tanto nomini nullum par elogium -- just kidding... RSS 2.0
 Saturday, February 02, 2008
I recommended The Illuminatus Trilogy to someone today. 
I once sent to copy of this book to Chris Sells once when he was finishing up his latest WPF book and he was cursing me for days because he couldn't put it down.

http://www.rawilson.com/illuminatus.shtml#drake gives you a little flavor (read the last sentence a few times).

This recommendation today reminded me of a couple of things that have been processing in the back of my mind:

1. Crowley: Liber Oz

Man has the right to live by his own law--
to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.
Man has the right to eat what he will:
to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.
Man has the right to think what he will:
to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.
Man has the right to love as he will:
Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

2. Mao: Problems of War and Strategy

Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the "omnipotence of war". Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

3. The fact that the above are likely directly responsible for my proud lifetime membership in the NRA.

You have no idea what hell I get because of my membership in that organization, but I can normally balance it out by saying that I give money to CARE & UNICEF (which is true too).

Saturday, February 02, 2008 3:53:46 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [2] -

Saturday, February 02, 2008 6:33:34 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Re: the Crowley quote

That last sentence had me thinking the quote might be irony, but after reading the references, it apparently wasn't.

Where do those rights go when they conflict with another man's same rights? What about when they indirectly produce a society which systematically does so? No man is an island, no act is in isolation, and no human will always "will" only what is "loving" or even fair to others.
Doug
Saturday, February 02, 2008 7:50:03 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
NRA? Unsubscribed.
Harold
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Douglas M. Purdy
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