Dobson, Besen, Obama, Warren; von Mises

Radio Hall of Fame Craters A Month After It Inducts James Dobson Amid Protests

NEW YORK –December 13th, 2008
A month after protesters picketed its annual dinner for inducting Focus on the Family’s James Dobson into its Radio Hall of Fame, the Chicago-based Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) announced today that it was selling its half-finished building.

"Pandering to extremists doesn't pay and the Museum of Broadcast Communications suffered a catastrophic blow to its reputation by honoring Focus on the Family's James Dobson," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out (TWO). "Bruce DuMont hoped to cash in by catering to the deep pockets of the religious right, but his prayers weren't answered.

When the nomination of Dobson was announced, TWO teamed up with the Gay Liberation Network and launched http://www.dumpdobson.com/ to keep Dobson out of the Radio Hall of Fame. These robust efforts culminated with a full-page "Dump Dobson" ad in the Chicago Tribune, signature ads in the GLBT media and a large demonstration outside of the awards dinner at Chicago's Renaissance Hotel.

DuMont blamed his woes on alleged broken promises by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the economic downturn. He did not point out that his project lost momentum after it became mired in controversy by cozying up to Dobson, says TWO.

"I can understand the temptation to pin the blame on Blagojevich, as he is not too popular these days," said Besen. "But, DuMont should take responsibility and admit that his project lost its luster and foundered after he chose to bronze the bigotry of James Dobson."

Washington -December 18
It would seem that another protest may be on the way. It was reported this morning that President-Elect Obama has chosen Rick Warren, the celebrity preacher at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., to give the invocation at Obama's swearing-in ceremony.

Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance. He has recently compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia. He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion. The Swamp

Well, it sounds as though Warren has his own "social gospel." Considering the effect TWO and The Gay Liberation Network had on the Dobson controversy, I'm waiting to see what they do with this. Pandering to extremists may not pay, but it is not "extremism" that is the problem. America's Founders were extremists. Ben Franklin himself must have been an extremist, to become America's first millionaire.

Or are we only talking about religious extremists? Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad were extremists.

Warren's ideas are not "extreme." They are outrageous, insulting, and in the sense that such widely popular theists can effect public policy and law, thus breaking down the wall of separation between church and state, not to mention influencing other citizens to become homophobes by wrongful moral comparison to child molesters makes such men as Warren unfit to "invocate" the swearing-in of any American President.

Study Guide to Ludwig Von Mises "Human Action" Available Free

"It has been a work years in the making, but finally the Study Guide to the Scholar's Edition of Ludwig von Mises's "Human Action", is available. You can order the handsome volume here, and — as we've come to expect — the Mises Institute is generously providing the entire book free for download here."

I have already downloaded mine, to a thumbdrive. The study guide is 318 pages and I have yet to read page one because I have had my copy for only 2 minutes now! But I am looking forward to reading it side by side with "Human Action."

The Study Guide's author, Robert P. Murphy, wrote in the Daily Articles of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute:

"Once you realize that Mises has a definite plan for the book — it is certainly not a Joycean stream-of-consciousness riff — then its 881 pages are not as daunting. You realize with each chapter, 'Yes, now I see why Mises couldn't really get on to Important Topic X until he first dealt with the material he just covered.'"

And if you are a free-market naturalist, (which you are if you are a metaphysical naturalist,) you just might want to check out The Gold Standard: An Austrian Perspective YouTube video from the Mises Institute's first conference, November 16-17, 1983; Washington, DC.

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Naturalism Denies Free Will; Assumes "Locality" of Abstractions

Liberalism and "Spatial Locality" of Abstractions

On the website Objectivism Online.Org, a young man asked a question about "spatial locality of abstractions" within the brain. It was an insightful question. Not many people would think about such a thing.

In spite of the fact that Ayn Rand was specifically asked about such a thing in her book "Philosophy: Who Needs It", I wasn't thinking of placing that "spatial locality" in the brain. I thought, "Of course its in the brain. The philosopher in the book who asked about it has to mean something else." What that "else" was I didn't give a second thought. I just knew that abstractions were not "out there"; they were in my head.

After all, Rand said as part of her answer that abstractions "are mental entities [,] or put it this way: a phenomenon of consciousness."

That is what I would have answered myself, that abstractions exist, but not in any empirical way unless they related directly to an object about which one drew the abstractions; even then, it's not the abstractions that would have empirical existence. Abstractions are in the mind.

She also said, "[W]e can call them 'mental entities' only metaphorically or for convenience. It is a 'something.' For instance, before you have a certain concept, that particular something doesn't exist in your mind. When you have formed the concept of 'concept,' that is a mental something; it isn't a nothing."

But in the conversation string, someone who calls herself "Dragon Lady" answered the question about "spatial locality" this way:

"When you're talking about a memory, a thought, or an emotion, you're talking about the *experience* of that mental entity. You don't *experience* any of those things as a conscious awareness of neurons firing in a specific location in your brain. The *thought* is conceptually distinct from the neurons just as the mind is conceptually distinct from the brain."

Well, that is precisely what I would not have thought to ascribe to "a phenomenon of consciousness." But that is what the young man was asking.

The Dragon Lady was right. But her answer led me to add an answer of my own to the string, one that I think raises the spectre that there are famous and respected philosophers who take the other view, and who have the power to cause such a question to be asked--and answered--the wrong way.

I once answered a similar question, without having the same understanding of the "spatial" element I now have after reading the question, Rand's answers, and the response by the other reader of the string. That first answer of mine was published two months ago in Memes, Free Will, Strong Naturalism, and Toilet Paper. It isn't incorrect. It just didn't go far enough.

Yet that was a very long answer. Looking at it today I'd say I could probably re-write it to be shorter, but what writer doesn't go back and look at his/her work and see where it could be reworked--over and over? In it's essence it is correct from a metaphysical naturalist view, and I will say from the view of a "student of Objectivism."

go to Liberalism and "Spatial Locality" of Abstractions, cont.

Bigoted, Lying James Dobson to be Honored

I once had a revealing conversation with an A-list news reporter, when I was trying to convince him to cover the scientific distortions of Focus on the Family's James Dobson. He declined to do so because he felt that Dobson lies so frequently that it wasn't news. Wayne Besen - Daily Commentary

Truth Wins Out (TWO) launched a new website today, DumpDobson.com, that calls on the Museum of Broadcast Communications to reverse its decision to honor Focus on the Family’s James Dobson in its Radio Hall of Fame. Unless the museum withdraws its pledge to induct Dobson, TWO will join Equality Illinois and the Gay Liberation Network to protest the awards ceremony, Saturday, Nov. 8, (5:30 PM – 7:30 PM), at the Renaissance Chicago Hotel. MORE

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The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
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Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

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