The Magi

Posted on

This is an excerpt from my interview with Dr. Winfried Corduan in which we discuss the Christmas-famous Magi. Hear the whole thing here. -P

Penjammin: You hear people talking about the Magi all the time. It's like, “oh, well, they they had some contact with material in Numbers or they had contact with material in Genesis or [especially] Daniel.” They'll say that Daniel was their leader once upon a time, and so he left his Magi in his place (when he was in Babylon). And those guys would have known the scriptures, and they could have done math and figured out prophecies that [implied]: here comes the king-of-the-Jews time. Now, that you hear all the time, but this is different . . .

Win Corduan: Well, here's the thing that I have become increasingly convinced of. About three years ago, I may have said something along the line of why, precisely, they went to Judea and Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem. That remains a mystery. Well, I have been more and more convinced that the theory that Zoroaster had had contact with the Israelites in exile, that theory has a lot of merit to it. Now I realize that most scholarship over the last hundred years has gone in the other direction, that some of the Jews learned about their religion from the Persians, but there really isn't enough overlap there to make that plausible at all. But it is plausible that (okay, I'm saying Israelites, not Jews, but) the so-called ten lost tribes who were deported into what at the time was then the Assyrian Empire with their belief in one God (assuming that they repented from all their idolatry). It was very likely that Zoroaster came in contact with some of them and that he picked up the idea of one God, possibly. And I'm saying, with greater probability than I used to think, [that] he picked it up from the Israelites and then incorporated it as he carried out the very much needed reformation of the original Persian polytheism.

For more, find Win's compilation of relevant blog posts here and hear the whole interview here.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Some Idealism 101

Posted on

This is an excerpt from my talk with Monistic Idealism. We discuss Idealism, Berkeley, and his new livestream series Idealism Forever. -P

Penjammin: That's the part that stood out to me there. Would you explain to people why is it that they wouldn't know that their experience of this physical world (on a dualist or materialist view). . . why should they think that it is not as the world actually is? It seems like common sense that, “Hey, there's a bus coming. I see a bus coming. That means that there's a bus coming.” And they would take [that] as just a direct correspondence between the actual world and what they observe. But Locke and others have said that maybe that's not the case. Why is that?

Jordan / Monistic Idealism: Great question. Um, so Berkeley answers this. Reality is experience. If that's what an object is (just an experience) and if I'm experiencing it, well, then I am perceiving reality the way it really is. But if you think the world is physical or material, or you're a dualist and you think it's more than experience, then How could you ever know? would be the question. You're putting yourself in a skeptical scenario. So you have your experiences, but you're saying there's a world beyond your experiences. You're saying there's more. There's this physical world out there, beyond all of our experiences. And so the question is, well, how would you actually know that? I mean, you couldn't you couldn't appeal to your experiences because you're saying reality is more, [that] it's somehow different. But if you're an idealist, you can say, yes, reality is what I'm experiencing. And that's the point George Berkeley made. He said, if you are an idealist, now you really can affirm common sense, right? But if you're not an idealist, now you're not affirming common sense, because you've put yourself in this skeptical scenario where you're not really sure if anything you're seeing is really real… because the physical world is different than experience. So how do you really know?

For more, follow Jordan on twitter, on youtube and listen below.

Also Jordan made a fun video version of this episode with illustrations.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Bonus Feature

Posted on

This is part two of my interview with the Culinary Libertarian. Our interview went over, and we just kept talking, kinda freestyle without any subject in particular to get to. So it's that kind of fun. (Hense the dvd-esc title.) We talk about benefit of the doubt, conservatism, family and more. There's an excerpt below. Get the whole thing, along with my eletter, here.

Dann: . . . There's more than two sides. But to keep the discussion simple, there's side A and side B, and there's propaganda on both sides A and B. If you think your side is free of propaganda and if you think your side of history is all sunshine and roses, then you're the problem, not the history. . . . It's hard to emotionally and mentally get yourself around the idea that my side did bad things and I accept that. That's a very difficult position to be in.

Penjammin: And that brings up a point about conservatism, too. (Yeah, I defend conservatism but probably not of a kind that everybody agrees with.) In principle, to me, [conservatism] is cultivating the inherited good. And I think, by definition, that has to be unobjectionable. Now, if that's actually what conservatives are doing, that's a completely different question. Often they're not. Often they're just, you know, driving liberal agenda by the speed limit as they say. But conservatism proper, I think, is cultivating the inherited good. But part of that process is discerning what you've inherited; what is good, what's the baby [and] what's the bathwater. And slavery… that inherited cultural institution needed to go. That's great, but other things maybe need to stay and you cultivate that. So with that sense of it, I think you're exactly right. Where are you coming from (your people, your tribe, whatever you identify with)? What's inherited in there? What have you received? And then Where is it good? Where is it bad?” That's the introspective self-evaluation you're talking about. What do you think about that? I know, you might have some opinions on that… Feel free to speak your peace.

Dann: Well, it's an interesting idea, and cultivating the inherited good, comes with the stated (we'll call it a principle for now) principle that there was an inherited good. What if there wasn't? What if there was not good and really not good?

Penjammin: So, it's all inherited bad, huh? Okay.

Dann: What if?

Penjammin: Okay. Just hypothetically, why not?

Dann: What if that's the case? What if there isn't inherited good. There's just inherited levels of not good to really, really, really not good. So we brought up the Constitution before, uh, and I think it requires more than just reading the document. It was written by a bunch of lawyers who were very crafty and clever with their words to make a government that protected them from the masses. It was sold as something to protect the masses from the government. But that certainly hasn't worked out to be the case in 238 years. We can certainly say today that that's not the case. So somewhere along the way it went off the rails. My question is, what if it was designed never to be on the rails to begin with?

Penjammin: So what you're saying is- if I'm hearing you're right. (I'm not going to do the Karen Newman whatever. Um, Cathy Newman, “what you're saying is” [laughs].) IF I'm hearing you right… (I not going to assume that I am-)

Dann: Jordan, his composure during that interview really was-

Penjammin: Inspiring, among other things. Yeah.

Dann: Yes.

Penjammin: But yeah. So, IF this is what you're saying, that here's something, the constitution, which is taken to be a good that's been inherited, and even it is not so good (there may be somethings [we could take out of it] but it's really, you say, muddy and very much not good), then what is their [the conservative’s] inherited good? And I would put to you that perhaps the sphere of politics would be the most minute social sphere of which conservatism is interested. That's one thing that bugs me a lot when people talk about conservatism is that it's almost defined by Republicans. And why would on earth would you let them define what this is for you? It's about family, which does not necessarily have to do with politics. It has to do with faith and other things which people are [about separating] church and state. So it seems like there are so many things that are bigger, more intimate, and have more to do with it. I think historically even politics has been peripheral at best. So now it's becoming definitive. And so yes, that might be one place; maybe everything in politics is inherited bad to some degree (just for sake of argument), but then you got to say family is good, even if it's imperfect.

Dann: So I don't disagree with you, but this is one of those things. So, um. Family. Do you remember? You're probably old enough to remember… I can't remember the actress- Candice Bergen Show. There was a news show, and as an actress, she got very hot under the collar over Dan Quail's version of family. Mother, father, two kids and half . . .

Get the whole discussion, along with my eletter, here.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Waking Them Up

Posted on

Hello. This week I had invigorating experience of watching the panel discussion / debate between Dave Smith and Laura Loomer. And I am reminded of another debate Dave did. A review of it be reposted below. Have great weekend. -Pen.

Earlier this week, I made an outline of the Smith Sarwark debate. Now you get to hear some of my thoughts. You’re welcome. 🙂

First, debates can be very helpful, but they also go bad easily. I need them to be engaging to get anything out of them, so I say debates need to be important and fun and followable… enough for the intended audience anyway. Second, someone should walkaway introduced to the whole scope of the matter at hand. Walking away with just two obscure takes leaves too much to be desired.

On both accounts, this debate did pretty well. It was easy to follow, for the careful listener anyway. Some of it seemed lost on Sarwark, but meh. Also, it was not dry. Smith kept it fun. Sarwark made it a bit creepy,1 but fun and lively it was.

Interestingly, each debater fit his message. Smith, in regular clothes and speech, stood passionately for profound yet basic principles. Sarwark illustrated his points with sales, twice, and with his suit and subtly crafty rhetoric, he fit the part. Dial them up, and one can imagine Smith pounding his fist and yelling, “Give me liberty or give me death!” while Sarwark worries about the Tory-vote.

Smith spoke to (and in the spirit of) the best in civilization. Sarwark's appearance of sincerity just clashed with his wormtonguery and the stench of b.s. on his breath. Smith won the debate. However, the line of the night goes to Tom Woods. Per Smith's quote:

We libertarians are the inheritors of an exceptionally venerable tradition of ideas that is noble and beautiful, and that carries a grave responsibility. We must be true to that inheritance. Enough putting people to sleep already. It’s time we finally woke them up.

Tom Woods

1. For just one example, if Sarwark took the time to pander to the audience and pet their emotions with “You’re special,” one more time, I was going to get sick. Someone from the audience should have yelled, “Thanks mommy!” His general style was off-putting as well.

2. Sarwark’s rhetorical care, dodges, and ploys were collectively and repetitively called out as “lawyering”. Sarwark even attempted to punt the label back once.

Liberty Alliance

Posted on

Below is an excerpt from my talk with Haley Heathman about the Liberty Alliance Network. The rest can be found here. Enjoy. -P

Haley: I started the Liberty Alliance Network. I think it was like January of 2021. And it was, of course, as a result of the Covid insanity. And I was a little bit disappointed in people on our side, that we were not doing enough to fight back against everything. I think by 2021, most of us on our side (in the circles that we run in), we already knew enough to know that . . . something wasn't right, and [that] this was a garbage and a hoax and whatever you want to call it. Plandemic. But nobody was doing anything, and I was really upset and disappointed that even people like us who should know better- I'm like, we've spent our whole lives (maybe not our whole lives, but since we were libertarians) railing against government day after day after day, and here's the biggest government incursion on our liberties in our entire life. And yet, everybody was just kind of sitting on their thumbs like, “I don't know what to do.”

Penjammin: Yeah, even the LP leadership was just like- the messaging was horrible if it was there at all.

Haley: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I was just like, “Are you kidding me? … so we're all just cosplaying here or something? We're just pretending to care about liberty, but we don't really?” . . . Of course, we are not known to be good organizers or effective organizers. The left, they can organize in a heartbeat. In the drop of a hat, they can get 500 people out to protest not being able to kill babies in the womb, no problem. We have to fight and tooth and nail to get people involved and everything.

And so that's what I wanted to do, to start a network where we could start promoting each other and our organizations. My goal is to inspire and encourage others to take action because that's what we need. We can't just sit here and be keyboard warriors. You've got to get in the fight. You have to kind of get involved. And so maybe you might not be like the type that's going to go out and start your own organization, but you might want to join up with somebody else's. And you need to know where they are. Now, back in 2021, there weren't so many. People were still under lockdowns and things like that, and there were still mask mandates and businesses shut down and schools shut down. And so it was hard, harder. Now, I'm proud to say. And I would actually argue that the right, right now, is better organized than the left.

Penjammin: Okay.

Haley: And and so, I mean, I can make that argument… Now it's kind of evolved a little bit because now there's so many groups and organizations. If you can't find one, you must not be looking hard enough because they're everywhere now. (Thank goodness.) And we still need it. We still need more. We still need more engagement.

Then through that I started my podcast, which started off as a Rumble channel, which is called What Can We Do? Because I'm trying to answer that question. One of the most common questions is, “Well, what can we do?” I'm like: “Well, here, let me tell you, let's talk to this person who's doing this, and let's talk to this person who's doing that, and let's talk to them, so you can get ideas and figure out ways that you can maybe get involved yourself.” That's again: Inspire and encourage others to take action. And I think that the worst thing you could do (well, especially back then, but now, at any point) is nothing. Or . . . I know we were bantering . . . back and forth about social media before [we] got serious. [00:10:00] . . . The days of being a Facebook keyboard warrior are over. You can't just sit there and engage in pointless Facebook arguments… Let's actually do something in the real world and get involved and get engaged. That's been kind of my passion for a while: getting people [to] do something, go do something, get out there, get involved.

Get the rest our discussion along with my eletter at penjams.com/MoreLibertyHaley.