Reflections From a Murky Pond

President-elect Barack Obama has been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2008 BCE. Kudos to Mr. Obama! He certainly deserves to be honored or acknowledged as the single most influential person in the world during 2008. From what I can see, only a fool would think otherwise.

According to Time Magazine – in one of the craziest elections in American history, he overcame a lack of experience, a funny name, two candidates who are political institutions and the racial divide to become the 44th President of the United States.

Time decides who – or what on occasion – to name as Person of the Year based on who they feel most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year. So Person of the Year is an acknowledgment of power and/or influence as opposed to a ringing endorsement of any person’s qualities of character, wisdom or action.

Below is the complete list of Time’s Persons of the Year since the award’s inception in 1927. This is the powerful, though not nearly always illustrious company whose ranks Obama has now joined.

1927 Charles Augustus Lindbergh
1928 Walter P. Chrysler
1929 Owen D. Young
1930 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1931 Pierre Laval
1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1933 Hugh Samuel Johnson
1934 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1935 Haile Selassie
1936 Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson
1937 Generalissimo & Mme Chiang Kai-Shek
1938 Adolf Hitler
1939 Joseph Stalin
1940 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1941 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1942 Joseph Stalin
1943 George Catlett Marshall
1944 Dwight David Eisenhower
1945 Harry Truman
1946 James F. Byrnes
1947 George Catlett Marshall
1948 Harry Truman
1949 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1950 American Fighting-Man
1951 Mohammed Mossadegh
1952 Elizabeth II
1953 Konrad Adenauer
1954 John Foster Dulles
1955 Harlow Herbert Curtice
1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter
1957 Nikita Krushchev
1958 Charles De Gaulle
1959 Dwight David Eisenhower
1960 U.S. Scientists
1961 John Fitzgerald Kennedy
1962 Pope John XXIII
1963 Martin Luther King Jr.
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson
1965 General William Childs Westmoreland
1966 Twenty-Five and Under
1967 Lyndon B. Johnson
1968 Astronauts Anders, Borman and Lovell
1969 The Middle Americans
1970 Willy Brandt
1971 Richard Milhous Nixon
1972 Nixon and Kissinger
1973 John J. Sirica
1974 King Faisal
1975 American Women
1976 Jimmy Carter
1977 Anwar Sadat
1978 Teng Hsiao-P’ing
1979 Ayatullah Khomeini
1980 Ronald Reagan
1981 Lech Walesa
1982 The Computer
1983 Ronald Reagan & Yuri Andropov
1984 Peter Ueberroth
1985 Deng Xiaoping
1986 Corazon Aquino
1987 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
1988 Endangered Earth
1989 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
1990 The Two George Bushes
1991 Ted Turner
1992 Bill Clinton
1993 The Peacemakers
1994 Pope John Paul II
1995 Newt Gingrich
1996 Dr. David Ho
1997 Andy Grove
1998 Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr
1999 Jeff Bezos
2000 George W. Bush
2001 Rudolph Giuliani
2002 The Whistleblowers
2003 The American Soldier
2004 George W. Bush
2005 Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, & Bono
2006 You
2007 Vladimir Putin

So I must counsel my Liberal readers not to gloat too much over Obama being added to what is as much a rogues gallery as a hall of fame. I must also counsel my Conservative readers not to mourn or vent too much over Obama being acknowledged as the singularly most influential person of 2008.

This post stems from Bruce’s brief but vitriolic comment on a post at Reflections From A Murky Pond. In it Bruce labeled me “divisive.” This got me to thinking about divisiveness and the Left’s use of the phrase.

Thus we have this post thanks to Bruce, who would be offended at providing inspiration to one of “my sort.”

Adherents of the Left’s ideology in America use “divisive” as a very strong insult. It is fast becoming one of their favorite epithets to hurl at Conservatives. The Left does not like and is seemingly horribly offended by those who vocally disagree with any or all of their agendas. Therefor dissent is divisive and divisiveness is Wrong and not to be tolerated.

Perhaps we should all remember that, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary divisive is defined as:

Divisive
Pronunciation: \d?-?v?-siv\
Function: adjective
Date: 1642

Definition(s):

1. creating disunity or dissension

So essentially the Left views dissent and/or disagreement with their manifesto(s) as legitimate cause for contempt and disgust. In their minds such dissenters are somehow less worthy than than those who have swallowed the Left’s message. Since divisive is being used as the insult this isn’t even a matter of loathing the Conservatives’ opinions; the very act of having a different – and therefor divisive – opinion seems to be the cause for rancor, disrespect, and denigration.

Please don’t get me wrong – I don’t expect scions of the Left to agree we with me, nor do I expect them to be kind or polite in their disagreement. Such an expectation would both be completely unfounded and hypocritical since history has shown me that neither they nor myself have a propensity for “pulling our punches” when we engage in argument. What both intrigues and concerns me is that they seem to view my disagreement itself as a wrongdoing.

A phrase comes to my mind:

We are Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

— Third of Five aka Hugh
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode I, Borg (1992)

Has anyone else noticed this trend? Has the use of divisive or divisiveness as as the paramount insult by the Left struck anyone other than myself as worrisome?

BTW: The Right has its own way of being vile and insulting their opponents. The difference seems to be that the Right is offended by the opinions of the people who they disagree with, whereas the Left seems to be offended by their opposition’s very disagreement itself.

Caroline Kennedy would like to be appointed to fill Sen. Hillary Clinton’s soon to be vacant US Senate seat. The daughter and only surviving child of Pres. John F. Kennedy has set aside her famously private ways, which she had maintained since her father’s assassination in 1963, and has now expressed a strong desire to serve in the US Senate.

This formerly private scion of the Kennedy dynasty has gained some significant support.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is reported to have urged New York Gov. David Paterson to appoint Caroline Kennedy to the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton. Sen. Reid is said to believe in Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications to serve as a US Senator.

Just what qualifications is Senator Reid thinking of?

According to Gov. Patterson, Caroline Kennedy Paterson is a strong potential candidate whose appointment would keep a woman in the seat and whose personal connections would allow her to raise the roughly $70 million required to hold the seat in the coming years.

So, since Mrs. Kennedy’s previous endeavors have been largely outside the political arena – with the exception of the Barack Obama campaign – and since she has no legislative or executive experience, it seems that her real qualifications are her genitalia and her access to wealth.

Isn’t this exactly the same sort of gynocentric sexism and pandering that the Feminists and the rest of the Liberals so vehemently accused Sen. McCain and the GOP of committing during the 2008 elections with the nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin as their Vice-Presidential candidate? With Mrs. Kennedy having no track record for supporting or advancing what are normally considered women’s issues, and with her having by far and away less experience than the much maligned Gov. Palin, the thinking American would expect to hear hue and cry from the various significant feminist groups and PACs.

The thinking American who expected such outrage from the Feminists would apparently be wrong.

Despite the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Feminist Majority having previously jointly endorsed Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)  to take Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, both groups have been very close to silent on the topic of Caroline Kennedy being given that seat. They do not act as if they are particularly bothered by Maloney, a woman with well over 23 years of experience as a legislator, being possibly sidelined in favor of another woman with little experience beyond that of a NYC socialite.

Given their silence, if Gov. Palin continues in the political limelight will these feminist organizations still malign her as a politician and a woman? Given these feminist groups’ silence on Kennedy, will anyone still listen to them if do continue to insult and denigrate Gov. Palin in the future?

Euthyphro is one of the Greek philosopher Plato’s early dialogues, dated to around or soon after 399 BCE. In it the Greek philosopher Socrates and Euthyphro, a man known for being a theologian, attempt to arrive at an acceptable definition of piety.

One of the key points in the Euthyphro dialog is called the Euthyphro Dilemma:

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

For the followers of the Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) this normally translates into – on the occasions when it is debated by the theologians – the question of whether something is commanded by their God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by their God.

Amongst polytheists – with the rare exception of myself – the question rarely arises do to our multiplicity of deities with possibly conflicting directives and our lack of requirement for- or belief in their omniscience or infallibility.

I can’t speak to whether or not the Sikhs have the Euthyphro Dilemma often or not. They’re monotheists, but their view of their God is vastly different from most other faiths.

In any case though, it’s an interesting debate. Is the God(s) the creator or legislator of morality, or is the God(s) the enforcer of a morality that originate from separately Divine will?

December 21, 2008 is Yule this year. This is the holy day (holiday) of the Winter Solstice, the longest, darkest night of the year. Its celebration is quite different from that of the Christians’ Christmas. In my faith – which differs somewhat from that of Wiccans and many neo-Pagans – Yule is a holiday of sacrifice, propitiating the Crone and Winter King for bountiful new season, and of quiet contemplation and prayer.

At Yule we reach the nadir of the Darkness, but look forward with hope towards Spring and the time of rebirth. Those who follow the same path as myself reaffirm our oaths to our Goddess and God during Yule, and offer up sacrifices to ensure that Spring will return in truth and not just in name.

Blessed Yuletide, one and all.