Unfrozen Enlightenment Caveman Voter

Unfrozen Caveman Voter

For people trying to understand American public opinion but questioning recent use of polling "data." Numbers depend on phrasing.

Don't caricature this attitude with a desire for more invasions, more nation-building, more regime-change, random airstrikes, or wanton slaughter. It's hard to say just what policy exactly might satisfy the caveman demographic. But really, the Unfrozen Caveman Voter intuits a large portion of the art of warfare: opportunities must be created and then exploited -- or if they come by luck, they must be exploited all the same. And finally, the use of extreme and otherwise intolerable violence is necessary if used in the service of victory.

Hollah! Sam (SM) ("Egyptian Sandmonkey," rants)

FTR, I'm not a WASP or from New England.

There's good multicultural and bad multicultural. It's like touching.

Not sure why anyone would risk summing up the greatest intellectual movement in western history - not noted for simplicity - this way:

The Enlightenment, however, by consigning Christianity to the private sphere, also removed the basis and justification for these values in the public sphere.

It's much simpler with examples. The bible, qur'an, torah, hadith, sunnah, davinci code, all books, are entitled to no special protection or privilege under the law, but equal protections. They're books. That's the Enlightenment view if we're extreme generalizing. Generalizing is not necessary.

Baruch
Spinoza

John
Locke

Wikilock
Wikispin

Pico della Mirandola: Renaissance or Enlightenment?

Wikipico

The French Revolution? (from "Enlightenment view") The French Enlightenment (Rousseau, Voltaire) wasn't the blueprint for successful governance, or particularly relevant to the major English thinkers.

I don't have the time to explain how unenlightened the French Revolution became.

American "democracy" (a representative republic, limited government, federal system, state sovereignty, enumerated federal powers, pre/post Civil War, no establishment or infringing on religion...), one could argue, succeeded in large part due to the popularity of Deism.
Thomas Paine:

The Persian shows the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the lawgiver of Persia, and calls it the divine law; the Bramin shows the Shaster, revealed, he says, by God to Brama, and given to him out of a cloud; the Jew shows what he calls the law of Moses, given, he says, by God, on the Mount Sinai; the Christian shows a collection of books and epistles, written by nobody knows who, and called the New Testament; and the Mahometan shows the Koran, given, he says, by God to Mahomet: each of these calls itself revealed religion, and the only true Word of God, and this the followers of each profess to believe from the habit of education, and each believes the others are imposed upon.

But when the divine gift of reason begins to expand itself in the mind and calls man to reflection, he then reads and contemplates God and His works, and not in the books pretending to be revelation. The creation is the Bible of the true believer in God. Everything in this vast volume inspires him with sublime ideas of the Creator. The little and paltry, and often obscene, tales of the Bible sink into wretchedness when put in comparison with this mighty work.

The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?

Society is built on intellectual presumptions, or "pillars" for effect.

Deism is one ?small? historical ideological pillar of the United States, unlike the dominant historical European sectarian secularism. Given Thomas Paine's use of several major religious figures in writing of the times, in the Colonies/United States religion was very much in the public sphere. Many warring European religions coexisted in the United States.

Whenever you read George S. Patton quotes (UCV)...

"Many of you have in your veins German and Italian blood. But remember that these ancestors of yours so loved freedom that they gave up home and country to cross the ocean in search of liberty. The ancestors of the people we shall kill lacked the courage to make such a sacrifice and remained slaves."


And then this,


"We Americans are a competitive race ... We love to win. In this next fight, you are entering the greatest sporting competition of all times. You are competing with Americans and with Allies for the greatest prize of all -- victory."

...it's important to remember he was a working theorist trying to defend the cavalry services, modernize armored forces, and convey a particular image to his soldiers. Patton was calculated and professional, contrary to many depictions of him in film. He scrupulously followed orders and accepted command discipline. Patton was a secular, professional warrior whatever his personal beliefs about religion. Patton knew that unnatural organization, logistics, yet aggression, and courage were advantageous in warfare.

As an unfrozen caveman blogger, scared by your blogging tools and viruses, not a strategist for either party, I'll simply (and that's all I know) conclude with this:

It's not healthy in our republic for such a large slice of the populace to be unrepresented by any politician. But that is the case today. Soon enough it will change. Just remember what happened to Phil Hartman's Caveman Lawyer:


"Thank you! Thank you very much, thank you! First of all, let me say how happy I am to be your nominee for the United States Senate! . . . I don't really understand your Congress. . . because, as I said during the campaign - I'm just a caveman! I fell on some ice, and later got thawed out by scientists. But there is one thing I do know - we must do everything in our power to lower the Capital Gains Tax. Thank you!"