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I am aware of that, though that is also the only headline among the list of dictators that they apologized for and removed, and as far as I am aware, they have not followed it up with another half as critical of one of the greatest mass killers in human history as the still-standing one of Rush.
I think that take is fair enough, I don't think there should be any expectation that people who disagreed with Rush need to go sackcloth-and-ashes, moreso that the amount of dancing on the grave is remarkable, particularly in what it seems to show in terms of hate/anger.
Sort of the best way to put it: There has been far more hate directed at Rush upon his death than the supposedly devil himself threw at someone like Ginsburg. Hating someone because you think they are hateful is sort of the tolerance paradox, but hating someone above and beyond even what you accuse them of is more just outright hypocrisy.
The article really just seems to be a drive-by. I suppose everyone wants to keep their write-ups short, but I'm getting the consistent impression that the overwhelming majority of people commenting on Limbaugh never listened to a single show of his. The method is "I found something bad he said in 1985, and then another in 2004, and then another in 2012, so now I know everything there is to know about the guy who spoke for three hours a day five days a week for over thirty years". The amount of people who think he was the literal devil because he called called someone a 'slut' (and then apologized) who cheered for 'feckless ****' and all manner of other insults is nuts.
I mean, just listen to the author: "For Limbaugh didn't just promote conservatism. He debased it, vulgarized it, turning it into a vehicle for the flattering of prejudice and bigotry. A political persuasion that once spoke proudly of honor and virtue came to applaud a reactive carnival barker who couldn't be bothered with reasoning or crafting arguments in good faith and who proudly practiced a politics of shamelessness, insult, and mockery.". Number of quotes of Limbaugh, who has arguably more quotable material in the public view than almost any human alive: zero. Limbaugh was very obviously just the font of evil, so any evil adjectives on-hand can and should be used, just throw them all at the wall and let them stick.
I don't expect mourning, I don't expect nuance, I don't even really expect neutrality, but I have never before seen such an absolute feeding frenzy to disparage and savage someone upon their death to the extent that it seems more like a game to get the harshest insult than anything resembling reality. I have no issue with someone who wants to write up a takedown on Limbaugh, one can attempt to do so from any number of levels, but the drive-by idea that every one of his 25,000+ hours of broadcasting were nothing more than KKK propaganda mixed with misogyny and good old-fashioned sadism is ridiculous. It's a guy who's most reported-on trait in his personal life was leaving multi-thousand dollar tips to waiters and waitresses wherever he went, but clearly his only effort in life was to make the world worse for everyone.
But Defector media, another sports blog, ran a point-counterpoint where the point headline was "Rush Limbaugh was a vile motherf***er" and the counterpoint was "I Agree, He Was A Piss Man And The World Is Better For His Death". I feel like you cannot even cherry-pick, I just randomly stumbled upon that one and there are more like it everywhere, up to and including, as noted, the NYT.
I feel like I could write a lot more on this, but just reading this article, I was going to excerpt it, but seriously, the whole thing does it, says more than I could.
Rush Limbaugh worked for pretty much every day of his adult life to make the world worse. Not different, just worse, just meaner and dumber in precisely every way it was already mean and dumb. He did not have some well-intentioned vision of a better world that just differed from yours or mine; he had no real politics, in the particular (and, for everyone else, intensely political) way that a certain class of white man can aggressively have no real politics to speak of, and he certainly had no moral or ethical base that is worth you thinking about or taking seriously. He was inchoate and stupid and unexamined spite transubstantiated into pork. Maybe, maybe he authentically hated people who were different from him. Maybe he hated the idea that those people might want their circumstances improved, and that someday regarding them as human might become a baseline norm of American life. He certainly portrayed himself that way; so what. That is the absolute most you can grant him by way of thoughts or ideas that may have remained with him even when there was not a microphone or camera in his face. More centrally, more to the point and the bottomlessly bleak meaning of him: He discovered that he could get rewarded by the people he did regard as human for lashing out, as viciously and with as much sneering, undisguised dishonesty as he could muster, at those he did not regard as human, and he did that for as long as anybody knew his name. Now he’s dead, not one moment too soon and many decades too late. He lives on in innumerable interchangeable worthless smirking morons and hustlers. The world will never miss him; he’s everywhere you look.
https://defector.com/point-counterpoint-rush-limbaugh/
Horatius Cocles, Phydios, and New Kiwis
I never listened to Rush beyond more than a few minutes and didn't like his style (I really don't like people being impolite) nor was he as conservative as I would have liked him to be. That said, I think people get him wrong a lot: I have it on good testimony that he actively pushed for more intellectually stimulating and even good-natured segments on his show, but his producers and contractors etc. pushed him to do more of the mean-spirited criticism stuff to stay on the air because it attracted more listeners. His favorite segments were actually the deeper intellectual discussion about books, history, etc. Also the better part of his show wasn't any more critical or hateful than many news hosts today. He was primarily just good at exaggerating to make a point.
I think it's a very fair comparison. I'm sorry about your loss though.
Is there freedom of speech in this region? (Just so I know)
Depends on what you mean by "freedom of speech". Insulting others is a good way to get ejected. But you can argue whatever point you want within the rules- we've even had abortion advocates come here and debate without getting kicked out.
Just so everyone knows, I know Beastland from many years ago on Nationstates. Simply stated, if he comes off as insulting, he probably doesn't really mean it.
Horatius Cocles, Phydios, and New Kiwis
So Beastland, how's your Latin these days?
I didn't insult anyone. But in other words, no you do not have free speech.
It's been a while. I didnt take Latin the senior year of high school (I took school online because of partial seizures). I still remember the basic stuff. I can decline first second and third declension nouns, though I kind of forgot 4th declension (I don't remember if there is another declension...). I know forms of past present and future verbs, both passive and the regular form of the verbs ("he ate.."). My national motto is about as complex as I can still get. I got a D on my last quarter of Latin because I kind of stopped caring.
If I translated correctly, my national motto (" Defende Libertatem; Tunc Res Publica Conservabitur") means "defend liberty; then the republic will be preserved"
To be honest idk if I used "tunc" correctly.
Sorry if I offended someone. Sometimes I see politicians (and judges, if you consider that a politician) as less than people.
Oh no! My phone just sent me a Breaking News update that Kim Kardashian filed for divorce against Kanye. I'm not gonna lie, I think Kanye is awesome.
I took Latin for 4 years in high-school. I still try to keep up occasionally with my Latin with the Duolingo app. It's a lovely language, I wish more people would study it.
In the midst of all this catastrophe in Texas, it's been hard to remember that Lent started this week. A small reading and hymn I found might be interesting to some of you.
for us didst fast and pray,
teach us with thee to mourn our sins,
and close by thee to stay.
As thou with Satan didst contend
and didst the victory win,
O give us strength in thee to fight,
in thee to conquer sin.
As thou didst hunger bear, and thirst,
so teach us, gracious Lord,
to die to self, and chiefly live
by thy most holy word.
And through these days of penitence,
and through thy Passiontide,
yea, evermore in life and death,
Jesus, with us abide.
Abide with us, that so, this life
of suffering overpast,
an Easter of unending joy
we may attain at last.
Prayer is the light of the soul
The highest good is prayer and conversation with God, because it means that we are in God’s company and in union with him. When light enters our bodily eyes our eyesight is sharpened; when a soul is intent on God, God’s inextinguishable light shines into it and makes it bright and clear. I am talking, of course, of prayer that comes from the heart and not from routine: not the prayer that is assigned to particular days or particular moments in time, but the prayer that happens continuously by day and by night.
Indeed the soul should not only turn to God at times of explicit prayer. Whatever we are engaged in, whether it is care for the poor, or some other duty, or some act of generosity, we should remember God and long for God. The love of God will be as salt is to food, making our actions into a perfect dish to set before the Lord of all things. Then it is right that we should receive the fruits of our labours, overflowing onto us through all eternity, if we have been offering them to him throughout our lives.
Prayer is the light of the soul, true knowledge of God, a mediator between God and men. Prayer lifts the soul into the heavens where it hugs God in an indescribable embrace. The soul seeks the milk of God like a baby crying for the breast. It fulfils its own vows and receives in exchange gifts better than anything that can be seen or imagined.
Prayer is a go-between linking us to God. It gives joy to the soul and calms its emotions. I warn you, though: do not imagine that prayer is simply words. Prayer is the desire for God, an indescribable devotion, not given by man but brought about by God’s grace. As St Paul says: For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself intercedes on our behalf in a way that could never be put into words.
If God gives to someone the gift of such prayer, it is a gift of imperishable riches, a heavenly food that satisfies the spirit. Whoever tastes that food catches fire and his soul burns for ever with desire for the Lord.
To begin on this path, start by adorning your house with modesty and humility. Make it shine brightly with the light of justice. Decorate it with the jewels of faithfulness and greatness of heart. Finally, to make the house perfect, raise a gable above it all, a gable of prayer. Thus you will have prepared a pure and sparkling house for the Lord. Receive the Lord into this royal and splendid dwelling — in other words: receive, by his grace, his image into the temple of your soul.
I couldn't find anything so I kind of BS-ed my "how to" speech in high school by teaching the kids how to say "the man was dropping poop into the dad's toilet" (I couldnt find a verb for poop. I may have actually used "dropped" instead of "was dropping" but I forgot how to do that) which I believe I translated as "vir locobat stercum in latrinam patris"
I hated my speech teacher (we had to take 1 public speaking class, and all the english or public speaking teachers are libs). He said crap like, when we were doing persuasive speeches and someone made a pro-death speech. He said "Is anyone uncomfortable? GET USED to persuasive speech week". I can tell how he favored the lib views too, letting her run over her time limit. And he smiled and helped her out. He admitted "I have a liberal bias". Kind of like a warning...You need to be fired if your liberal bias may effect your grading. Thankfully, he agreed with my issue, as it was one of the few issues his dumb ass could wrap his brain around because he is a lib and only agrees with a few freedoms (I argued against having a drug war: I am a libertarian), and let me run over my time too.
I really hate using the term "liberal" to describe them..... liberals like guns and aren't socialists. I am a true liberal. Unfortunately idiots stole that term so I have to say "libertarian"
I'm definitely going to have to look further into past Texas winters/outages and look at some more articles to get a better sense of how thing stood, where it fell on the scale from 'semi-routine power problems' to 'California-level effectiveness' to 'Mass death every time it gets cold." I'm definitely willing to concede that the system may have been lax in its precautions, though from what I have read so far, including those articles, it seems like past outages were neither catastrophic nor constant, that the scale is relatively mild and the lack of upgrade falls more in the realm of 'not doing something that might have been recommendable' rather than 'fiddling while Rome froze'.
(Of course, there's also something of a value judgement worked into it. Most every question of regulation ends up asking about some kind of tradeoff between cost and safety, sort of like the car example above, to what extent one is willing to go, whatever the answer is is always going to have some people wanting a little more and some a little less)
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On a related note, Ted Cruz is apparently leading the news, and I frankly cannot find the story anything other than ridiculous, though I'm willing to hear other thoughts. What he did was most certainly bad optics, but as an actual moral failing or disservice to his state or something, I'm struggling to see it. It's not as if he's the Governor, and obviously he's not in Washington, which makes his staying in-state basically completely useless beyond I guess personally collecting firewood for the neighborhood. He's not dodging any policy he supported or carving out any loopholes, he's physically avoiding the weather along with most everyone else with the ability to do so. People are saying that his "I'm trying to be a good dad" line is just a dodge, and maybe it, but as an excuse it's a pretty darn good one, if your wife and young daughters were freezing without power and you had the ability to take them elsewhere, would you really drop that because you wanted to look good politically? That's the sort of thing that people say they hate about politicians, just playing to the cameras and not being real people, but the voting public is more hypocritical than anyone else here, because we then turn around and bash someone for not playing to the cameras when his presence would be completely useless, he cannot do anything more than any other bloke on the block.
I really have very little appetite for grandstanding, Cruz is making himself look bad politically but I don't think I'm willing to say he did anything actually wrong. It's just a 'misery loves company', putting his family through an unpleasant experience for the sake of people being happy he's also going through an unpleasant experience. Hypocrisy requires an actual contradiction in action, when our Mayor got her hair done after shutting down salons for everyone else, that was hypocrisy because she was doing something she prevented everyone else from doing, Cruz was doing something he'd have had no qualms about anyone else joining him in.
I've seen more coverage, and more openly harsh coverage, of this than I did of the Speaker of the House violating the COVID protocols she pushed (and subsequently accusing a hairdresser of being in a conspiracy against her), and that's just bonkers. Cruz jetting out is, at best, a snarky story to insult his toughness and/or criticize a lack of 'compassion', it has no place in any reasonable or neutral environment leading the headlines over the people who lock down the freedoms of others then breaking their own rules to benefit themselves.
I think part of the the many problems with politicians is that so many of them have lied so many times that it's just automatic (and easier?) to just decide that they're probably lying (especially when it comes to saying something personal about themselves). :/
'Fweedom'
The way you have it is fine aside from capitalization, though a Latin-speaker would probably not use tunc at all in this context (it's sort of implied).
To be fair, the concept of liberalism has evolved considerably since 1801 and the modern progressive movement and typical Democrat described as a liberal has a legitimate claim, stronger than just about anyone's actually, to be the natural descendants and inheritors of nineteenth-century liberalism.
For a quick reference: https://www.etymonline.com/word/liberal#etymonline_v_43404
Members here may find this a useful resource. I know the Vatican, various bishops, and some Protestant leaders have already mentioned the basic moral teaching about vaccines and their potential use of abortion-derived cell lines, but most statements essentially said: Moderna and Pfizer are preferable, avoid AstraZeneca if you can. Now that the Johnson & Johnson may be forthcoming (avoid if possible), here's a complete list of vaccine candidates on this issue:
https://lozierinstitute.org/update-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-and-abortion-derived-cell-lines/
Horatius Cocles, Roborian, Zoninite, and New Kiwis
It is an interesting moral question that I have not really come to a concrete position on, there's a lot of different angles, whether it's primarily about the acceptability of the substance itself, or the process, or whether one is incentivizing the companies who make use of such. The whole structure of vaccine distribution complicates things too, there's no real direct interaction with the developers/company.
I think I slightly lean towards the critical/unacceptable side of things, but not to any extent that I'm sure of where I stand. As matters are, I'm likely not going to get vaccinated, so it's more of a philosophical exercise than anything.
---
A little bit of lightheartedness for rough times: https://babylonbee.com/news/tragedy-local-texas-man-so-focused-on-staying-warm-he-has-forgotten-the-alamo
Stay strong Texas.
Personally, I have no conviction to avoid anything with cells derived from aborted babies. If memory serves, babies aren't being continually killed to supply cells for these vaccines. The cells come from cultures that were started from a couple of babies who were killed decades ago. They're long dead. Boycotting these vaccines will not bring them back or keep more babies from being killed for this purpose- because more aren't being killed.
Hey, guess what? It's time for a long awaited Zentari poll! Come vote now!
You just gotta love the reasoning behind the second choice (which apparently is the most popular one), "Trump did untold damage to our democracy, so we must therefore in response make it illegal for the people to choose their preferred leader via vote."
'We must protect our democracy by destroying our democracy.'
Phydios, The Rouge Christmas State, New Kiwis, and Etowah union of tribes
You are correct that more people aren't being killed for the purpose and the cell lines date back to the 70s. That said, I would point out the problem of complicity: participating in someone else's sin/crime is wrong even if it is in the past, as is indirectly encouraging using illegal methods (via natural law) to achieve perceived goods.
Now I think the Catholic Church strikes the right position here: the original sin is distant enough, and your connection to it distant enough, that you do not commit as sin by receiving the vaccine, but it is still best encourage vaccines that have no involvement with that evil than those that are developed/grown inside cells derived from that evil.
I also think it is fairly creepy to use cells from someone who was killed and did not donate them and, even worse, for companies like Johnson & Johnson/Jansen to claim trademarks on one of the cell lines like they can own the genetic material taken from someone's kidneys.
As implied in what I have already said, I don't agree that just because no one else is being actively killed or there is no chance to bring back those killed for these ends, that it is okay to partake or support without reservations. As another example, I would similarly avoid using the data taken from the deal struck with Unit 731, even if the unit is gone and no further humans are being killed/tortured. The means used to get that data and these cell lines were fundamentally immoral and should not tolerated by society. Pepsi was boycotted for the same reason about a decade ago, and they stepped back.
Horatius Cocles, Roborian, New Kiwis, and Etowah union of tribes
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