I understand the differentiation you wish to apply from your previous comments. My comment hoped to express my doubts that such should (or could) be applied directly as a measure of law.

Censorship is not the only way to deal with disinformation. — Relativist

Yes, to have the collision between 'truth and falsity' as described by Milton requires a shared secular space where the autonomous person is allowed to persist within. The freedom from authority is not a self-evident condition because authority has different dimensions. Consider the language of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — U.S. Constitution

This list of what cannot be legislated starts off with a powerful source of authority in its own right. This permits different groups of people to teach their children as they please. If this process is not to dissolve into the despotism the amendment struggles to avoid, there must be a countervailing agency of education that will preserve secular freedom. How to do that without establishing another tyrannical authority is the fundamental challenge of democracy in our Republic. The secular is not an order that replaces all others but is a form of participation that stops when enough people stop participating. As Eliot said: "We are the music, while the music lasts."

In our short history, the 'Government' has given plenty cause for the petitions of grievances. The possibility for a democracy is the possibility that the secular spirit is still alive amongst those who serve it. Keeping open the space for personal autonomy is a continual struggle.

Over the years, the author of this OP has maintained that the existence of "states" is not the result of a process of human development within the dynamic of many conflicting agencies. It is, instead, an idea that infected the world when enough people started sharing it. By the criteria of the First Amendment, this makes the entity essentially theocratic. This is a withdrawal from any shared secular space where the causes of speech do not have to be adjudicated by abstruse logic. The imagined theocracy also abnegates the voice of the press. All appearances of culpability are washed away by gesturing to the dark cabal huddling just outside of the sensorium. The withdrawal from the space makes it impervious to any contradiction observed coming from it. Elvis has left the building.

Agreed. I think Rousseau agrees.

For sure, I don't want to celebrate the quality in that way. And hard-core assholes do not regret anything.

But I do not feel triumphant.

Property is the result of the luck of inheritance or the gains of conquest. Rousseau described the initial move as the result of calling a certain area "mine." That would seem to fill the bill of "legitimate control." Can such an idea be free of competing interests?

I view the matter as starting with the tyrannical and learning better.

I regret many episodes of what I did while parenting. As much as I don't like the quality, it is a part of me as it is with the people who I oppose.

Instead a thief is considered to illegitimately deprive the owner of control.

So ownership cannot be about control. — Banno

if you have got it right in the first sentence, how does the 'acquisitive' spirit featured in the second type differ from the original desire?

Having spent the last ten years in the midst of the 'cultural war' up close and personal, the freedom to lie is a component of the desire to disrupt a certain kind of conversation while establishing particular narrative as facts. The method combines the power of received ideas with fictional narratives. Maybe the best example is when Trump discounted the severity of covid. He asked his followers to discount evidence as he does. Whatever goals are entertained by the believers, it is the freedom to not be concerned with evidence that is most appealing. And yet the group keeps producing "evidence." They are immune from contradiction.

Those questions are interesting to me as a reader of Aristotle because of the emphasis Aristotle put upon only being able to speak of potential by means of analogy. He expressed more confidence about other things.

So theft results in the thief owning what has been stolen. — Banno

That was Marx's argument

And folk hereabouts think this a good argument? — Banno

What?

Good points.

I count the use of language that includes the use of the word 'vermin' to describe other people as an immediate disqualification. I would be fired in a heartbeat if I did that at work. What does it mean that it now gets treated as a rhetorical flourish?

He never mentioned where they were from, who they were, that they were a “specific community”. So that’s a lie. — NOS4A2

“Twenty-thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended on a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life. This was a beautiful community, now it’s ah —” Trump said. “Residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the town’s geese. They're taking the geese. You know where the geese are, in the park. And even walking off with their pets.” — azcentral press

Trump changes the denigration of the first message to match the defense Vance is giving for lying about it. They are a team now. Try to keep up.

I feel I am not in Kansas any longer. I thought we were talking about believers in the Deep State.

I don't recall when any of those people slandered a specific community in this way. It is the degradation that you keep ignoring.

No, I think people can speak for themselves.

I see it as a device to reduce agency to a play of puppets. The puppet masters cannot be seen directly but they are responsible for all you do encounter. When someone seems to be speaking for themselves, they never are. Unless, of course, the speaker is one of the vanguards pointing this situation out.

Within this framework, there is no possibility of being corrected.

I cried "fire" in the theater because I need to clean up the mess in the first three aisles.

Hosea illustrates how different the views of the Kingdom of Heaven are between different Christian groups.

Paul quotes Hosea 9:21 in Letter to the Romans 9:24 in order to support the inclusion of Gentiles to the expected change. It is helpful to read that passage in the context of the whole chapter:

Israel's Infidelity, Punishment, and Redemption
Plead with your mother, plead—
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away her whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts,
or I will strip her naked
and expose her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
and turn her into a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
Upon her children also I will have no pity,
because they are children of whoredom.
For their mother has played the whore;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, “I will go after my lovers;
they give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”
Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns;
and I will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
She shall pursue her lovers,
but not overtake them;
and she shall seek them,
but shall not find them.
Then she shall say, “I will go
and return to my first husband,
for it was better with me then than now.”
She did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished upon her silver
and gold that they used for Baal.
Therefore I will take back
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season;
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.
Now I will uncover her shame
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
I will put an end to all her mirth,
her festivals, her new moons, her sabbaths,
and all her appointed festivals.
I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
of which she said,
“These are my pay,
which my lovers have given me.”
I will make them a forest,
and the wild animals shall devour them.
I will punish her for the festival days of the Baals,
when she offered incense to them
and decked herself with her ring and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
and forgot me, says the Lord.
Therefore, I will now allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
From there I will give her her vineyards,
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she shall respond as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
Therefore, I will now allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
From there I will give her her vineyards,
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she shall respond as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of
Egypt.
On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer will you call me, “My Baal.”(master)
For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more.
I will make for you a covenant on that day with
the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety.
And I will take you for my wife forever;
I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

On that day I will answer, says the Lord,
I will answer the heavens
and they shall answer the earth;
and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and they shall answer Jezreel (God sows);
and I will sow him for myself in the land.
And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah (on the not pitied),
and I will say to Not my people, “You are my people”;
and he shall say, “You are my God.” — Hosea 2, NRSV

The emphasis upon changing the cosmos itself is also central to Paul's vision. But Paul is expecting the faithful to transform into new creatures altogether. Quite a leap higher than changing the covenant with Israel and creation as Hosea describes.

And both are very different roles from that of Jesus in the Gospel according to John where the Logos was co-present with God at creation.

This chapter also puts the kibosh on Paul's attempt to place 'faith above works' into the scriptural tradition. Israel has to stop being a whore for the change to happen.

And to follow up on the Marcion separation of the punitive and loving spirits, Hosea gives the lie to that proposition.

Edit to add: I forgot to mention that it was a talk given by Jason Staples that brought the two passages to my attention.

A supreme being would be responsible for our production. Our ideas are just our ideas. As the Proverb says:

The plans of the mind belong to man,
but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes,
but the Lord weighs the spirit. — Proverb 16

You follow the lack of concern for people exemplified by your Leader. Amplifying lies is not moral behavior, especially while holding a large megaphone.

The damage done to the community falsely vilified by a Presidential ticket is reprehensible regardless of whether it leads to violence or not. The fear is real enough.

You are reversing the power relationship involved. In Genesis, we were thrown out of the Garden after we tried to become equal to God. Similar smackdown happened with the tower of Babel.
Icarus did not pack enough sunscreen. Prometheus got nailed to a cliffside.

As the Reverend Dirty Harry said: "A man has to learn his limitations."

That presentation is also a vital part of the call and response that unfolds at his rallies. He polls the crowd to ask how he should respond to his 'managers'. He gets to stand inside and outside of the operation at the same time. Using one register for x and the other for y. Ventriloquism of the highest order.

A lot of stories about Supreme Beings include reports of what happens when you get too uppity. I am inclined to err on the side of caution.

With the addition of Lara Loomer to the Trump Brain Trust, a wide disparity is revealed in the skillsets of the Deep State Provocateurs on hand to do the dirty deeds.

My ninety-year-old mother is still a better shot than the kid was in Pennsylvania. The Florida dude looks like he was angling for Bill Murray's role in Caddyshack. These efforts are a far cry from the work of 9/11 and 1/6.

I recommend starting with Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality.

We use natural resources for our ends. But the idea of property is a claim restricting competing claims. The exchange of commerce proceeds from ways of establishing a right to something versus simply people taking stuff from each other as they can.

And that last bit gets one ready to read Hobbes.

You are ignoring the request for the one thing.

The burst into the dining room with all the food is Trumpier than Trump himself. Desperate hunger portrayed as barbarity.

Derrida.

It may actually be interesting. I always lapse into a coma before I can find out.

We are getting footage confirming the carnage:

I don't think Marcion was involved in the vivid imagination of different agents of creation as drawn out by many Gnostics. Both, however, have an inheritance from Greek tradition. Hesiod's Theogony is a genealogy of the gods. The world changes as a result of their generation. Timaeus tells a story about the Demiurge. Scholarship points in many directions as to how this Builder could be seen as demonic. The emphasis on self-knowledge is woven from many sources beyond the instruction given at Delphi. Adding an -ism to the term makes it more unitary than evidence permits.

In terms of the contrast I am making in my post, both of these points of views are pushed to the side in Mark 12:29:

And one of the scholars approached when he heard them arguing, and because he saw how skillfully Jesus answered them, he asked: of all the Commandments, which is the most important?"

Jesus answered: "The first is, 'Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and with all your energy.' The second is this: 'You are to love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." — The Complete Gospels, edited by Robert Miller

Maybe the better term for the purposes of studying early text is 'supersessionism'. Documents like the Epistle to the Hebrews emphasize that the new message has gone beyond the old. That has stirred a lot of controversy over whether that means the covenant has changed from one "people" to another. That became a set doctrine later but it is difficult to confine the full purpose of the initial writing to that interpretation because the views being objected to by the writer were not held by all observant followers of the Torah. The original arguments between different witnesses (before the death) seem to have carried on after the death of Jesus in different ways. The more I find out about that side of it makes me more curious and less certain of what went down.

When the 'Christians' began to talk about themselves as a "people", that is when others could become others. Not a process unique to any time, as far as I can reckon.

I share your view of negativity. There is a measure of his message in the anti-Semitic fury of Martin Luther.

The path of Marcion is murky and mostly told by his enemies. The narrative of Jesus being condemned by other Jews is one of the themes strongly developed by the Church Fathers and development of the Gospels. I wish that more light could be thrown on the first groups. The Fathers clearly had something to do with that darkness and the impending reign of intolerance.

The matter of whether and to what degree the Jewish world was Hellenized before Jesus does not bear upon the different expectations of what the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven would bring about. The centrality of Zion expressed in Isaiah, the purification of the temple emphasized by the Essenes, point to an end of oppression and a punishment of sinners. The following language expresses the change:

Enoch 45:1 Parable the second, respecting these who deny the name of the habitation of the holy ones, and of the Lord of spirits.

Enoch 45:2 Heaven they shall not ascend, nor shall they come on the earth. This shall be the portion of sinners, who deny the name of the Lord of spirits, and who are thus reserved for the day of punishment and of affliction.

Enoch 45:3 In that day shall the Elect One sit upon a throne of glory; and shall choose their conditions and countless habitations, while their spirits within them shall be strengthened, when they behold my Elect One, for those who have fled for protection to my holy and glorious name.

Enoch 45:4 In that day I will cause my Elect One to dwell in the midst of them; will change the face of heaven; will bless it and illuminate it forever.

Enoch 45:5 I will also change the face of the earth, will bless it; and cause those whom I have elected to dwell upon it. But those who have committed sin and iniquity shall not inhabit it, for I have marked their proceedings. My righteous ones will I satisfy with peace, placing them before me; but the condemnation of sinners shall draw near, that I may destroy them from the face of the earth. — Book of Enoch, translated by Laurence

Whatever status Jesus might have as a divinity, his death did not bring about the expectations of many. How to respond to this obviously led different groups to think about the tradition in different ways. Some of Paul's writing speak of the imminent arrival of the new world. He also gives an explanation of how the tradition needed to be replaced by the new life.

It is in that context that I am interested in Marcion who wanted to separate the creator of tradition from the gentle lord of the Savior. It can be noted that Maricon was clearly more 'Hellenized' than the followers of the Torah in Jerusalem. One does not have to purge all traces of 'Greekness' from those followers for the difference to be significant.

A similar condition applies to the earliest gnostic materials. Some are drawn from Greek ideas, some from other sources. There still is a tension between traditional life and visions of apocalypse. The desire to change a world of brutal power such as the Romans deployed remained a goal for Gnostics centuries later.

When asking you my question, I was focusing upon the conflicts amongst Jesus followers about what had or had not happened. What we can establish through surviving texts is, as you have noted yourself, limited. The reference made to one of the founders of textual analysis was not meant tot authorize him as a theological spokesperson.

I need to ponder the matter before addressing the theology expressed there to speak to the issues that concern you.

The pedicure of Ozymandias cracks alone in desert sand.

Indeed, Protestant scholars tried to make exactly this sort of argument as they struggled to dislodge Greek thought from their form of Christianity (which is quite difficult given its influence is all over the NT and clearly in some OT books, such as the Wisdom of Solomon). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can you provide some examples of that?

Martin Luther emphasized a direct witnessing of the words of scripture in place of the middlemen of Orthodoxy. That began a tradition of questioning the history of the text which led to scholars in Germany looking into the denouncement of heresies by the earliest voices of 'established canon' as not being the last word on the matter. In the 18nth century, Johann Salomo Semler is an important figure in that field of textual study. His work began the attempt to understand Marcion in the context of the Hellenistic matrix of his time. Church Fathers, such as Tertullian, wanted to appropriate the narrative of Judaism where Marcion wanted to separate the 'cruelty of the older testimony' from the 'purely good' message of the new. This meme has been repeated since then without need of a specific canon.

I don't want to pit my generalization against yours. This topic is a ground of sharp contention amongst scholars today. I put my request forward to understand what you have in mind when speaking of dislodging 'Greek thought from their form of Christianity."

Section 1, Beauty, Fashion, and Happiness. Third paragraph.

Here is a link:
Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne

I can agree with Karr while entertaining Baudelaire:

I have to say that, for some years now, the world has shown itself somewhat improved in this respect. The value that amateur collectors attach these days to the pleasant coloured engravings of the last century proves that a much-needed reaction in public taste has occurred; Debucourt, the brothers Saint-Aubin, and many others have been entered in the dictionary of artists worthy of study. Yet they represent the past; it is to the painting of modern manners that I wish to address myself today. The past is interesting not only for the beauty extracted from it by those artists for whom it was their present, but also, being past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due not merely to the beauty with which it can be invested but also to its essential quality of being present.

I have before my eyes a series of fashion plates, commencing with the Revolution and ending, more or less, with the Consulate. Those modes of dress which appear ridiculous to unreflective people, serious people without true seriousness, have a dual charm, both artistic and historical. They are often very fine, and executed with spirit, but what to me is every bit as important, and what I am pleased to find in all or almost of them, is the morality and aesthetic of their age. The idea of beauty Humanity creates for itself, imprints itself on all its attire, rumples or stiffens its clothing, rounds out or aligns its gestures, and even, in the end, penetrates, subtly, its facial features. Humanity ends by resembling that which it aspires to be. Those engraved forms can be viewed as works of beauty or ugliness, of ugliness as caricatures, of beauty as ancient statues. — Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne

Not exactly nostalgia.