Lawrence Auster Diagnosed With Pancreatic Cancer

Lawrence Auster, Blogger
View From The Right

Lawrence Auster of View From the Right has announced that he has metastasized pancreatic cancer.  He was diagnosed a year ago, and has been undergoing chemotherapy since then.

Auster has responded very well to the chemotherapy; numerous tumors in his body rapidly shrank and now are not visible at all.  However, that does not imply a cure, as the tumors are probably just microscopic at this point.  They could come back, but no one can predict when. Nevertheless, the medical treatment has undoubtedly prolonged Auster's life.

God bless you Larry and may you continue to beat the odds!

Read Larry's announcement here.

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Too Much Discussion Regarding Gays

The super Christians who frequent "View From the Right" have continued to discuss my tolerance for gays.  Good lord, funny how the word "tolerance" can cause such controversy.   The discussion did help me to clarify my real position on this and other matters.

I often self-censor to avoid offending Christian conservatives, especially family members who are really into religion.  I won't do that any more.  I do not filter my judgment, logic and thought through anyone's "holy scriptures."  I am a member of no religion, including Christianity.  I judge religions by the amount of joy they impart to their followers.  Religions that replace joy, wonder and optimism with fear, loathing and prejudice are to be devoutly ignored.

I admire Carl Jung, a great thinker and psychiatrist who tried to understand religious concepts (like an afterlife) through his own direct experience.  He was wonderfully open-minded about it.  A couple of Jungian quotes:

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.

My stand on gays is easy to understand:  leave them alone.  Do not insult them, taunt them, fire them (on that basis alone), and most certainly, do not beat them up.  Teenage gays have a very high suicide rate, mainly due to bullying from their peers. Don't add to that by your own behavior.  Live and let live.

My personal standard goes even further:  do not ostracize gays, nor deny them kindness, inclusion and friendship, assuming that the only area of difference is their sexual orientation.  I thought the actions of some social conservatives to boycott CPAC over the participation of a gay conservative group were mean and narrow-minded.

As far as religion and gays is concerned, I will say this:  any religion that requires you to hate people you don't know, for things they can't help and who are doing you no harm, is a false religion.

Lawrence Auster Wrong on Amanda Knox?

My friend Larry Auster and I do not agree on every point.  He has concluded that Amanda Knox was most probably guilty, and her innocence is only a lie being pushed by the liberal media in America.  I, on the other hand, believe she is innocent of the crime for which she was convicted of murder.

Read Auster's opinion here.

The case was recently made more ambiguous by a stupid "Lifetime" movie on the crime that was fiction, told with the premise that Knox was guilty.  I had a ton of hits yesterday from people who had viewed the silly flick and were looking for information on Knox.

Almost all of the lies, distortions, myths and falsehoods about Amanda Knox and the crime for which she was framed are covered at Injustice In Perugia.

Prosecutors who frame innocents simply to augment their reputations or to express their biases are nothing new.  It happens, more often than most Americans want to believe.

The Liberal "Script": Gun Violence Motivated by "Conservative Anger"

Lawrence Auster isn't always right.  I've been meaning to rebut his odd post regarding the term "Political Correctness," but the Arizona shootings pointed my attention towards more substantial fare.  However, Auster is usually right and is again this morning.  He writes:

EVEN AS THE LIBERALS' BIG LIE ABOUT CONSERVATIVES' RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MASSACRE IS BEING RAPIDLY DISCREDITED BY THE FACTS, THE LIBERALS CAN'T LET GO OF IT 

As reported in this morning's New York Times, the FBI has found written statements in Jared Loughner's home showing that he planned to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, but has found no indications as to why he targeted her. The article goes on to mention Loughner's repeated disruptive behavior, in five classroom incidents involving campus police, which led to his being suspended from Pima Community College.

Notwithstanding the complete absence of any knowledge of Loughner's motives for seeking to kill Giffords, the Times ends the story with this:

Nobody knew for sure what compelled the gunman. Ms. Giffords, who represents the Eighth District, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, has been an outspoken critic of the state's tough immigration law, which is focused on identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants, and she had come under criticism for her vote in favor of the health care law.

To repeat, there is no evidence that Loughner had any interest in the illegal alien issue or in Gifford's stand on it. Indeed, there is no more evidence that Gifford's position on the illegal alien law motivated Loughner's attack on her, than there is evidence that Giffords's position on Afghanistan or taxes or the funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting motivated his attack on her. Yet the Times couldn't refrain from tossing off the hint that Loughner shot Giffords because of her opposition to Arizona's controversial law on illegal aliens.

But here, I think, is the silver lining. That final, cheap-shot paragraph in the Times article may be the fading echo of the leftist media's attempt to blame the Tucson massacre on the right. The facts showing that Loughner was a mentally ill person who had nothing to do with conservatism have been widely disseminated. The left realizes that they can no longer sustain their Big Lie that Loughner was a conservative motivated by "conservative anger." But the skunks at the Times couldn't completely abandon their pet notion that the massacre was caused by right-wing hatred, since that charge, as Robert C. insightfully shows in the previous entry, is central to their own ideological identity. "To the believer," Robert writes, "the unfounded accusation itself is offered as a testimonial of belief to other fellow believers."

Liberalism, as I have said many times, is not about reality; it is about the perpetual reenactment of the sacred liberal "script" in which virtuous, inclusive liberals demonstrate their virtue by suppressing bigoted conservatives.

Auster's post is here.  He makes reference to an email written by one Robert C of Nashville, which is also worthy of a read, as it has insights into the workings of the liberal mind.