@wandeljw,
Quote:Charles Darwin was not to blame for Adolf Hitler.
That's right. Alois Hitler was the likely culprit. It has been disputed though by those who would have Adolf 25% Jewish. Maria Shickelgruber played a part in the way the garden plays a part in making the rows of lettuce and peas. Not really to be blamed at all.
An incident actually. His processing was a long series of incidents all of which he survived. Sometimes against the odds. Surving infancy was difficult enough.
It was not Hitler who formed the
idea but the
idea that formed him. The 1,000 year Reich and German racial purity. The Jews just happened to be there in numbers and were useful in other ways. He was more anti not German than anything else. A militant nationalist.
The
idea took definite form in the French Revolution and with Napoleon. But it originates further back. In the expansion principle of British and other European empires. The Puritanism of Cromwell some argue.
When Napoleon came to power he had no choice but to push the expansion principle further and against competing powers doing the same. Mainly England. Even English styles were overpowering French ones in relation to gardens and parks, feelings over drollery, dress and furniture. Industrialisation, parliamentarianism, business, journalism and urbanisation.
What was being represented was the epochal shift from the Culture proper to Civilisation. As Napoleon intended to replace the British Empire by a French one so Hitler intended to replace all empires by one German one. And the force of destiny was behind the
idea which the theory of evolution validates. It is not even an idea. It is a necessity. An empire on which the sun never sets and run from the greatest centre of civilisation yet seen--Paris. And later--Berlin. Now--Washington eh? The triumph of the Civilisation of the great City over the Culture of the countryside.
When cheap agricultural products are advertised without any hint of the countryside in the images and reliance on style-choice becomes absolute; the colour, the texture, the price, the sort of people who consume them and the settings in which they are consumed, then, and only then, will the revolution be complete and the organised economic and military-industrial complex will not just defeat the ecclesiastical-chivalric culture, as predicted by Cervantes, but eradicate it from memory as Orwell explained, in a rather crude way, how to do. Even our kids who think milk comes from supermarkets are ahead of the atavistic backsliders in the advertising industry who can't leave the rustic imagery alone.
With Hitler's defeat he becomes no longer necessary. But the
idea lives on in anti-ID despite the sentiments of our dude anti-IDers on here and those we have witnessed from elsewhere.
Quote:I really don't think that Richard Dawkins goes home and slips into a bra and panties.
One has to wonder why Mr Ruse feels the need to make that remark. It's as if he feels that Mr Dawkins slipping into feminine frillies is distasteful or something. Why shouldn't he if that's what he fancies as a consenting adult in the privacy of his home? And Mr Ruse doesn't rule it out.
Quote:The truth, as always, is much more complex than it appears in such simplistic analyses.
I'll agree with that but have to wonder how Mr Ruse can hope to cover the ground he tries to do in so few words without being simple to the point of absurdity in the style of the Setanta school of historical analysis.
The "stroppy broads in pant suits" is a telling point too. The "someone" who pointed that out to Mr Ruse would have understood why my Footballer's Wives posts were on topic.
Perhaps those who are dealing with a stroppy broad in pant suits personally can be forgiven for asserting otherwise.
