loon pond: In which the Devine and the pond have great hopes for Xian crusading warriors ...

Say what?

For a moment the pond thought that the bromancer had doubled down on his Donald worship, but relax, the splash was just a re-branding of yesterday's outing ...

... though the new label did make it clear just how much the bromancer had gone the full forelock-tugging, abasing, supine Trumpist ... and shifted from mere sucker Asians to the entire world.

Thankfully, it's already been covered by the pond, though the pond appreciates the clarification, and the resonant glorification ...

Meanwhile, over at the Terror, the Devine was wildly excited at the notion of 'onward Xian warrior', crusaders being all the go ...

A different part of the battlefield? So that's what bigots think the world is ... a vast battlefield wherein the bigotry might be used to berate others ...

Never mind, this being Sunday, please allow the pond to do a detour, as it's been dipping into John Stuart Mill's On Liberty of late, available here, available online thanks to the kindly folk at adelaide.edu.au, at least for those whose browsers don't kick up a fuss ...

A few random thoughts, the first no doubt pleasing to the bromancer, the Devine and libertarians everywhere ...

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.

But elsewhere, Mill turns decidedly ugly ...

...Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) “thou shalt not” predominates unduly over “thou shalt.” In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man’s feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so far as a self-interested inducement is offered to him for consulting them. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established; who indeed are not to be actively obeyed when they command what religion forbids, but who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled against, for any amount of wrong to ourselves. And while, in the morality of the best Pagan nations, duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place, infringing on the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian ethics that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read the maxim —“A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the State.” What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honor, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

Even worse, the wretch mounts a defence of Mormons and their right to go about a quiet life, and their own business, and if that happens to include polygamy, so be it ...

...A recent writer, in some respects of considerable merit, proposes (to use his own words,) not a crusade, but a civilizade, against this polygamous community, to put an end to what seems to him a retrograde step in civilization. It also appears so to me, but I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized. So long as the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke assistance from other communities, I cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant, who have no part or concern in it. Let them send missionaries, if they please, to preach against it; and let them, by any fair means, (of which silencing the teachers is not one,) oppose the progress of similar doctrines among their own people. If civilization has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilization. A civilization that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization receives notice to quit, the better. It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians.

Indeed, indeed, but now the pond must reluctantly return to the fearless Xian crusader warrior, and the dancing with delight Devine ...

Hang on, hang on, Gichuhi used to hang around with Family First, which went off and formed a merger with Cory's party, and now the crusading warrior Xian Lyle is joining up with Cory, but fickle Lucy has headed off to the Libs and refused to join Cory ...

If that's an example of Xian warrior unity, then the pond should retire to its cat-herding business ...

But being the Devine, that penultimate par is a beauty ...

Indeed, indeed, but not so fast Missy Miranda. Let us remember that according to the bromancer, the Donald is a mega-hit, and so Lyle must pass certain tests before he can be considered by the pond as a pollie capable of representing the deep North ...

Has he groped a pussy or two? Has he fucked a porn star? Does he like a decent spanking, preferably with an upmarket magazine of the Forbes kind? Has he paid hush money for the pleasure? Has he married three wives? Has he gone bankrupt a decent number of times? Are there a decent number of ruined creditors in his past? Does he refuse to pay his bills in a timely manner? Will he resort to the law in a litigious way?

Does he show a proper authoritarian despotic streak? After all ...

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.

Will he celebrate Nazis and retweet hateful, erroneous video clips? Will he berate institutions and undermine their purpose? Does he lie on a regular basis? Does he practise his lying regularly, if only to stay shape? Speaking of shape, does he prefer fast food?

Does he tweet his lies on a daily basis, or at least as much as time allows?

All these are what passes as decent Xian values these days, and if Lyle conforms to them, the pond will give him a mulligan ... let's face it, that's the only way he's going to fulfil more promises than he promised.

Meanwhile, the Terror is in top form this day.

All the chairman's tabloids are spruiking their free Enid offer, though the pond does worry that Enid might be above the average reading age of the rags' readership ...

But only the Terror could manage to juxtapose a child clutching her Enid with the invitation to its readership to write the new Fifty Shades ...

As Colbert observed in relation to another matter, that's just what Enid needs, a little bondage. Or a lot of bondage, the full basement with whips and chains routine. Whatever.

It's not enough that we have Dame Slap giving pollies a firm spanking, the Terror is all in on good old Xian crusader warrior values ...

And so to a few cartoons ...