Agreed – but what is really frightening is that he also has a reasonable grasp of economic reality. I just wonder how many Americans are “that guy” just below the surface of their every day living?

I did not intend to include you in that capsule summary; I’m like you in never having, as you put it, copped a stance of superiority of any kind. As for Gnostics, I ran into more than a few in graduate school. Some were the libertine type of Gnostic (let us wallow in the works of the flesh because they cannot damage the superior spirit), but there were also some who were early adopters of the humanity-as-blight-on-Gaia ascetic variety. It was quite an experience for an orthodox Christian.

Leninists themselves know this. “Give me a child for 8 years and I will make him a Bolshevik forever.”

Okay, you have also just described Osama Bin Laden.

My own theory is that Bin Laden and Kendall and their ilk realize that while they are comfortable and part of the in crowd they will never be more than that. Bin laden would never lead the house of Saud and probably not even the house of Bin laden. Kendall might become a Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Latin American Affairs on Alternate Wednesdays in Months Without an R in Them, but he would never ever be President or even SECSTATE.

They would rather create a Hell and rule their part of it than serve in Heaven.

Never was a gnostic. Gnosticism is a heresy because it taught that creation was a fallen order and intrinsically evil. It was created evil. The Church, in its wisdom, declared it a heresy and did not include the Gnostic texts in the canon.

Pelagians do believe in something quite opposite of the Gnostics. The gnostics do not see this world as the place where salvation occurs, whereas Gnostics want to get out of this world, out of the body, etc.

It was never, ever a part of my attitude or aspiration to cop a stance that I was superior to other people. If you knew me, as I was back then as a young man and who I am now as a 54 year old you would never think that of me. As for when I was a young man, I was a pained soul seeking meaning and salvation. Not a haughty, vicious person. In fact, over time I began to see that I did not have a lot in common with the actual socialist progressives themselves. There was just enough doubt in my mind that I was pursuing how to get around the conservative critiques of utopian thought. And when I could not accomplish it and saw to my satisfaction THAT IT COULD NOT BE DONE, I drew the correct conclusion and moved on.

And I recoiled at the Leninists I knew. There is something scary about some of those people.

Wretchard’s comment reminded me of a missing person case that is still unsolved as of 2009. Bradford Bishop was a Yale (BA) and Middlebury (MA) graduate from a socially prominent family in Pasadena who worked in Army counterintelligence for a few years before moving over to the State Department and the Foreign Service. In March 1976 he was told he would not receive a promotion that he thought he deserved. He left work early, went home, murdered his wife, mother, and three children, drove from Maryland to North Carolina to dispose of the bodies, and has so far eluded justice.

“According to Bishop’s co-worker, Roy Harrell, his family (primarily wife and mother) constantly told him that he was inadequate, washed-up, and wasn’t going anywhere in his career. This may have given him the motive to commit what seemed to be a crime of passion. The co-worker also went on to add that this was usually Bishop’s way to ‘put someone in their place,’ as he liked to say himself.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Bishop

So the murderous anger of the “funny people” that Wretchard describes in #47 can issue in very personal crimes as well as espionage.

Wrong. That which can be named is not it.

Apropos of heresies, I think these folks are an ugly combination of Gnosticism (salvation through superior enlightenment) and Pelagianism. Don’t know whether Fred would agree with that diagnosis or not.