You know it’s a sign of “the end” when The New York Times® and Time Magazine® earn a link in our blog due to our accusing them of truth telling (for once!)  This short blog has a very interesting surmise.

Should it turn out that financial guru Bernard Madoff is guilty of stealing upwards of $50,000,000,000 of his clients’ investments one can, in keeping with the en masse left-leaning, hyper-tolerant mania which is sweeping these United States these days, only hope (and keep a nice thought, too) that we’ll carefully mind ourselves as to the severity of our reaction as a nonjudgmental family of well-meaning beings.

Obviously, to many of us, education is “still the key” to, umm, blunting our wonderfully evolved race’s inclinations towards, umm, misunderstandings about one man’s mistaken misappropriations of the monetary assets of others, so it will remain especially important that our progress towards progressive values not be derailed by the inflexibility of old fashioned (think “right-wing, conservative”) moral expectations nor by the assuring but coercive rigidity of a so-called high standard of justice.

After all, hasn’t each of us woken up on the wrong side of the bed and needed a little extra tolerance for the disarming lack of balance which ensued? Isn’t it New York Times® columnist David Brooks who presumes to remind us how divisive it can be to rush, or even crawl, towards a black and white  assessment which might be perceived as not inclusive of others? 

Before any of us offends another’s inclusive sensibilities by acting bigoted (or acting at all close minded) towards a Bernard Madoff let us resolve to not become so partisan that Mr. Madoff is suddenly made to “feel like the other.” (Remember one present day “expert’s” lesson drawn from Kristallnacht?) Do we, as a beautiful gathering of tolerance-loving beings want to risk having those as erudite as David Brooks’ passel of colleagues at The New York Times® react by showing us that we are, in Brooks’ pejorative, “reactionary?” Chance forbid.

So this week when water cooler chit chat surrounding Bernie Madoff’s alleged faux pas takes a turn towards outdated, judgmental standards, and the quest for alleged moral clarity, which, taken together, might tempt you to abandon the enlightened warmth of everything “progressive” merely to join those hateful, ethics-touting control freaks who smugly offend others as if they have a duty to judge well, well, you and we at TheBSshow.com® can band together in protest. We can say, “Hey guys, isn’t this critique sort of inappropriate? Might not others feel offended by your bigotry towards Bernie at this sensitive time? Can’t you see how such hatefulness can be perceived as divisive. Can’t we all just come together?”

Yes! Yes, we can. Together, we can all work — oh, wait, now many of us will absolutely have to work because our $50 billion has been pilfered, but, leaving that aside, what was I saying? — oh, together we can progressively progress towards, umm, more togetherness, and finally learn that when we positively come together (or in this case work together) it’s not only easier to continue avoiding harsh judgments, it’s also easier to reach into others’ pockets, er, I mean, easier to share that enlightened open mindedness of the message of acceptance which feels stronger than fifty billion fallacious platitudes which, though vacuous at best, nevertheless help us to forget how ridiculously dangerous, wrong, and infantile our constant sidestepping of moral issues is. 

What’s the old bumper sticker slogan?  ”If you think morals education is expensive, try Bernie Madoff’s.”

©2008 TheBSshow.com and The BS Show With Bjorn And Shawn®. All rights reserved.

The BS Show is not responsible for any physical or ideological regurgitation on the reader’s part, temporary or otherwise, caused by the ruthless lucidity of holistically reasonable analysis put forth herein. The reader is advised that any acquisition of genuine wisdom will lead to a proportionately sharper mind, softer heart, and richer life, not to mention irreversible erosion of those myriad beliefs often founded on fundamentalist secular extremism (FSE) and the like, whether or not the reader’s indoctrination was administered by those in authority at universities or otherwise. In that regard the reader assumes all responsibility for the immeasurable risk(s) associated with finding the courage to question the presuppositions of those FSE teachings at the suggestion of The BS Show®.  :-)

In this, the December 8th 2008 porchcast of The BS Show, our co-hosts trade all that “save the west” nonsense for the pursuit of fun. Good ol’ accessible everyday enjoyable uber openness displaces their usual, consequential mumbo jumbo. It’s about time! Goodbye to the heady concepts, the stick in the mud macro analyses, and those really big words (Shawn!). And, no, it wasn’t just Bjorn’s idea to attempt this shift.

Gosh nab it, they first chronicle, er, rather, tell what lead to the decision, glide through a few too-serious passages from Theodore Dalrymple to set up the venture, then launch into the shallow and unthreatening waters of funness with panache, I mean, flair… which, as it turns out, leads to a very moving and inescapable, consuming final segment. (ACLU please save our show!)

Yep, when Bjorn and Shawn threaten to pull the plug on pushing their big BS Show agenda, we with any sense of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth should be nervous about the future.

Segment 1 of 7

To VIEW any subsequent segments of this week’s porchcast of The BS Show With Bjorn and Shawn, click on “See the rest of this entry.”

See the rest of this entry »

Remember the scene in Harrison Ford’s old movie where Indiana Jones was scared almost as witless as the film’s audience by the intimidating imposition of a desert-savvy, middle eastern garbed, enemy combatant, of sorts, wielding two glistening swords and threatening to emphasize with immediacy the fragility and brevity of Jones’ earthly mortality?

And remember your great relief when Jones — the film’s good guy — having recalled the loaded handgun on his person just shot the guy? Me, too. I loved it. 

My point is that, in light of the recent Islamic extremist lethality in Mumbai (Bombay), and given the clock-like dependability of human nature to, in the real world, assiduously come up with new recreant expressions of evil — some of which are destructive of innocents and innocence — it will always be in good people’s best interest everywhere that superior fire power reside in the hands of the good guys. Always. 

However, where foolishness and strategic nuttery (think head-in-the-sand pollyannas and pacifists, for example) outweigh palpable quantities of goodness, humility, and reason (hopefully instantiated in the form of law and jurisprudence), uncontroverted danger will persist and metasticize often to needlessly catastrophic proportions. Who wants that? (Hint: Don’t ask PC extremists at the New York Times who can’t or won’t admit the vast, pragmatic differences among an extreme radical like Mother Teresa, an extreme radical like Abu Musab al-Zarquawi, and an extreme radical like Joseph Stalin.) 

In anticipation of the next stealthly scheduled Militant Muslim Mayhem it would be best if the “gooder” among the human race — or at least the less evil — could muster enough courage to finally begin: (1) recognizing the paucity of wisdom which besets us as a race; (2) questioning our unwillingness to accurately judge,* parse, and extirpate the ideas and ideologies which repeatedly foment wanton mass murder; and (3) demanding that our protective personnel be so overwhelmingly equipped by us (in comparison to those passionate, genocidal jihadists just around the corner) that the good guys will not have to fear the lethal embarrassment of bringing a bamboo cane to a machine gun fight.

* Yes, the author knowingly used the word “judge.” If this causes the reader to judge the column differently, or to judge that the author has misjudged, the reader might further judge the merits of retracting any judgments as may be construed to be judgmental. As an adjunct readers are also encouraged to judge that the numbness propagated by the anti-judging zealots in our universities will cause history’s judgment of us to be justifiably pitiless.

©2008 TheBSshow.com® and The BS Show®