NIU + 15 hours- Guns don't kill people, postmodernism does.... ¿Que? | Remember, IEDs have killed more soldiers in Iraq than guns have

Last night I was listening to Dr. Milt Rosenberg's Extension 720 on WGN Radio. If you've not heard this show, you're missing out on the best talk radio has to offer. Prof. R- is probably the most civil and civilized person to be found on any electronic medium.

One of this guests made the point that this is the inevitable result of our society's widespread abandonment of the concept of absolute truth, absolute right and wrong, and corresponding all consuming self absorption and self indulgence... much the same point as I made after the Kirkwood MO massacre. (He even identified "postmoderism" and "relativism" as I had done last week..)


click to read my first PoMo Rant

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Now... Right Mike makes some cogent comments in response to my previous post, but I'd like to address one in particular.

Oh, and another reason I don't want my guns taken away is that, as soon as there gone whats to stop the government from taking more rights away from me, you take away the second amendment because its outdated, you take away the bill of rights because all the amendments are equally old. What's to stop freedom of press next. Free speech goes, you can't stop the government you can't really revolt with sticks and baseball bats can you.

Now... to give some historical context on this (yes, I know... there I go again... thinking that our past has some relevance to our present... *grin*)

#1: In the days when the 2nd Amendment was added to the constitution, the situation both domestic and foreign was most unstable. We could not count on the government to fulfill its first duty to all citizens: To protect them from enemies within and without.

#2: Civilians often had better firearms than the government did, so the idea that gun ownership was a protection against government abuse was plausible indeed. Civvy's often used the Kentucky Long File while the government had muskets.

Today, that's not the case. There is no gun legal for civilian possession which can match the rate of fire, penetrative ability, and over all lethality of what the feds and SWAT teams have. Our personal pistols and hunting files won't even dent the body armor these guys have.

So the idea that personal firearms are a bulwark against government tyranny is utterly non sequitur - it doesn't follow!

#3:Clearly our enemies over seas have learned this lesson, even if our NRA purists here haven't. They aren't generally killing our brave men and women in uniform with guns... they're taking them out with unconventional explosives.

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I don't know what the answer is yet... and I may never have one... but I do know that it is essential to constantly reexamine ones assumptions and beliefs, even & especially the most deeply held ones which have risen to the level being on a par with religion.

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Remember- the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. ... So... who's being stupid... and how to we wise'm up?!

Postmodernism run amok in the wake of the Kirkwood MO shooting spree

The below is my transcription of a portion of the interview which appeared with Gerald Thronton, brother of the man who went into a Kirkwood MO council meeting and opened fire, killing 5. It occured on Fox News' Studio B today. You can watch the full interview at fox here ... but be aware, if you're using Firefox, you may not be able to get it to play. Any errors in transcription are mine, of course, and the story is a copyright story of Fox News. I have added emphasis in accordance with my point, it does NOT reflect the vocal inflection of the participants.

You can understand a person's meaning because we don't understand anyone's ability to mean what they mean. We can only relate to it as we feel we understand it to be by the words that were said. ...
[Reporter asks about GT's description of brother being at war, objecting that he just "went in and shot and killed 5 innoucent people"]
Well that's your opinion, the war statement is my opinion its based on factor that when talks break down between people at odds either they can go in separate directions or they can chose to escalate it to a violent stage and they would be considered [to be at?] war as anyone would use when talking about violence dealing with an issue that more people feel they have a right to be a part of. Some are even forced to be in that frame.
Reporter- maybe I'm misunderstanding but it sounds like you're defending ...]
Well you see everyone wants to be able to put a final note on it as whether it was right or wrong. There's no way to satisfy any and everyone because no one really feels what my brother felt, no one really feels what the persons who were shot and dead felt and therefor those persons are the ultimate ones that feel whether they should have did or could have done anything differently.

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The interview goes on in the same vein. The reporter tries unsuccessfully to get GT to admit that killing is wrong, and they get into a debate about the meaning of war. It was funny and bit humiliating when President Clinton pulled this about the meaning of "Sex" and "is", but to hear this sort of thing used to defend the murder of innocents is alarming to say the least!

I have never heard such a stunning example of the postmodern view that everything is subjective, and there is no objective or external reality or truth. It was no less than chilling to hear this in regards to such a heinous and wanton act of evil.


To read more about postmodernism, there are many sources on the web. I'm not saying all aspects of it are wrong and evil like this... indeed, I live out a very postmodern life in some ways. One of my late father's professors at Valparaiso University taught him an aphorism (the source of which I've not been able to track down... I think the prof was OP Kretzmann) that "When you exaggerate a truth you create a falsehood."

A few select bits from the Wiki about Pomo

postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality

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In its broadest context, postmodernism can be seen as a world view. For instance, Walter Truett Anderson identifies postmodernism as one of four world views. These four worldviews are the postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed, the scientific-rational in which truth is 'found' through methodical, disciplined inquiry, the social-traditional in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilisation and the neo-romantic in which truth is found either through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self.^[7]

A related intellectual / philosophical school is relativism

Relativism is the idea that some element or aspect of experience or culture is relative to, i.e., dependent on, some other element or aspect. Some relativists claim that humans can understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of their historical or cultural context. The term often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture. One argument for relativism suggests that our own cognitive bias prevents us from observing something objectively with our own senses, and notational bias will apply to whatever we can allegedly measure without using our senses. In addition, we have a culture bias — shared with other trusted observers — which we cannot eliminate. A counterargument to this states that subjective certainty and concrete objects and causes form part of our everyday life, and that there is no great value in discarding such useful ideas as isomorphism, objectivity and a final truth. (For more information on the "usefulness" of ideas, see Pragmatism.)

I placed the deep philosophical stuff at the end because while I know many of you are outraged and dismayed by what happened, not many (any?) of you care as much about matters of ontology (the nature of reality) and epistemology (the nature of knowing) as I do.

Yes... I know there are other issues involved... matters of gun control, whether the city of Kirkwood did do right by this man... having lived in St. Louis, I know it is a very racially polarized region where the old school people in power do not react well to outsiders or to those who challenge them for any reason. I'm not wanting to get into that any more to acknowledge that I expect others of you are thinking about these issues and (being the moderately/eclectically postmodern fellow that I am) I respect and appreciate that others have other concerns. Mine is simply this... Postmodernism and Relativism be damned, DEAD is DEAD, and MURDER is MURDER!