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Folks on the Right have speculated for months why the Left hates her so -- a hatred astounding in its vitriol, a hatred extending to her handicapped child. We have known for years that the Left is addled by hatred. Those it admires today and in History have also been superb haters. Such hatred has no place in a Republic, but it fits rather well in a tyranny. In fact, hatred is one of the supporting props of tyranny. No tyranny can survive without a continuous outpouring of hatred for some race or some class or some religion.
So why the hatred? Let us make things simple. Sarah Palin is hated because she is a Christian. In her words and in her deeds this is plainly obvious to those who follow Christ. He told us that this would happen to those who followed him -- "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." Notice those who hate Palin. From top to bottom they are pagans and God haters. That is also why they hated Bush. Their hatred had nothing to do with policy.Illustration via Why Did Sarah Palin Resign? Three Possible Reasons And More @ The New Ledger
If the Founders agree with you, you are following in the footsteps of the Founders. If the Founders disagree - they would have changed their minds. Americans have spent two centuries learning to play this blithe little game, great sport of a wonderfully Jesuitical nature, and has allowed each of the various modern American ideologies to craft its own Founders and its own Old Republic. - Unqualified Reservations: Secession, liberty, and dictatorship
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps,
the people march:
"Where to? what next?
-- Carl Sandburg: The People Yes
Apparently, Hitler could not avoid the fact that he believed what he was doing was for the great benefit of Germany. The winner of an election cannot be dissuaded from that belief until he is deposed. Hitler himself is not so interesting as is the ways in which he represents the ambitions of the 20th century. I wonder how different he is from any other such leader, and how different the German people are from us. Yeah, now I do actually wonder. Like most other folks who have studied Hitler's Germany, I scratch my head wondering how London, Washington, Paris and Moscow could have been so blind.
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and â at first â even the paperâs own reporters and editors. The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its health care reporting and editorial staff." -- Washington Post sells access, $25,000Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
The 87,492 page bill -- official designated as the American Patriotic Renewal Act of 2009 for Carbon Reduction, Energy Independence, Heathy Climate, Sustainable Job Growth, Adorable Puppies, and Earthly Paradise -- is a keystone in President Obama's first year legislative agenda, and was originally anticipated to get swift congressional passage. Instead, it faced a unexpectedly tough vote in the House last week after coal state Democrats complained it would place an unfair economic burden on their home districts. "I am as interested in reversing global climate change as anyone, but I fail to see how increasing taxes and random machete attacks on Ohio coal producers alone will solve the problem," said Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). "Come on people, there are plenty of other industries who deserve machete attacks too."
At over 2,280 meters above sea level (nearly 7,480 feet), the capital city of Chaghcharan has no factories, few cars or motorbikes, and air that is fresh and dry (and thin). Yet these are the lowlands. For about six months out of the year, the mountains around us could just as well be blanketed under a hundred miles of snow. When the snows arrive in about November, the place is socked in. The nearest paved road is about 380km (236 miles) away at Herat. Tens of thousands of people in the surrounding mountains and in this lowland are cut off from the world. There is nowhere to go but here. None of the Afghans have internet access, but there are cell phones. Even the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), run by the Lithuanians, becomes isolated other than by virtue of the gravel airstrip. They sometimes go several weeks without a flight. The place might as well be a spaceship, isolated first by the snows, then by the floods from the melting. This is a common story in Afghanistan. -- Lithuanians on the Moon
It is easy enough to see why progressive doctrine should be attractive to our masters. Tyrannical ambition is nothing new, and throughout human history it has nearly always presented itself to men in the guise of idealism. We are all inclined to meddle in other people's business; we are all inclined to think that we know better; and higher education tends to inflate our vanity and to make us more inclined to lord it over those who are less well-instructed. Never for a moment does a Barack Obama stop to ask whether depriving us of responsibility for our own well-being is demeaning. He and his supporters know that they know better, and their putative wisdom in this regard constitutes for them an absolute claim to rule. The logic unfolding within the progressive impulse requires that there be a class of Guardians empowered to supervise our lives in every particular, and to an ever-increasing degree this is the reality with which we live. -- Paul Rahe: Obama's tyrannical ambition
Fruit, I now understand, causes within people a diabolical disorientation, and that disorientation spreads into every aspect of humanity. Fruit captivates the attention and leads to painful mishaps. Fruit causes aggression, which leads to war. It inspires prostration and adoration, which leads to idolatry and misplaced allegiances. Fruit flummoxes a man’s ability to reason, impacting his marriage and his daughter’s self-esteem and future lumbar health. Fruit maketh a woman into a blithe-and-brainless spirit, content to bounce from car-to-car like a well-flicked pinball. These people go out into the world. They write books. They teach. They govern nations. They program network television. -- The Anchoress — A First Things Blog
Presto-the beleaguered, more moral liberal must be given greater leeway, employ sometimes questionable means, since his ends are the more exalted. Yes, Al Gore gets to fly private, and have a few extra rooms in his mansion, but he is sacrificing on the planetâs behalf, and needs a more ample footprint than the rest of us to save us from ourselves. Who cares if George Bushâs Texas ranch house has a lighter footprint than Goreâs mansion, given that Bush thwarted Kyoto and Gore promoted it? Yes, Timothy Geithner skipped a few thousands in taxes, but who wouldnât if you were trying to reformulate an entire tax code to level the playing field? Yes, Bill slipped up with Monica, but Monicas come and go-a womanâs right to chose simply cannot. Yes, Eliot Spitzer had a bothersome desire for young prostitutes, but he was a crusader against Wall Street greed. And yes, the previously mentioned John Edwards was campaigning to the left of Clinton and Obama, and thus his âproblemsâ deserved some sort gestation, given his voice on the behalf of the poor.
The Bad Moose crowd at night is prone to motorcycles and tattoos. There are very few drinks with umbrellas in them in evidence. There is a contingent of very large males enamored of high-fives and bottled beer, and some women who might have danced around a pole previously. The bartender works alone, whirling like a dervish, is dressed like a vampire, has some metal in the face and tattoos on the skin, and could probably clear the room in 15 seconds flat. And she's a girl. -- Sippican Cottage: Money (Still) Changes Everything
The calculus of political correctness is like roshambo, the "rock-paper-scissors" game. Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.
Don't ask why. It just is.But who then makes The Rules?, asks the Belmont Club in Carnival of grotesques:
If Poets were the unacknowledged legislators of Shelley's world, then who are unacknowledged legislators of ours? If Shelley's commentary remains valid then the true authors of Breitbart's Laws are the Carnival of Grotesques collectively referred to as popular culture. They make the rules to which we subconsciously conform. Its members are household names. And the measure of its quality can be deduced from the fact that Lavandeira occupies an honored position in this assembly. And that's why Andrew Breitbart can write seriously about this creature, and the reason why anyone, in spite of himself should read it. Perez Hilton is about us. He is a measure of the circumference to which our outlook has shrunk.
Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he'd get it and you wouldn't, it's rationing. -- Michael Kinsley
The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter at MACH .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage! The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players vibrated around the board. -- Alva Review/Courier HT Rick @ Brutally Honest
Another day, another day of internecine Muslim slaughter in Iraq. To put things in perspective, if a proportionate mass killing had occurred in the US, it would equal 2000 American dead. Pundits and academics and scribblers of every kind will write millions of words trying to explain these killings. Some will blame Iran. Some will blame Al-Qaeda. Some will blame Bush. Yet such things happen regularly in Iraq and in almost every nation where Mohammed hangs his ragged turban. Muslim killing Muslim began when Islam began. It will end when the last two Muslims strangle each other with their own intestines.
If any man in Guantanamo Bay prison had been found in [Michael Jackson's] condition there would be cries for a war crimes prosecution. But since Jackson succumbed to that most socially acceptable and lucrative of ends, death by celebrity, the real question is whether anyone — anyone at all, bar some fall guy — will be found guilty of anything....
One might be forgiven for imagining that the elite media system actually works quite well: that it can keep a secret when it wants to; that secrets only leak when it is convenient. When massive liquidity problems impend, when tax bills disguised as climate change fixes are introduced in the dead of the night, when totally incompetent people are foisted on an unsuspecting public, it can hide the information quite effectively. If these horrible autopsy results are real then I hope it starts a fire that doesn't stop until everyone associated with this incident burns down. Here's one slogan from the sixties that hasn't gone out of date. Burn, baby, burn. It isn't that I like Michael Jackson particularly, but no human being should be beset by bloodsuckers this bad. -- Belmont Club Night of the living dead
I don't know how, but I am now in my sixties. I keep telling myself not to feel so much sorrow for what is happening now, since I have the easy way out. Every time I almost let go, the figurehead utters something about being a nation of laws or international law and I'm sucked right back in. I read this yesterday morning, it helped yesterday -- "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."-Romans. Hmmm, it just helped again. Nonetheless, I'll do all in my power to stand against America's enemies, domestic and foreign.
In contemporary Canada we also face tyranny, but of a sort that we have brought upon ourselves in ways no Czechs, no Persians, ever did. There is no regime in Ottawa that seized power by violence, and imposed the "politically correct" ideology on us from a party manifesto. The advance of this tyranny -- of the Nanny State and all its trappings -- has been accomplished in plain view, by incremental advances, with our co-operation. -- David Warren
The card table bohemian Marxists loomed large now on the radar screen. I saw them watching the bum they had hired directly across the street, and eying me. And here I was, right in front of them; I was the person they were touting on all those flyers. I was the worker who they would emancipate. I've been a body shop mechanic, and a janitor, and a housepainter, and a welder, and a factory hand, and a starving artist, and a laborer, and every other damn thing. If I sneeze at the wrong time I could still lose a finger or two at work.... They sized me up, and pulled their hands back in, and let me pass by without saying anything. -- Sippican Cottage: Gimme Some (More) Of That Old Time Religion
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
The rise to power and fame of the real lowbrows explains a lot. It even points to an answer of sorts. Because we've all been intimidated by the Cult of Nice not to contradict anybody who comes out with a really stupid, destructive idea. We can no longer call a really stupid idea what it is. I know that I censor myself all the time. We have been taught to keep our mouths shut when a word in time might make a real difference. We have allowed the national conversation to be dumbed down.
Here's my resolution for July Fourth: From now on I'm going to call idiocy idiotic. Not nastily, but as clearly as I can. It is high time for normal, intelligent common sense to become acceptable again. I'm happy to have a respectful argument with anyone who disagrees with me. But I'm going to start saying the magic words:
That's really dumb! That's really ignorant! You haven't thought about that much, have you? Have you ever considered another side of that batty idea?
The process through which a principal is captured by his servants is familiar to students of bureaucracy and even business. Once capture is consummated, the master and servant exchange places. The enterprise is run thereafter not for the benefit of the principal, but for those of the agents, such as when a country is run for the benefit of a government, or when a government is run for the benefit of its officials. In the case of Jackson, he may have been working -- and made to keep working -- for the benefit of the vast swarm of creditors, suppliers and hangers-on who attached themselves like parasites to failing host.
But how many people, reflecting on the King of Pop’s fantasies, will ask themselves whether subprime mortgages, unfunded social security or borrowing our way out of debt makes any more sense than that last shot of Demerol? On a day when the House has passed the climate change bill, wouldn’t it be good to ask how much of what the public is being made spend is for the public’s own benefit, and how much for the continued livelihood of the armies of special pleaders who surround society with their policy pills and needles? Good, but unlikely. It is far easier to believe in promises and rely feel-good nostrums than it is to look in the mirror, even though we know what it will show. Jackson’s death when it came, wasn’t a surprise; probably not even to him. And the crash of public policy fantasy, when it arrives, will not be wholly unexpected.