, "Sam, you are a MAGNA CUM LAUDE graduate of the Harvard Law School."

Old Ervin leaned back and said, "Yes, Howard, but nobody will ever know it."

Least of all Chris Matthews.

I was watching while MSNBC pulled out its inside-the-beltway political expert to talk about the unique situation in the Senate. With a Bush victory, the Senate would be 50-50, with Vice President Cheney breaking the tie and making Republicans a majority. The commentator said such a thing has not happened in over a century.

Because of this novel even split, Democrats are saying they should not be treated as a minority usually is. Actually, as I pointed out earlier in Whitaker Online, the exact same situation did occur in 1953, when Vice President Nixon broke the tie in the Senate.

And in 1953, the minority was treated as the minority, just as it was in 1955, when Democrats ruled by a single vote in their turn. The old Southern senators would know that. Sam Ervin might humor Chris Matthews by acting like Chris' big words impressed him. But he, not Chris, would know the basics cold.

Not so today. Today Southern Republicans are so bound up in the beltway culture that they probably don't know this. Outside of Helms and maybe Thurmond, your Southern Republican today is just one more Republican, dumb as a brick and with the courage of a rabbit. I have often seen them ignorant of the basics, just like the Yankees.

You would do well to write your senator and remind him of 1953. Don't give the Republicans another excuse to act like a minority when they have a majority.