3 Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
4 When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.
Anyone who trusts princes or governments is also a fool. For states and nations have risen and fallen time and time again. Here the neo-cons are wrong: America they say is not tribal, it is a propositional nation. They forget the Soviet Union was one as well. When the power stops, the works of that generation, of those politicians, becomes one with Tyre.
Any one who considers ancient people stupid and ignorant is a fool. There are many people who preach that the Jews of Jesus time acted in ignorance, for they did not have the gospel. They had something greater: Christ among them. And they knew who he is.
1After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay many invalids — blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a sabbath. 10So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” 11But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.'” 12They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” 13Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. 17But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” 18For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.
The Jews now opposed Jesus because he had claimed to be equal with God. This is radical: this led to trinitarian teaching — and the rejection of this is a core part of Islam (Not the Coptic churches: they disagree about the nature of the trinity) and Unitarianism. But Both are dying.
But are these dying remnants of primitive societies really so different from the rest of us? Mortality stalks most of the peoples of the world – not this year or next, but within the horizon of human reckoning. A good deal of the world seems to have lost the taste for life. Fertility has fallen so far in parts of the industrial world that languages such as Ukrainian and Estonian will be endangered within a century and German, Japanese, and Italian within two. The repudiation of life among advanced countries living in prosperity and peace has no historical precedent, except perhaps in the anomie of Greece in its post-Alexandrian decline and Rome during the first centuries of the Common Era. But Greece fell to Rome, and Rome to the barbarians. In the past, nations that foresaw their own demise fell to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Plague, Famine, and Death. Riding point for the old quartet in today’s more civilized world is a Fifth Horseman: loss of faith. Today’s cultures are dying of apathy, not by the swords of their enemies.
The Arab suicide bomber is the spiritual cousin of the despondent aboriginal of the Amazon rain forest. And European apathy is the opposite side of the coin of Islamic extremism. Both apathetic Europeans and radical Muslims have lost their connection to the past and their confidence in the future. There is not a great deal of daylight between European resignation to cultural extinction at the hundred-year horizon, and the Islamist boast, “You love life, and we love death.” Which brings us to Spengler’s Universal Law #2: When the nations of the world see their demise not as a distant prospect over the horizon, but as a foreseeable outcome, they perish of despair. Like the terminally ill patient cashing in his insurance money, a culture that anticipates its own extinction has a different standard of rationality than does conventional political science.
One can read of doom and gloom. Our economic system is in dire straits, with bank cooperatives (whose loaning practices skirt what is legal) not paying back depositors in china, a corrupt and secretive elite in the USA, and the use of various law suits. Canada is, if anything worse.
Today, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith issued an order in the Richard Warman vs Mark and Connie Fournier and John Does defamation case heard September, 2013. In addition to ordering that we must pay Warman $127,000, Justice Smith issued an injunction against us ordering we that never publish, or allow to be published, anything negative about Richard Warman. This means we are barred for life from ever operating a public forum or a blog (even about cookie recipes) where the public can comment. If we do so, any one of Warman’s handful of supporters could, and probably would, use a common proxy server to avoid being traced, plant a negative comment about Warman on our site, and we would both be charged with contempt of court. If that happened –unlike in the Ottawa courtroom where we were blocked at every turn from presenting a defense– we actually would have no defense. We would both go to jail. This life sentence was imposed for our terrible crimes of voicing our honestly held beliefs and allowing others to do the same. Defamation law, in its current state, is entirely inadequate and counterproductive when applied to the internet. Now it is being used as a tool of censorship.
On Wednesday, Judge Frederick Weisberg handed climate scientist Michael Mann a potentially significant victory in his defamation suit against Mark Steyn, National Review, Rand Simberg, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In a relatively brief order, Judge Weisberg denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss and lifted the stay on discovery in the suit. He explained:
Opinions and rhetorical hyperbole are protected speech under the First Amendment. Arguably, several of defendants’ statements fall into these protected categories. Some of defendants’ statements, however, contain what could reasonably be understood as assertions of fact. Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable. Viewing the allegations of the amended complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, a reasonable finder of fact is likely to find in favor of the plaintiff
For reasons I explained here, I am skeptical of this result. Judge Combs-Greene’s opinion was unpersuasive (and error-ridden) and Judge Weisberg — insofar as he adopted the same reasoning — is similarly mistaken. (Note, however, that Judge Weisberg did not claim he was bound by Judge Combs-Greene’s conclusions under the law of the case doctrine.) The statements at issue — however wrongheaded or outrageous — constituted protected expressions of opinion. Berkeley’s Dan Farber, who is undoubtedly less sympathetic to the defendants than am I, likewise believes the comments at issue were protected speech.
Now, I consider Richard Warman and Michael Mann to be academic bullies. They intimidate, they use the peer review process to kill papers (and even journals) Mann has not disclosed his data and it is questioned: Warman trolled the now repealed hate speech laws in Canada — to the point where the Canadians were repulsed by these laws and the politicians (finally) did something about it.
They deserve to be shunned. Mocked. Made into jokes. Steyn is quite effective at this. Not receive the protection of some judges who left their intelligence and discernment somewhere in the senior common room.
Perhaps the Psalmist should have said that we should not trust princes for they will make the courts fascist and corrupt. But… they too will perish, and be accountable to someone who is just. As will we all.
Finally, Mann and Warman, if you are butthurt, and want to sue, I live in Dunedin, New Zealand, This blog is read by about 200 people a day. The only reason I travel to North America is family, and that can change. if you use a sledgehammer on this gnat… your findings will be treated with the contempt they deserve: either ignored or fisked, but I serve neither the Canadian nor the Americans: your judges will get the response Private Eye normally has.