On Eywa, Libertarians, and No Niqabs in Court

I would love to live in a world where being really, really bad at something means that you win. Like what couldn't I do? Win a multi-million dollar grant for software programming research? Get paid to develop a cure for cancer? Win an Olympic medal? Positively critique post-modern environmental feminist literature?

Actually maybe I could do that last one, "She eviscerates my soul with a heart wrenching drama exploring and extrapolating the contours of the female personification of divine uncertainty. Only in suffering this loss. By understanding not with the feeble flutterings of the mind but with the typhoon of truth that lies, swelling but stifled in the breast of every daughter of Eywa as they suffer the torture of conformity to a world determined to destroy their fabric of being. To destroy it so that they, the oppressors, can latter satiate their greed for destruction, while the guardians of the earth, those who were born of our Mother to protect her, the sisterhood of priestesses, stands by with silent, bowed heads. They are empty....." Did I do well? Alright you can all stop laughing. Some people make real money spouting that stuff, which is more than I do.

Speaking of which the people who said that Avatar was Dances with Wolves meets Pocahontas were right. They forgot to add the bit about "...meets Michael Moore". As far as I can see the movie was a call for Greenpeace to buddy up with the Taliban (and the pantheists, what do we call God now, Allah-Leaf? Or is that the drugs that are apparently bankrolling the terrorists. Hm, I get it! The sacred tree is really an opium poppy and the sacred floating milkweed...okay skip it) So therefore the movie was a call for Greenpeace to buddy up with the Taliban and the Mafia to wage armed war for the purpose of destroying the western, Christian, environment-raping, anti-science, war-mongering, capitalist people who want to fight "terror with terror" since we all know that the "terrorists" are gorgeous, peaceful, in tune with nature, good guys. The "baddies" and "goodies" in this movie have seldom been more predictable since nursery fairy tales. They couldn't even vary the stranger meets daughter of chief and falls in love thing. Don't strangers ever meet the daughter of the garbageman and fall in love? For the record, if there was any amazing twist at the end of the movie I missed it. I had a headache and didn't think that watching a bunch of aliens attack heavily armored spacecraft with bows and arrows, and win, was going to help.

But can I have a personal flying bird-thing and a glowing forest? That was cool.

Now if you really want to see a good movie, watch The Book of Eli. That was cool and thoughtful. Well alright, way more thoughtful than cool unless you enjoy post-apocalyptic scenes shot in one colour, gray, with lots of grime, violence, and chronic poverty. I don't. So I'll erase the cool bit and just call it thoughtful. Mentally cool. Christian movies as they should be. Also R rated.

Also on my list of cool things, the Binks. Master compiler, fashion expert (he noticed my hat, what can I say), encourager of little blogs, resource extraordinaire, etcetera ad infantum has another post up. Shove along and read it. You can find some juicy stuff on Gaza peace activist knives, Ayn Rand the Big Sister, oil in the gulf, and the Toronto Police tricycle brigade. Do go read up.

I am a conservative, not a libertarian. Indeed I believe that libertarianism has some fundamental flaws. (this should provoke some unprintable stuff in my comment section. The fact that it is true nothwithstanding. For the record, I even met one card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party of Ontario who freely admitted to me that many of his fellow party members should be in jail. His name shall not be released. The fact that I don't know it is a complete aside.) As Chesterton said,

"Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat." (Orthodoxy)

That is really the fundamental flaw with radical Libertarianism. They deny the cat. That said, libertarians have a tendency to make some remarkably good points on a not infrequent basis. I think slimming down the government is a very good idea. Step one, defund any and all interest groups and subsidies to private businesses and corporations. That should go a long, long way. I promise that I will actually dialogue with any comments this time, I know I have been bad for that in the past. P.S. I am not a libertarian, keep the comments clean. I censor.

David Warren for a good read on Tea Parties and coming problems (and why we need a balance to the "ornery know-nothing libertarians" without capitulating to the "pointy-headed intellectual control-freaks").

Speaking of doing what you want to do, no you can't wear a niqab when you are testifying in court. Yes, it may be painful and difficult to take it off. If it comes to that retelling the story of an assault or abuse may be very painful and difficult, but we don't put people in jail for years without hearing the evidence and testimony against them. Likewise, we want to see your face when you are giving testimony, it is important in deciding whether or not you are telling the truth. And no, we don't have some stereotype that we have to get over about women in niqabs being likely to lie. We have this belief that everyone in court is a potential liar. That's why we have things like cross-examination for instance.

Speaking of which, the article I wish I wrote on the Israeli raid on the "humanitarian" ships written, once again, by our own dear D. Warren. Of course it was nothing but a publicity stunt of the more hypocritical and nasty type. Look, if even I knew that the ships were going to sail before they sailed, it was not a covert attempt. It was provocation.