Couple Pay with
Their Lives for
Progressive
Delusion
AMERICAN THINKER
August 17, 2018
This is a "tragedy" in the original Greek dramatic understanding: people undone by their fatal flaw, based on pride.
Benny Johnson reports in the Daily Caller: An American couple decided to bicycle around the world in an attempt to prove evil does not exist. They chose to bicycle through ISIS territory and ISIS killed them.
Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan left their D.C. government jobs nearly two years ago to embark on a worldwide bike tour. The wide-eyed, optimistic couple kept track of their trips on a website where they posted stunning photos of their travels and whimsical musings on evil, the media and the goodness of people.
In one post, Austin – who is a vegan – said he worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development during Obama's presidency explained how he and his girlfriend were planning to bike around the world with hopes to meet "generous" and approachable people.
He did acknowledge that biking makes one more "vulnerable." ...
In another post, right before entering the ISIS hotbed recruiting grounds of Tajikistan, Austin waxed about how "evil" does not exist in the world. …
"I don't buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own—it's easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that's quite rare. By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.”
It is a lovely fantasy, to be sure. It's the same mentality that attaches a bumper sticker reading, "Mean people suck" to a Volvo.
At the root of the difference between progressives and conservatives is a contrasting view of human nature. Conservatives believe that humans are fallen, as the Bible teaches, that we are prone to temptation, and have a sinful nature. The Founding Fathers understood this well, which is why they insisted on a government made up of contending branches and the opportunity to have selfish interests balance each other in the political branches.
Progressives, by contrast, follow the teaching of Rousseau, the founder of progressivism, who believed that in a state of nature, human beings are uncorrupted, and the ills of the world are due to bad social arrangements. If only the right rules are in place, evil will disappear.
Communism, which told its followers that the perfect system awaits, killed over a hundred million people in its quest for a workers' paradise. This young couple died because they embraced a cognate progressive view – that evil doesn't exist, only people responding to bad signals. Their friends and family have my sympathy. I hope they will eventually come to understand why their loved ones embraced a fantasy that cost them their lives.
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| Beware the sucicidal mania called liberalism |
Who the hell goes on a bike tour of Muzzie Land?
ReplyDeleteWho the hell goes on a bike tour that close to a theatre of war?
I'll tell you who: those who have been brainwashed by the Education_Media Complex, which is forever spouting that Islam is a religion of peace.
YEP! We seem to have raised at least two generations of mis-educated, indoctrinated airheads thanks to Cultural Marxism which long ago was successfully mislabelled "PROGRESSIVISM," and then "LIBERALISM."
DeleteI have come honestly to believe that our so-called "best" universities function now as Wellsprings of Evil deter ine to bring about our downfall.
If I had a manhild, I'd rather he be a good auto mechanic than another stinking, soulless. limp-wristed Intellectual Moron wit a labio-dental lisp.
If my child were a female, I'd rather see her become a responsible loving wife and mother who loves to make home an attractive, welcoming respite from the workaday world, who cooks beauiful food and hosts pleasant social affairs than one of those charmless, carping, thundering, defeminized harpies groomed for eternal combat by hissing spitting, growling FemiNazis lashing out with unsheathed clawss to tear the testicles out of every man unfortunate enough to cross her path.
My guess would be that Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan were idiots. The story leads me to conclude that there is something to be said for social darwinism theory.
ReplyDeleteYes, Mustang, but I believe, as i said, that whole generatiins have been deliberately MISLED –– brainwashed if you will –– to believe thatdown is up, black is white, bad is good, common sense is evil, and that everyone BUT us terrible greedy, racist, hypocritical white Americans is courteous, kind, trustworthy, loyal, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. };^)>
DeleteRemember Nick Berg who was so' arrogant, so conceited –– and so ignoant –– as to think he could stroll into a Moslem stronghold, and by sheer force of his good intentions PERSUADE the barbarians tto adopt a more humane way of life? Well, he was, as you m/ay recall. one of the first to have his head cut off ON CAMERA by the Moslem devils.
DeleteWorse even that his arrogant leftist FATHER loud blamed GEORGE w. BUSH for the terrible fate that befell his stuoid sin.
That FATHER was far more angry at PRESIDEN>T BSH than he was at the vicious fiends who decapitated his son.
It's hard for me tp empathize with grandstand;ng, self-righteous fools like that. I can only say, THEY ASKED FOR IT.
LEFTIST THINKING makes PURBLIND iIMBECLES of its ADHERENTS.
Nick Berg's FATHER decapitated his son.
DeleteThe Arab Muslimaniacs served only as the INSTRUMENT by which the FATHER murdered his offspring.
Your Danzig needs more cowbell, Franco!
ReplyDeleteSorry, FJ, but I don't think so. You should know by now that I am unwilling and unable to tolerate music of that degenerate sort.
DeleteI have long beieved it to be one of THE most powerful contributing factors to the woeful degeneracy that began to undermine then overtake, then ANNIHILATE our once-vibrant, good-humored, if somewhat naive popular culture –– probably before yiu were born.
This is the unthinking naivete the cushy western world of guardrails and safe spaces engenders.
ReplyDeleteWesterners lounging in a world built by wise and strong men and women over many centuries, make the mistake of believing this is the natural order. As Pres. Trump would say, sad!
Not to contradict, but I don't see it as NAIVETE, which, if I remember rightly, means "untutored innocence."
DeleteInstead, I firmly believe incredible stupidity of this variety is the result of "Educational Malpractice."
Because of Cultural Marxism's perncious influence, we abandoned the sound, healthy practice of TEACHING our CHILDREN how to recognize the differences between right and wrong, wisdom and folly, sanity and insanity, helpful and destructive, beautiful and hideous, coarse and refined, etc.
Having abandoned our former STANDARDS and replaced them with a frankly NIHILISTIC approach to Existence, we have made our children PREY to all kinds of incredible FOLLY which would have been unthinkable in former –– i.e. pre-PROGRESSIVE –– times.
It's not stupidity. It's willful ignorance.
DeleteI thoiught that was what i indicated, albeit with more elaborate wording, although I question where the WILLFULNESS could come from when generations of poor souls have been systematically MISEDUCATED and INDOCTRINATED by a loose de facto conspiracy of crypto-Marxists egged on no doubt by the Moguls of Internationalism who have a pernicious agenda all their own.
DeleteWhat SF said. Yea, how many think the rest of the world is in jeans and buying tay swif CD's.
ReplyDeleteHow about the caste system in India that has people living their entire life pushing human waste through the sewer systems to the rivers that everyone swims in...
It's truly sad that these two young people truly believed that evil didn't exist.
ReplyDeleteYes, and Willfull Ignorance along wth Educational Malpractice are among the greatest evils imaginable.
DeleteGod WILL protect us, but only IF we first do everythig possible to protect ourselves.
AWARENESS of REALITY is one of the greatest gifts we could give anyone –– especially our children –– and to OURSELVES.
BUT, it is most important that we not portray "Reality" as entirely evil, because it is not. Learning how to DSCRIMiNATE and DIFFERENTIATE among infulentia; forces is VITAL.
Mental illness knows no Gender.....This is what the Liberals,-Democrats- Progressives, Socialist’s, Democratic Socialist’s with a new name bring to the table to help build our nation? Really? Andrew Cuomo, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. One is a Marxist and the other is an idiot. I’ll let you decide.
ReplyDelete