Politics According To Krauthammer

Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 8 months ago to Politics
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I just finished Charles Krauthammer's last book, "Things That Matter." It is so brillian that I literally found over 100 topics to discuss in this forum. But I won't. At the very start of the book he makes the point that no matter how much effort he puts into writing about science,medicine, art, poetry,architecture, chess, space, sports, numbers, in the end they must "bow to the sovereignty of politics."In trying to move the spectre of politics off the table he got into the Voyager probes and whose voice narrated but Kurt Waldheim, a former NAZI. It prompted me to ask the Gulch one simple but extremely profound question: What one thing would you send on Voyager 1 and/or 2? Krauthammer finally winds up saying what biologist and philosopher Lewis Thomas proposed as evidence of human achievement ;the Complete works of Bach.(Personally, I would have chosen Beethoven). So, am asking this forum, if you were allowed to send only one item on Voyager 1 or 2, what would it be? Remember you are representing all of earth from fauna to flora, from philosophy to nonsense, from math to quantum. Just one thing. Music? Science? words? go for it.

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  • Posted by rsgrahamjr 6 years, 8 months ago
    Mortimer Adler's compilation of 'The Great Books', I think, would be a nice addition.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ayn Rand had nothing to do with the spread of objectivism except to create it and inspire by writing an inspirational book. It was Branden who popularized it, lectured and proselitized it and designed and put out the printed matter. When she broke up with him over silliness, the movement fell apart, and Humpty-Dumptied. Silliness? Yes! She was married and she used him as a sex partner, and he idolized her and went along with it. He then fell in love with a woman other than his wife, and when Rand heard of it she broke off any relation she had with him. She had no claim to restrict him from meeting and falling for someone else. He was virtually her sex slave because he worshiped her so much. He'd never admit it, but as Grandpa Sherman would say, "You'd have to be blind in one eye and can't see out of the other" to not recognize it.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    What saved humanity in the past was the new frontier that was the Americas. It was the fresh start that was needed. And it has begun to devolve to where Europe was after Columbus. Hopefully, space will become the new frontier and possibly save humanity again. One can only hope.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My impression it was music which was used as communication. The "Seasons" reminded me of Glazenouv's "The Seasons." I love joyful music, exciting, arousing. Maybe John Williams only?
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  • Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It illustrates what riches of music we have as a race, what amazing things can be done acoustically. Some day, a composer will master combining acoustic with electronic to the point where you can't tell one from the other, and he or she will be Beethoven's inheritor.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    A true individualist would not want to be and would never BE elected now. We won’t live forever and need to take the least offensive alternative for the duration of our lives. What happens after I am gone isn’t of a lot of interest to me.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ayn Rand said what her motives were. You don't have to guess. Trump is not a consistent intellectual anything. Not liking the results of collectivism is not individualism.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree that trump isn’t an intellectually consistent individualist. If he were, he would want to repeal Obamacare, not repeal and replace it (only one example) .

    I think people today range from an intellectually consistent individualist to emotionally derived socialists like Bernie Sanders- with a lot of people bring in the gray area in between.

    The reason I characterize the trump support as a last stand of at least partial support for individualism is that they are standing up to the emotional appeals of collectivism, but without the benefit of a solid intellectual background. Hence, they will fail and be swept up in the coming Venezuelan - type funeral pyre when the USA wealth rubs out

    Trumps policies will make our current situation last longer, but willl not affect the eventual outcome.

    I don’t really know ARs motivations, but I say she did predict what’s going to happen
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It is not why she wrote Atlas Shrugged. She said "although the political aspects of Atlas Shrugged are not its central theme nor its main purpose..."

    Trying to prevent the plot from coming true is what she told herself while she was writing it, to avoid lapsing into disabling pessimism as she saw the events she was projecting in fiction already coming to be. That was her purpose in tolerating the negativism.

    Trump is not a last stand for what is left of American values; Trumpism is an emotional backlash following the 'man on the white horse' without understanding what American values have meant. Neither individualism nor the political implementation in the Constitution were ever about making "better deals" and emotional sales pitches to promote them. Don't project your values onto populism and conservative slogans.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Your quote supports my point about why she wrote AS.

    My point about the trump election was that it was the last stand for what’s left of American constitutional values. A weak stand I would agree. But just wait and see what follows him- a real horror show worse than obama
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  • Posted by chad 6 years, 8 months ago
    If there is a place where the populace is libertine and individualistic instead of collective they might find humans frightening in their degree of self destruction and acceptance of evil. I would hope there might be some motivation to rescue me from here.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    She said she wrote Atlas Shrugged to portray in fiction her vision of the ideal man. In 1964 she said "although the political aspects of Atlas Shrugged are not its central theme nor its main purpose, my attitude toward these aspects—during the years of writing the novel—was contained in a brief rule I had set for myself: "The purpose of this book is to prevent itself from becoming prophetic."

    Trump has no relation to that. Not only would a picture of Trump convey no meaning at all (and a picture is all there could be because there are no ideas to go with it), his election did not mean that America "woke up". Neither Trump nor the idolatry of the 'man on the white horse' show an awakening of reason and individualism, let alone the proper principles. Most of Trump's populist support, even in opposition to Hilary, is trying to have its cake and eat it too. The rejection of Clinton by a minority of the people, but enough to hold the electoral vote spread across the country between the dominant coasts, was much weaker than the rejection of George McGovern over 40 years ago both in numbers and in sense of life.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    As I remember, Ayn Rand was on an interview show and she did talk about how she wrote AS in hopes people would wake up and slow down and reverse the march to collectivism.

    The photo of Trump was just an indication of when America woke up for the last time before the socialists took over and destroyed the country
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Buckley is not standard of comparison for anything either "magnificent" or "really good".
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  • Posted by Stormi 6 years, 8 months ago
    A photo of FLW's FAllingwater house, with a caption "Authenticity in all".
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Buckley used vocabulary to obscure and impress his own narcissism, not communicate. That was not magnificent.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ayn Rand did not "hope" Atlas Shrugged would turn the tide, she strongly advocated the necessity of those who understand it spreading the right ideas. But she had expected that when Atlas Shrugged was published its ideas would be more widely acknowledged. By the end of her life she was not optimistic but recognized that people have free will and are able to choose.

    A photo of Trump would be meaningless.
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  • Posted by lrshultis 6 years, 8 months ago
    I would not have sent anything other than the Voyagers to gain knowledge of the solar system and a little beyond it. It is a little irrational to think that, if the probe was ever found by some intelligent beings, that thousands or millions of years or if at all in the future, the stuff sent would be of any importance at all. Until it is possible to travel faster than light, there is zero possibility of the probes being discovered.
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  • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 8 months ago
    A hyperlink to my website. We pretty much cover it all. A picture is worth...
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