Global Chess Festival Web Site

The link below will take you to the Global Chess Festival website. Chess grandmaster and legend Judit Polgár sponsors this event.

Global Chess Festival

Eric Burdon and The Animals - When I Was Young

For Erich Ferger

Hello, Erich, I am writing this to you in the hopes that one day you'll come across it, and read it. A shout-out across cyberspace, if you will.

First of all, I feel proud of you, a precise feeling that simply means I am pleased to know you are doing well, and have some awesome accomplishments to your credit. Two beautiful sons, a beautiful wife, a career in the Air Force-I heard that you just recently became a tech sergeant. Congratulations! Good job! Oh, and I also heard that you are teaching children how to play chess-nice! Chess is an excellent game to teach children, for it contains a lot of practical lessons for living life in the real world.

I wish you and your family the best, and I hope you continue to succeed and prosper. Maybe we can play a game of chess. You can find me on chess.com as "jrturner" and/or "johnrussellturner". I've learned how to play a much better game since last we played, and I bet we can have a good game or two. Wow, that would be great!

This is a recent picture of me; I took it last week while doing some on-line research (aka "YouTubing") at the local library here in Tucson. Right now, I'm about to go to chess.com and see if I can get my rating above 1500-I play blitz chess only. 10 minute games are the most fun, but sometimes I enjoy a five minute blitz.

Well, so long, dude. I'll always have a place in my heart for you. No matter what. I think of you from time to time, and I wonder what you are like, what you are into these days. I imagine you're quite busy raising your family! Don't ever be discouraged or doubtful that you are on the right path. God bless you, Erich Ferger, and keep you well!

Social Justice: A Null Term

Here is the Google dictionary's definition of social justice:

Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. "Distribution of wealth" is a phrase that has no part in any serious discussion of justice. Distribution of wealth is up to those who produce it. Then there's this, a typical bromide heard in social justice circles:

"Individuality gives way to the struggle for social justice"

"Individuality gives way to the struggle for social justice?". Excuse me, comrade? Then who acts? Whose struggle? Whose justice? Why should individuality give way?

Communists do not like to be specific when engaging in rhetoric or polemics. They prefer to intimidate you into becoming a true believer. That is the case with the null term "social justice", null, because it means nothing specific, relative to justice (in fact, it has nothing to do with justice at all). It carries a certain amount of clout, however. Everyone on the Left gives it lip service; it seems to be a noble goal, and besides, to argue against it would be like arguing against world peace, or puppies and kittens. There are problems here with specificity: who belongs to society? Answer: no one individual, and everyone in general (except yourself). If social justice pertained to individuals, then we all could lay a claim, based on justice, to a mansion in Bel Air. Or perhaps we could just lie around all day, smoking weed, and demand a house, electricity, food, clothing, and free Internet-in the name of "social" justice. What is just, who decides, and who passes out the goodies? And again, who is society? Everyone, except individuals? No, the collectivist answer is: the sum total of all the useful idiots, brainwashed automatons, and imprisoned captives who all believe, or pretend to believe, in the State as the benefactor of mankind.

On Inclusion and Social Justice

Inclusion? Social justice? What do these Leftist values mean, actually? Can I get a definition, please? I'm just wondering what a Leftist would say if I asked him for a definition.

Inclusion is, as far as I can tell,  the principle that no one, regardless of race, creed, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or for whatever reason, should be excluded from... what? government programs? private businesses? an individual's free choice of association? I would imagine a Leftist would say "no one should be excluded from educational, economic, or social opportunities, because of who they are." Excluded, by whom? Everyone, but the elites? (there goes freedom of personal choice). And when a Leftist claims he wants to be inclusive, does that include Christians, who believe that Muslim radicals should definitely be excluded from civil society? Christians, who believe that homosexuals should be excluded from the institution of marriage? Conservatives, who believe tyranny should be excluded from the government? Or how about someone who simply disagrees with the Leftist agenda?

No, when it comes to disagreement with them, Leftists are amongst the most exclusive people in the world. Especially if you're a Christian. And tell me something, just exactly when did "inclusivity" become such a sacred principle? Also tell me, if someone doesn't want person type x into his business, the principle of inclusivity says he doesn't have that right, even if he is the owner of that business?

"Social justice" is another amorphous, vague, and  ultimately meaningless principal. Ask any liberal what it means, and you'll get a mishmash of Leftist bromides for an answer. Near as I can tell, it refers to the principal that no one should want for the basic necessities of life (as defined by lefties), which means: lefties want to take your shit and give it to a poor person. If no one should want for life's basic necessities, who then will give it to them, if they are needing it? What if some people would rather keep their shit for themselves? It's the Gulag for those selfish bastards, comrade. Or the firing squad.

Social justice destroys property rights; inclusion destroys property rights. To Hell with that, and with the lunatics who believe their fucking concern for the poor makes them morally superior, and entitles them to forcibly take the property of one man, and give it to another. Or to force their values on others.

Self-Honesty and Emotions

The most important thing in my inner life is not my feelings, but self-honesty. Many times I've acted as if my feelings were more important than my values, and suffered for it. All that's OK now, for I have learned to question every feeling I have, and to check the premises of the thoughts those feelings are based on. Self-honesty! Thoughts are at the basis of all emotions, and it is very beneficial ( although not always easy) to take a good, self-honest look at why I think what I think about something. This will help me (and you) deal with troublesome emotions, for often they're based on an irrational thought or  two. It's worked for me. Do I really value x, or am I just giving mental lip service to x? Or worse: pretending to value x in order to manipulate others.

Group Think

Some individuals value their ideals more than they do human lives. "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet", they say, meaning that some will be sacrificed (or outright killed, in some historical cases) for the sake of their ideals. But human beings are not eggs, and at the precise moment whenever any idealist talks about such sacrifices, he has left the realm of rationality, reason, and good will towards ones fellow man. No ideal is greater than human life.

Furthermore, no ideal is greater than any one man.

It is necessary to be precise here. For example, if you claim that the rights of society trump the rights of the individual, the obvious questions are: what are the rights of society? Who determines what rights society has? If society's rights consists of whatever the majority in that society considers to be rights, then rights become a matter of vote, to be granted or taken away at the whim of whatever group is in the majority. But consider the implications of such a view:  individuals exist at the permission of the group; the right to life is granted by those who are living; no one man is of any importance by himself, but only as part of a group. If this is so, then men are not free. They are dependent upon society. They are, we are so often told, "social animals". Again, who decides what is in the best interests of society...if it is not the mob currently in majority, is it not some dictator who issues proclamations that all must obey (or become an omelet)?

I know what freedom is. It is independence. It is being alive and beholden to no one for one's right to be alive. It is independence from others, part of which is simple self-sufficiency. I need no one's permission to live, and in a perfect world, I would need no one's permission to keep whatever I earn or make.

Sacrifice for the greater good is one thing-but it is I, as an individual, who makes that decision and no one else has the right to tell me what or who I should sacrifice my life for. And besides, if I give my life for what I consider a greater good, that is not a sacrifice at all. But if I die for "society's" (i.e., someone else's) concept of a greater good, and I don't agree but do so out of a sense of duty, then that is a sacrifice. I am a slave when I make sacrifices of such a nature, at the mercy of society, a mere serf with a bought soul.