As to the F word, I think it just displays ignorance and a very poor vocabulary. I wonder how many books these people have read lately.
If they really are out of control, they will only continue to dig themselves a bigger hole. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said: nothing gives a person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. Maybe he got that from Socrates.
I employed the Socratic method teaching Social Studies in a small town Texas high school, asking students to explain and justify their often deliberately outrageous and offensive statements. I found this strategy remarkably effective not only in exploring the topic of a lesson, but also in stimulating their critical thinking skills and taking responsibility for their own opinions and statements. As any good courtroom attorney knows, the best argument is inquiry.
Attorneys taking Depositions ask many open-ended questions.
Law Professors ask students open-ended questions, and given enough time in the daily lesson, sometimes utilize the Socratic method.
Good litigators never ask a question of a witness, even their own witness, unless they first know the answer. On Cross, litigators can ask leading questions of witnesses who are not their own, (with one exception), but this can be deadly if the litigator is not sure of the answers.
Although it may be difficult for a young litigator to believe, a well-seasoned, well-prepared, litigator can conduct a courtroom Cross in such a way as to result in no surprise answers, whatsoever, in the testimony of an Opposition witness. This can be been as analogous to Socrates making adjustments to his questions, depending upon what the other person has just said.
An excellent point - thank you for expanding and clarifying the important difference between inquiry as a surgical tool to dissect a statement to expose its validity or its underlying intention, and as a means of exploring and expanding on a topic. The contrast between cross examination and deposition is the perfect reference to illustrate this distinction and the great value of inquiry as a tool for lawyers and history teachers, both of whom examine human behavior, albeit within different contexts.
You say, "While so many around him were losing their hands, he always remained calm and cheerful."
Do you mean "heads" or hands?
And you say, " Diogenes Laertius observed, “Socrates was so well-disciplined in his way of life that when plague broke out in Athens he was the only man who escaped infection.”
Some of us, who have never known the story of Socrates, are calm, cheerful and well-disciplined.
But yes, those characteristics are few and far between.
Beautiful and so True John! Socrates is one of my favorites along with Pythagoras, Plato and Marcus Aurelius. All basically utilizing Stoic Philosophy and True Servant Leader Philosophy. I don't know of anyone like that in government (And elsewhere) now Right or Left from the top down with the possible Exception of Massie.
*** "Comment on the 2025-2026 Formula for COVID-19 Vaccines for Use in the United States."
Comments received by **Noon tomorrow (May 14) will be provided to the committee**. Comments after that (by May 23), will be "taken into consideration by FDA"
(Lots of comments are in favor of COVID vaccination, and are asking for Novavax (also dangerous spike based). A way to meet the "need protection from COVID-19" angle is to emphasize that COVID-19 responds to treatment with repurposed drugs.
A sane way to take it seriously while not maiming and murdering people is for an honest public health system to advise preparation, support access to treatment, not more of this crime against humanity.
"The https://www.regulations.gov electronic filing system will accept comments until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time at the end of May 23, 2025. Comments received by mail/hand delivery/courier (for written/paper submissions) will be considered timely if they are postmarked or the delivery service acceptance receipt is on or before that date.
***Comments received on or before noon by May 14, 2025, will be provided to the committee***. Comments received after May 14 and by May 23, 2025 will be taken into consideration by FDA. In the event that the meeting is cancelled, FDA will continue to evaluate any relevant applications or information, and consider any comments submitted to the docket, as appropriate."
On the federal register link, there's a tab to view the comments. Some seem like they were listening to calls to action by pharma funded groups / mind-virus groups who still think covid shots can be safe, and think the new hires who are more sane are the dangerous ones. I didn't look at a ton of them, but the ones I saw were in favor of Novavax (also spike based and a disaster)
All the more reason to comment!
My comment -
"I understand that decisions to withdraw medical products from the market must be made on sound science, not on ideology or predetermined bias.
Yet by now, in 2025, there are overwhelming amounts of quality science showing, beyond a doubt, that the COVID-19 vaccines do far more harm than good. Even if they may reduce the symptoms of the acute phase of COVID-19, they do so at profoundly greater risk than simple early treatment - early treatment that an ethical public health system would advise everyone to be prepared with, and would not hinder access to.
You must be aware of the science showing serious harms downstream of the body manufacturing foreign proteins. Especially vaccines which instruct the body to make parts of the spike protein, as Novavax does also. The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is dangerous, and it is not safe in the vaccine form. In fact, it is more dangerous via vaccination, where there is no certain off switch, and LNPs travel throughout the body, as Dr Byram Bridle tried to tell the world in 2021. He was correct all along.
You know the scientists who have been coming forward with honest science on this for years. Please, listen to them. Dr Jessica Rose. Prof. Angus Dalgleish. Dr Byram Bridle. Each of the brilliant Fellows of the Independent Medical Alliance / formerly Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance... many more ...
I would never minimize COVID-19. While some have an easy time with it, it has the potential to do long-term damage. Even to hospitalize or kill - however that would be almost impossible if Treated Early. And even later treatment works, while early treatment is better.
The argument that the shots may reduce symptoms and keep people out of the hospital, while not stopping infection and transmission, is moot when Early Treatment is in the equation.
The doctors who treat both long covid and vaccine injury say that vaccine injured patients are, in general, much sicker, & more difficult to recover.
Yet the myopic, narrow lens of counting only "COVID" infections and "COVID" deaths, while obfuscating and ignoring the many, many other harms which these injections create the ideal conditions for, including heart disease, autoimmunity, severe neurological disease, infections, and cancers - is not honest. It is a crime against humanity that more people are seeing through every day.
Someone in my family works in healthcare. She has taken multiple COVID shots, and recently had a terrible bout of mononucleosis.
The Epstein-Barr virus is regulated by the same Toll-like receptors of the immune system that these injections - By Design - compromise.
It is unethical in the extreme that some healthcare workers are required to take these injections repeatedly. Not only does it jeopardize their health, but it weakens their immune systems, putting their patients in more danger.
By now, healthcare workers subject to mandates have been vaccinated so many times, their immune systems have been assaulted enough.
And keeping these products on the childhood schedule is a betrayal of innocent babies and children, and a betrayal of all who volunteered for and voted for an administration that we were told would bring honesty to medicine.
The clinical trials were full of problems, the risk reductions were misrepresented.
I'm not going to cut and paste parts of the thousands of studies showing clear harms of these products - there are doctors and scientists who have been pleading for this information to be listened to.
Please listen to them. Kevin McKernan. Dr James Lyons-Weiler, Dr Pierre Kory, Midwestern Doctor. Dr Peter McCullough. Their info can be followed all the way down and is clearly more trustworthy than the insulting packaged talking points by captured "experts".
Yes, COVID-19 is a serious disease. An ethical public health system would encourage everyone to have "just in case" kits and to make effort to be in better health. Not everyone is healthy, some people have difficult vulnerabilities and immune system problems - all the more reason to avoid these shots, for everyone, while emphasizing that the vulnerable especially should be prepared for covid by some simple supplements and medicines to have on hand.
Instead of blocking / threatening doctors and pharmacists for prescribing / dispensing repurposed medicines That Work, this should be encouraged.
These are not sterilizing vaccines - that isn't possible for a virus like this.
Please - do what has been the obvious right thing since at least winter of 2021 - Withdraw these shots from the market. As soon as possible.
I write in hopes that, finally, there are people at the FDA and other public health agencies with the ethics to understand how urgent it is to stop these shots, and to listen to the experts with track records of having been right - not the captured experts who have gotten everything wrong, yet are still cited in the media.
Thank you. I am vehemently anti vax and anti PCR too so you know where I’m coming from. Never got any except a few times I had to get the PCR and when I did I told the nurse
“The other time I had it they went to my brain and it it hurt me for days!” That put fear in them to go in just a little, then I’d grab their arm and pull it out of my nose!
I will look at the comments.
If there are too many pro vax I am suspicious many would be made up.
How about this response...it may be apocryphal...the young lady in line for the "showers" in the holocaust, grabs the guard's gun and shoots him before she is gassed to death herself.
Love your musings and ramblings on history, John. When I hear Europeans friends talk about history, they sound like you. Americans don’t typically write or speak with your level of inquiry. I enjoy reading your Substack emails first.
Back in the day, the F and C words were everyday terms used by the natives of their land.
Then the invaders came and imposed their languages, mores and cultures.
The successive new ruling castes decreed and enforced etiquette (French word) which excluded the use of native vocabulary in “polite” society. Consequently, this marked the people who used these “profanities” - oh, my! - as beneath contempt. It continues to this day.
The upper, ruling classes variously had Latin, Greek, French.
For instance, at “Court” the language post 1066 was for many years French. These Kings and Princes spoke no English.
Looking at the English terms used for everyday items, one can see this class structure today. Stool and Spoon - from the Saxon, how the peasants sat and ate. Chair and Fork - from the French: how the elites sat and ate.
Many people use the term “Utopia” in ignorance, because they have neither read the book nor understood its backstory.
Written in a time when the language of the elite was Latin, Utopia was presented as being a translation of an ancient journal, written in Greek. Fluency in Greek, was, of course, the mark of truly civilised intellectuals from a previous era, before Latin took precedence.
So no-one understood what Utopia meant.
As an Anglo-Celtic, I reserve the right to use my rich register in all its depth and vigor. A concise “Fuck You!”, delivered by a lady in a cut glass English accent, is remarkably effective and succinct.
Similarly, telling some jerk to stop being such a [C word] works wonders when enunciated in English English (we do have a broad array of accents that we can deploy, all offering different nuances).
The secret lies in blending both accent and occasion and being judicious with use.
People who regard the use of these superb words as being signs of ignorance or poor vocabulary are lazily repeating old tropes espoused by pseuds, and thus expose their own paucity of register. They are people, as someone described HW Bush to me, who step out of the shower to take a pee.
I suspect Mrs Socrates was a super delightful young lady who sadly realized she had married a pain in the arse.
If we look at the moving feast that is Wikipedia, we can see how the wise words we now take as verbatim records of history have been polished and refined over the centuries, and always to make a point.
We rarely read the bloopers nor do we read the dumb shit that the ancient philosophers actually said in between their carefully curated gems.
But yes - let’s end this cultural appropriation and keep the F and C words for exclusive and appropriate use by the English.
I believe there is calmness in the truth. The truth can be spoken calmly and still have a huge impact because it is the truth. Those who yell and scream and swear are for the most part trying to hide their inadequacies or worse yet their outright lies. While there is a time and place for controlled outbreaks when attempting to shock some people into reality the truth, calmly stated is usually much more effective. I suspect that often people in politics scream and swear to inure people to those desperate times when perhaps an emotional outburst may be necessary. The desensitization of people toward outbursts and foul language serves the purpose of keeping them ignorant.
Well said. As I understand Socrates, he was not a pacifist but one who kept his head in difficult times. I know that when I get caught up in negative emotions and quick reactions I make less than the best decisions, and whatever discussion I am in slowly circles 'round the drain. But when I stay even-tempered and take my time to sort things out, the end result is much better. Not perfect, but closer to its positive potential.
As to the F word, I think it just displays ignorance and a very poor vocabulary. I wonder how many books these people have read lately.
If they really are out of control, they will only continue to dig themselves a bigger hole. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said: nothing gives a person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. Maybe he got that from Socrates.
Never heard my father in law say it. Not when I was around him for 30 years.
He learned to filter his worded sentences and put that one high on the list as a Nada!
They’d first have to learn that Socrates isn’t an athletic footwear brand.
Excellent!
I employed the Socratic method teaching Social Studies in a small town Texas high school, asking students to explain and justify their often deliberately outrageous and offensive statements. I found this strategy remarkably effective not only in exploring the topic of a lesson, but also in stimulating their critical thinking skills and taking responsibility for their own opinions and statements. As any good courtroom attorney knows, the best argument is inquiry.
Would you agree with me on this?
Attorneys taking Depositions ask many open-ended questions.
Law Professors ask students open-ended questions, and given enough time in the daily lesson, sometimes utilize the Socratic method.
Good litigators never ask a question of a witness, even their own witness, unless they first know the answer. On Cross, litigators can ask leading questions of witnesses who are not their own, (with one exception), but this can be deadly if the litigator is not sure of the answers.
Although it may be difficult for a young litigator to believe, a well-seasoned, well-prepared, litigator can conduct a courtroom Cross in such a way as to result in no surprise answers, whatsoever, in the testimony of an Opposition witness. This can be been as analogous to Socrates making adjustments to his questions, depending upon what the other person has just said.
An excellent point - thank you for expanding and clarifying the important difference between inquiry as a surgical tool to dissect a statement to expose its validity or its underlying intention, and as a means of exploring and expanding on a topic. The contrast between cross examination and deposition is the perfect reference to illustrate this distinction and the great value of inquiry as a tool for lawyers and history teachers, both of whom examine human behavior, albeit within different contexts.
You say, "While so many around him were losing their hands, he always remained calm and cheerful."
Do you mean "heads" or hands?
And you say, " Diogenes Laertius observed, “Socrates was so well-disciplined in his way of life that when plague broke out in Athens he was the only man who escaped infection.”
Some of us, who have never known the story of Socrates, are calm, cheerful and well-disciplined.
But yes, those characteristics are few and far between.
Wokism the pox on education.
Beautiful and so True John! Socrates is one of my favorites along with Pythagoras, Plato and Marcus Aurelius. All basically utilizing Stoic Philosophy and True Servant Leader Philosophy. I don't know of anyone like that in government (And elsewhere) now Right or Left from the top down with the possible Exception of Massie.
Take note of Karoline Leavitt......bedrock character, lands her thoughts soft as butterfly wings. ,
*** "Comment on the 2025-2026 Formula for COVID-19 Vaccines for Use in the United States."
Comments received by **Noon tomorrow (May 14) will be provided to the committee**. Comments after that (by May 23), will be "taken into consideration by FDA"
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/call-for-action-please-submit-public
https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/send-your-comments-to-the-fda
(Lots of comments are in favor of COVID vaccination, and are asking for Novavax (also dangerous spike based). A way to meet the "need protection from COVID-19" angle is to emphasize that COVID-19 responds to treatment with repurposed drugs.
A sane way to take it seriously while not maiming and murdering people is for an honest public health system to advise preparation, support access to treatment, not more of this crime against humanity.
https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/send-your-comments-to-the-fda
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/call-for-action-please-submit-public
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/05/08/2025-08083/vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee-notice-of-meeting-establishment-of-a?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
"The https://www.regulations.gov electronic filing system will accept comments until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time at the end of May 23, 2025. Comments received by mail/hand delivery/courier (for written/paper submissions) will be considered timely if they are postmarked or the delivery service acceptance receipt is on or before that date.
***Comments received on or before noon by May 14, 2025, will be provided to the committee***. Comments received after May 14 and by May 23, 2025 will be taken into consideration by FDA. In the event that the meeting is cancelled, FDA will continue to evaluate any relevant applications or information, and consider any comments submitted to the docket, as appropriate."
Where are the pro covid and novavax comments?
On the federal register link, there's a tab to view the comments. Some seem like they were listening to calls to action by pharma funded groups / mind-virus groups who still think covid shots can be safe, and think the new hires who are more sane are the dangerous ones. I didn't look at a ton of them, but the ones I saw were in favor of Novavax (also spike based and a disaster)
All the more reason to comment!
My comment -
"I understand that decisions to withdraw medical products from the market must be made on sound science, not on ideology or predetermined bias.
Yet by now, in 2025, there are overwhelming amounts of quality science showing, beyond a doubt, that the COVID-19 vaccines do far more harm than good. Even if they may reduce the symptoms of the acute phase of COVID-19, they do so at profoundly greater risk than simple early treatment - early treatment that an ethical public health system would advise everyone to be prepared with, and would not hinder access to.
You must be aware of the science showing serious harms downstream of the body manufacturing foreign proteins. Especially vaccines which instruct the body to make parts of the spike protein, as Novavax does also. The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is dangerous, and it is not safe in the vaccine form. In fact, it is more dangerous via vaccination, where there is no certain off switch, and LNPs travel throughout the body, as Dr Byram Bridle tried to tell the world in 2021. He was correct all along.
You know the scientists who have been coming forward with honest science on this for years. Please, listen to them. Dr Jessica Rose. Prof. Angus Dalgleish. Dr Byram Bridle. Each of the brilliant Fellows of the Independent Medical Alliance / formerly Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance... many more ...
I would never minimize COVID-19. While some have an easy time with it, it has the potential to do long-term damage. Even to hospitalize or kill - however that would be almost impossible if Treated Early. And even later treatment works, while early treatment is better.
The argument that the shots may reduce symptoms and keep people out of the hospital, while not stopping infection and transmission, is moot when Early Treatment is in the equation.
The doctors who treat both long covid and vaccine injury say that vaccine injured patients are, in general, much sicker, & more difficult to recover.
Yet the myopic, narrow lens of counting only "COVID" infections and "COVID" deaths, while obfuscating and ignoring the many, many other harms which these injections create the ideal conditions for, including heart disease, autoimmunity, severe neurological disease, infections, and cancers - is not honest. It is a crime against humanity that more people are seeing through every day.
Someone in my family works in healthcare. She has taken multiple COVID shots, and recently had a terrible bout of mononucleosis.
The Epstein-Barr virus is regulated by the same Toll-like receptors of the immune system that these injections - By Design - compromise.
It is unethical in the extreme that some healthcare workers are required to take these injections repeatedly. Not only does it jeopardize their health, but it weakens their immune systems, putting their patients in more danger.
By now, healthcare workers subject to mandates have been vaccinated so many times, their immune systems have been assaulted enough.
And keeping these products on the childhood schedule is a betrayal of innocent babies and children, and a betrayal of all who volunteered for and voted for an administration that we were told would bring honesty to medicine.
The clinical trials were full of problems, the risk reductions were misrepresented.
I'm not going to cut and paste parts of the thousands of studies showing clear harms of these products - there are doctors and scientists who have been pleading for this information to be listened to.
Please listen to them. Kevin McKernan. Dr James Lyons-Weiler, Dr Pierre Kory, Midwestern Doctor. Dr Peter McCullough. Their info can be followed all the way down and is clearly more trustworthy than the insulting packaged talking points by captured "experts".
Yes, COVID-19 is a serious disease. An ethical public health system would encourage everyone to have "just in case" kits and to make effort to be in better health. Not everyone is healthy, some people have difficult vulnerabilities and immune system problems - all the more reason to avoid these shots, for everyone, while emphasizing that the vulnerable especially should be prepared for covid by some simple supplements and medicines to have on hand.
Instead of blocking / threatening doctors and pharmacists for prescribing / dispensing repurposed medicines That Work, this should be encouraged.
These are not sterilizing vaccines - that isn't possible for a virus like this.
Please - do what has been the obvious right thing since at least winter of 2021 - Withdraw these shots from the market. As soon as possible.
I write in hopes that, finally, there are people at the FDA and other public health agencies with the ethics to understand how urgent it is to stop these shots, and to listen to the experts with track records of having been right - not the captured experts who have gotten everything wrong, yet are still cited in the media.
Please, Withdraw The COVID-19 vaccines."
Thank you. I am vehemently anti vax and anti PCR too so you know where I’m coming from. Never got any except a few times I had to get the PCR and when I did I told the nurse
“The other time I had it they went to my brain and it it hurt me for days!” That put fear in them to go in just a little, then I’d grab their arm and pull it out of my nose!
I will look at the comments.
If there are too many pro vax I am suspicious many would be made up.
Are you suggesting that Amerucans have a nice'ol cup of hemlock?
Unlike Socrates, who exchanged cheerful banter with friends before he drank it, we Americans would lose our composure and grovel for clemency.
How about this response...it may be apocryphal...the young lady in line for the "showers" in the holocaust, grabs the guard's gun and shoots him before she is gassed to death herself.
https://rumble.com/v2iuvpm-jabbin-by-bob-marley.html
True. What would Socrates say of the Houthis? Now that we're friends and all, Trump should try to get some of them to join his army.
😆
Love your musings and ramblings on history, John. When I hear Europeans friends talk about history, they sound like you. Americans don’t typically write or speak with your level of inquiry. I enjoy reading your Substack emails first.
Back in the day, the F and C words were everyday terms used by the natives of their land.
Then the invaders came and imposed their languages, mores and cultures.
The successive new ruling castes decreed and enforced etiquette (French word) which excluded the use of native vocabulary in “polite” society. Consequently, this marked the people who used these “profanities” - oh, my! - as beneath contempt. It continues to this day.
The upper, ruling classes variously had Latin, Greek, French.
For instance, at “Court” the language post 1066 was for many years French. These Kings and Princes spoke no English.
Looking at the English terms used for everyday items, one can see this class structure today. Stool and Spoon - from the Saxon, how the peasants sat and ate. Chair and Fork - from the French: how the elites sat and ate.
Many people use the term “Utopia” in ignorance, because they have neither read the book nor understood its backstory.
Written in a time when the language of the elite was Latin, Utopia was presented as being a translation of an ancient journal, written in Greek. Fluency in Greek, was, of course, the mark of truly civilised intellectuals from a previous era, before Latin took precedence.
So no-one understood what Utopia meant.
As an Anglo-Celtic, I reserve the right to use my rich register in all its depth and vigor. A concise “Fuck You!”, delivered by a lady in a cut glass English accent, is remarkably effective and succinct.
Similarly, telling some jerk to stop being such a [C word] works wonders when enunciated in English English (we do have a broad array of accents that we can deploy, all offering different nuances).
The secret lies in blending both accent and occasion and being judicious with use.
People who regard the use of these superb words as being signs of ignorance or poor vocabulary are lazily repeating old tropes espoused by pseuds, and thus expose their own paucity of register. They are people, as someone described HW Bush to me, who step out of the shower to take a pee.
I suspect Mrs Socrates was a super delightful young lady who sadly realized she had married a pain in the arse.
If we look at the moving feast that is Wikipedia, we can see how the wise words we now take as verbatim records of history have been polished and refined over the centuries, and always to make a point.
We rarely read the bloopers nor do we read the dumb shit that the ancient philosophers actually said in between their carefully curated gems.
But yes - let’s end this cultural appropriation and keep the F and C words for exclusive and appropriate use by the English.
Woohoo. Love it! 😃
I believe there is calmness in the truth. The truth can be spoken calmly and still have a huge impact because it is the truth. Those who yell and scream and swear are for the most part trying to hide their inadequacies or worse yet their outright lies. While there is a time and place for controlled outbreaks when attempting to shock some people into reality the truth, calmly stated is usually much more effective. I suspect that often people in politics scream and swear to inure people to those desperate times when perhaps an emotional outburst may be necessary. The desensitization of people toward outbursts and foul language serves the purpose of keeping them ignorant.
Well said. As I understand Socrates, he was not a pacifist but one who kept his head in difficult times. I know that when I get caught up in negative emotions and quick reactions I make less than the best decisions, and whatever discussion I am in slowly circles 'round the drain. But when I stay even-tempered and take my time to sort things out, the end result is much better. Not perfect, but closer to its positive potential.
Me, too. Still working on it at 68.
This. Bravo 🥂
Thank you, much appreciated!