05/31/2006
Gore: Bush administration "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".
Posted 2:17 PM EST by Andy Towle in Elsewhere | Permalink
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Let me add: ...that needs to be run outta town!
Posted by: Michael W. | May 31, 2006 2:22:07 PM
AlGore at his looniest.
(Pleeeze run him again...)
Posted by: Tom | May 31, 2006 2:45:57 PM
Gore is absolutely right on just about everything. Our country would be so much better off today if he had been rightly recognized as the winner of the 2001 election.
Posted by: Bill | May 31, 2006 2:55:05 PM
Did anyone read that profile of Gore in last week's New York magazine? It was very compelling. It definitely made me rethink him.
Posted by: MT | May 31, 2006 3:00:52 PM
Yes, Tom, Al Gore is "loony." And Bush is very bright, and is a great humanitarian, and the world is so much better off now than it would have been if the Supreme Court had appointed Gore the winner in 2000 instead of Bush. And the moon is made of green cheese, too! Also: 1 + 1 = 3.
Posted by: JOE 2 | May 31, 2006 3:23:41 PM
I also say, please run Al Gore again. Maybe the American people have learned their lesson. Look at the headlines from Iraq today. Killing pregnant Iraqi women aint exactly the way to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. What a mess George Dumbya has created. I'd like to gloat, but I looked up the definition in the dictionary, doing that would make me as stupid and small minded as the conservatives. Taking sick joy in the misery going on in Iraq for the Iraqis and foreigners in their land wouldn't be too satisfying.
Posted by: Derrick from Philly | May 31, 2006 3:28:24 PM
I just can't help but think people view Al Gore as stale. Not that Hillary stands a chance of winning a national election. She doesn't. Al has a better chance, but it would seem like Dems can't find a man of the future.
How 'bout Roger Clinton? He's no dumber or shadier than Dubya! JOKE?
Posted by: xolondon | May 31, 2006 4:08:05 PM
Roman Catholic Christians, the original Christians, discovered Greek philosopher and perpatetic Aristotle in the 13th century, when Thomas Aquinas melded patristic Christianity with Aristotlean philosophy. Apparently, the biblical fundamentalists are now coming into Aristotle's sphere as well. Apparently, in the Reformation, when they discarded philosophy, most notably Aristotle, and surrendered entirely to the Bible as "the literal and inerrant Word of God sufficient for salvation," they have become aware that something is missing. The Bible missed something?
Well, according to Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life, the Bible does not address teleology, the Greek word for the study of purposeful and purposive action. Now, Aristotle's notion of teleology was ubiquitous; not only human action was directed toward a purpose or goal, but so too was nature.
Warren does not point out the Bible's omission, he simply adds Aristotle's insights to it, just as Aquinas did seven centuries ago. I guess some people need to reinvent the wheel, or the wheel just won't exist.
And, once again, the same mistakes are being repeated. Without question, humans do act to achieve some predetermined goal, and our language of means and ends illustrates this. Not all human action is teleological, but a great deal of our conscious action is. We do x in order to achieve y. Really, very simple and quite obvious. But, contrary to Aristotle, and Aquinas who refurbished him, nature itself does not act in this manner. Only conscious beings act purposefully, not animate or inaminate objects. Most animals seem teleological, but few plants are. Higher on the List of Complex Beings, more purposeful behavior becomes (and occasionally, lacking purpose). It's not a paradox, it's just a matter of using teleological concepts in specified ways.
So now, the fundamentalist Christian can rejoin the Catholic in acting purposefully. Of course, they can join the rest of humanity, going back to Aristotle, that never disputed this feature in the first place. And, of course, they have chosen to impose teleology onto nature again, just as Catholics have been doing. The way they do this is prescriptive. They observe how "nature works" and then impute moral imperatives based on how humans ought to act based on what they perceive the purpose of natural phenomena to be. It's the classic is-ought fallacy; one cannot derive a moral imperative (value judgment) from what is (facts about nature), any more than one can impose a fact to fit our purposes.
It then slides into "this" is meant for "that." The proverbial "penis" is meant for the "vagina," and then they escalate it by insisting it's only that arrangement or "fit," and then only for procreation, and then only within marriage. I still don't understand why they don't escalate this nonsense -- to limit further the "meant for only" -- to only a woman's fertile period, but, hey, it has to stop somewhere, the end may as well be arbitrary as the means.
Of course, a lot of human activity has no discernable purpose at all. Those acts motivated by instinct and by the subconscious are just two exceptions. And, just like an acorn's purpose can be both squirrel food and an oak tree, many natural features can be used in manifoldly different ways. An oak tree can become a coffee table or a house or a boat or heaven knows what else. But, now the new purpose found for teleology is again one of its older uses: To disabuse non-Christians and homosexuals. Their purpose-full life is not complete unless their purpose to exterminate/eliminate The Other is complete. So here we go again.
Posted by: The Gay Species | May 31, 2006 4:46:33 PM
Gore is correct.
Posted by: Robert In WeHo | May 31, 2006 8:14:45 PM
Bush is the terrorist who hijacked America.
Posted by: vince | May 31, 2006 8:44:06 PM