Thursday, April 12, 2012

Porn Nation: Raquel Welch Edition

por·nog·ra·phy n

1. Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.

2. The presentation or production of this material.

3. Lurid or sensational material: "Recent novels about the Holocaust have kept Hitler well offstage [so as] to avoid the ... pornography of the era" (Morris Dickstein).

[French pornographie, from pornographe, pornographer, from Late Greek pornographos, writing about prostitutes : porn, prostitute; see per-5 in Indo-European roots + graphein, to write; see -graphy.]

Timeless beauty Raquel Welch granted an interview to Men's Health. In it, the sex symbol lamented the pornification of our culture.  Here are some interesting excerpts...
I think we’ve gotten to the point in our culture where we’re all sex addicts, literally. We have equated happiness in life with as many orgasms as you can possibly pack in, regardless of where it is that you deposit your love interest.
It’s just dehumanizing. And I have to honestly say, I think this era of porn is at least partially responsible for it. Where is the anticipation and the personalization? It’s all pre-fab now. You have these images coming at you unannounced and unsolicited. It just gets to be so plastic and phony to me. Maybe men respond to that. But is it really better than an experience with a real life girl that he cares about?
And it makes for laziness and a not very good sex partner. Do they know how to negotiate something that isn’t pre-fab and injected directly into their brain?
I don’t care if I’m becoming one of those old fogies who says, “Back in my day we didn’t have to hear about sex all the time.” Can you imagine? My fantasies were all made up on my own. 
They’re ruining us with all the explanations and the graphicness. Nobody remembers what it’s like to be left to form your own ideas about what’s erotic and sexual. We’re not allowed any individuality. I thought that was the fun of the whole thing. It’s my fantasy. I didn’t pick it off the Internet somewhere. It’s my fantasy. (Men's Health)
Porn takes a beautiful gift from God and cheapens it. That is what Satan does. He can’t invent anything, he creates nothing, he can’t read our minds. All The Croucher can do is watch and wait for the chance to corrupt God's work and pervert our pathetic human efforts.

Porn:  It's not just about sex!

In my lexicon, porn is anything taken to a perverted extreme.

Frankenfood and fast food have replaced real food. Obesity and diabetes are almost epidemic as manufactured comestibles that never spoil make fresh perishable food so passe'. High fructose corn syrup and a thousand other chemical inventions crowd out the sustenance and tasty viands that filled our ancestors' larders.

Facebook and online virtual worlds takes the place of face to face interaction in the real world. We bowl alone. Video games have us sitting on our asses instead of going out and playing real games

New feel-good Christianity, grounded in monetary success and perpetual happiness tries to erase all that scary talk about hell, the devil, suffering, sacrifice and following Jesus Christ.

Government paychecks replace a hard-earned one. The government family supplants the real ones, housing, clothing and feeding us. They even teach us how to sneeze and admonish us to eat our veggies!

Rightwing porn and leftwing porn replace real dialog, reasoned analysis and intellectually-honest debate.

Economic pornography leads to demographic death. Work and self-worship leave no room for children.  Europe is facing it, and Asia is firmly in the grip, most sadly for Confucian cultures who revere their elders. The number of unmarried Japanese men who will have no progeny to revere them continues to climb, with 20% of 50 year-olds having no spouse or children.
I remember Jimmy Coburn once said to me, “You know what’s the sexiest thing of all? A little mystery.”  -- Raquel Welch

40 comments:

Ducky's here said...

You become a victim of comfort and before you realize it, too late.

Anonymous said...

Work and reward versus reward without work. The Devil's job gets easier and easier.

Anonymous said...

Cole Porter saw all of this coming, and made a note of it about eighty years ago in Anything Goes:


"In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked in a something shocking
Now Heaven knows
Anything goes.

"Good authors too, who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose.
Anything goes.

The world's gone mad today
Good's bad today
Black's white today
Day's night today
Most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos ..."



I saw it for myself in the early Sick-sties:

All of sudden -- or so it seemed -- Up was down. Light was dark. Truth was a lie. Virtue was evil. Vice was virtuous. Beautiful was ugly. Modesty was obscene. Neatness was out. Sloth was in, etc.

This occurred, of course, because of the machinations of the Cultural Marxists who remain the most potently destructive force ever to hit our shores. They quickly infiltrated, permeated and took over every means of mass communication imaginable and busily set about "reinventing" the culture, a term that should now be spelled with a capital-K.

I stated that normal American culture has become deracinated yesterday, and was told I didn't know what I was talking about by a very smart individual who always talks as though he already knew everything there is to know, and has, therefore, the authority to straighten all the rest of us out.

Sorry, but it was HE who hadn't a clue. I'll wager, no one under fifty-five -- and few even at sixty -- begins to know what has been done to us by these demonically clever schemers and manipulators.

What's perfectly "normal" and more-than-acceptable to most people today remains abnormal and frankly repugnant to me, because for good or for ill I still remember how things were, and still know who I am and how I got there.

If ever there was proof needed of cultural deracination surely it may be found the court-mandated green light given to the porn industry and the viral proliferation -- and widespread acceptance -- of this dispiriting phenomenon that quickly followed.

The success of the Cultural Marxists has been so spectacular that its victims do not begin to realize they are victims.

The deception only becomes more powerful and all-pervasive with each succeeding generation.

That legendary Little Boy's proverbial "finger" was forcibly removed from the "dike" by court order. As a result, all of "Holland" is now under "water."

I miss "Holland!" All those tulips, creaky old windmills and plump, golden-headed girls in wooden shoes wearing dirndls and starched white-winged caps were rather attractive.

Well, how could you possibly miss something you've never seen, and never knew existed?

SAD!

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

A new slogan just occurred:

A PORN NATION is a POOR NATION!

Bumperstickers anyone?

~ FT

Christopher - Conservative Perspective said...

Silver,

Although I tend to agree here I am left to wonder about the pic of Raquel you chose to post, why not stick with just a face shot to further her point on the "mystery"?

That said, I am not complaining being I have been a fan of hers for decades but also see a little hypocrisy in her statements as evidenced by the photo which is just one of thousands of her completely manufactured for "eye-candy" or #1 in the definition of pornography.

Silverfiddle said...

Christopher: It's a bikini shot and is nowhere near porn. Been to a beach lately?

It's interesting that this 60's sex symbol never did any nude scenes (although she did do sex scenes that left it to the imagination), that I'm aware of, and the closest she got to posing nude was a Playboy shoot that is tame compared to what you see in Maxim today.

I am not a prude, Christopher. That picture is sexy but tasteful.

Jersey McJones said...

You're kind of all over the place here, Silver, but the stink of partisanship overrides it all and I think that's a shame, as you would have a food point without it.

JMJ

Bunkerville said...

Not much different than the way the Roman Empire ended their brief moment of being top dog.

Silverfiddle said...

Jersey: You're mighty sensitive for such a foul-mouthed character.

Partisan? Do you see everything through political lenses? You must have a dirty conscience.

Anonymous said...

Bunkerville,

I wouldn't call Rome's period of ascendancy "a brief moment."

1. Rome was founded in 753 B.C. A Monarchy lasted from 753 - 509 B.C. In 509 B.C. the Roman Republic began. It ended in 27 B.C. The Empire ended in 476 A.D.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_the_Roman_Empire_begin_and_end#ixzz1rqnnSHYy

2. Timeline of the Ascent, Decline, Fall and post-Empire history of Rome ending at 1461 A.D.:

http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/romans.html

753 B.C - 1,461 A.D. counts as a looooong time, and Rome is still going strong as one of the world's great capital cities. The population of Italy today is 57,000,000 -- still a sizable chunk of humanity.

Do you realize that there are only about 12,000,000 Jews in the entire world. The Jewish population of New York City equals or possibly exceeds that of Israel -- or so I've always been told.

A thousand years may be no more than "an evening gone" in God's Sight, but it's still a pretty substantial chunk of time in human history. Rome lasted a great deal longer than the British Empire and certainly much longer than our truly brief 225 year history as a sovereign nation.

The pressure to cede our sovereignty to an eventual World Government is very great.

May God forbid it from ever happening.

BUT, nothing's "static," so it's very likely we will soon go the way of all the great civilizations of the past -- only our tenure as "top dog" will have been briefer by far than any of the others.

We may be the first who actually permitted itself to be inveigled into committing SUICIDE.

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

SilverFiddle your points about Raquel Welch's appearance in a bikini are well taken. Anyone who "has it" to that high a degree really ought to flaunt it by all that's holy.

Have you seen pictures of the lady lately? She's over seventy now, and STILL extraordinarily beautiful. So is Sophia Loren, by the way. On the other hand Brigitte Bardot, "the most luscious broad who ever lived" according to many men of my generation, looks like an overweight wizened up peasant woman on her last legs. Go figger!

My grandmothers may have thought girls in bikinis bordered on the obscene, but then THEIR mother's though exposing so much as an ankle or a forearm to public view was going too far.

At the height of the Victorian Era -- a dark, dreary almost suffocatingly hypocritical period for which I have no misplaced nostalgia -- it was fashionable for decent women to make little lace-trimmed petticoats to put on the legs of their PIANO's for God's sake.

Things can, indeed go too far in ANY direction.

But again I will quote Shakespeare:

"There is nothing either right or wrong but thinking makes it so."

Obscenity -- like beauty -- may well be in the eye of the beholder.

Why is the Venus de Milo -- and countless other statues from classical antiquity -- NOT considered obscene?

Why do we find it easy to accept representations of naked men with their genitals exposed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but going to see the place in a bikini or a thing would be completely unacceptable?

Why do these questions still occupy our consciousness?

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

Jersey,

What is a "food point?"

I have to admit you've piqued my curiousity.

~ FT

Z said...

Sex isn't sexy without some mystery; I agree with James Coburn.

"Porn takes a beautiful gift from God and cheapens it." That's something I've always believed is happening to our kids today, when sex is SO cheap and so touted in films and TV. They won't even know the beautiful gift because it's been tainted and some will be so bored by the time they're 20.
I remember getting a 'funny email' photo of a huge fraternity house with all its members standing in a big group shot, on bleachers, etc....there were about 5 college girls in the front posing with their blouses up off their breasts, big taunting smiles on their faces.. I couldn't help wonder just how much sex they'd all had if 5 18yr old girls with no tops on wasn't pulling the guys' eyes away from the camera and how much sex the girls had already had that would prevent them from the complete and rightful shyness girls for centuries would have felt in that position. So sad.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I don't know about that, Z. Dorothy Parker gave us quite a different -- more realistic, less lugubrious, and far more honest -- slant on the subject of sex -- one with which I find myself much in sympathy:


The Little Old Lady In Lavender Silk

I was seventy-seven, come August,
I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I've experienced zephyr and raw gust
And (symbolical) flood and simoom.

When you come to this time of abatement,
To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
As to what you got out of it all.

So I'll say, though reflection unnerves me
And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
There was nothing more fun than a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
I fell into the habit of love.

And I learned how to kiss and be merry -- an
Education left better unsung.
My neglect of the waters Pierian
Was a scandal, when Grandma was young.

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
Were I given the chance to repeat.

For contrition is hollow and wraithful,
And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory's faithful,
There was nothing more fun than a man.


~ Dorothy Parker


The lines that have stayed with me since I first discovered this gem:

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
Were I given the chance to repeat.


"To everything there is a season, and a time and purpose to everything under the sun ..."

~ Ecclesiastes

We find wisdom if we learn how to recognize -- and accept -- when these seasons begin and end.

At least in our decadent Bourgeois society widows are not expected to throw themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres -- yet.

A bit less tongue-clucking and great deal more counting of blessings are surely in order, I should think.

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

“You know what’s the sexiest thing of all? A little mystery.”

The photo is in fact simply lovely.

Nudity, if correctly presented, can be art whilst being sexy as it can be erotic and yet not pornographic (in the sense that we know it today).

Today the word pornographic represents passing the line into unwarrented lust and touching the forbidden as apposed to being a little bit suggestive of it.

Perhaps I am old school, but naked or fully exposed does not turn me nor do I consider even the tiny bikini to be pornography in itself. I consider a smooth long leg and thigh or a smooth exposed shoulder sexier than an exposed "boob". Like art, it comes down to the overall presentation AND reason behind it.

That is why, James Coburn is in many ways correct, the mystery is often the more sexy because what we cannot see our imaginations can fill in - and that image we produce will suit our own tastes of what is sexy.....

Damien Charles

Ducky's here said...

As usual, Freethinker blames cultural Marxism for everything, including the proliferation of pornography.

May I recommend a film. Should be available on Netflix.

The Pornographers by Shohei Imamura.
Rest easy, there isn't anything explicit in it. But compared to a piece of crap like Boogie Nights it manages an adult treatment of the subject. And this is going to amaze you, Freethinker, but it absolutely wails on Kapitalism as the source.
You'll find much the same done even better but with a little less humor in Godard ( My Life to Live , 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her but he is the master at deconstructing pop culture.

Interesting that the profitable American entry here is the exploitative piece of junk.

But Imamura does a fine job of developing the idea that sex is an economic driver and Godard pretty much nails it as nothing but another commodity to Kapital.

So where do we go Freethinker? Thing is, I'm aware of the right's arguments on this matter and they aren't convincing. You just play the cultural Marxism card and ignore mine.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many are aware that Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is one of the "sexiest" books ever written?

No one disrobes. No one indulges in lurid gestures, suggestive remarks or "inappropriate" touching. Everyone speaks and behaves in the most decorous manner perfectly in accord with the style and custom of the period, and yet one feels the attraction -- and the growing sexual tension -- between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy from the moment they meet. One also feels longing -- and even anguish -- at the the thought that their obvious need and growing affection for one another beneath the tissue-thin veneer of what-appears-at-first-to-be hostility might not be fulfilled.

True sexual attraction and the fulfillment of yearnings -- not for sex, itself, but for union with a particular, very special individual -- is a rare and wonderful thing -- the Pearl of Great Price as a matter of fact. But the idea that it could not happen unless one remains "pure" and retains one's virginity, until The Wedding Night is patently absurd.

Of course one must WANT that in order to find it. I would agree that our present culture of casual and careless attitudes towards everything has a dulling effect.

I'll never forget reading about hippy life in Haight Ashbury back in the Sick-sties when all that was still "new." Some long-haired, sweat-soaked imbecile was asked if "communal sleeping arrangements" meant that he was having sexual contact with other men as well as the women since all members of the commune felt they "belonged" to each other?

I'll never forget his answer, which still shocks me today:

"Sure, man! What hell! Skin's skin, ain't it?"

If it hadn't been for the mind-numbing effects of satanic Rock 'n Roll combined with all that marijuana and LSD and God-knows-what-all-else, succumbing to the lure of Forbidden (fermented) Fruit would every likely never appeared so "easy" and so "natural."

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEUW!!! Thinking about that era always makes my flesh crawl.

~ FreeThinke

Ducky's here said...

Damn, I had a good post lost by something in the software.

Anyway, I see you enjoyed Bowling Alone , Silver. Kinda depressing, no?

It goes to a concern I have with Libertarianism. I don't believe it is possible for a community to survive everyone doing there own thing.

Now, the oligarchs care nothing for norms. They respect very few and will do anything for gain, yet these are the people folks like z think will get us back on track. Pardon my chuckle.

Working class folks used to behave more in line with community norms and that is disappearing. A real problem and you will blame the welfare state.
SHOCK AND AWE !!! I rather agree but it has moved me more towards Democratic Socialism and that would be a touchy discussion.

So here we are again. We agree on some of the very critical problems of the culture. However, I simply can't understand why folks feel Kapital and the Calvinist moralists can do anything but lead us further into the weeds.

Dilemma.

Ducky's here said...

Freethinker, I've always found class problems in Austen. Women are constantly in a bind because daddy can't come up with the cash. He's been off making bad investments or the like.

Austen is often a good demonstration that the nature of marriage is complex and in Austen's day was heavily concerned with the transfer of property.

Of course when the lower classes tried to cross class lines watch out. Best to go to the Child ballads, Wagoner's Lad, Anachie Gordon etc.

Anonymous said...

I didn't realize people still believed in Satan . . .

I thought we all figured out by now that "temptation" is merely our own bad desires and that giving in to those desires is simply a result of our (often times) frail human nature.

Believing that some ethereal creature tempts us is fairly ridiculous and takes a lot of culpability off humans.

The logic simply does not add up. There is no being that creates desire in our hearts. The desire is already there by virtue of our physiology. What we desire is in large part due to our brain chemistry and architecture. You can argue against that all you want, but you would be arguing against some fairly hard science.

So since we know that desire is a result of our brains, not some mythical creature, then how can Satan tempt us? If you're a glutton, does that mean all food that you see was somehow created by Satan to tempt you? If you are lustful, does that mean that Satan created women's bodies and made them sexy just to tempt you?

Satan is a literary device. It's a personification of the potential darkness of the human soul and our propensity to fulfill our bad desires.

Silverfiddle said...

@Jack: I thought we all figured out by now that "temptation" is merely our own bad desires and that giving in to those desires is simply a result of our (often times) frail human nature.

Obviously, you thought wrong.

Silverfiddle said...

Ducky: You have a cartoonish view of libertarianism. I don't hold it against you, because it's a broad spectrum.

You don't think libertarians participate in group activities, church, clubs, trap and skeet leagues?

Z said...

"They respect very few and will do anything for gain, yet these are the people folks like z think will get us back on track"

Ducky, why are you speaking for me again and who do you mean I think will get us back on track?

Jack, are we all supposed to do the palm to forehead thing now and say "Gee, Jack knows something I didn't know and never thought about!?" :-)
SF is right...you thought wrong.

Ducky's here said...

Silverfiddle, my statement is that in an ECONOMIC system millions of independent actors cannot form strong organizations.

It will always be last man standing and everyone else plays a milder form of the Hunger Games.

I am a leftist an therefore I am going to give dominance to the economic system. It will always trump government to some extent. The trick is to avoid the extremes that completely trump it like Objectivism and Communism.

Ducky's here said...

Very simple, z. You advocate a form of laissez-faire which cedes power to oligarchs.

Somehow you manage to resolve this with participatory democracy (I think, as long as they have ID's) but that's a pipe dream.

Anonymous said...

|| Ducky, why are you speaking for me again and who do you mean I think will get us back on track? ||

Because you always take the bait. Just can't let anything go by uncommented on.

Silverfiddle said...

Silverfiddle, my statement is that in an ECONOMIC system millions of independent actors cannot form strong organizations.

Interesting theory. Do you have any real-world examples to support it?

The first 100 years of this nation were comparatively libertarian, and Toqueville marveled at the voluntary cooperation among the citizens.

Finntann said...

Honestly FT, I'd have to say you're being somewhat unfair in your characterization of my response.

You made a statement, that we have been deracinated, and urged us to look it up, I did:

Websters "to remove or separate from a native environment or culture; especially: to remove the racial or ethnic characteristics or influences from."

My response was simply that you were part and parcel of American culture (like it or not) which like all cultures is in a constant state of flux.

You imply that there is some insideous cabal hiding behind the curtain like the Wizard of Oz, pulling on the strings and levers of culture. I counter that culture is the collective 'we', it is dynamic, never static. The culture that you were born into is not the culture that you are in today, the same can be said for all of us.

I also attempted to make the point that culture is so indelibly impressed upon you that in a foreign locale, dressed like a local and speaking not a word, an astute observer can easily identify you as an American.

You may not like modern American culture, but you are certainly part of it.

To address Ducky's perception of libertarianism as all of us running willy-nilly about.

The Amish exist freely, without government laws dictating they wear plain clothes, shun modern conveniences, and cooperate with one another. They are free to act as they wish and any Amish, individually is free to leave.

Libertarianism means being free from government dictate as to how to live and what to do and to live as one chooses, and while you are free to ignore social constraints, everyone else is free to shun you as well. There is a clear and distinct difference between government and social constraints.

What liberals don't like to acknowledge is that you are free to suffer the consequences of your actions and behavior and the only one responsible for those consequences is yourself.

You do not have the right not to be offended, as you also do not have the right not to be disliked, shunned, or ostracized by those you offend.

Which gets me to porn. Why is porn rampant in our society? Because you can look at it in your living room/den/bedroom free from any and all social constraint. No longer do you have to trek to the counter at the local drugstore with the latest copy of Playboy and suffer the emotional suffering of the disapproval of the seventeen year old pimply-faced clerk.

I haven't really done any research, but I would guess that Playboy sales aren't much better than they've been historically, I would also venture to observe that the commercial porn market depressed as the internet expanded. I see far fewer porn magazines in stores, and there are certainly fewer XXX movie houses today than there were in the 70's and 80's.

Personally I don't find much socially redeeming value in any of it, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Cheers!

Ducky's here said...

Yes and the second hundred years as we continue to destroy community norms and create a large underclass are the children of the 1st hundred.

Toqueville's representative democracy has gone the way of the cart horse.

Z said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
viburnum said...

SF: "The first 100 years of this nation were comparatively libertarian, and Toqueville marveled at the voluntary cooperation among the citizens."

That was back when we knew we were all in it together, before politicians started sewing the seeds of division.

Anonymous said...

Ducky,

If you've read me consistently over the past few years, you'd know I believe that "The Oligarchs" -- an internationalist cabal who really control things behind the scenes -- have USED every faction -- including the Cultural Marxists -- to take advantage of ever turn of events to further aggrandize and secure their own oligarchical power.

BUT, it's interesting to note from the following report, such as it is, that DEMOCRATS have AIDED and ABETTED the porn industry and REPUBLICANS have worked to OPPOSE it.


WIKI SAYS:

"In 1967, Denmark decriminalized pornography with few [apparent] adverse effects, and the following year, the United States Supreme Court held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes.


"These two developments contributed in part to Congress creating the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in 1968 to investigate the effects of obscenity and pornography on the people of the United States.


"Each member of the Commission was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. In what became the most detailed and comprehensive investigation into pornography to date, the Commission in its final report found that pornography could not be shown to do harm to individuals or to society, and recommended the repeal of obscenity and pornography legislation as it related to adults.


"Released during the presidency of Richard Nixon, the report generated a brief bout of controversy but was ultimately ignored by the administration.


"Attorney General for Ronald Reagan Edwin Meese also courted controversy when he appointed the "Meese Commission" to investigate pornography in the United States; their report, released in July 1986, was highly critical of pornography and itself became a target of widespread criticism.


"That year, Meese Commission officials contacted convenience store chains and succeeded in demanding that widespread men's magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse be removed from shelves, a ban which spread nationally until being quashed with a First Amendment admonishment against prior restraint by the D.C. Federal Court in Meese v. Playboy (639 F.Supp. 581).


"In the United States in 2005, Attorney General Gonzales made obscenity and pornography a top prosecutorial priority of the Department of Justice.
The conservative religious organization Concerned Women for America polled every U.S. attorney’s office to find out what they planned to do about obscenity.

"Except for a handful of offices that didn’t return calls, not one said it had any inclination to pursue anything other than child obscenity cases."


If, as the article suggests, Nixon did nothing to oppose the porn industry it was because the machinations of his political enemies kept him too busy to do much other than try to defend himself from relentless attack.

~ FreeThinke

PS: This means mirabile dictu that you and I are not all that much in disagreement. Nevertheless, the writings of members of the Frankfurt School urge -- among many other things -- that corrupting the morals of the young by encouraging them to become morbidly obsessed with sex is tactic sure to be helpful in disorienting, undermining and ultimately conquering "decadent Bourgeois" society and the Christian religion. The latter is regarded as a great Enemy to be conquered and disposed of. - FT

viburnum said...

Ducky: "Toqueville's representative democracy has gone the way of the cart horse."

Yes. It's been run off the road by populists, anarchists, socialists, and communists.

Silverfiddle said...

I notice the left is all about diversity and choice, until it conflicts with their vision.

As government has grown, so has societal dysfunction, government ineptitude and public debt.

I'll ask you again Ducky to provide us some examples to bolster your theory.

Anonymous said...

WHAT THE H___?

I hope Silver Fiddle will remove the two extra repetitions of that last post. I can't imagine how that happened. It certainly was not INTENTIONAL.

~ FT

Anonymous said...

FINNTANN,

I looked the word up, myself in 31 online dictionaries. We don't disagree (much) on the definition only on whether or not our society has been subjected to a deliberate, calculated process of deracination, meaning a process of cutting us off from our roots and alienating us from our accustomed mores, cultural norms and values.

I say we have.

You say we haven't

You, apparently, see the changes that suddenly emerged, probably around the time your were born, as a perfectly natural, inevitable process of cultural evolution. I see the cataclysmic events of the 1960's as part of an insidious long range plan -- a calculated, skillfully orchestrated, choreorgraphed, stage-managed -- choose you own metaphor -- deliberately planned attack.

It is unlikely we will ever agree on this, so it's probably best to agree to disagree and let it go at that.

However, did you ever read Linda Kimball's article in American Thinker called Cultural Marxism? It's quite an eye opener, unless you've decided that American Thinker is just another part of the lunatic fringe obsessed with "conspiracy theories" in which case there is no help for you.

Do take a peek at it:

http://www.americanthinker.com/archived-articles/../2007/02/cultural_marxism.html

Best,

~ FreeThinke

Finntann said...

Yes, I am familiar with Linda Kimball... have you read any of her other articles?

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball

I'd call her a moron, but that would be an insult to morons everywhere.

How's this headlines grab you?

"Occult Pagan revival signals death of America and the West"

"Rev. 18:3: evolution...primordial heresy as the science of becoming God"

"Mouthpieces for the Father of Lies: conservative leaders and pundits who prohibit truth"

Mindless rightwing religious hack if you ask me. It's people like Linda Kimball who give conservatives a bad name.

Cheers!

Ducky's here said...

Freethinker, shouldn't you be at Walmart photographing ass cracks?

jez said...

In my opinion, Freethinke misses the point of sex and/or Jane Austen.

I like Silverfiddle's extension of the term "porn," it's handy. Could it be that the most prolific source of porn in the world is the advertising industry.

Anonymous said...

Oh dear! Well we can all have a delightful time playing games of one-upsmanship while despising and rejecting each other, but to what avail?

I have better things to do with my time than deal with relentless negativity.

The Generation Gap is frightfully real, and certainly cannot be bridged by me -- probably because I much prefer to be where I am.

If you guys are happy where you are, God bless you. Enjoy life. It doesn't last very long.

So, I'll take the high road, and you take the low ride, and we'll see who gets to "Scotland" first -- if at all.

It probably doesn't matter. The point of life, if there is one, is found in the journey not the destination.

Pip pip and cheerio!

~ FreeThinke