zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron ]

I’d like to take one small data-point and bring it into sharp focus with what lit critics would call a close reading of a two-word phrase from one of Loughner’s videos.

Maybe it’s because in French conscience means both what we’d call conscience and consciousness in English, when I read the weirdly stilted prose of Jared Loughner with its curious insistence on syllogism, the phrase “conscience dreaming” suggested “conscious dreaming” to me — and I wondered whether Loughner wasn’t perhaps thinking of the activity called “lucid dreaming” in which one knows while dreaming that one is dreaming, and begins to “direct” the dream in much the same way in which a film-maker directs a film.

The first quote in this DoubleQuote is from one of Loughner’s videos — the second, which confirms my hypothesis, quotes a friend of his.

I am not suggesting that “lucid dreaming” is responsible for Loughner’s actions — I’m not sure that anything or anyone is, including Loughner himself.

My point is that here as elsewhere, figuring out what the allusions in an unfamiliar rhetoric mean is an important step in understanding the mental processes that produce it.

Lucid dreaming is one clue in the tangled mess that was Loughner’s state of mind that day…

February 6th 2011 marks the centennial of the birth of America’s 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan and it is an appropriate time to reflect on the legacy of a man whose presidency altered the course of his party, his nation and the world. It is no exaggeration to say that events set in motion by the Reagan administration are still unfolding today and the ideas and values championed by Ronald Reagan continue to shape our public policies and frame our political discourse.

Therefore, to commemorate and debate this important legacy, The Ronald Reagan Roundtable, hosted at Chicago Boyz blog will begin February 6th and end on the 16th.

Past Chicago Boyz Roundtables have featured discussions about specific books – On War by Carl von Clausewitz, Science, Strategy and War by Col. Frans Osinga and The Anabasis of Cyrus by Xenophon. They were well-regarded and thought-provoking enterprises. This roundtable will be a little more like the last one on Afghanistan 2050, in that there is no set book to evaluate but a wide-open and free-wheeling discussion of Ronald Reagan, his administration and the historical record.

Contributors will be free to address the topic narrowly or broadly, from Left, Center or Right, in scholarly or polemical tone, with a focus on the present or the past, at whatever length or number of posts they feel is required. Book reviews of the burgeoning number of titles related to Ronald Reagan and his times are also very welcome.

Participants will be encouraged to comment upon one another’s posts and interact with the readers who leave comments but that is not obligatory, contributions can also stand on their own.

Those interested in in joining the Ronald Reagan Roundtable should contact me or Lexington Green and we will make the arrangements with a final “head count” to be announced on or about February 1st

Hope to see you there!

“Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it’s been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.”
  – Ronald Reagan