THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

SOME REALLY TOUGH GUYS | 2006-07-02

I am still a bit taken aback that Joe was actually an amateur boxer. Let me explain something about that word "amateur." You may not get paid for it, but when you go into the ring you are still there to knock the other guy cold or be knocked out cold. Joe only mentioned this because I talked about Rocky Marciano, and Joe knew him psersonally.

A pal of mine was an amateur boxer. He, too, met a boxing celebrity. The poor bastard got into the ring with an eighteen black boy whose name was Cassius Clay, still in his golden glove days. Joe had the chance to talk to Rocky. When you meet a celebrity it's good to have something they said to talk to your grandchildren about. Unfortunately my buddy remembers very little about Cassuis Clay.

Pastor Peters of Scriptures for America was the first man who had the guts to inverview me. He is one of two people who has my books and promotes them:

http://www.scripturesforamerica.org/

Pastor Peters amd his sons are all rodeo riders.

I was watrching a documentary about Neandertkal Man. Even thought their bones were much thicker than ours, they went after things like mammoths with sticks, and the death and injury rate was phsenomenal. To illustrate this, the experts pointed out that Neranderthal skeletons looked like rodeo riders'.

On a regular basis, some young man in the military will take the risk of contacting me. Their address usually shows they are in something mean. For some reason, affter a lifetime of listening to the self-styled Greatest Geneation tell me how tough they were, a disproportionate number of the guys I deal with really are tough guys.

And they were not part twelve million who put on unforms. They do it vcluntarily and individually.

But even the toughest young guy has the psychological vulnerability of youth. I will never lie to them. But I will never discourage them.

The war never ends. The war is never won. We are taking losses we can never repair. But I volunteered for this war, and if I didn't think we could win, I'd say so. I would still fight, but I would never encourage any young person to get in the trench with me if I thought he had no hope.

Joe believes there is no hope and he will not encourage others to have it. I see victories and I see daylight.

Yes, EVERYTHING humans do starts with a lot of talk. Humans are the compulsive communicators. We are the only animal that chokes becasue our larynx is far down in our throat to accommodate our costly larynx. Nature does not pay an evolutionary cost like htat if the larynx were critical to us, real world critical, not theoretically critical. If it's evolutionary, it WORKS.

The USSR did not fall because of the game of containment all those administrations played. It fell because of WORDS.

Joe is honest and I am honest. We disagree.

I think we can live with that.

MDERPELDING MDERPELDING SUMMATION ON DAVES PIECE BELOW | 2008-06-05

This post makes me think that I have falsely interpreted some of Bob's writing.

I have always thought that the biggest problem in the modern world is that too many people make their livings on bullshit. And that they control our lives.

On our nickel.

Not on how the bullshit is produced and refined.

Merry Olde England bullshit begat Yankee bullshit.

Throw in some Germanic bullshit and John Dewey with the Yankee bullshit and you get the truly modern bullshit in PC America. And the holy PhD.

All not worth a plugged nickel.

Oh, and in the interest of diversity, I shouldn't exclude Jewish bullshit, arguably the finest bullshit on the planet.

Now however, I finally understand.

One must not discriminate between bullshit and reality, but between different kinds of bullshit.

Reality be damned.

It's all bullshit.

Uh-Oh...I've become post-modern.

-- mderpelding

You describe perfectly the levels of nonsense we need to brush aside as step one. But we don't need another piece of BS called "post-modern." Reality is not "post-modern." It's just REALITY.

I am always rethinking the BASICS. We need to step back, take a deep breath, and take a completely, totally absolutely fresh look at really. There is a growing realization that what is being said is just silly.

ALL of it.

What I say is usually so simple that people just don't GET it:

Screw the labels. We need to THINK FOR OURSELVES.

WHY DOES LEFTIST NONSENSE HAVE TO BECOME A DISASTER BEFORE WE ABANDON IT? | 2001-06-23

No, Virginia, it isn't the Communist Plot or Secret Evil Geniuses that who invent and push the leftist nonsense. The Soviet Union is gone, and the disastrous nonsense keeps coming.

Most of today's horrible ideas begin with professors on campuses in the West. Ideas that the left likes are invented or at least developed among social science professors. From time to time, one of those professors floats an idea that sells like hotcakes on campus.

It spreads from there.

For example, American academics and the media and yuppies and Europeans used to sell socialism as the Wave of the Future.

Socialism said that the government had to take over the entire economy and turn it over to the bureaucrats who were trained by professors. The "intellectuals" would rule in the Inevitable Socialist Future.

But different forms of socialism killed at least a hundred million people in the twentieth century. Socialist failure in the Third World and in Communist countries kept most of the world in poverty. See September 30, 2000, THE KEY TO PROSPERITY: DON'T BE A DUMBASS and OUR IMMIGRATION POLICY SAYS THAT MONEY IS MADE BY MAGIC. And June 17, 2000 -- KINKY SEX, AGAIN.

Real socialism has been discredited at incredible cost, over and over, until even Communists now admit it's silly.

That was a disaster for the left. Intellectuals and radical students and the media and yuppies used to say that bureaucrats must run American life because Socialism was the Wave of the Future. It was also Accepted European Opinion.

Now another idea was needed to make an argument for bureaucratic rule.

Soon it became a popular idea on campus that bureaucrats should run all aspects of American life, not for socialism, but in the name of Saving the Environment. This was not a plot, it was a natural development.

Social science professors on Western campuses run what amounts to a Liberal Seminary. They teach leftism, and they try to formulate leftist ideas that will sell. After Socialism As the Wave of the Future died, they tried many new excuses for bureaucratic (aka Intellectual) rule.

Finally, the Environment excuse sold like wildfire among students. So Environmentalism as an excuse for Intellectual Rule went out by the usual leftist route: It was first tried out on 1) leftist students. When it sold there, it naturally it spread 2) to the media. The media sold it 3) to leftist Yuppies.

Europeans bought Bureaucrats Must Rule To Save The Environment from what they considered the American Intelligentsia. Only then did it become Accepted European Opinion.

The idea that led to the Kyoto Treaty started on American campuses, spread by the routine leftist route, and is now Idealism, Intellectualism, and Accepted European Opinion.

Other policy disasters became Accepted European Opinion by the same route.

The idea that Criminals Are Just Victims Who Need Lots of Social Programs To Save Them followed exactly the same route. It sold on campus, so it sold to the media, so it sold to yuppies, so Europe swallowed it whole.

Academics changed clean air from a legitimate concern to an overboard leftist excuse for bureaucratic rule. They changed the idea that even criminals have rights to a giant leftist world view that was a disaster. They changed education to leftist indoctrination. None of this is accidental.

Academia tells us openly that it is dedicated to the leftist agenda. They openly suppress all real dissent from that agenda.

And we pay them to do it.

WHY IS THERE A FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT? | 2004-06-19

If voting is a right and the fourteenth amendment guaranteed equal rights to black people, there would be no fifteenth amendment. Ask yourself, why is there a fifteenth amendment?

Then ask others why there is a fifteenth amendment.