That Dagmatic Sense of Humor....

I'm not even close to subtle, and the following links are sure proof of it. Sometimes there's no deep reason for a sophisticated argument against obvious evil, and at those times, I don't argue. I post this kind of thing instead:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/01/re-capping-obamas-state-of-uniion.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/01/chicago-blues-round-em-up-head-em-out.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-night-leftards-cried-jooos.html

Anarcho-Tyranny in the U.K. / Modernity-wide Psychosis

I've been through some wars and other man-made disasters, and I've seen some of the worst that Man is capable of. There's no end to the evil things people can do, even things I see around me daily in this distant and dismal city here in Canada surprising me. I've also seen things and witnessed heroism and glory beyond the ken of the average man. What I see now, what passes for normal, what passes for The Good, is so disturbing that I conclude that the Modern world I love so much is sick in mind and soul. Yes, I have my pet theory, but that must wait. Below I hope you'll bear with the length of the post to witness some of what goes on in our shared reality, such as it is. This is a world of Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious as intelligentsia.

The world has come to this: after writing about George Washington's dignitas, some hack at the New York Times concludes with this:

Americans still admire dignity. But the word has become unmoored from any larger set of rules or ethical system.

But it’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07brooks.html?ref=instapundit

From the Washington Post there's the flip side of the fascism of the Left, not the Führer worship but the demonization of the petit-bourgeiosie:

Joseph Ashby, "Lunacy on Parade," American Thinker. July 07, 2009

Attempting to break the mold of mindlessness, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen has unleashed the full fury of his intellectual prowess on Sarah Palin.

Cohen’s piece manages to slog out 770 words without squeezing out an ounce of substance. He does make one thing clear: he lies awake at night worrying about Palin. Here is a sample of his Pulitzer-worthy commentary:

…dumb as a mud wall…
…utter disaster…
…awful…
…allergic to briefings…
…uncorrupted by knowledge…
…unfit for office…
…a ditz…

And Cohen gets paid to write this. Remind me again why newspapers are a dying business?

I suggest that many people are not intelligent even though they seem on the surface to be so, having, for example, high degrees from prestigious universities, a fair indication, as a rule, of some kind of intellectual competence, and further, that many of them are in positions of high public and private authority, by which I mean here our intelligentsia. As impressive as the titles and positions might well be, and even are, we still have what comes out in the light of reality to be intellectual monkeys. We have trained idiots holding positions of power and authority. Sarah Palin is "dumb as a mud wall'? It's a metaphor, to be honest, but stale and inappropriate. It's not mixed, but it's colorless and stupid. Sarah Palin isn't mute, i.e. "dumb." But to the point, what's the criticism and what is it based on? We have here a circle jerk, to be crude but plain. Our intelligentsia sit in a circle and each reaches over and plays with the one beside him, each thinking it's satisfying. How smart is that? I don't care if each and every one of them is happy about it. What does it have to do with anyone else? It's disgusting and shameful, and who cares about their status? Wouldn't you think of them as all the more disgusting for it?

Like monkeys imitating, we see the little monkeys doing it too. It's painful seeing little monkeys imitating large monkeys jerking each other off. We see below some moron in england aping his higher-ups, he likely knows not why. He's doing what his superiours are telling him, however indirectly. Little pukes do what big pukes do. And that., dear reader, can lead to the end of the world. Many people aren't thinking, and they never will. They just do what the rest do, even if it leads to destruction. Few like being on the outside. They'll do anything and not think about it at all, so long as it seems to be popular with those they fear and want to curry favor from. They want to get along and feel righteous. I call it stupidity. Why would we think it anything else? Well, we could consider it insanity. Unfortunately, it's normal.

UK deports terror threats!

Anjem Chaudary? Abu Qatada? Abu Izzadeen?

Nope. Kylie Shirley, age 14, and other members of the First United Methodist Church of Okeechobee, Florida.

When news stories danced and twisted and turned in order to avoid identifying the perpetrators of terrorist acts as Muslims, I've joked about Methodists committing terrorism -- maybe some UK official thought I was serious.

This incident is the direct fruit of anti-terror laws that were framed specifically in order to avoid giving the impression that they were drafted in order to fight against Islamic jihad terror. Such laws focus on minutiae and side issues, and 14-year-old Christians snapping tourist photos end up getting deported, while real Islamic jihad threats continue to operate freely in Britain, thumbing their noses at authorities.

One wonders how many jihadists from Pakistan eased through customs while British officials were detaining, questioning, and deporting the Methodists from Okeechobee.

Absurd Britannia Alert: "Teens from Okeechobee church deported from England after running afoul of anti-terror law," by Carolyn Scofield for WPTV.com, July 3 (thanks to L.A.):

OKEECHOBEE — Kylie Shirley took one picture in England.

The 14-year old and a friend posed in front of a window. Behind them is the British Airways flight that carried them to Gatwick Airport in London.

A few minutes later, guards confiscated her camera and cell phone.

Kylie and thirteen other members of the First United Methodist Church of Okeechobee were sent into a nearby room.

There immigration officials questioned, photographed and fingerprinted them before putting them on planes headed back to the United States.

"The guy from immigration came in and told us that we were going to be sent home and everybody started crying," says the 8th grader, who says England is her favorite country outside of the United States.

The church group was on a mission trip. They planned to help remodel the Islington Central Methodist Church and sightsee after that.

"When they were questioned about entry, we all gave the same answer," says Pastor Jim Dawson. "The answer was, we were here to do missionary work in a church."

The word "work" caught the attention of immigration officials.

Under the United Kingdom's tier system that's designed to deter illegal workers and potential terrorists, anyone doing any kind of charity or religious work must have a visa and Certificate of Sponsorship along with a passport.

The church group only had passports.

Dawson says they arranged the trip last year, before the rules went into effect. They booked everything through a travel agency in Tennessee.

The agency says it's the traveler's responsibility to know the rules.

So there they were, trapped in a room at Gatwick Airport, only allowed one phone call to the American Embassy.

William Shirley, Kylie's father, says within 20 minutes of going into the room, one immigration official told him they were already booked on a flight back to the U.S....

The group spent a year and a half raising money for the trip. Now they don't know if they'll ever get the $18,000 back....

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026851.php#respond

The case aboe is of a fool and a moron who doesn't get the tory at all. He's imitating others without a moment of thought of his own. He's usual. He's typical. He's ordinary and normal. That's a problem these days. It wouldn't surprise me to find the English national anthem changed to an old Sex Pistols tune. In fact, I think this should be it, at least till there is a reprisal of our Modernist revolution so suddenly halted in mid-stream.

Right ! now ! ha ha ha ha ha

I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
Dont know what I want but
I know how to get it
I wanna destroy the passer by cos i

I wanna be anarchy !
No dogs body

Anarchy for the u.k its coming sometime and maybe
I give a wrong time stop a trafic line
Your future dream is a shopping scheme cos i

I wanna be anarchy !
In the city

How many ways to get what you want
I use the best I use the rest
I use the enemy I use anarchy cos i

I wanna be anarchy !
The only way to be !

Is this the m.p.l.a
Or is this the u.d.a
Or is this the i.r.a
I thought it was the u.k or just
Another country
Another council tenancy

I wanna be an anarchist
Oh what a name
Get pissed destroy !

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/sex+pistols/anarchy+in+the+uk_20123592.html

There are two kinds of people in this life: Modernists and primitives. The natural state of Humanness is a state of primitivism; and it's only in the past 250 years that Man has become Modern. Most aren't, and most will not become so in this period of history. Primitivism is normal. It's the way of Man. The monkeys of Modernity, our intelligentsia, are typical people of the typical sort. In my humble opinion, they are not special. They are just garbage. Removing them makes me happy, if only we could. We must do so if our revolution is to regain its course as the future of Humanness. It's not natural, this revolution. It's not the Human way of being. It's not going to et any sympathy from the primitives, even those sophisticated monkeys of the intelligentsia. They're up-scale Sex Pistols. They're going crazy and wrecking our world. They are nearly everyone, and unless we stop them because we believe in the just cause of Modernity, we will lose and be drowned. Us or them.

Obama and the Commie Dwarfs

I see Obama all over this story, but where's Sarah Palin? Where does she fit in here? We got yer Obama, yer Chavez, Ortega, Castro, Amadinejad, the creepy little priest, any number of scums like Howard Zinn, but where's Sarah Palin to wash it all away?

Earlier this year, in the face of strong public opposition, Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales declared that he would stage a referendum to have the country’s constitutional term limits law overturned, thereby allowing him to remain indefinitely in power. The people of Honduras had adopted the single, four-year--term limit as part of their Constitution in January of 1982. Significantly, the term limits provision is one of only eight “firm articles,” out of 375. By law, cannot be amended.

The Supreme Court of Honduras declared the Zelaya referendum unconstitutional, his own Liberal Party came out in strong opposition, and the public overwhelmingly opposed his power grab. Despite this, Zelaya, a leftwing politician with strong ties to Cuba’s Castro and Venezuela’s Chavez, scheduled the referendum for Sunday, June 28. At midnight, Wednesday, June 24, the strong-arm president gave a televised speech accusing his opposition of promoting “destabilization and chaos” by attempting to thwart his unconstitutional referendum.

As the situation in Honduras continued to deteriorate, the Zelaya’s attorney general called for his ouster; his Defense Minister resigned; he fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for stating that he would refuse to send out troops to put down public protests; the chiefs of the army, navy, and air force resigned; and the country’s Supreme Court ordered the nation’s army and police not to support the unconstitutional referendum.

Through all of this, Barack Obama abetted the Zelaya power grab through his calculated silence....

Full Story Here.

Obama's not the only one to give the people of Honduras a rough ride: the S.G. of the U.N. is in on it too. He's with Zelaya today flying in to help the past president reclaim his lost spot. Who? This guy, standing up for Zelaya, like Obama's doing.

The U.N. General Assembly president accused the United States on Tuesday of “demonizing” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the latest blast against Washington by the former Nicaraguan official.

“I don’t think anyone can doubt that in our part of the world, concretely here … Ahmadinejad has been demonized,” Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann told a news conference.
…
D’Escoto said that “the United States has been in the business of the demonization of people from (for)ever,” but had “canonized” former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

“And then we hear terrible things about Ahmadinejad,” D’Escoto said at the news conference on a recent trip to Syria, Finland, China, Bahrain, Switzerland and Iran to promote a U.N. conference in June on the world financial crisis.

D’Escoto said there had been “a big ado,” including protest letters written to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, when he went to a New York meeting attended by Ahmadinejad during the annual General Assembly summit last September. He did not say who had written the letters.

He said the “demonization” contrasted with the “great respect” in which Iran was held by its neighbors for hosting some 3 million refugees from Afghanistan.

D’Escoto also doesn’t want mass-murderer Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir busted because it would be “racist,”

He said it would “deepen a perception that international justice is racist.”

While he was at it, D’Escoto defends his statement accusing Israel of apartheid towards Palestinians because Jimmy Carter said it first.

http://faustasblog.com/?tag=miguel-descoto

Obama can nod and wink at Amadinejed, and D'Escoto can schmooze with him too. One big happy family.

Obama officials say talks with Iran still possible.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT The Associated Press
Sunday, June 28, 2009; 6:57 PM

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is open to discussions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions despite protests questioning the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, U.S. officials said Sunday.

Ahmadinejad has accused the West of stoking unrest, singling out Britain and the United States for allegations of meddling. Last week, Iran expelled two British diplomats, and Britain responded in kind. Iran, which detained nine British Embassy employees Saturday before releasing four, has said it's considering downgrading diplomatic ties with Britain.

The U.S. has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad said he would make the U.S. regret its criticism of the postelection crackdown and said the "mask has been removed" from Obama's efforts to improve relations.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that Ahmadinejad is falling back on his government's usual strategy of blaming the West and the United States in particular for its internal problems.

"This is a profound moment of change. And what Ahmadinejad says to try to change the subject is, frankly, not going to work in the current context, because the people understand that the United States has not been meddling in their internal affairs," she said.

The legitimacy of the government, while questioned by the people of Iran, is not the critical issue for the U.S. goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear capability, Rice said.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062800672.html

Claudia Rosett has some good insight into the news from Honduras, particularly the Sandinista thug now in charge fo the U.N. Here's a bit of her piece, link to follow:

Zelaya — according to the AP – is traveling in a Venezuelan jet. And accompanying him is the last thing Honduras, or any other other embattled democracy needs: The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockman.

D’Escoto sums up just about everything wrong with the United Nations. As head of the 192-member-state General Assembly for its 2008-2009 session, he has been empowered to swan around the world, swaddled in the UN flag and purporting to speak for the poor, the oppressed, and the “international community.” In truth, d”Escoto is a Nicaraguan Sandinista retread, oozing hard-left dogma, praising some of the world’s worst despotisms and agitating from his plush UN offices in midtown Manhattan for massive transfers of wealth from the world’s leading democracies to his pals in tyrants’ cockpits of places such as Iran.

I mention Iran in particular because d’Escoto made a five-day visit there in March, with his expenses apparently paid by the Iranian government. He returned to New York to hold a press conference trashing free countries such as the U.S., and praising Iran’s regime as one enjoying “great respect.” For more detail, here’s a link to my column at the time for Forbes.com , covering D’Escoto’s performance on that occasion.

[d'Escoto embracing Ahmadinejad at the UN]

D’Escoto took special pains to denounce the U.S. for having “demonized” his buddy, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – whose rigged “relection” as president on June 12th, as we all know, has inspired massive protests inside Iran itself.

Wielding the credentials of president of the UN General Assembly, D’Escoto enjoys the pernicious position of being a prominent official who is responsible in theory to everyone, but in practice is accountable to almost no one — while serving at the pleasure of a General Assembly which is dominated by unfree states. The GA’s most powerful voting bloc is the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, which overlaps with the so-called Group of 77 — a UN caucus organization which actually includes 130 members, who chose as their chairman for 2009 … wait for it… Sudan. That’s the kind of crowd behind d’Escoto.

Nicely written piece. Read it all here: http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-last-thing-honduras-needs/

And who is this winner?

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, M.M., born in Los Angeles[1] on February 5, 1933, is a Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest.[2] He is the current President of the United Nations General Assembly; taking up his one year term in September 2008 and presiding over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

D'Escoto was ordained a Roman Catholic priest for the Maryknoll congregation, before engaging in politics. He was a key figure in the founding of the Maryknoll imprint, Orbis Books, in 1970, and was an official with the World Council of Churches. As an adherent of liberation theology, he secretly joined the Sandinistas.

He served as foreign minister in Daniel Ortega's FSLN government from 1979 to 1990. ... While foreign minister, he received the Lenin Peace Prize for 1985-6....

[Elected to head the U.N.] D'Escoto designated^[13] 15 senior advisers : Brother David Andrews CSC (USA), Ms. Maude Barlow (Canada), Mr. Mohammed Bedjaoui (Algeria), Mr. Leonardo Boff (Brazil), Mr. Kevin Cahill (USA), Mr. François Houtart (Belgium), Mr. Noam Chomsky (USA), Mr. Ramsey Clark (USA), Mr. Richard Falk (USA), Mr. Michael Kennedy (USA), Ms. Eleonora Kennedy (USA), Mr. Olivier De Schutter (Belgium), Mr. Joseph Stiglitz (USA), Sir John E. Sulston (UK), Mr. Howard Zinn (USA).

More, if you can stomach it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_d'Escoto_Brockmann

UN Watch has this on the "special advisors":

And now this: UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, former Nicaraguan FM and unrepentant Sandinista, has named a rogues’ gallery of anti-Western crackpots and 9/11 conspiracy theorists as his “Special Senior Advisors.” The indefatigable Matt Lee of Inner City Press has the story here.

Now advising the head of the UN’s parliament are Professor Richard Falk, cheerleader for the theory that 9/11 was an inside job; Ramsey Clark, tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes, and Noam Chomsky, the anti-American guru who lends his name to Holocaust deniers. ...

http://blog.unwatch.org/?cat=47

What part of this are we supposed to like? Where's the part about Sarah Palin? Why is this all about Obama and the seven Commie dwarfs? What kind of country do we have here, anyway? Where's Sarah Palin?

[As Ralph Waldo] Emerson (1803 - 1882) sagely noted, every hero becomes a bore at last. The danger for the celebrity entertainer Barack Obama may lie not so much in his inane and perfectly commonplace juvenile politics, i.e. his "liberalism," as in the fact that he is beginning to bore the audience.

When the audience becomes bored by its heroes it begins to lust for something new - and that something new can always become the horrific spectacle of sudden fall and disintegration. It's all show biz after all - and the show must go on.

Teleologicus, Jun 30, 05:47 AM at: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/real_vs_an_authentic_world.html

Sarah Palin is like my mother, (assuming that I'd had one,) a normal and ordinary and decent woman like most others back home. Do we really want celebrity Commies for leaders instead? This just ain't right.

Fourth of July Palinism.

Don't tread on us.

[T]he Gadsden Flag "the most common symbol displayed by right wing terrorist organizations."

What is America?

When I was younger, America was a nation, the best on Earth, home of the brave and the land of the free, my home, a great place. Today I'm sick at the thought of it. Our natural president, Sarah Palin, is subject to insane hate-campaigns.

Our current office-holder bows down to foreign kings who set up terrorist acts against our people and our nation; he glad-hands drug-dealing, terrorist supporting Banana Republic dictators; schmoozes with Caribbean Communists; plays Stepin Fetchit like a second-rate warm-up comedy act for a stripper on the European stage; and bellies to the bar to slag his family in the hope of a few coins dropped his way for amusing the town hoods by way of sucking jihadis at Cairo. Our official leader blows off dying kids battling for democracy in Iran and blows Latino thugs in the the hope of gaining a wad or two by dumping on Hondurans. The man is facing hondos of his own. All down. This scum-bag is finished. In six months he's made many of us hate our own government more than we've ever hated anything else in life. He's not America. He's the end of the fasces.

Sarah Palin is the beginning of the renewal of America's beautiful Revolution. Four years from now it'll be long past time for many American citizenship-holders to leave. They won't have anything worth staying for anyway, but they'll have many good reasons to go. They'll be so deeply hated they won't be safe staying. Middle-class people will visit them and give them the belated message that America is for free people, that our nation is independent, that we live our own lives and the government is going to shrink to minimal. Maybe Sarah Palin will take office. If not, there will still be a palin nation for the president who comes.

The Greek word palin, as many must know now, means "return." Yes, we will return our nation to its origins, renewed and more beautiful than before. The intoxicated losers in the house of our nation today will find a reckoning coming. They'll find themselves held responsible for the damage when the parental people return. This party won't last. Then we'll rebuild.

The Gadsden Flag has been used throughout modern politics as a symbol of disagreement with the current governmment. This flag was most notably used during the Tea Party protests of 2009. The flag is often associated with the Right of revolution.

This current use of the flag has caught the government's attention.... Ironically, some authorities now label the Gadsden flag as "Extremist" .... Reports from Louisiana say that a man was detained by police for driving with a "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker on his vehicle.^[3] A 2009 unclassified report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) to Missouri law enforcement called the Gadsden Flag "the most common symbol displayed by right wing terrorist."^[4]

Sarah Palin is the America that's going to come back to bite the Left. Our country. Don't tread on it.

N.B. Left hate-graphics: http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/06/wonkette-goes-after-trig-palin-again.html
N.B.: [A] Department of Homeland Security report, "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment"

Obama's Recipe for America or Palin Americana: To Serve Man.

I think fairly often about Sarah Palin as president, usually when I read or hear about some latest antic by Obama. I don't catch the Obama word on tv, like some recent piece from David Letterman. That guy has some audience left, and it's strange to me that we can have a country in which he's a success of any sort. He'd only be possible in a nation that elected Obama. Letterman attacked Sarah Palin's 14 year old daughter on his tv show. That sort of thing doesn't surprise me anymore. It comes from a nation I don't recognize, and that nation used to be home. I remember America as hometown Palin. Television is a foreign country. Obamaland is The Twilight Zone. I remember my home. It was a nice place.

J. Robert Smith, "Still Open Season on Sarah Palin," American Thinker. June 12, 2009

[....]

East and left coast elites have a beau ideal, and that's President Barack Obama, the elegant, cosmopolitan, smooth apologist for America's foibles and mortal sins. The Big Spender and soon-to-be Debaser of the Dollar. The Savior of Detroit who's Amtraking automakers. The compassionate fellow who wants to ration healthcare. And the man who claimed he'd deny Miranda rights to terrorists, only to, well...

President Obama cleans up nicely, as they say. He talks the left's talk, and knows what fork to pick up at a five-star restaurant. He's an African-American JFK, which almost makes him the left's ultimate fantasy. The only thing he's not is gay. But even fantasies have limits.

Note that today's liberals -- or progressives, as they prefer -- never rhapsodize about the late Harry Truman, a gruff, unpolished Democratic pol who didn't give a damn about which fork he used at hoity-toity eateries -- if he ever entered any.

Truman regarded Uncle Joe Stalin as a windbag and mass murderer; he considered communism a sham and a great danger. And he initiated the long, hard Cold War that defeated the communists.

That's not what today's liberal admires in a leader: Resolve in defeating the nation's enemies. For liberals, like Pogo, the enemy is us. These descendants of Adlai Stevenson II see life as complicated -- a vast gray zone -- where truth is relative but most everything about America is absolutely wrong.

Palin is too much like Truman for liberal tastes, less the gruffness. She's a Main Streeter who's very comfortable in her skin. She doesn't put on airs, and doesn't aspire to do so. Her husband is a workingman whom she loves and is proud of; not an inconvenient truth, to steal a phrase. Ditto her son, Trig, born with Down Syndrome rather than aborted. Ditto her daughter, Bristol, who gave birth to an out-of-wedlock son.

Bristol has come out for abstinence among young people. Her honesty and courage is met with rolled eyes and sneers from jaded elites, reporters and liberal commentators. And bad jokes by a ratings-loser talk show host.

Surely, Bristol can't really want to help young people avoid her mistake. Her public stand is all about damage control and pre-emption. She's standing up to inoculate her mother from charges that the Palins talk the good talk about family values but walk a very different walk.

Imperfect creatures that we are, we are all bound to stray. Learning from, and making amends, for our mistakes are large parts of redemption. Bristol is admirably seeking redemption. Had she only chosen to condemn Gitmo and stump for same-sex marriage, then she'd have won plaudits from liberals.

Out-of-wedlock births are a Hollywood norm, and win the seal of approval from convention-hating lefties. Yet another reason to ridicule Bristol.

Governor Palin's conservatism is the sort that connects with the natural conservatism of a majority of Americans. Hers comes with no frills, no eloquent turns of phrase, no Shakespearian grandeur.

Hers is a hotdogs and hamburgers and cold beer conservatism. It's upbeat, reality-tested, everyday commonsense. Americans live it every day. They recognize it in Palin, and are attracted to her accordingly. Hence, liberals' fear.

Bless Palin's moose-shooting, hockey mom's heart. She wasted no time unloading both barrels at the hoary Letterman for his lurid jabs. The time has come for conservatives to start fighting back. Governor Palin is showing the way.

The saying goes that the best revenge is served cold. In this case, Sarah Palin needs to always bypass the elites and the mainstream media. She needs to take her case directly to hardworking Americans, whether in Auburn, New York, Joplin, Missouri or Macon, Georgia.

And in those towns and cities and suburbs across the nation, she needs to deliver this powerful, game-changing message: Americans don't have to be ashamed of, or apologize for, being Americans. Our traditional values, morals and beliefs are the nation's backbone and have made us great.

We have been a force for great good and freedom in a world often lacking in both. We may stumble and fall at times, but we pick ourselves up and move forward with hope and optimism and an unshakeable belief that, as Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, our best days are ahead of us.

Take this message to Americans and it won't be cynical comics or cynical elites who have the last laugh.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/still_open_season_on_sarah_pal.html

America will return.

Insubordination as Democracy

What happens if Obama supporters in government here find themselves working sometime later under a Sarah Palin administration?

A poll taken by the government employees’ newspaper Republic shows that 54% of such employees are not willing to work under a Freedom Party (PVV) minister or deputy minister. Sixty-eight percent think it would be a disaster if the PVV would be in the government.

http://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/nederland/article2753457.ece/Ambtenaren_willen_niet_onder_Wilders_werken.html
http://badnewsfromthenetherlands.blogspot.com/2009/05/government-officials-unwilling-to-serve.html

If Dutch civil servants are too 'moral' to work under a Geert Wilders-influenced government, how can we expect American civil servants supportive of Obama to deal with Sarah Palin-- or anyone else they don't like?

Class Action

Clothes make the man, so they say. And if such is true, then I'm a dud. I asked a buddy in the jungle why I never got attacked, and he said it's because I look like I'm not worth the effort. Of course I am. I can talk about Spinoza for hours.

Redneck? My cowboy boots tell a different story. They say: "Big Class."

I don't wear my cowboy boots every day. I wear them when I'm dressing up and going out to impress people. Usually I don't care to try to impress anyone. Sarah Palin doesn't know this or that? Obama knows all things cool and smart? I know a few things about class that Obama must have missed in Marxism 101. I know a few things about class that Debra Jackson knows.

Do-Sa-Do: Square Dancing and Mindfulness

When I was 12, one of my best friends was a square dancer. Twice a week, her family would pile into the Country Squire station wagon and head to the Grange Hall, where they'd gather with their square dancing club for an evening of music, friendship and do-sa-do.

As a regular guest, I was fascinated by the form but, in the height of my coolness-conscious years, also acutely aware of the overwhelming dork factor. These people lived to square dance.

They skipped around for two or three hours at a time, twirling and smiling and dabbing at their foreheads between dances. They hunted for holiday-themed fabric months before special dances in order to whip up the perfect ruffled dress and matching shirt for each occasion. They packed their petticoats and headed to Penticton, British Columbia every summer for a regional square dancers' convergence.

The square dance girls were just as boy-crazy as my regular friends, but they had a built-in way to hold hands with the guys they liked. As for me, I had a major crush on my friend's older brother who, at 15, was an articulate, ambitious student body president with piercing blue eyes and blond hair to his shoulders (it was 1972, after all).

In one of our (for me, anyway) excruciating conversations involving much blushing, he told me that square dancing was like meditation. "It's a way to forget about everything except what's going on right now. You have to pay attention to what the caller says, and let your mind and body make sense of it naturally, without trying too hard."

http://ambafrance-do.org/alternative/19621.php

When we take a class action and return ourselves to our home, maybe then I'll go home too. For now, home doesn't impress me. I'm not dressed up for it. Folks'd sneer at me, I do think so. When I go back home and walk through the door and see the Debras dressed to dance, and when I smell the hay and cattle and the clouds, then do sa do. That's a class action I'll be part of.

Anarcho-tyranny (6) Hemlock for the Masses

Socrates was a public intellectual, and for his efforts he was executed. If he'd been a lesser man, one could almost cheer that. Public intellectuals are the menace of our time, that "time" being from roughly 1750. It's gotten worse by the decade. Public intellectuals have become the scourge of Life. Where is Cincinnatus? Well, in Wasilla, Alaska, now that you mention it. Somewhere in the Netherlands.

We in the West live, so we think, in democratic nations. Comparatively, yes. Ask Geert Wilders where he'd rather be: the Netherlands or Sweden. Obviously he'd rather be in the Netherlands where he faces criminal charges for speaking and making his short film Fitna; in the Netherlands where he's under 24 hour per day guard from jihadis who intend to kill him; in the Netherlands where he spends his nights in different locations out of reach of jihadis who want to kill him. In Sweden, no doubt the government would toss him onto the street and let him be killed. In his own way, Wilders is like Socrates: he asks questions that piss off the ruling classes. So far the Dutch aren't willing to kill him outright. Instead, they hope to toss him in prison or drive him out of the country. The intelligentsia hate Wilders. Rather than deal with the masses of murderers Wilders speaks of, they go after Wilders himself.

Sam Francis, "Mass Immigration + Feckless Feds = Anarcho-Tyranny," VDARE.com; 21 April 2003

"[A]narcho-tyranny": a combination of anarchy (in which legitimate government functions ... are not performed) and tyranny (in which government performs illegitimate functions....)

The result of anarcho-tyranny is that government swells in power, criminals are not controlled, and law-abiding citizens wind up being repressed by the state and attacked by thugs.

[....]

http://www.vdare.com/francis/patriot_act.htm

Socrates was a challenging and infuriating fellow who pissed-off his friends and enemies alike, being a genuine democrat in that sense. He lived off the labours of his wife and neglected his family to go into the agora and chat up people about morality. Today in the West it's unlikely he'd be sentenced to death for his efforts, but he'd definitely be hauled in front of a "human rights" commission of some sort. He'd find himself confronted by a dozen or so nasty little Platos. Nothing much changes. Except when you make it change. You could look at Jefferson and Madison to find out about that. You could look at the U.S. Constitution. Or you might take a peak at Geert Wilders.

Mark Steyn, "Dutch Courage," National Review Online. 21 Jan. 09.

[....]

The Dutch, like the Canadians, think they can maintain social peace by shriveling the bounds of public discourse and bringing what little remains under state regulation. But one notices that the coercive urge, which comes so naturally to Euro-progressives, only goes in one direction. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice shuts down the investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm for selling tapes urging believers to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" (ie, Jews) because that's simply "the everyday climate in the rhetoric". The masked men marching through the streets of London with placards threatening to rain down another 9/11 on the infidels are protected by a phalanx of Metropolitan Police officers. The PC nellies of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, happy to hound the last neo-Nazi in Saskatchewan posting to the Internet from his mum's basement, won't go anywhere near Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus al-Hayitia, the big-time Montreal imam whose book says infidels are "evil people", Jews "spread corruption and chaos", and homosexuals should be "exterminated".

Instead, the state's response to explicit Islamic intimidation is to punish those foolish enough to point out that intimidation. You don't have to be as intemperate as Minheer Wilders can sometimes be: In the Netherlands even the most innocuous statement can get you into trouble. To express his disgust at Theo van Gogh's murder, the artist Chris Ripke put up a mural outside his studio showing an angel and the words "Thou shalt not kill". But the cops thought this was somehow a dig at the local mosque and so came round, destroyed the mural, arrested the TV news crew filming it, and wiped their tape. The Dutch have determined to commit societal euthanasia, and dislike fellows pointing out it might not be as painless as they've assumed.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2UyZTQxMDg4MzMyMWM3MjFiYmFkMmJlM2Q3ODBlODA

The Spartan faction is ascendant in the West today. Our public intellectuals are Platonist fascists. Rule by cliques of "enlightened" thinkers, those who "know" and who will, out of their innate goodness, keep us from the horrors of the Truth. The Big Lie. It's all for us and the preservation of society, right up till the time everyone is dead.

Bruce Bawer, "Submission in the Netherlands, City Journal. 22 Jan. 2009

[....]

The same people who demonized Fortuyn have done their best to stifle Wilders. In April 2007, intelligence and security officials called him in and demanded that he tone down his rhetoric on Islam. Last February, the Minister of Justice subjected him to what he described as another "hour of intimidation." The announcement that he was making a film about Islam only led his enemies to turn up the heat. Even before Fitna was released early last year, Doekle Terpstra, a leading member of the Dutch establishment, called for mass rallies to protest the movie. Terpstra organized a coalition of political, business, academic, and religious leaders, the sole purpose of which was to try to freeze Wilders out of public debate. Dutch cities are riddled with terrorist cells and crowded with fundamentalist Muslims who cheered 9/11 and idolize Osama bin Laden, but for Terpstra and his political allies, the real problem was the one Member of Parliament who wouldn't shut up. "Geert Wilders is evil," pronounced Terpstra, "and evil has to be stopped." Fortuyn, van Gogh, and Hirsi Ali had been stopped; now it was Wilders's turn.

[....]
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0122bb.html

Socrates was evil. Geert Wilders is evil. I'm a boatload of disgusting things. You're rotten, too, no doubt. We cannot be allowed to voice or write our opinions or the whole of society will fall into chaos. That's what happens when evil people speak or write. Better to poison the free-thinker than allow chaos and dissent. Yes, it means the jihadis and the fascists will tyrannize the world, but it'll be OK because the elite know... The Truth. Charge Wilders for disrupting the phantasy of multi-culturalism. Throw him in jail.

[T]he Netherlands allows private citizens to petition the courts to compel prosecution. In Wilders' case, eight parties, including a politician from an opposing party, asked the courts to force prosecutors to bring criminal charges.

A three-judge appeals panel on Wednesday ruled that Wilders' insults to Islam were so egregious that the principle of free speech was not sufficient defense.

"The court considers [Wilders' film] so insulting for Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute Wilders," a summary of the court's decision said. The court explained that Wilders' claims in "Fitna" and other media statements were "one-sided generalizations ... which can amount to inciting hatred."

[....]
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481665,00.html

Of course, when one refers to the Truth, one must distinguish between truth as the helots live it and the Truth as the Gnostic Platonists "know" it. And the chaos? Well, again there is the chaos of the helots and the demos and the chaos of putting things right eternally and unchangingly for the good of all later. Right? It means the Will to Death. It's not just a Dutch Disease. It affects us all.

Melanie Phillips, "Britain's Surrender," Wall Street Journal. 19 Jan. 2009.

[....]

Years of demonizing Israel and appeasing Islamist extremism within Britain have now coalesced, as a result of the media misrepresentation of the Gaza war as an atrocity against civilians, in an unprecedented wave of hatred against Israel and a sharp rise in attacks on British Jews.

Throughout the war, London's streets have witnessed a hallucinatory level of violent and explicit support for Hamas from Muslims, members of the far left and supposedly progressive individuals.

Night after night, Israel's embassy in well-to-do Kensington found itself under violent siege. Demonstrators attempted to storm the building, howling their support for the terrorist body whose genocidal intentions toward Israel and the Jews necessarily includes killing every one of the occupants inside.

[....]

The police told pro-Israel demonstrators on at least one occasion to put away their Israel flags because they were "inflammatory." Yet officers allowed some anti-Israel demonstrators to scream support for Hamas -- and even to dress up as hook-nosed Jews pretending to drink the blood of Palestinian babies.

In general, the police have reacted passively to the violence. One recent video clip captured the astonishing spectacle of Muslims stampeding through London's West End hurling traffic cones and other missiles at the police, all the time shrieking "Allahu akbar" and "cowards." The police ran and stumbled backward rather than standing their ground and stopping the rampage.

[....]

It was Britain which took the lead in framing the United Nations resolution calling upon Israel to withdraw all its forces from Gaza while making no mention whatever of Hamas. And it was Britain which also drew a disquieting moral equivalence between Hamas terrorism and Israeli self-defense.

[A]lthough "middle Britain" is beginning to grasp that the Islamists in Gaza are the same as those rampaging through the streets of London, ministers are intent on appeasing Muslim extremism and intimidation both at home and abroad.

[....]

Across the spectrum, Britain's elites are terrified of dealing with militant Islamism. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, in a pattern which goes back to the foundational Christian blood libel against the Jews, they are concealing their fearful inability to deal with Islamist aggression by displacing the blame onto its Israeli victims instead.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123240733254895655.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Links above, except S. Francis, from Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

Phillips writes: "Britain's elites are terrified of dealing with militant Islamism.... They are concealing their fearful inability to deal with Islamist aggression by displacing the blame onto its Israeli victims instead."

The Dutch bash Wilders. Every coward government has its favorite. That's not strange. That's totally normal. It's Human to pretend and to sacrifice someone expediently. What doesn't make sense is accepting ones own self as the sacrifice of others for no good reason. Yes, the psychology is there for all of us to grasp; but it's not universal: some will fight back. Some will struggle for the Will to Power against the Will to Death. Ask Geert Wilders.

Our ruling classes will sacrifice the people in small and unnoticed batches till they run out of batches. That's the nature of people. Most will accept death as the way things must be. Some, like Primo Levi, will survive. Some, like Adam Czerniakow, will sacrifice others till the shame drives them to suicide. Such is life. Not everyone is a Jabotinsky.

History isn't determined other than by the confines of Humanness, history being Will, the moment by moment making of the future. Accident is not history. Man's reaction to accident is history. History is Will. Anarcho-tyranny is Will. Revolution is Will.

Plato, Marat, Lenin: all public intellectuals. So too, Socrates, Jefferson, and Sarah Palin. Geert Wilders. What you will.

"Sweden: Muslim demonstrators attack Jews at peaceful pro-Israel rally."

See link for video: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024579.php

Sweden: Muslim mob attacks peaceful pro-Israel rally, chants "Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!"

See link for video: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024586.php

Criminal jihadis are not controlled, and law-abiding citizens like Wilders wind up being repressed by the state and attacked by thugs. That's not democracy. That's the Netherlands. It will be; and it will be worse-- unless by Will people rise up and reorganise the state.

One Plumb Job

Here's a guy with a dream job, a working vacation most of us would grab in a flash.

Joe the Plumber is taking on a new job.

Associated Press. 07/01/2009

The Ohio man, who became famous during the U.S. presidential campaign after asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative Web site called pjtv.com.

Dubbed Joe the Plumber by McCain's campaign, Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher was held up as an example of an American worker who would be hurt economically by Obama's election.

Wurzelbacher says he'll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.

He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants go over there and let their 'Average Joes' share their story.

[....]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053548.html

Anyone looking for a reporter to cover for Joe when he returns, please let me know. I'm available for extended periods.

Year of the Palin.

"Thank heavens this turned out to be a gag gift for Christmas 2008...."

That bit of brilliance comes to us via the Los Angeles Times, (see below.) A calender of Sarah Palin is the best-selling gift this Christmas season at Amazon.com, and the LAT thinks it's a joke. That's pretty funny. I'm wondering whose future is looking rosy? Is it the future of the LATimes? Or is it Sarah Palin's? Gee, dear reader, I don't know. Let's take a look and find out.

The Tribune Company, the newspaper chain that owns The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, is trying to negotiate new terms with its creditors and has hired advisers for a possible bankruptcy filing, according to people briefed on the matter. [Story here.]

Well, heckeroony! It looks like the joke is on the LATimes. Whodda figgered?

Dave Porter. "Sarah Palin 2009 calender tops gift lists."

(AXcess News) Reno - Entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in America! A Sarah Palin 2009 calender - available online via Amazon.com - is flying off the virtual shelves of holiday gift-giving ideas and is slated to become perhaps the most popular gift giving idea this holiday season!

The 2009 Sarah Palin calender carries 50 photos of the popular Alaska Governor whose photographs were done by Wasilla, Alaska photographer Judy Patrick - complete with Palin's gun-toating [sic] and flag waving provado [sic].

Palin, who flew [sic] to national popularity when she was named [sic] the running mate [sic] of Arizona Senator John McCain in the heated and highly followed [sic] presidential campaign against Barack Obama.

If you're expecting a photo-op [sic] there in the 2009 Sarah Palin calender with a lipstick weilding pig - forget it. Palin was portrayed with background images of Alaska and American flags and was not intended as a post-race slap at Democrats.

As to why the 2009 Sarah Palin calender would be more popular than say a Barack Obama calender is anybody's guess - but there it is for all to judge for themselves. Perhaps the fact that Palin is more of a post-election topic than prior presidential Veeps on the losing side of an election may have something to do with it.

http://www.axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/17264

That, gentle reader, is pretty incoherent. I liked it though. It encapsulates the mind-set of many Palin critics in a milder way than they often portray themselves. But let's move on to the professionals at the LATimes. They're literate. They''re hip. They know stuff.

Sarah Palin's 2009 calendar is the #1 Amazon office supply

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is still No. 1 in some people's hearts and minds.

And now her 2009 calendar is currently the No. 1 seller on Amazon.com's list of office products and supplies, beating out a nifty pair of scissors.

The calendar-maker is Judy Patrick, a former Wasilla deputy mayor and F.O.S., as well as an Anchorage-based photog who used her own stash of pix of the governor and her family to create the calendar.

Click here to buy one!

Thank heavens this turned out to be a gag gift for Christmas 2008 and not a portent of the new U.S. vice president taking office in 2009.

Anybody else think we totally dodged a bullet?

Or are you one of those 2012 hopefuls?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2008/12/sarah-palins-20.html

Oh. Ho. Those LATimes writers are so clever and witty. Ho. Ho. I personally don't know why the geniuses at the LATimes are going bankrupt. Oh. Ho-ho.

Anybody else think they'll totally dodge the bankruptcy bullet?

Or are you one of those 2009 LATimes hopefuls-of-being-employed?

Anarcho-tyranny, part two.

Rational? Normal, sensible, decent, people do all kinds of self-harming things. So what? Those very same people do things to others that they shouldn't. An example of the latter: they put out the trash when they're not supposed to, thereby mucking up the garbage collection system for everyone. We have to ask what is to be done in cases of both private and public harm. It's damned near urgent.

Two prominent visions of social life are these: that man is an individual who makes his own decisions in his own best interest, he knowing better than others his own needs. And if a man acts in his own interests, usually that will benefit others in that he will act in such a way as to gain good for himself rather than run the risk of the harm of being lynched by angry neighbours, for example. He will not always act in his own self-interest to his own benefit, we know this, sometimes he acting irrationally. We usually accept this as the nature of things, allowing for the fallibility of man and assigning to him the responsibility of the man's own actions. If the man does well, he is rewarded by his efforts; and if he does poorly, he suffers for it all of his own account. Each person is, in such a world-view, an individual, adult, free, independent and self-interested within a group of co-operative others doing much the same as he. Society and the state exist because of other banding together in a daily referendum on nationhood, as Ernest Renan puts it. We decide every day to live together as a people. We choose to live as a democratic people, each giving up a bit of freedom for the greater freedom to live more freely than in an anarchic melee of all against all. Most famously it's a Hobbesean vision of society. Unrestrained "liberty," is, according to Hobbes, what most of us would term anarchy: "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.

[....]

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; No knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.

Regardless of the misty origins of Social Contracts or their equivalents in the real world, we do, most of us, have The Laws. The Laws conflict with our individual freedom, which we accept so long as they are the minimum necessary to maintain order. Oh: that is, if were are individualists rather than Communitarians.

Clarice Feldman, "Dustbin Stasi," American Thinker. 01 Nov. 2008

The marvelous writer whose work appears under his pen name Theodore
Dalrymple has long argued that in statist regimes like that in the UK
local authorities do little to prevent or punish real crime but use
every law at their disposal to beset and harass the honest, law
abiding citizens -- because it's much easier work. The end result is
that the big issues of right and wrong get no attention as honest
citizens are reduced to scurrying around complying with
ever-increasing and ever more stupid petty regulations on their every
action.

Nothing illustrates his point better than this story:

More than half of town halls admit using anti-terror laws to spy
on families suspected of putting their rubbish out on the wrong day.

[More:] http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/11/dustbin_stasi.html

If memory serves, it is Schiller who writes that no one is a whole but is rather a fragment of the whole, a splinter or a sliver of the whole, and that alone he is nothing of worth at all. His is the Communitarian vision of Man, quite typical of Europeans. There is much to be said in favor of such a vision: that those who live alone are feral, are animals, some of whom can't even walk upright, having learned from birth to walk like wild beasts. The feral man has no language. He has no articulate ideas. Man alone is, in short, not a man. It is society that gives man the boundaries that make him part of something rather than the boundless nothingness of freedom as individual. It is to others that every individual owes his being and sense. It is not merely to the living, it is to the past that one owes as well: one owes the past for traditions and laws and customs and livelihood and family and so on. Because no one man is important in comparison to the whole, no one is important as an individual in himself but only the collective is important. Selfishness, therefore, is a harm beyond repair. Individualism is a sin irredeemable. Putting out your trash against the greater collective, against the General Will is so wrong it requires that the whole of the community take action, in the case above by having some of them watch to ensure that those who violate the collective rights have a chance to prevent the individual person from such violations of the common good. The state must spy on the individual to ensure he doesn't do wrong against the whole, and that if he does, that he is corrected. The common interest before the personal interest. It makes sense in a Utilitarian view. We're all in this together.

"She's [Sarah Palin] not my role model. I don't identify with her. And it scares me because I feel she's not going away -- win or lose," says [Obama supporter Eileen] Limas. "She will go back, she will educate herself on things and re-tool herself and she is going to be around a while. I think she is going to be a substantial political player for the Republicans for a long time to come." CNN.

There are a couple of ways of understanding the nature of the meaning of life, separate and conflicting, that lead to our currently divided society: there is the collectivist vision, that we are all one; that people are nothing without other people to give them meaning and identity; that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. Yes, we are the children of the world. And there is the vision that man is himself, makes himself according to what he decides is better for him by his own lights than what is demanded or even commanded of him by the state, by experts in how to live another's life. The latter one might call Gnostics, those who feel they have a greater insight into what is a good life for all, and who gather the powers of the state to enforce their visions onto the personal lives of the "masses."

When you were a child, your guardians, whether parents or not, probably had some better idea of how you should live your life than you did as a child. They, in turn, had less an idea than the rulers of the state and nation, i.e. those in charge of maintaining the order of society, e.g. politicians, university professors, journalists, and so on, those one might dismiss today as Philosopher Kings. Yes, some experts certainly do know much and valuable much at that. Your parents knew too much and valuable about your life when you were a child, no doubt. But they none of them knew enough to live your life for you. Sometimes the experts, government or even your parents, just don't get it, thinking they know your needs better than you can ever know anything about anything at all. Your life is held "in loco parentis," in the place of the parent by surrogates. Comes a time you should grow up and live your own life. Should come a time when you leave them, and they leave you alone. Often that doesn't happen: you become, as an adult, infantalised by the state and its minions. At adulthood, you are removed from the controls of schools and put into the control of the world by direct government. You never grow up to be mature adult. You never become a full individual: you are made into one sliver of the masses.

How many times have you heard from the social minders a slogan such as this: "The common good before the individual good"?

One hears this, or variations of, at any meeting of Povertarians: Give back to the community. We are all one big family. No one is more important that the group.

"Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz."

You might want to look up that slogan to see where it comes from and why you just might not like it.

To give you a head start, I'll give a hint: It is the slogan of the Nazi state.

If you don't like the way thing go, it could be that you don't like this "Velvet Fascism" of the Povertarians taking care of all your needs. Maybe you really don't want to be a part of the herd of Human farm animals the minders would make you part of. Maybe you're an adult.

"Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."*

Conformity hippies will lead us astray from our own intuitions of the Good. Who are these religious fanatic Povertarian communalists to know our lives better than we who live them? Walk away.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."*

"Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz."

Your choice.

*Quotation above come from Henry David Thoreau. [Reprinted from comments section at Downtown Eastside Enquirer.]

After roughly 300 pages of intense Germanic philosophizing, Fitche sums up with the line: "It depends on what kind of person one is."

Communalist Povertarian or Palinite?

Among roughly the same number of pages, though of terrible tedium, Ruth Benedict sums up with this: "In reality, society and the individual are not antagonists. His culture provides the raw material of which the individual makes his life. If it is meagre, the individual suffers; if it is rich, the individual has the chance to rise to his opportunity. Every private interest of every man and woman is served by the enrichment of the traditional stores of his civilization." Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1934; rpt, 1959; p.p. 251-52.

Some people have managed to become both kinds of person, both the totalitarian and the champion of individuals: they allow license to some and exercise total control of trivialities among others. This is what Samuel Francis calls "Anarcho-tyranny," to which I will return at a later time, having first weighed the chances of successfully dumping the trash without being caught.

Adam K. in the Covenant Zone - Palinite

After warning us what the Obama administration will do if it is smart about irreversibly transforming America and its Constitutional order, Adam begins to unfold an inverse strategy for those full of (presently fantastic, but eventually possible) visions of how Washington could be turned back to the people. His is a message for the thinking representatives of the vast majority of Americans, those without any power or benefit in the present Washington game, or those who can disavow present interests in the name of a necessary freedom for the future nation, those who can now start producing thought experiments in hopes for making subtle changes in the culture at large, in the quest to erode the liberal fascist order and renew the constitutionalism proper to a self-ruling nation.

But note, this will require a discipline for building (imagined and real) covenants, a great love for, an understanding of, freedom and nation and ordinary people, and not just angry rhetoric obsessed with the evils of the present regime:

I haven’t spoken about the Palin phenomenon, but would like to now, because it is linked to a broader point: the absolute need, if we are to extricate ourselves from what seems to me to be a death spiral (the success of the 9/11 attacks), to demolish the Washington “establishment”: there is almost nothing actually existing in Washington, with the exception of Constitutionally mandated institutions, that I wouldn’t include in this imperative. The CIA should be abolished and replaced by human intelligence gathering groups directly accountable to the President; the State Department should be eviscerated; we should bring back the “spoils system,” so that a new Adminstration can be genuinely responsible for the actions it undertakes–I would like to set the major political parties on the road to extinction, first of all by removing any legal forms which elevate them above any other private association; the same for the big media. And that’s just for starters. All this is in the realm of fantasy (and, perhaps, liberating thought experiments) at this point, of course–I raise the issue here not because I necessarily think Sarah Palin would do any of these things, but because there is no doubt that official Washington and its media praetorian guard saw her as a deadly threat to business as usual. The frame-up of Palin revolved around her unfamiliarity with Washingtonese and media-speak–I would agree that she probably doesn’t know much about some foreign policy issues, but neither did Clinton or Bush before being elected, neither does Obama, and Biden knows a lot more that isn’t true than is. They have no more brains than she does: the difference, to paraphrase the Wizard of Oz’s speech to the strawman at the end of the movie, is that they have been “certified” by the establishment and she hasn’t. The most remarkable and prescient events of the campaign might turn out to be those disastrous interviews: what a careful and sympathetic viewer saw in Palin’s encounters with the “mainstream” media was someone torn between her lack of familiarity with the terms of a very hostile environment, her loyalty to her running mate which led, in turn, to her exaggerated deference to the standardized “official” discourse with which the campaign advisors tried to inculcate her, and her own, rather precise but largely unwelcome convictions and political instincts. Torn to the point of incoherence: when, in that cring-producing moment, Katie Couric asked her which newspapers and magazines she reads, and Palin answered “all of them,” as a writing instructor I saw the terror of the student desperate not to be “wrong” and rummaging through her store of commonplaces for a serviceable answer that won’t draw upon itself the dreaded red ink (”what is this essay about?”–”He is making a point about universal human nature”…)–I imagine that, running through her mind at that moment was something like “Oh my God, they didn’t tell me which newspapers and magazines I read!”

It was very good for us to see it and, I hope, in the long run, for Palin to have experienced it–because it is only those who are untutored in Washington’s ways, but skeptical enough to burst the bubbles of conventional wisdom (and there Palin certainly has some work to do) who can save us at this point. Margins of the political system must be sought where “unregulated” associations and agendas can be formed–there’s no need to ignore the pseudo-center, but no serious political activity at this point can allow itself to be dependent upon it either. My own favorite is a movement organized around constitutional amendments: let’s sit down a formulate the language knocking the media, the judiciary, the universities, and the political parties off of the pedestal they have erected for themselves; let’s see if we can revise the terms of accountability of elected officials for the programs they establish by forcing Congress, not unelected bureaucrats, to set the rules according to which laws will be implemented–I am confident that language in all of these cases, and many more, can be found that would gain the support of the 2/3-3/4 of Americans needed to pass new amendments, and such a campaign would be an unprecedented experience in trans-partisan political self-education. We could then hold politicians accountable to their stand on the amendments. Let’s see if we can be subtle and irreversible ourselves: all ideas conforming to our constitutional order should be welcomed into the discussion.

GABlog » Blog Archive » Subtle and Irreversible

Polls? Bah!

Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespaians, yet bravest of all was declared Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they fired their volleys, the mass of arrows blocked out the sun. Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade.'

--Herodotus

Go, Sarah, Go!

Calling all Palinites

Hey you! I'm a Palinite. I love Sarah Palin and at least a lot of what she represents, like middle class American values. You too? Well, even if you all show up this evening for coffee at VPL at 7:00 p.m. outside Blenz coffee bar to join us we'll till be a small crowd. Good. We've got room to grow.

Anyone who loves Sarah Palin is someone I want to chat with. Meet me and my friend in the atrium for coffee this evening. Sarah-talk. Come on, Palinites!

Neopalinism

It came to my attention last day that I had forgotten the occasion of a deeply-held personal concern, and that the source of my thought originates in the mind of a Black American commenting on slavery. Neither he nor I have ever been slaves, though both of us have ancestors who were. We both share a common memory, and his informed mine, though I forgot about him as the key to my understanding.

Memory keeps the individual coherent in his own existence. Below are four coherent memories of America.

John Kaminski, "The New Evil Empire: America has become what Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used to be."

The evil empire, number one threat to peace in the world, is now the United States. No more Red Menace. No more Third Reich. Now it's a War on Terror executed by the biggest terrorist of all - America, the nation that killed its own people by the thousands in order to trigger World War III and capture all the world's oil fields.

[....]

And when the rest of the world comes calling to rectify this murderous tyranny and worldwide oppression that America now practices, what will you say to them when they aim their guns at you? That you didn't know?

http://www.rense.com/general49/evil.htm

"PETA Urges Ben & Jerry's To Use Human Milk; Group Says Move Would Help Humans, Cows." Waterbury, Vt.; 23 Sept 2008.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman."PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.

http://www.wptz.com/news/17539127/detail.html

I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

Theodore Roosevelt, "The Strenuous Life."

http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/research/speech%20strenuous.htm

[L]et us leave this small and barren country of our and take possession of a better. There are plenty to choose from-- some near, some further off; if we take one of them, we shall be admired more than ever....

Cyrus did not think much of this suggestion; he replied that they might act upon it if they pleased, but added the warning that, if they did so, they must prepare themselves to rule no longer, but to be ruled by others. 'Soft countries,' he said, 'breed soft men. It is not the property of any one soil to produce fine fruits and good soldiers too.' The Persians had to admit that this was true and that Cyrus was wiser than they; so they left him, and chose instead to live in a rugged land and rule than to cultivate rich plains and be slaves.

Herodotus, The Histories. Trans. Aubrey de Selincourt. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books; 1965; p. 599.

We can't remember things we've never known. I often forget things I have learned. Still, I remember enough to remain more or less coherent as an individual through a long life-time. Above we have four memories of Americanism. They are, together, incoherent. We live in a pluralistic nation of many conflicting memories, united by something more than the details. Ernst Renan claims our nation is a daily plebiscite of agreement to live as a united nation; Johann von Herder claims we are an ethnic group united by climate, language, and ethnicity over the course of time. It must come to what we remember of our selves as nationals. We won't remember what we never knew; and we might forget much of what we did know. I venture the opinion that many Americans have forgotten, or worse, never knew, what America was and is. It seems that many have come to remember the memories of others, and taken them on as personal.

History is, from what I've experienced, an eternal dialectic. Nevertheless, one chooses much of what one remembers, and one acts coherently, if not necessarily rationally, to maintain the flow of the general movement. Still, it is a daily maintenance project for the person and the nation. Given what we have, we work to maintain it and expand it where possible. Memory, thus, is Will. Memory is also futurity. I will remember to remember what I remember in time to come so I remain coherent. So, history isn't simply what happened: it is what we will for the future. We keep what we can and move on to collect more later. Like chess, determined as it is, we are presented with life-Will nearly limitless in its options to move as we will. We can choose to remember what we will, even if such memories are not our own.

Americanism can be a Palinism. We can choose to remember America as our future by reifying the palin of American memory. We recreate America daily as we remember it privately. What kind of memory do we choose our future to be?

Return, Palinite

I'm a Palinite. No, I'm not an expert Palinite, but I have some good instincts and some experience in life that qualifies me to call myself a Palinite in good conscience. I want a return to America. I have no desire for the continuance of meaningless expertise in public lives. I want excellence instead. I want a return to average and normal: Saras.

"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health Education and Welfare under JFK and author of "Excellence."

Two things I like? Plumbing and Philosophy. Maybe yes it's because I'm full of shit. Maybe certainly I'm no expert at either Philosophy or plumbing. But I do know something about both. No, not an expert, but still I have some idea of things, practical and plumb.

Below we have a number of stories on amateurs and experts and blogs and media pros. Maybe plumbers shouldn't have opinions about Philosophy; but if so, then one will hope philosophers don't ever opine on the nature of plumbing. Nor should novelists ever deal in fiction. In such a world, we'd all stay home, if we're carpenter, and freeze in the dark, assuming we're not electricians.

First, a book review, in media res, for all of our Latin speaking Romans:

Since Andrew Keen is so instinctively dismissive about amateur contributors to the internet - people like me - it's hardly surprising that I should instinctively dismiss his book, so let me declare an interest right away: I like Web 2.0. I've been a contributor to it - through Amazon customer reviews, Wikipedia, discussion forums, MySpace, Napster and so on - for nearly a decade now, and I've followed the emergence of the political movement supporting it, exemplified by writers such as Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler, with some fascination. and no, I've never made a dime out of it (though I have been sent a few books to review, not including this one).

Andrew Keen is that classic sort of British reactionary: the sort that would bemoan the loss of the word "gay" to the English language, and regret the damage caused by industrial vacuum cleaners on the chimney sweeping industry. His book is an impassioned, but simple-minded, hearkening to those simpler times which concludes that our networked economy has pointlessly exalted the amateur, ruined the livelihood of experts, destroyed incentives for creating intellectual property, delivered to every man-jack amongst us the ability - never before possessed - to create and distribute our own intellectual property and monkeyed around mischievously with the title to property wrought from the very sweat of its author's brow.

Keen thinks this is a bad thing; but that is to assume that the prior state of affairs was unimpeachably good. You don't have to be a paranoid Chomskyite to see the pitfalls of concentrated mass media ownership (Keen glosses over them), or note that the current intellectual property regime - which richly rewards a few lucky souls and their publishers at the expense of millions of less fortunate (but not, necessarily, less talented) ones, isn't the only way one could fairly allocate the risks and rewards of intellectual endeavour.

Keen's world is one where there is a transcendental reality; a truth, purveyed by experts, trained journalists, and in great danger of dissolution by the radically relativised truths of Wikipedia where the community sets the agenda, and if two plus two equals five, then it is five. So much Big Brother: Orwell's novel gets repeated mention, it apparently having escaped Keen that a media owned by a concentrated, cross-held clique of corporate interests - which is what the old economy perpetuated - looks quite a lot more totalitarian than publishing capacity distributed to virtually every person on the planet.

Keen laments the loss of a "sanctity of authorship" of the sort which vouchsafed to Messrs Jagger and Richards (and their recording company) a healthy lifetime's riches for the fifteen minutes it took to compose and record Satisfaction (notwithstanding their debt - doubtless unpaid - to divers blues legends from Robert Johnson to Chuck Berry) and seems to believe individual creativity will be suddenly stifled by undermining it. There's no evidence for this (certainly not judging by MySpace, the proliferation of blogs, Wikipedia, and so forth, as Keen patiently recounts), and no reason I can see for supposing it to be true on any other grounds.

On the contrary, Yale law professor Yochai Benkler in his excellent (and freely available!) The Wealth Of Networks has a much more sophisticated analysis: there is a non-market wealth of information and expertise - residing in heads like yours and mine - which the networked economy has finally unlocked, for the benefit of all, and at the cost of the poor substitute that preceded it. That this might have compromised the gargantuan earnings capacity of one latter day Rolling Stones (to the incremental benefit of a few thousand others) is far less of a travesty - and more of a boon - than Keen thinks it is. Now rock bands have to sing for their supper. Keen may regret that but, as a concert goer, I sure don't.

Keen also, irritatingly, keeps returning to the Monkeys and Typewriters analogy (writes your dear correspondent, a monkey). It is true there may not be much talent behind the infinite typewriters, but the evolutionary lesson is that there doesn't need to be, as long as we have tools, be they Google algorithms or manual reputation management devices (things like Amazon's "helpful review" voting buttons) to sort the wheat from the chaff. And like it or not, we do have these tools: they're the sine non qua of Web 2.0, the thing without which it would never have got off the ground.

And Wikipedia (or Linux, or eBay, or Amazon's customer review system) is potent evidence of that. That there are notorious cases, a few of which Keen recounts, doesn't detract from the fact that Wikipedia is largely comprised of brilliant articles, with helpful links and useful surrounding discussion, a complete history, and those articles that aren't so good are obviously not: all you need to pack for a visit is your critical faculties. Again, if the choice were blind faith in Encyclopaedia Britannica or a skeptical read of Wikipedia, I know which I'd have, and which I'd counsel for my children - especially since Wikipedia is automatically up-to-date, preternaturally following the zeitgeist, and replete with good know-how on things that Britannica would never have in a million years. Most of the time, we don't need a Nobel-prize certified article, and in Britannica wouldn't get one anyway, if what we wanted to know about was "The Knights who say 'Ni'."

Elsewhere Keen misunderstands Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Correspondence Theory of Truth, implies that traditional media isn't systemically biased, assumes his fellow men have no sense of skepticism whatever (because something is watched on YouTube, Keen assumes it is necessarily believed true), and constantly fails to see the double standards in his own arguments: Complaining that traditional media is losing out to a swarm of unpaid, under-resourced amateurs, Keen suddenly remarks "but in reality it's often those with the loudest, most convincing message, and the most money to spread it, who are being heard". Plus ca change, eh?

Lastly, Keen laments the passing of specialist record and book shops like Tower, whose "unparalleled" and "remarkably diverse selection" will be lost to us for ever. Clearly he's no online shopper then, since dear old Amazon would lick all of them put together - but Amazon, he says, lacks the dedicated expertise of sales assistants that could have stepped out of Nick Hornby's Hi Fidelity. Except that it doesn't, since it has literally millions of them - people like you and me - who can offer our tuppence worth gladly and without thought of recompense.

The thing is, there *is* a debate to be had here, though not quite the apocalyptic one that this author believes is necessary, and at times Keen touches on it, but his brimming prurience and needless moral disgust - at the cost of level-headed analysis and exposition - towards a community which has simply adjusted to the new social environment more quickly than traditional political and business models have makes this a poor entry for the purposes of kicking off that debate.

In the mean time, Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom and Lawrence Lessig's Code: Version 2.0 (neither of which Keen seems to have read) might be a better place for interested persons to start.

Olly Buxton

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0385520816

Now, as it turns out, I am a blogger, one of the infamous few who isn't making a killing from this business. Below we have a different take on blogging from that given by the most excellent Sir Whatshisname above.

Hannah Strange, "The final showdown: reactions from the blogosphere."

Bloggers may not be a homogeneous group, but they are an educated and affluent one, according to a new survey measuring the current state of the blogosphere. Seventy percent of all global bloggers are college graduate, half are between the ages of 18 an 34, and 40 percent have a household income more than $75.00.00, [a] survey found.

And while blogging has only recently exploded in mainstream popularity, at least 50 percent of the bloggers surveyed have engaged in online commentary for more than two years and, collectively, are now generating close to one million posts every day.

The survey was conducted by Technorati as part of a continuing analysis into trends and themes i blogging. As part of the 2008 report, a random sample of 1.2 million bloggers registered with Technorati were asked about: the role of blogging in their lives; the tools, time and resources used to produce their blogs; and how blogging has affected them personally, professionally, and financially.

While the survey was administered in English, responses came from bloggers who publish in 20 different languages in 66 countries. Highlights include:

• Women make up only 34 percent of active bloggers, but are more sophisticated than male users about various means of driving traffic to their site.
• The majority of resondants currently have advertising on their bogs, generating a mean annual revenue of $6,000.00 U.S.
• One in five Asian bloggers is a student and more likely to write about music than politics; however, Asian bloggers are also three times more likely than bloggers elsewhere in the world to have paid advertising on their site.
  
• American bloggers are four times more likely than Europeans to try to make money from their site.

Both personal and professional topics are equally popular, the survey found. Most bloggers write about multiple topics, and about half consider their style to be "sincere, conversational, humorous, and expert."

Gossip or tell-all tales fell to the bottom of the list in self-described styles among the bloggers surveyed. The majority of blogger reveal their identities on their blogs and recognize the positive impact that blogging has on their personal and professional lives. More than half are now better known in their industry and one in five has been on the TV or the radio because of his or her blog.

Personal satisfaction is by far the most popular measure of the bog success, the survey found, though, on average, bloggers use four distinct metrics to gauge their influence, including revenue generated and the numbers of subscribers or comments.

For the complete survey, go to http://technorati.com/blogging/state/-of-the-blogosphere/

Here I jump in again briefly with an introduction to Th. Lifson's article on the MSM. [Boo! Hiss!]

Thomas Lifson, "Newspaper death throes (continued)", American Thinker; 26 Oct. 2008

The Newark Star-Ledger reportedly plans to reduce its newsroom staff by half, according to the Associated Press. The editor is quoted as saying that 151 out of 335 editorial employees have so far accepted buyouts.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post chronicles the troubles of the AP itself, in a piece by Jay Newton-Small. The article notes the increasing reliance of the AP on news analysis and and editorializing, as opposed to straight news gathering, but oddly focuses on Ron Fournier, who is a rare AP staffer not in the left-liberal camp.

Increasingly, the AP is becoming a competitor of the newspapers which own it as a cooperative). Major papers, including the Tribune Company biggies (LA Times, Chicago Tribune) the Star-Tribune, and others are dropping the AP, reducing its revenue base.

Jerry Malone, a veteran journalist "who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut" laments the decline and fall of American journalism, declaring himself ashamed to admit he's a journalist now. He suggests that the dying industry may be sacrificing its integrity by blatantly shaping the news to support Obama for reasons of its own:

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a manner that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide - especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50:50. [....]

...you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway - all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself: an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country . . .

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/newspaper_death_throes_continu.html

Oh, the world is ending and it's all a big catastrophe, not anything like when I was a boy, back in the good old days. Polio and the Cold War and famines in India. Great.

Then came the hippies, and look at the mess we have now. So we do what we do, and we do our best, expert or no. Personally, I have more faith in you than I do in Obama. You, who are likely like Sarah Palin, (if you are) inspire me. No experience? Come on!? I might not want you changing my car brakes but I think you're likely as well-informed as the next person about things that matter in life. If hundreds of Sarah Palins would go to Washington--as our representatives-- then I'd feel good about America for the duration. We don't need your expertise in foreign affairs. We need a return to America. We need palin, "again" a "return." That's why today I'm not an expert but that I am in spite of that at least a minor Palinite. Return my America to the people. Any decent person can do it. Expert or no.

You can do it, excellent Palinite.