A "reason," other than apathy, that kept otherwise decent people away from the polls? Excuse me?

Now, in the aftermath of our election disaster, I found the last in a series of ten articles on it, at NuVo Initiative.

"Experts" seem to agree, however they get their information, that significant numbers of religious conservatives stayed home on Election Day and did not vote. Some of that may be attributable to anger or disgust at our border situation; some of it may be due to our huge spending programs; much of it may be due to the way our media has been negatively hammering every aspect of the Iraq war since it began. I submit for your consideration that many more people watch and read the MSM Leftist-spun news sources, collectively, than watch Fox, listen to Talk Radio, and follow any Blogs, all together. They've been doing it since they were children, and they trust the MSM. Therefore, they have almost universally been steeped in negative-spun views on our side of the war in general, and on Bush in particular. Not the real facts, but the MSM News.

Now, these factors may cause an otherwise conservative person to vote against the sitting government in anger, or, less likely, they may cause him to stay home and not participate.

What does that leave us with, as participants in the voting process? Committed Leftists. Green nutburgers. Gay Libbers. Abortion activists. ACLU supporters. In other words, Anti-Believers. And, as Hannity keeps showing, again and again, Democratic silly twits who can't name the sitting Vice President, or Secretary of State, and probably don't know up from down.

SANE's NuVo Initiative is a "Null Vote" movement, in which high philosophical and intellectual reasons are given for one to not vote, and to be very vocal about why one is not voting. Don't vote, and tell all your friends, neighbors and family why you're not voting.

Reasons. Well now, let me see.

1. Our Republic, as founded and intended by the Founders, is moving toward a pure Democracy, an unworkable system even before movements seeking to include even non-citizens in the voting process. Senators are no longer elected by State Legislatures, but by popular vote, and there is a movement to eliminate the Electoral College. Other factors combine with these to move power away from local jurisdictions, weakening and eventually eliminating the Rule of Subsidiarity and all local authority, and making "the people" responsible, eventually, for everything.
2. The Court, under Leftist control of its membership and its direction, no longer adheres to the pre-existing, written words in the Constitution, but creates completely new, unlegislated and unrepresentative law, by merely "interpreting" presented ideas into legal decisions and thereby establishing legal precedent that the other two once co-equal but ever increasingly more subservient branches of government meekly follow, just like stupid little sheep.
3. Issues are now being decided by popular vote that never should even have been called into question in the first place. Popular vote is now, or in the future, to decide such things as the nature of marriage; when a human being is a human being; when a human being can be destroyed for a "higher" purpose; when a human being can be aborted; when someone's child can be secretly smuggled somewhere for an abortion; when a boy-scout troop needs a homosexual scoutmaster imposed over it; whether we should physically confront an enemy who has sworn to kill us all, or subjugate us all, or convert us all. And more.
4. The lines of citizenship - potential voters - are increasingly blurred as time goes on. Many within our borders refuse to assimilate, and keep to some sub-culture or counter-culture to which they identify more strongly than they do to the larger American ideal. In fact, many among them detest the American Ideal and say so. Some are here legally, some illegally, but the important factor is the separateness, the unwillingness to assimilate, and the hostility to Americanism. It is therefore argued that we, collectively, are less of a people than we were in the founding era, and can no longer call ourselves a good people, or a decent people, or an American people, because we are becoming a conglomerate of traditions and values and norms.

I submit that none of this removes from any of us our responsibility and our duty as citizens to participate in the process. Every single demographic gathered still shows that we remain a Judeo-Christian people, whether we show it in the public square or not, and whether it is obvious or not. Over 86% professed Christians, over 90% professed believers, however well or poorly we practice our faith, that is what we call ourselves. NuVo will accomplish nothing other than to take some of the best believing Americans out of the process, yielding the field to the enemy. No matter how high-sounding the philosophical rhetoric, the bottom line is NuVo encourages good, moral people to not vote, leaving all the voting to the most immoral and / or unthinking people.

All voting does not necessarily lead to the predicted Global Village nearly as much as piss-poor voting and / or not voting at all does. So what if an issue shouldn't be on the ballot in the first place; vote your morality anyway. If you don't like the increasing reach of government, do something proactive to put an end to it. Not voting is not proactive, all pretty arguments aside. This is not a matter for high philosophy; this is your basic, fundamental real world situation that demands action, not lofty thoughts and high discourse. At what point might the larger public notice this Nuvo Initiative, and suddenly say, Gosharooties, those NuVo people appear to be right; let's all suddenly just re-establish the American Republic in the theoretically perfect image that they all imagine.

Poof.

Sorry, but it just ain't gonna happen. America is what we - you and me - make it, not what we wish it to be, and not what we talk it up to be. We were not put here to be spectators, or mere commentators and critics. Citizenship here is not free. Freedom has a cost. The less we exercise our legal right to actively participate in the government process, the weaker that right will become, and the closer we (or our children or grandchildren) come to one day, potentially, getting our new work assignment in front of an oven door in some camp, or something similar.

If any man truly believes in God then he is called to action in favor of His rule, and to either pull, push, or at least get the Hell out of the way. In the American political process, as on the field of battle, some of us are called to attack, some are called to defend, and some are called to support. For the most part, if you are not a cleric or consecrated monk or nun, then you really are not called solely to pray, but also to actively participate. Is there no sense of duty in the NuVo Initiative? Is this not just a high-sounding form of Let Someone Else Do It?

Attack! Lead the attack. Who better to lead than the ones with the most effective logical ammunition and weapons? No one was given rhetorical and logical and philosophical talent to just publicly blather about it, while encouraging the best in America to a disgusting neutrality on the most important issues confronting man today. We are all in the world for a purpose, and temporarily, by the blessing of God. This is not a pleasure cruise; either fish, cut bait, or get off the boat and quit your public bitching. If this initiative has contributed significantly to the outcome of the election, and I think it has, then NuVo should be ashamed of it.

While all of the philosophical points are not only correct, but soul stirring, the ultimate goal remains wrong; voting, in and of itself, does not necessarily lead to any inevitable One World government. It can be used to restrict it, with the right leadership. Inaction in today's situation is tantamount to abject surrender.

I am reminded of the quote from Rev 3:15-16:

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.

I still like the mission of SANE, but I think it needs a better strategy. An effective one.

Pray for America.

From: Shalom Midbar
Date: Fri, November 10, 2006, 12:43 PM
Subject: To Mr. Biorseth
Comments:

Mr. Biorseth, your comment is a good one but I would say almost wholly misdirected.

First, the NuVo essay no 10 seems to say that of the religious conservatives who did not vote some acted out of disgust and frustration and you've added another possibility, misrepresentation by the Main Stream Media of the situation in Iraq.

The problem is that the media is what it is. And, now at least, Iraq is a mess and the President continues to rely on the Ideology of Democracy to "fix" it and Islam proper. The evidence and logic suggests this is wrongheaded at best if not patently dangerous and fatal at worse.

But, to your broader point. We must "engage" the system or we risk turning over the country to the dangerous Elites. But in your rendition of four reasons for the NuVo Initiative, you mentioned the EFFECTS of the REASON for NuVo not the REASON itself. The REASON itself is the Science/Democracy Reciprocal or Obversion.

If you haven't studied this aspect of SANE, you are missing what so captivated me when I discovered this site several months ago. As a "scientist" and "mathematician", I find this critique demonstrably true. And, it is the basis of our democracy, Open Society Today. If you understand this critique, then you will understand that your "voting" in order to save us from the EFFECTS is in reality aggravating the EFFECTS because you are reinforcing the REASON.

Address the Russian roulette metaphor. What would you do in that case?

Welcome aboard and keep in mind one thing I have learned participating and reading here. The few, but growing commentators on SANE are expected to argue strongly and to make their points with rigorous arguments. But don't be thin skinned. These are hard and cutting edge issues. We are pioneering new ground. There is no other site like SANE in all of the billions of blogs that have been created. We all "own" this site, even those among us not of the SANE staff. Again, welcome aboard.

From: Vic Biorseth
Date: Monday, November 13, 2006 8:20 AM
Subject: To Mr. Midbar
Comments:

Mr. Midbar:

Thank you for your thought provoking comments.

You are quite right: the SLIMC "is what it is," and I see that as the major contributing factor in the whole problem. Many, many generations of Americans have grown up reading and listening to and watching and being formed and guided by them. But, I do not merely say of them that they are what they are and leave it at that; I resist them and I directly attack them, and I look to a future change for the better in that quarter. It's much the same with the Scientistic crew that I repeatedly refer to as all of TTRSTF, a fellowship to which I pray that you do not belong.

As I said in my comments on the original Bush War Revisited article that first drew my attention to SANE, I disagree that the Bush war doctrine is wholly wrong, and in fact believe that Democracy in Iraq might be the single most achievable antagonistic-to-Islam goal open at the moment. The fact that Democracy does not come easily, or soon, or with guaranteed perfection, does not change that possibility. I would like to hear your comments regarding that particular comment; I hope you will agree, at least, with the premise that Democracy and Islam are so antagonistic to each other as to be mutually exclusive, at some level. I submit that to whatever degree Moslems move voluntarily into Democracy, to that same degree do they voluntarily violate Islam, or, at least, Sharia, and become somewhat less fierce in their religion, both in practice and in "evangelization."

History seems to indicate that as predominantly Islamic lands become more Democratic they become less dangerous to their neighbors, and, in reverse, as they become less Democratic, they become more dangerous to their neighbors. Where is the evidence and logic that suggests that this - specifically, increasing Democracy in Islamic lands - is wrongheaded at best and fatal at worst?

You're quite right; all of this SANE sponsored NuVo direction is quite new to me and I haven't studied it. To your comment regarding the Science/Democracy Reciprocal or Obversion, my first reaction was - Huh?

It made me go back and read and re-read much of the preceding material and the 10th article in particular, which was the first one I ever saw. I think I now understand, but still disagree, mostly with the apparent absolute certainty of it. I've seldom encountered such fatalism. All of this discourse might be fine in some faculty lounge or at some high-toned cocktail party, but SANE is encouraging all who encounter their website to adopt their thinking and drop out of the American voting system.

Before you introduce a change into a functioning system, you should first consider whether that change will help or hinder the function of that system. The system under consideration here is the unique Jeffersonian-model of Democracy under-girding our unique American Republic. The function of the system, as designed, is to provide a manageable form of representative government to the people of the nation. The change being proposed is to get all of the most devout Christians and Jews to not vote in elections, leaving all the voting in all elections to be done by the least religious among potential voters.

In other words, the SLIMC wins. By default.

I disagree with the premise that our form of government cannot be self correcting but by its nature must devolve into purer and more inclusive forms of Democracy inevitably spiraling into the Global Village. The original intended function of our system can be restored by decent men. If they vote. It is possible to return to being a nation of laws and not merely of men, but only if enough of men are willing to return to the literal words of our Constitution, and to the principle of separation of powers that goes along with that.

I do not see the point in demonizing all Open Societies based on the questionable proposition that an Open Society must be or somehow must eventually become a totally Open Society, nor do I accept the implied notion that a movement toward Democracy somehow equates to a movement toward an absolutely unrestrained Open Society. I oppose such a complete openness, and obviously so do you, and we both live in a Democracy. Does that not indicate that an Open Society, like a Democracy, can exist within some limiting parameters? The limiting factors to openness to other people and other values should be set by the people of the nation, through their participation in the process, which necessarily includes voting. If you see what you think are inexorable pressures toward unlimited openness, then you have the option contributing to inexorable pressures limiting openness. Through your vote.

Or, you can sit back and do nothing in a strange, self-congratulatory way.

If our Democracy is so fatally flawed by its tendency towards unlimited Open Society, then, what are our alternatives to our Democracy? Return to Monarchy? Some form of Socialism? Rule by some hopefully benign Dictator-of-the-moment? Show me where your path is leading us.

I see no evidence or logic supporting the contention that abandoning field and leaving the vote to

1. those with no external guiding ethos
2. those who have abandoned or never learned to do critical thinking
3. the most immoral among us

I reject the Russian Roulette metaphor as a poor analogy. If we sit at the table with the revolver, and there is a live cartridge in one chamber, and we take turns spinning the cylinder, pointing and clicking, sooner or later someone is going to get shot. It's just a matter of the number of cycles.

Not so with our Democracy. I see no empirical evidence that suggests that our American form of government must be just as inevitably and as fatally directed as is the game of Russian Roulette. The NuVo Initiative is based upon nothing other than a very attractive hypothesis. In other words, it is a conjecture, and nothing more. I remind you that a conjecture, no mater how scientific, no matter how educated, no matter how much consensus it enjoys, never, ever, rises above the level of being a guess.

In Gen 22:16-17 I find that all nations are to be blessed through Israel:

I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.

I take a much simpler approach to the problem, and it is this:

1. Champion Truth.
2. Attack Liars.

From: Jay Tyler
Date: Tue, November 14, 2006, 02:54 PM
Subject: NuVo 10
Comments:

I am glad to see sensible, reasoned critique of NuVo. That of Vic Biorseth satisfies this standard. But, frankly, it is pointless to argue against NuVo without arguing against NuVo. The point of sensible and reasoned critique of NuVo cannot be non-participation in the terms of discourse it establishes as its basis. The terms are science, in particular mathematical physics (the meaning is the mathematization of physics as set in the context of the reduction of ALL body to indefinite and identical matter). This simple first premise of NuVo is it reduces all Speech (mathematical physics is not speech) to Uncertainty. The first thing one must do to disagree with NuVo is to show, or even say, this starting point is untrue. This is the position of those who talk about a "good" science and a "bad" science; so-called scientism. NuVo has taken this on in the piece about Dawkins, in effect showing there is no scientism among scientists; that Dawkins is right about this, and also speaks for science as such.

Make this your next submission Vic. It's not a "challenge" but simply a level. If it's not your thing, consider if not voting is as bad as you think it is. Ellen Rossini's letter of today, who evidently votes and doesn't intend to stop, still says she sees the wrongness in "voting" if we should murder the innocent. Mainly this is what is chopped-speech so that "murder" is also killing murderers or fetuses not murderable. But let's start here. Whittle this one down. Surely we can stop voting on abortion.
All the best,

JT

From: Vic Biorseth
Date: Tue, November 14, 2006, 07:20 PM
Subject: To JT:

My dear JT:

Science, Schmience; Method, Schmethod; Certainty, Schmertainty. These positions or arguments are unrealistic and pointless. We're not in some classroom, and our personal, familial, local, national and international direction is not driven by mere theory and hypotheses, but by very real-world phenomena. This stuff might be good for high intellectual discourse or for maybe even for making beer-bets, but this is not the stuff by which we should be driving (or not driving) the national bus.

All speech is reduced to uncertainty? Sez who?

Please point me to the piece on Dawkins that you referred to; I don't see it. I find it hard to believe that Dawkins might be right about anything at all, most especially anything he might say about Scientism. I'll take one F. A. Hayek (who coined the phrase) to any 100 Dawkinses any day of the week. I recently did an article touching on Dawkins' competence and high esteem among all of TTRSTFs, which you can see right here, if you can handle a manner of speaking that most do not find to be in any way uncertain. Yep, he's sure scientifical all right.

Yes, there is "wrongness" in sacred human life issues being reduced to decision by mere popular ballot. But there is more "wrongness" in standing by and allowing the situation to get even worse. So long as the SLIMC controls and spins national discourse, and is allowed by us to religiously censor all images of abortion on the same airwaves on which we regularly see live C-section birth deliveries, open heart surgery and horrible old Holocaust films, while abortion is one of the most common procedures practiced now, we can only expect this situation to get worse. That's the problem.

When enough of us are angry enough, and proactive enough, we will generate a revolution in (or affecting) the field of Journalism toward the broadcasting of unvarnished Truth. The distinct minority that controls the media is shaping minds. And that's how it came to be that contemporary people are not horrified by abortion, for instance. It's talked around, and about, and over; it is never, ever shown. Not even on Capital Hill, where even grown up Congressmen use cartoons or un-bloody artistic renderings to illustrate their pro-life points. And they don't get it, because they've been adversely affected by media disinformation too.

NuVo is dead wrong. What SANE ought to be pushing is Truth and a heavy dose of Reality in direct opposition to clear falsehood. Taking just one issue - abortion - I believe it safe to say that the overwhelming American population simply could not stand it, and could not stand for it, if they knew exactly what it was and exactly how it came to be. Its chief proponents and original architects are, in a word, liars. Now, this is just one issue of many that is just crystal clear; it is an issue that is so easy to debate and argue by any clear-headed believing Jew or Christian that I have to wonder how it ever gained so much ground - but then, I remember the SLIMC and its stranglehold on the Truth of it.

Physics and mathematics have nothing whatsoever to say about morality, politics, our national direction, or whether or not someone should vote. NuVo is way out of its league on this point. You can't base social organization (or disorganization) on math or physics any more than you can base your next rocket design on input from a popular rapper or a psycho-therapist. When material science can produce a provable source and destiny for matter itself it might gain a bit more respect from me; until then, I'll continue to view it as just another field of work to do, among the many.

And I will not ever give up my vote.

Warmest regards,

Vic

From: Shalom Midbar
Date: Tue, November 14, 2006, 11:56 PM
Subject: science and Democracy
Comments:

Vic:

For reference, the Dawkins piece is the Science v Scientism essay located HERE. Permit me to spell it out, but you should still study it.

For science to work, it must be able to reduce the world, every part of it that has any meaning for us, to mathematical physics. Don’t be confused about this. Scientific theories hold no certainty -- scientists themselves say this (although it is true that many of the politicized scientists, the majority today, argue for even the certainty of the theory in vogue). But a true scientist will concede that theories are always subject to revision with new discoveries and experimental data. Even the laboratory observations hold no certainty -- quantum physics now tells us that man's observations can change the very nature of the thing being observed depending upon how the thing is observed, meaning measured.

Rather, the certainty of science (and it is this about science that is destructive of human existence) is in its claim that the world and everything in it can be reduced to equation. Equations are made up of infinitely malleable symbols but all amounting to mere proportions of magnitudes, meaning quantities.

Now, to give a rather crass example, if a scientist were to say that his equations of matter included all that was necessary to describe the world we live in but then he were to concede to have omitted Divine Purpose, what the Greeks referred to in their own way as Telos, the equations would no longer symbolize the world and would be, according to Science, false. It would be akin to a scientist saying that E=mc2 and then accepting that E=mc2 + Divine Purpose where Divine Purpose was simply not subject to human ratiocination because you could plug in no variable or symbol to capture it. Why? Because it is not a magnitude or quantity. And, the mathematician would explain to you condescendingly that you cannot plug into an equation something that does not represent some magnitude (i.e., quantity). If defeats the purpose of math. And, then you should say, that is why mathematical physics destroys the Truth of Existence. Existence is not reducible to magnitudes.

This means, per Descartes and the Enlightenment thinkers who hold sway so dominantly today, that the certainty of the mathematics of science -- the ability to reduce the world including human existence to symbols representing infinitely malleable magnitudes (i.e., quantities) -- DEMANDS the uncertainty of all else. Going back to our example, if the Divine Purpose in the equation were wholly uncertain, the scientist would simply remove it as wholly irrelevant to an equation dealing with the certainties of symbolic quantities. For the scientist, E is a certainty. It is a symbol representing some measurable quantity. In the equation, it doesn’t matter how much E there is only that it stands in proportion to two other equally certain symbols similarly representing magnitudes standing in proportion to E. All just infinitely variable magnitudes of matter.

What does this mean? It means that all of the things you say, like abortion is wrong, could be true to you or to your co-believers (and to us), just like Divine Providence in our case above, but that is all it can be. A Belief. Uncertain and wholly subjective.

So you don't misunderstand. It is this SANE rejects. Plain and simple. Man's existence, his being, is simply not reducible to the part of existence that is matter.

Now, Dawkins, Einstein and the rest, will tell you that science can not explain how we ought to be living. Only what we are doing physically. This is what you say and all men of religious belief say who wish to live with science’s certainty but to curb its dominion. But, if science is certain even just for the “natural” or “physical” world (as opposed to the “metaphysical” world as if they were divisible), then the How of how we ought to be living in this “natural” world cannot be discovered as Truth, because it is not subject to the method of mathematical physics; it cannot be known; it can only be believed with uncertainty. It is just “an opinion.”

So what does that mean? It means that the Truth of Existence you and I experience in our lives of faith and Reason is simply false -- at least according to Science. Your “truth” might be pleasurable, desirable, and even quite socially or personally useful in the complex world we live in, but it cannot be true. Truth in human affairs, since the Enlightenment, has been reduced to the method of voting (i.e., democracy) because democracy is predicated precisely on the notion that truth in human affairs is the uncertainty captured in the method of voting.

Parenthetically, at least for purposes of this discussion, our founding fathers understood this to some degree and made every effort to limit democracy or voting to a given People and to a given class within the People. They did so because they thought that voting might work -- and at the time it was all but an untried constitutional experiment -- if it were restricted to men who understood and experienced the world in a fraternity of purpose and destiny. To do otherwise, to say that fraternity of purpose and destiny, the guts of a nation and a People are whatever the majority might say it is at any given time – precisely what we have come to today in the Open Society -- is to embrace a world that knows no truth but method.

Now, you say this is all highfalutin philosophic gibberish. But yet, you struggle to explain how it is that the life of the human baby in the mother's womb can be voted upon and lose! How the few good men in Congress, like Rick Santorum, can lose while the Arlen Specters who embrace abortion can win!

So in your frustration to explain it, you latch on to a symptom. The media. But the media and even the Elites (such as the professors, who most assuredly pursue the agenda of science-democracy at every turn) are but the symptom. The etiology is what we have learned here at SANE (and I count myself one of the fortunate ones), from Yerushalmi and as I gather from his teacher, Robert Loewenberg.

But with all of your words, you cannot explain why this has taken place with such abandon. Yours are words which indict the purveyors (correctly so) but they are without explanation. Your words, with great emotion, fail to capture the simple but obvious fact that you condemn the Elites as messengers of something you know to be bad and wrong because you see the results, but miss the message itself and its implications.

Now, as to voting, or more properly, the Null Vote. NuVo was at first difficult for me also. But I have come to understand that voting is Democracy in the Open Society. Today, it can be nothing else. You wish to suggest that if you work hard enough campaigning, you can get the vote in your favor. For how long? And will they not do the same? If you lose the vote, do you concede the truth at least insofar as you "accept" the democratic vote? What would you do if the Elites stood up and said, we wish to vote on the “right” of a women to kill her new born if it had an IQ below X. Vote? Campaign against such a thing? Let’s suppose you did. And lost. Now what? Now they are murdering babies. Do you wage another campaign and vote again? And lose again? Having lost twice, what do you do? Resign yourself to continue to participate until the vote goes your way? What if two-thirds of the nation passes a constitutional amendment that says abortion, including partial birth abortion, shall always be legal and that this amendment can only be amended by a 99% vote? Keep on voting?

What are you going to do to convince the "voters" who say to you, “Look, you have your view of murder and we have ours.” You vote and we vote. Whoever wins is right and good and just for the time being. At least until we vote again.” Isn’t that what we hear from many quarters among the Republicans? Before the election, we heard ad nausea that if we all didn’t get out and vote the world would come to an end. “No decent man, no matter how frustrated with the Rs would ever not vote and give it away to the Ds. That would be fatal." But now that the voters chose the Ds, we hear, "Well this is a blessing in disguise. The Rs deserved to lose for their fat cat lifestyles. Now we can really reform and vote again.” Do you not see the silliness in this?

You wish to reject the deeper understanding of the science-democracy obversion as cocktail talk because you want us to keep voting. No matter what. Voting is better than XXXXX. But what is XXXXX mean when it can happen anytime and all times.

NuVo -- the Null Vote, not voting -- is not abandonment. Precisely the opposite. There is much to do for a man of faith and Reason to bring order to his world. See for example the IASPS-SANE Project Proposal as a start. But voting is in fact Russian roulette with a loaded gun. Good men like you and me have been arguing for 200 years against the Elites. And, we started with a distinct advantage: the founding. But since the Civil War, and certainly in the 20th century, the Elites have proven far more adept at the game of voting than you or I precisely because the West and our founding fathers made some serious mistakes at the outset. The proof for this is in the pudding, as they say.

One mistake was not limiting the size of America and more importantly not protecting the local community political orders from a national government that was never meant to become a Health, Welfare, and Safety police power devoid of the fraternity and Judeo-Christian worldview among smaller communities of men who shared the same vision. This suggests does it not another avenue or policy of action? There are yet others.

Finally, let me just address your statements about democracy and Islam. Where has democracy tamed a Shari’a-faithful Islamic nation? You make an empirical statement to the contrary. Give me two examples. Give me one.

Further, you say that democracy is antagonistic to Islam. That is true only because you ironically stand up democracy as the slayer of Islamic truth. In America you would fight against democracy's ability to destroy truth – for example, its ability to vote on and approve of abortion -- yet you would want an Islamic democracy to cast aside the Islamic truth of its world view of hegemony and vote like the liberal democrats you wish to counter here in America. Islam is evil not because the Open Society democracy would oppose Shari’a, but because Shari’a is a FALSE truth. Islamic law is evil because it destroys all that is true and good in the Judeo-Christian world. Isn't it odd that conservatives use as a weapon against Islam that it criminalizes homosexuality as if that is a sign of its evil? In America, this too was criminalized until just recently – and properly so -- when the Elites successfully “voted” and cleansed even the criminal statutes of any Judeo-Christian founding.

An Islamic democracy works just fine (from the Islamic point of view) if you live in an Islamic nation in which the vast majority accept the Shari'a as the living word of Allah. There is nothing in that aspect of democracy that would tame anyone. They vote. They just happen to vote to say that Shari'a is supreme. In our country, we unfortunately say the Supreme Court is supreme. Our court sanctions the murder of babies in the womb; the Muslims sanction the murder of infidels.

What you intend by suggesting that democracies are "peaceful" is precisely why democracies are fatal. The democracy predicated upon the science-democracy obversion is peaceful for the reason that it will not fight to defend itself against the Other because it has no basis upon which to KNOW its existence is superior to its enemies. Do you need an example of this absurdity? Just listen to the debate about "profiling" Muslims. Open Society democracies cannot establish a political order because “order” (not in the sense of “law and order” but ontological order) requires one to be able to discriminate in favor of its People and against the Other. Discrimination requires the application of the Truth of one’s existence. If all of human existence, including one’s very nation, is only an uncertain good, fighting wars becomes effectively impossible.

So if your "peace" is this kind of democracy peace, then it most assuredly leads to the One World State-Open Society. If you don't see that, I dare say, respectfully, that you remain in the fog of the science-democracy malady. And in that case, the only option you have is to vote.

But I shall not. I will not attempt to establish the Truth of Existence with the democracy club that when used proves only that Method is King because truth is not within our reach. Because I reject with every fiber of my being this assertion, I will work toward Truth but with Truth.

All the best and with many prayerful blessings,

Shalom

From: Vic Biorseth
Date: Wed, November 15, 2006, 12:59 PM
Subject: The NuVo Initiative

Shalom:

Thank you for the link to the piece on Dawkins. It seems to present a different definition or usage of Scientism than what I have used and still use. I do not condemn all of science as Scientism; I reserve the term for certain seemingly universally accepted so-called scientific theories that are backed up by nothing, other than a popular composite or a collective consensus on a purely subjective conjecture. I speak at length about some of these here and here, and in many other pages and articles. I charge those who teach and defend these so-called "scientific" theories with religious faith in them, since they can produce no other evidences. Whether they really are faithful men or not only they know; my goal is either to move them to scientifically reconsider the theory in question, or to openly insult them by calling them non-scientists. There is nothing scientific about officially elevating hypotheses regarding phenomena that have never even been observed let alone tested to the level of a scientific theory, and then supporting and teaching and using it as an axiom, a generally accepted given, to be built upon. Like E=MC².

I'm still astounded at how many scientists today are so absolutely certain about their absolute uncertainty.

In Splendor Of Truth John Paul the Great expounds and defends Objective Truth against philosophical and moral relativism and the Modern denial of absolute Truth. And in Faith And Reason he stresses the return to metaphysics, the reality of fixed, objective yet knowable Truth, the return to Reason, and turning from Doubtfulness and the Crisis of Meaning. It's as good a response to what appears to me to be an almost general failure of science today. At least in public; the science that someone like me is made aware of. I'm sure there are still plenty of good scientists out there, but good science isn't being publicized very much these days.

And, thank you for the link to the IASPS-SANE Project Proposal; it's the most positive, proactive thing I've seen here so far. It's going after the most important division of the enemies of Truth, the one entrenched in academia; the other two are, of course, the SLIMC and the rest of Show Biz. The university is the most critical center for the fight, because the university produces teachers, and teachers become the major influence on young minds.

I am no scientist; indeed, I never even finished my degree. I have 45 credit hours in physics, and 45 squeaking-by-with-a-C credit hours in mathematics, from so long ago that only the fuzzy foundation is left. I have spent a long career as a computer programmer and systems analyst, working with many professional people, many (not all) of whom were multi-lettered semi-literate college graduates, who were, predominantly, Leftist, indifferentist, globalist, utopian, and essentially unprincipled people. I sometimes think it might be a good thing that I didn't spend more time in academia.

But the major news media and entertainment today is almost as destructive to principle and to ethos as schools. When you see a kid with chartreuse hair, a tattooed ass and nipple rings, you're looking at a kid imitating life as seen on TV and in the movies and on CDs and DVDs. Kids are impressionable. They imitate what they perceive to be cool. If you think the university is an unprincipled learning environment, turn on the TV. Even the advertisements are vulgar. Look at today's cartoons. Not only are they ugly, they are downright vulgar. But, I maintain, it is an elitist minority driving the SLIMC - Show-Biz bus, just as it is an elitist minority driving the academic bus.

I submit that this is a cause, not a symptom, of our national condition today.

Now, what we're talking about here involves things that effect a people's set of principles, or their external guiding ethos. That is what can change a people for the better or for the worse. That is what guides, or fails to guide, voters. Our Western ethos is founded upon the existence of an external objective Truth that is completely independent of the mind of man. It exists. It is independent of science. It is independent of thought.

The banner proclaiming this existence is what SANE should be raising high to lead the charge of the rest of us, against all opponents to the existence of external objective Truth, wherever they may be. Proof that teachers can have an effect on children is proved by the negative effects we see today, and by many, many past examples of positive effects. What is bad may be corrected, as SANE recognizes in it's new initiative at the link above. I submit that something similar (I don't know what) needs to be done to publicly oppose and eventually overturn the direction of mainstream media and major entertainment in this country.

It is principles that need to be restored if we ever hope to defeat politically what seems to be so prevalent among our representatives today. I still maintain that we cannot stop voting while these efforts progress. It's our system, and voting is how it is driven, and if we don't make it work, we stand to lose it. A good beginning point is to defeat Democrats so we can wind up with Supreme Court Justices who have what used to be known as good judgment. I don't think I need to remind you that it was the Court - not voters - who single-handedly dismantled representative law all across the land and established new unrepresentative law with Roe V Wade and Doe V Bolton. We didn't get to vote on that. And neither did a majority of Congress get to vote on the undoing of it, thanks to the Democratic Party. Not voting can only exacerbate that condition.

Why, exactly, must our Democracy be predicated upon the science-Democracy obversion? So, all of science is, theoretically, reduced to mathematical physics, or, method. So what? Is there no realm of human thought beyond science? How does that demand, of the believer, an abandonment of external objective reality, and therefore of ethos? If that is what science teaches today then that is something that cries out to be changed in science teaching. Physics is necessarily a material science, and material science, if pure, cannot consider the immaterial. But it does not follow from that that a man cannot be both scientific, a physicist, and a devout believer. So, the scientist has to throw out the Divine Purpose symbol to make his math work; however, math cannot address faith anyway. So what? They are two different things, and even though you are only one man, you are quite capable of dealing with your physics and with your theology without abandoning either one.

Perhaps science and Democracy are obverse to each other, but I don’t see how that means that a scientist is incapable of making a political decision, or how a priest is incapable of both working out a math equation and voting, or how a professional politician is incapable of amateur astronomy.

The principles of the people are what need to be restored. This begins with big, broad, public recognition of the absolute existence of independent, external, objective Truth. I admit that I don't know how to do that, but I know that it has to be done. All I can do is confront opposition to it and yell about it, but sometimes I feel like I'm yelling into the void. So, I vote, and I encourage others to vote, and I yell until I'm horse.

You asked me to show examples of Democracy taming Islam; I can't do that, but I don't think I ever claimed Democracy tamed Islam. But I think if we compare Turkey to Iran, we see that one is considerably more of a threat to her neighbors than the other. and as politics in Turkey ebb and flow between representative government, as they know it, and Sharia, the potential threat to her neighbors similarly ebbs and flows. Unless and until someone forcibly takes the reigns of government there, the people have at least as much likelihood of voting out more parts of Sharia as voting them in. I think it safe to say that the average Turkish citizen is somewhat less "Islamic" than the average Iranian citizen, as evidenced by their appearance, dress, things that they do in public, and even the fact that they vote, all of which are things I tend to doubt the average Turk would want to change.

Voting imposes upon the citizenry a separation of ecclesial and civil law, something that is against the religion of Islam. Maybe an Islamic land under Democracy will still pose some threat to the world at some point under some leadership, but I submit that an Islamic land under pure Sharia is a much, much more dangerous entity in the world. Democracy may never conquer Islam, but I think Turkey shows that Democracy may temper Islam somewhat. I suspect that in general the Turkish people are happier than the Iranian people. An unhappy people, like an unbalanced atom, are unstable, and they will do something. It's easier for a demagogue to scapegoat someone, like Israel, to an unhappy people than to a happy people.

The eventually totally Open Society conundrum gives me more pause. I pray that it is not inevitable, but time seems to indicate that that's the current direction. It must be resisted.

Shalom, if you would work toward Truth but with Truth, and you know that Method is not King, and that material science cannot point the way to ultimate Truth, then you are called to properly point the way, not only with your eloquence, but with your vote. We can't just let this total openness just happen. We have to actively resist it.

It's comforting, in my little piece of the world, to know that the fox hole next door is still occupied. Just as it is hair raising to recognize when it is no longer occupied, and that sleep is no longer an option. Current trends aside, since they are merely trends, I submit that the Open Global Society is not inevitable. It is currently the trend advanced mostly by the American Left, which is to say, the Democratic Party. Would you say that not voting contributes to the eventual Open Global Society, or somehow keeps it from advancing?

Thank you for all this food for thought, scary as some of it might be.

And may He bless you and your entire house.

Vic

From: Shalom Midbar
Date: Wed, November 15, 2006, 10:23 PM
Subject: To my new friend Vic

Vic: it appears to me you are my senior by quite a few years but you've worn me out. I think it will be obvious to some, and even to yourself with some deeper reflection, that you are just wrong. But, it is equally clear that your resistance to understanding what science is and what "democracy" is runs deep. Deeper than I am capable of going.

But you are manifestly a good man. And we need good men. In America and here at SANE.

But, just to keep the record straight. Turkey's Ataturk decimated the Islamic powers in an effort to secularize Turkey before even beginning to introduce "democracy". But Turkish democracy is only as democratic as the Kemalists in the Army permit. As reported here, and as I know coming from that region of the world, Turkey has made an effort to get admitted to the EU. To do so, it "opened" up its doors to a "truer" democracy. Guess what happended? Turkey got its first Islamic government since the Ottoman days. Now we can only guess how deeply into the young officer corps the Muslim faithful have penetrated. And the secularists in Turkey are frightened to death. Just last week they poured out into the streets protesting the ascendant Islam. Things are getting dicey over there. Nope. Democracy is a blessing for Islam in a Muslim nation. Don't doubt it for a minute.

On the science-democracy-voting thing, think local; think community.

And for your kind blessing, as we say, All who bless, shall be blessed.

S.

From: Vic Biorseth
Date: Thu, November 16, 2006, 08:14 AM
Subject: NuVo Initiative 10
Comments:

Shalom:

Just wrong? How so?

My contention is that the Democratic vote may properly address only worldly things, i.e., civil law and the legal affairs of man. To propose that the Democratic vote may properly address absolute Truth is the proposition that is manifestly wrong. Just as it is manifestly wrong to propose that pure material science can point the way to ultimate, absolute Truth.

The fact that we see issues on the ballot than challenge Revealed Truth and our ethos-guided principles does not mean that that Revealed Truth is subject to change, by us, or by our vote. It means that evil is in the world, and has worked to put those issues before us in a very worldly way.

I submit that a minority of evil men (or evil directed men) in positions of authority in politics, in schools, in the major news media and in show-biz have acted to

1. weaken or eliminate our sense of ethos and our Western principles
   
2. weaken or eliminate our civil founding principles
   
3. get these items on ballots or in new unrepresentative law

From: Vic Biorseth
Date: Thu, November 16, 2006, 02:13 PM
Subject: NuVo Initiative 10
Comments:

Apparently, I need someone with absolute certainty of what science is and what Democracy is to point out to me, probably through the use of mathematics and physics, exactly what they are, in no uncertain terms. And to explain the twin equations upon which all of this NuVo Intiative seems to be so solidly based, which are:

1. Science = Certainty
2. Everything Other Than Scince = Uncertainty

From: Mike McKinney
Date: Thu, November 16, 2006, 06:41 PM
Subject: jumping into the fray

Guys: I've been sitting here the past week watching you go at it. Interesting to a point. But Vic, you've got to look around. I'm not much for labels and science-democracy looks like a label but what SANE has described about the situation we're in is just too clear to argue about.

Of course it is absurd to say that all of what we are is science and its equations. And of course, you and I as good Catholics reject that. But, even that I am not sure of because we Catholics have been taught to treat science with respect but only if it stays out of our turf. But science says we don't have a turf. It says you might "believe" you have a turf, but that is all it is. Your "belief."

And, that is how we get into this voting mess. I don't like not voting any more than the next guy because give me a few beers and I'll go toe to toe with anyone who wants to hurt me, my family or my friends even if I know I'm going to lose (probably because the beers suggest I won't lose).

I like the idea of the university anti-elite seminars and I even think these SANE folks, and I now count myself one of them, ought to establish local chapters. Franchise the darn thing in bricks and mortar and not just this internet stuff. I want to see faces and look into a man's eyes when I talk of the love of my nation, family and God. Do you know what I mean?

But most of all, I am now telling my children: go read the Bible when the next election comes around. The McKinney's are not going to dignify voting on the suicide.

Mike

From: Sane Staff
Date:> Fri, November 17, 2006, 07:04 AM
Subject: in response to Vic

Vic: David Yerushalmi sent along a note to us with his latest essay. It reads as follows:

Today's submission. Let Vic B know that this was written with many of his "issues" in mind. I have taken him through the analysis that you and S. Midbar have taken up with him in this comment thread but only really on the science-democracy reciprocal point. This essay ought to take him a bit further if he pursues it seriously. I have not spoken of the NuVo Initiative explicitly but I will do so in the continuation of this piece which I hope to get to in the coming days G-d willing. Thanks. DY

From: Vic Biorseth
Date: Fri, November 17, 2006, 10:07 AM
Subject: NuVo Initiative 10

Gentlemen:

I think I get it. At least in part; or, at least, two parts of it. Maybe not the whole thing yet.

I had to read it, and then digest a bit, and then – almost like Scripture – read it again, after some prayer and reflection. I even had to reboot myself a couple of times.

The first part that I think I understand involves the domination of scientific thought over all current social discourse.

I disagree with the implication in the construction “ . . . what modern science, meaning modern reason, means for man’s existence . . . “ which leads to the proposition “If indeed it is possible for man to examine and manipulate the world based upon the necessary assumption that everything is reducible to mathematical physics – and that is the necessary assumption of science because without it (science) simply doesn’t work – then the very Terms of Existence are reduced to the Part. This is what we refer to as the Redirection.” I reject it because I don’t want to believe that modern science equates to modern reason. But I’m afraid that in the broader context of how most men reason today that it is almost certainly true, and that makes me tremble.

“Once the Whole of Existence is completed in the Part, man becomes radically united with every other man, and indeed, every other creation – every other thing. There can be no ranking which does not simply count things; there is no qualitative ordering possible.” Which, as pointed out, removes justification for war, or even for political differences, or recognition of any difference or value-ranking between any two men or any two Parties or any two peoples or any two nations. The list is endless. Ideologies; religions; moral norms; etc. Even species. Even inanimate things.

I reject this scientific, universal notion that man is a mere thing among other things. Man cannot be reduced to a mere mathematical symbol. I see The Problem as the absolute domination of modern science over the collective mind of man. Yet, it doesn’t matter so much what I think about it, if this has indeed become the dominant direction of modern thought.

Which brings me to the second part of what I think I understand, which involves the self-revelatory nature of the majority vote, and what it says about the people who voted, as A Distinct People.

And how they vote indicates that they (we – the American People) do indeed give more priority to the Certain, or scientific, side of your metaphorical wall of separation than to the Uncertain, or Divine side of it. Which says that we are no longer a Godly people, and that the trend is definitely anti-God. And that makes me tremble even more.

I have in the past treated “how well or how poorly we practice” our faith, as a majority, as less important than the fact that “we identify ourselves” as Christians or Jews, as a majority. I was wrong. The way we vote proves it. Yes, even the very issues on the ballot show how far we have fallen.

What have we become?

As I came to this realization of what America has become and is becoming the Words that came to me were a reversal of the beginning of the Psalm and of Christ’s words from His Cross, “My people; my people; why have you forsaken me?” and I had to pray my first national atonement prayers, of many to come.

Now, the Lord hears the prayer of the righteous man; but are we few righteous enough?

I can only speak for myself; I know my own failures and sinfulness. I don’t live in any monastery, I’m just an ordinary working man, living an ordinary word-a-day life doing practical things out in the physical world. I try to pray regularly but I’m sure that I don’t do it perfectly or with the best worthiness. I do strive to be a public example of a good disciple of Christ, and it seems to me that what I am best at is publicly sounding off in His defense, and in strong opposition to His opposition.

I see the reasoning behind and the value in the NuVo Initiative.

But I cannot not vote. I cannot.

Perhaps my faith isn’t strong enough. My great fear in not voting is that not voting will prompt the American System, or what’s left of it, to collapse into nothingness more quickly and certainly than it might without some worldly resistance to the Modern trend. America – or, perhaps more correctly, The American Ideal – may be the world’s last best hope for redemption. Europe is gone. The African Christian nations are disunited. Israel is in constant, never-ending peril. The most important battle for men’s souls in this world goes on here, in America, and some of us are called more to some form of worldly action than to spiritual action. Voting is action.

I have to resist Modernism, and I have to resist Secularism, with every weapon at my disposal, and one of those weapons is my vote. Too much American blood has been shed to grant me the right to vote for me to idly toss it aside. If it is futile, I will have lost nothing by trying, and I will have kept the blood-bond with my fellow American veterans, living and dead. And if it is not futile, then we collectively have a chance.

In the meantime, we should all turn our faces to God and beg for His mercy.

I thank you, sirs, for your patience, and I hope you are not too upset with my continued opposition to not voting. I cannot condemn your position; I hope you do not condemn mine.

May God Help Us All.

From: David Yerushalmi
Date: Fri, November 17, 2006, 10:21 AM
Subject: To my colleague, Vic Biorseth

Dear Mr. Biorseth:

You are indeed a rare soul and man of Reason. You have penetrated these matters against the resistance that necessarily flows from the Redirection.

With that, how could I or any man begrudge you the act you take in voting when it arises out of your refusal to abandon your fellow American. While I might continue to argue that voting amounts to that abandonment, I would not and could not now, after your last Comment, say that to you.

You have my eternal blessings that you and I (and others here at SANE and elsewhere in America) will penetrate this Truth and find the power and elevation of soul and Reason to remain a People bound by bonds so deep and so strong that we will survive even the riptides of the Redirection which attempt to pull us apart.

All the best, and keep in touch through your wonderful writings,

David Yerushalmi

(Note: You can find the original articles this was all based on at NuVo Initiative Series 10.)

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