John Lithgow in Dexter

John Lithgow has been in 84 films and he's played some excellent roles, including criminal roles. But in Season 4 of Dexter on Showtime Lithgow is in league with Anthony Hopkins and Lionel Barrymore, among the best villains of all time. Michael C. Hall (Dexter) has been wonderful for the past four seasons, as have the supporting cast including Oz veterans Lauren Velez and David Zayas, Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Dexter's sister, and Julie Benz, who plays his wife. If you get past the premise that a serial killer can be trained to kill only serial killers, the show's story line is rich. Dexter has been great TV, but Lithgow does one better. In the last scene of Season 4, No. 11, "Hello Dexter Morgan", Lithgow's performance is classic. And P.S.--It seems to me that Showtime is outstripping HBO this year.

How Dan Halloran Ran: An Interview with Phil Orenstein

My interview with Phil Orenstein on Dan Halloran's successful political campaign for the New York City Council (Queens) appears on the Republican Liberty Caucus's blog http://www.rlc.org/2009/12/09/how-dan-halloran-ran/

Obama Looks at Change From Both Sides Now

Yahoo! carries this headline: "Obama defends US Wars as He Accepts Nobel". The Norwegians seem to have taken an interest in US Politics. They gave the once-prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to Democratic Party politician Al Gore, who has gone around the world preaching falsified research in order to encourage adoption of a pollution trading scheme that will benefit himself personally. Now they give it to another Democratic Party partisan, Barack Obama, who lied to his followers and told them that he opposed the wars, and now he defends them, preaching the classical Orwellian saws "war is peace" and "change is stability".

Last year no one would listen to me when I called Obama a cheap Chicago politician with extremist left wing views. Now, that he is president, I will refrain from name-calling. Rather, let us view the Nobel Peace prize as a dead letter, much like the socialism of its administrators.

AP on Yahoo! writes:

"And yet Obama was staying here only about 24 hours, skipping a slew of Nobel activities. This miffed some in Norway but reflects a White House that sees little value in extra pictures of the president, his poll numbers dropping at home, taking an overseas victory lap while thousands of U.S. troops prepare to go off to war and millions of Americans remain jobless.

"Just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan, Obama delivered a Nobel acceptance speech that he saw as a treatise on the use and prevention of war. He crafted much of the address himself and the scholarly remarks — at about 4,000 words — were nearly twice as long as his inaugural address."

Town of Olive Bank Statements, 9-30-09

Through a freedom of information law request I obtained the Town of Olive's bank statements. I had written the request about six weeks before the election in early November and Sylvia Rozelle, the Town Clerk, handed me the statements about 10 days after the election.

Notice that taxes are collected in January, so about 9 of 12 months or 75% of the year had gone by when these balances occurred. With a quarter of the year left, the Town had the following balances:

$1,044,475.38
880,511.51
393,626.14
115,170.24
201,267.64
4,758.24
-----------
$2,441,541.51

The 2000 Census found that the Town of Olive had a population of 4,579, according to Wikipedia. Thus, the Town had about $533 for every man, woman and child. That's probably more than many could afford to save because of all the taxes that they're paying to the Town. Total spending is about $4.3 million, according to the Olive Press so the cash balance is 2.4/4.3 = 55.8% of spending when 25% of the year was left. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party chose to raise taxes by over 6%.

Bankruptcy Court Should Appoint Glenn Beck Editor of LA Times

PO Box 130
West Shokan, NY 12494
December 9, 2009

Honorable Kevin J. Carey, Chief Judge
c/o David D. Berg, Clerk of Court
United States Bankruptcy Court
824 North Market Street 3rd Floor
Wilmington, Delaware 19801

Dear Judge Carey:

I urge you to consider requiring a shift in the editorial policy of the Los Angeles Times and other of the Tribune Co. newspapers, which I understand are currently being reorganized under chapter 11 in your court. Part of the reason for the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy is the LA Times’s one-sided ideological approach. Although a significant percentage of the Los Angeles population is Republican, the LA Times is extremely biased in a left-wing way, far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. This contributes to the circulation declines. To reverse that, a more even handed editorial policy is required. To accomplish the mainstream approach, Glenn Beck ought to be appointed editor-in-chief of the LA Times in place of Russ Stanton.

I took an interest in this subject this morning because I saw an article by one of the LA Times’s reporters, James Rainey. Mr. Rainey claims that a conservative talk show host, Glenn Beck, is unethical for advocating investment in gold while he owns gold. Yet, the LA Times may have advocated investment in stock, when its ill fated employee stock ownership plan held stock in trust for Mr. Rainey and the editorial staff. Likewise, an investigation may reveal that the LA Times has published columns recommending long term investment in stocks when its publisher, Sam Zell, owned stock. Thus, Mr. Rainey is so biased that he may have inadvertently accused his own firm and its former owner of unethical conduct.

Gaffes like this have become so common among the American newspapers that many conservatives, such as myself, have stopped reading them. Naturally, this contributes to their declining circulation and loss of advertising revenue. Perhaps if Mr. Rainey and his editor, Russ Stanton, acted as journalists rather than pamphleteers for the feudalistic left, the LA Times would have a circulation above one million.

I would suggest that to make the LA Times and the Tribune Company more competitive that you ask Glenn Beck to become editor in chief. You will notice that Fox News, which is not the New York Times in terms of content but is much fairer and does not aim to serve as pamphleteer for the left wing of the Democratic Party as do the LA Times and the New York Times, has been outselling the other networks and the entire newspaper industry. Why not call Mr. Beck and ask him to help?

Why allow badly educated reporters like Mr. Rainey to continue to abuse shareholders and investors?

Sincerely,


Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com

James Rainey and Glenn Beck

I just wrote this e-mail to Jim Rainey of the LA Times.

>Dear Mr. Rainey: I am curious if there has been a single conservative of whom you have had much that is positive to say? If so, please do tell who that person is. I will search your writing on him and post the history on my blog. Thanks, Mitchell Langbert.

Rainey accuses Glenn Beck of unethical conduct in advocating gold. This accusation misconstrues the reasoning behind prohibition of insider trading. Insider trading can exist only where there is a fiduciary duty to shareholders. It emanates from the duty insiders have to protect them. If insiders divulge information that artificially inflates the stock price temporarily, this can hurt the shareholders. Thus, insider trading is illegal.

But to say that an announcer should be prohibited from advocating an asset class, especially where he divulges publicly that he holds that asset, is ridiculous. This is what Mr. Rainey incompetently claims. There is no such thing as insider trading with respect to gold. There is no fiduciary duty to a metal.

The history of media attitudes toward gold has largely been one of lying and deception, in particular pandering to Wall Street, and Mr. Rainey appears to be no exception.

Wall Street dislikes gold for several reasons. First, Wall Street profits handily from the Federal Reserve paper money system. This is because the present value of expected dividends is increased by reductions in interest rates (increases in the money supply), a policy that the Fed has relentlessly pursued since the 1930s. Second, increases in the money supply are handed first to Wall Street via the money center banks. The subsequent circulation of money around the economy then increases prices. This transfers wealth from consumers to Wall Street, a policy that the New York Times has long advocated. Thus, academic and media sources, to include William Greider in his book Secrets of the Temple, advocate the central bank. But they do so by insisting that the paper money system helps the poor. As Karl Popper pointed out in Open Society and Its Enemies, lying about altruism has long been a tactic of collectivists. Thus, pro-Wall Street feudalistic "progressives" pretend to object to increases in income inequality and stagnant real wages, both of which are direct products of the monetary system that they advocate, including Mr. Rainey's LA Times.

Thus, in 1999 and 2000 Mr. Rainey's LA Times, the New York Times, Bloomberg Television and other Wall Street/Democratic Party inflationists were touting Internet and technology stocks, right before they fell by 80%. Do you want to take Mr. Rainey's advice given that his employer has been wrong almost every time?

Now, Mr. Rainey and his socialist-for-the-rich comrades attack gold. Rainey's article is rife with the kind of lying and double talk that has always characterized the Wall Street/Democratic Party media: the claim that there is such a thing as an "expert" in investing, for instance. Did this expert tell Mr. Rainey to invest in gold in 2001 and make him rich? Or did Mr. Rainey follow the LA Times's own repeatedly incompetent advice and invest in stocks in 1999 and 2008?

Rainey writes:

"When first confronted with the suggestion he might have a conflict of interest last week, Beck responded in characteristic fashion."

I am curious what that conflict of interest would be. Mr. Beck appears to say that he favors buying gold, and he has bought gold. He has announced this to the public. There is no conflict. He is doing what he says. If he were selling gold and telling people to buy it I would have questions. But is every single announcer on television who says that they think the stock market will go up and holds stocks unethical? Or is Mr. Rainey a biased, incompetent clown?

SNL: Obama in China

Jim Crum sent me this video. Besides being well executed in the SNL tradition, the skit surprised me for expressing concerns about the world monetary regime and the US relationship to China that are normally off limits in America's Pravda-like Democratic Party media. Now that the 2008 election is long past, NBC is apparently willing to permit a little late night levity at President Obama's expense. But just a little. While we're not quite there, America is not that far away from soft totalitarianism, certainly where Democratic Party media like NBC is concerned.

Hannity on the Certificate

Bob Robbins just forwarded a Post and Email article on Sean Hannity's rather recent but in my opinion 14 months late and $14 short (we are, after all, living in the age of the Federal Reserve Bank) demand that President Obama make his vault copy birth certificate public. The demand was made in response to remarks by Governor Sarah Palin. The Post and E-mail writes:

"(Dec. 9, 2009) — Last night Sean Hannity affirmed that the desire of millions of U.S. Citizens to see the real birth certification of Barack Hussein Obama was legitimate.

"His argument was, that if Obama was bold enough to vaunt an electronic image to 'prove' anything, that he should not be cowardly to hide the real McCoy."

The Post and Email article in turn refers to a World Net Daily Article:

"Sean Hannity today defended Sarah Palin's recent comments about Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility for the presidency and WND's pursuit of the story."

He said the question about his original, long-form birth certificate has still not been answered.

"What was so wrong in saying that, 'Can we see your birth certificate?'"

With all due respect to Mr. Hannity, where was he when this question was important, for instance, in October 2008??

Birth Cert. Activist Leo Donofrio To Sue Chrysler, Seek Birth Certificate

I just received this press release that appeared on Devvy.com from Jim Crum and Bob Robbins.

>(Dec. 7, 2009) — The Post & Email can confirm this afternoon, that Attorneys Leo Donofrio and Steven Pidgeon are representing a group of Chrysler Automotive dealers in seeking legal redress to their loss of their franchises following the direct and unconstitutional involvement of Barack Hussein Obama in the Chrysler reorganization.

It is speculated that the action will involve a writ of quo warranto, where by Obama will be legally forced to prove that he legitimately holds office as President of the United States in accord with the requirements of Article II, section 1, paragraph 5 of the United States Constitution.

That paragraph reads,

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The Supreme Court of the United States has on several occasions confirmed that the phrase “natural born citizen” indicates a U.S. citizen, who was born in the U.S.A. of two U.S. citizen parents. Obama, on account of having a father who was a British subject at the time of his own birth, was not, is not, and can never be a natural born citizen. He is thus unqualified to hold the office of president.

Regarding the pending action in the courts of the District of Columbia, Donofrio says that the goal of Steve Pidgeon and himself is to see the owners of the dealerships, whom they represent, “reinstated to their businesses.”

The District of Columbia is unique in the nation, for having a section of its legal code devoted to the writ of quo warranto, when employed against federal office-holders who exercise their office within the District.

Attorney Donofrio is famous for his advocacy of the use of the quo warranto provisions of the D.C. Code and holds that the D.C. courts are the only proper venue for such actions against federal officers.

For more information about the issues raised in this report, click on the tags at the bottom of this article.

Judge Napolitano: Uconstitutionality of Patriot Act, America a Tyranny

Fortuitously, someone just posted asking why I haven't written on the Patriot Act and, almost the next e-mail was from Jim Crum, who sent this video of a prominent judge about the unconstitutionality of the Patriot Act. "Freedom must be defended from every assailant...from the government that wants to take it away from us."

America has become a tyranny. My blog yesterday morning speaks to similar themes in a slightly different way. I'm for Napolitano for president.

Jim Crum writes:

This is beyond terrific. Listen to the end AND THEN FORWARD IT ON.

>Andrew P. Napolitano is a 59 year old former New Jersey Superior Court Judge.
He is a graduate of Princeton University, and Notre Dame Law School. At Princeton he was a founding member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, along with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court Judge in the history of the State of New Jersey.

Obama's Brown Shirted Totalitarian Personal Security Force Now Law

I just received this article by Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry (ret'd) from Jim Crum. The Democrats' president is a true blue totalitarian.

>Hello!

This bill is now law.

It is a question of funding and enrollment, now. Nothing else.

I can think of all sorts of great uses for it, such as:

Energy Police
Health Care Police
Carbon Footprint Police

By the way, an amendment (#705) to keep ACORN from engaging in the profram was killed:

(28) S.Amdt. 705 by Sen. Vitter [R-LA]
To prohibit ACORN, or organizations affiliated or co-located with ACORN, from receiving assistance under this Act.
Proposed: Mar 25, 2009. Rejected: Mar 26, 2009.
Mar 26, 2009. Motion to table amendment SA 705 agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 53 - 43. Record Vote Number: 114. [View Details]

Someone wake me up when the shooting starts.

JJC.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1388

Introduced Mar 9, 2009
Referred to Committee View Committee Assignments
Reported by Committee Mar 11, 2009
Amendments (52 proposed) View Amendments
Passed House Mar 18, 2009
Passed Senate Mar 26, 2009
Signed by President Apr 21, 2009

This bill has become law. It was signed by Barack Obama. [Last Updated: Nov 13, 2009 4:57PM]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: J----@aol.com
To: J-------@aol.com
Sent: Mon, Dec 7, 2009 4:17 pm
Subject: Obama's Personal Security Force by Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry (ret'd) - chilling


Obama's Personal Security Force

http://stupidfrogs.org/articles/obamas_personal_security_force.htm

OBAMA’S PERSONAL SECURITY FORCE
By Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry (ret'd)

CurryforAmerica.com

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we have set. We have got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded,” said Barak Hussein Obama on July 2, 2008. His words require a bit of translating, however.

In plain English, President Obama has set national security objectives which he has yet to share with the American people. According to his statement he is convinced that the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, constituted as they are, are either unreliable or unable to accomplish the national security objectives he has chosen. So, he intends to ask Congress to authorize, fund and build a civilian national security force that is, “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded,” as America’s military forces.

To be as strong as our current armed forces, Obama’s civilian army will have to be able to match the Army and Marines tank for tank, missile for missile, and battalion for battalion. It will have to match the Navy and Coast Guard ship for ship, and the Air Force fighter plane for fighter plane and bomber for bomber.

His civilian force’s congressionally approved budget will require appropriations that match the Pentagon’s current budget level dollar for dollar. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obama expects to fund his private security force with a $6 billion allocation over the next five years. Though that is not equivalent to the nation’s current military budget allocation, it is still not a paltry sum.

That is how we must interpret Obama’s words if we take them and him at face value. But does Obama really mean what he said or was it just campaign rhetoric? If it was only rhetoric, there should be no effort to follow up with concrete proposals or appropriations.

So what is one to think about H.R. 1388, Obama’s National Civilian Security Force bill which is slowly working its way around Capital Hill? It is formally named the “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act.” It provides for uniforms to be worn by the young volunteers (up to 250,000 of them) and for the establishment of a 4-year “public service academy” to train new public service leaders. From this it is reasonable to conclude that there must be fire somewhere in the middle of all of Obama’s rhetorical smoke.'

Where is there an historical example of a nation having a civilian national security force that rivals the size of its military forces? Why, in the early 1930s Germany, of course. The force was called the “Brown Shirts” and was used to bully, intimidate, and indoctrinate individuals and political parties that opposed the German government’s policies, in much the same manner as ACORN’s (The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) thugs for hire do in Chicago today.
We can safely assume that such an organization would take its orders directly from the President just as the Brown Shirts did in Germany and just as do Obama’s current White House Czars today. Left alone to develop and mature on its own, such a national security force could prove to be quite dangerous to our Constitution and to the liberty and freedom of all Americans.

Only the U.S. Military could control such a civilian security force if it went rogue, and that would have to be by brute force. For the Administration to counter the military’s use of force, it would have to somehow subvert the military so that while its forces are declining in power, the brown shirts are increasing in power.
In the process, the President would become a law and a power unto himself – whom no one could control -- with a civilian army or security force readily at hand to do his personal bidding, unchecked by Congress or the Courts. Eventually there would no longer be the separation of powers that our Founders so wisely established. And as history teaches us, under such a scenario the President would become a de facto dictator.

But the descendants of those who survived Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and Bastogne are neither easily fooled nor easily misled. While a few misguided politicians may stupidly or maliciously agree to form a sizeable civilian national security force and even plot to upset the constitutional system we so cherish, they will not succeed.

Having spent most of my life in the U.S. Army, much of it in foxholes, I can say without hesitation that the U.S. military will not stand idly by while the Constitution is being abrogated and destroyed. So let us remain vigilant and never forget, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

How We Can Move On

The freedom movement and those who have voted for and supported the current status quo might reconsider history. George W. Bush failed many who supported him and seemed even worse to many who opposed him. He was elected as a "compassionate conservative", but failed to live up to either the term "compassionate" or "conservative". He disappointed many who oppose bureaucracy and big government. He disappointed Americans because of his arrogance, his inarticulate failure to adequately plan two wars, his managerial failure with respect to Hurricane Katrina, and his ongoing support for the military industrial complex, specifically including the decision to massively subsidize Wall Street.

President Bush likely had hoped to (a) retain his social conservative base, (b) win over non-affiliated voters through his "compassion" and (c) retain many of his big government conservative backers. It turned out that non-affiliated voters were offended by his support for the military-industrial complex. Also, there are fewer big government conservatives than he, Newt Gingrich and the American Enterprise Institute thought.

In the end Mr. Bush was left with the backing of social conservatives, and even these left him because of his unabashed interest in providing preferences to Wall Street and the military industrial complex. A rather ironic ending to the career of a "compassionate conservative". But he has that rugged masculine Texan look, and so his appeal to socially conservative women and some Lincoln Log Republicans, probably about 15 or 20 percent of the public, likely did not wane.

Bush's failure led to a reaction. However, the nature of the reaction speaks to a failure of American politics, and it needs fixing. A Republican victory next year and in three years will not be enough. More imagination is needed. The nation needs to be re-created. Otherwise, the current cycle of corrupt Republicans followed by ideologically dogmatic Democrats will continue until the nation, once the greatest in the world, collapses.

America needs to move on, and ought to think about how. The Obama reaction makes clear that fixation on rigid goals and simple-minded ideological commitment to centralized authority are destructive and will not work.

President Obama represents the extreme left in the European sense, which won the White House for the first time since Theodore (R-NY) and Franklin (D-NY) Roosevelt. Like the Roosevelts, Obama and his followers and associates retain a feudalistic belief that progress is accomplished through power and violence.Mr. Obama's willingness to lie to his followers about his commitment to the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq illustrates the nature of his character. He is committed to the idea that the central government ought to compel radical change and equity through the cap and trade act, institution of an inferior, mandatory medical plan and ever more extensive and ever more rigid regulation of the economy.

The Democrats and Mr. Obama attempted to use a considerable degree of guilt in electing the first African American to the White House. Mr. Obama's opponents have been routinely accused of racism. My own blog, a relatively small piece of the world, was taken down. The Wall Street-backed Democratic Party media resounded Mr. Obama's trumpet, accusing all who disagreed of deviance and reaction. Not once did the Democratic Party networks or Fox discuss the imbalance in Wall Street's financial contributions to the candidates: 2:1 in favor of Obama.

Mainstream, middle-of-the-road Americans ought not to feel fear, hatred or even contempt for President Obama. As president and as an individual he deserves our respect. Rather, we ought to blame ourselves, for President Obama's education, his collectivism, his feudalistic commitment to government violence and to power are the products of his education. Republicans have sat quietly while the American education system, and the higher education system, have been hijacked by ideological extremists, collectivists who argue for backward, primitive tribalism, socialism, instead of the system that created American economic progress. The ideology behind Mr. Obama created his figure. The economic interests that he has subsidized control his breadth. The individual is not to be blamed.

America is in the grip of special interests, Wall Street and the military industrial complex, to a degree heretofore unknown. The twin headed hydra of corrupt, big government Republicans and of feudalistic Democrats will continue until Americans say "no". But in contrast to Americans in the day of the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, Americans have become a timid, conformist lot. They have lost their guts. They are lazy and they are piggish.

Those who ought to be the best hanker after rewards from the Wall Street complex. The extent of social control exercised by the feudalistic power structure that aims to further collectivize the nation will increase until Americans take steps to regain their fortitude.

Americans who wish to reverse the institutionalized corruption need to start by reforming themselves and thinking small. They need to reunite with their roots and their like minded fellow Americans instead of seeking to indulge in credit card debt and bank loans. They need to reduce their egos. They need to spend time on politics instead of watching television or in other diversions. The original arguments for the eight hour day involved the claim that Americans needed more time to contribute to politics and the public good. Instead, Americans became fixated on consumerism.

Americans are not special because of who they are. They are special because they received a gift. The gift was given to them by men of wisdom, the founding fathers and their successors, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland and others. They were entrusted to protect the freedom that the founders had won and created, and instead, just as Esau sold his birthright to Isaac, Americans sold their birthright for a credit card, an ignorantly written government regulation, and a social security card. Excessive self indulgence, fear, lack of courage, lack of prudence, lack of respect for others and willingness to treat others, such as Chinese workers, unjustly have contributed to the malaise. In other words, a fundamental self indulgence and lack of ethics due to smugness and ego have contributed.

The first step to move on is to look at how our own behavior has contributed to Obama's election. Then to ask ourselves how we can take a few steps to turn things around. Those who demonstrated in the tea parties have taken a few already, and need to ask how can they build organizations that will enable them to take that many more.

Karl R. Popper on Socrates

I wonder how many "progressives", economists and social scientists fit Popper's depiction of Socrates' measure of scientific knowledge and intellectual integrity:

"Socrates was a moralist and an enthusiast. He was the type of man who would criticize any form of government for its shortcomings(and indeed, such criticism would be necessary and useful for any government, although it is possible only under a democracy) but he recognized the importance of being loyal to the laws of the state. As it happened, he spent his life largely under a democratic form of government, and as a good democrat he found it his duty to expose the incompetence and windbaggery of some of the democratic leaders of his time. At the same time, he opposed any form of tyranny; and if we consider his courageous behaviour under the Thirty Tyrants then we have no reason to assume that his criticism of the democratic leaders was inspired by anything like anti-democratic leanings. It is not unlikely that he demanded (like Plato) that the best should rule, which would have meant, in his view, the wisest or those who knew something about justice. But we must remember that by justice he meant equalitarian* justice...and that he was not only an equalitarian but also an individualist--perhaps the greatest apostle of an individualist ethics of all time. And we should realize that, if he demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was sceptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers of the past or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: how little do I know! Those who did not know this, he taught, knew nothing at all. (This is the true scientific spirit. Some people still think, as Plato did when he had established himself as a learned Pythagorean sage, that Socrates' agnostic attitude must be explained by the lack of success of the science of his day But this only shows that they do not understand this spirit, and that they are still possessed by the pre-Socratic magical attitude towards science, and towards the scientist, whom they consider as a glorified shaman, as wise, learned, initiated. They judge him by the amount of knowledge in his possession instead of taking, with Socrates, his awareness of what he does not know as a measure of his scientific level as well as of his intellectual honesty.)"

----Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, pp. 128-9.


*Popper uses the term "equalitarian" to refer to equality before the law, isonomy, as opposed to Plato's "totalitarian" justice, whereby Plato identified the just with the good of the state.