Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg was expected to be anticlimatic. The man who was expected to set the crowd aflame was Edward Everett, a widely famed orator. Everett’s speech was the day’s principal “Gettysburg address.” His 13,607-word oration began:
“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; — grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”
On it droned for two hours until it concluded with these polished lines.
“But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country, there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg.”
Why was it forgotten when Lincoln’s was remembered? Possibly because Lincoln’s speech had the great virtue of not trying to be the main event itself. It was a commentary on events. The battlefield itself spoke and men heard it. In a world where action answered action, all seemly remarks would be brief and therefore Lincoln’s remarks were seemly. But today, words have possessed us all, taken on a life of their own, like a devil or malevolent spirit. For example, Andrew Sullivan describes the martial qualities of Barack Obama, which in his view are far superior to John McCain’s, by describing BHO’s prowess in the news-cycle. “Obama’s strategic skills have been obvious for quite a while. He is perfectly prepared to hang back in a campaign, to allow attacks to pummel him and to lose news cycles or primaries to a media-centric opponent. … America is at war with lethal enemies, its economy is teetering, its people are unsettled. And McCain gave us a 44-year-old former beauty queen as the person who could be asked to take over the White House in an emergency if anything happened to the oldest first-term president in American history. Tactically: daring. Strategically: potentially disastrous.” Perish the thought of a beauty queen at the White House when we could have the news-cycle tested Barack Obama instead. Sullivan, of course, is not always the best judge of strategy. Readers may recall what Andrew Sullivan thought of General Petraeus in July of 2007:
Petraeus is either willing to be used by the Republican propaganda machine or he is part of the Republican propaganda machine. I’m beginning to suspect the latter. The only thing worse than a deeply politicized and partisan war is a deeply politicized and partisan commander. But we now know whose side Petraeus seems to be on: Cheney’s. Expect spin, not truth, in September.
If men who have hammers see every problem as a nail, pundits can have the understandable tendency to see everything, including war, as spin, spin and more spin. Reality becomes its representation, or rather, its misrepresentation. Sound and fury come to signify everything. Camille Paglia is impressed by Sarah Palin, but for the wrong reason:
“We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling,” said Camille Paglia, the cultural critic. “That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.” “Good Lord, we had barely 12 hours of Democrat optimism,” said Paglia. “It was a stunningly timed piece of PR by the Republicans.”
Both Sullivan’s and Paglia’s comments are disturbing in their own way. The idea of Obama accomplishing over Chicken Marengo what Napoleon achieved at Marengo and people qualifying for high office on the basis of a “political speech” is symptomatic of the trivialization of practically everything. What does “war” and “qualification” signify any more besides a talking point? David Brooks captured the pompous, yet unreal quality of modern political debate in a satiric, cutting, fictional convention speech. Brooks lampooned the phenomenon of words upstaging reality. Brooks imagined a statesman telling his rapt audience:
My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”
One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.
We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.
And the saddest thing of all if that if Brooks’ parody were delivered at a real convention, it might be actually be reported as the strongest political speech of a generation and send thrills coursing up and down the legs of the listeners. Until the next news cycle. The title video is here.
Tip Jar.
I think that if the hurricane is all its cracked up to be next week — then it would be a good idea to turn the republican convention into a giant telethon to raise money to help repair stuff in the gulf.
Then do the convention later.
The pubbies would get immense support for such an action.
Sully’s whole “Obama is good at strategy and Macain sucks at it” it kind of killed by the fact Obama was completely wrong about the surge. How can you be a master of strategy when you repeatlly say a military plan will fail, it then works better the all exceptions and you can’t even bring yourself to say that it worked? Sounds like someone who puts his head in the ground when he gets it wrong.
There is a world of perception and a world of reality.
In the world of perception, words and images spawn existence. We start with a mental model of truth, then collect facts that fit with with that model, while rejecting those that don’t. Deductive reasoning is the dominant mode of thought: Cogito ergo sum. It is thought that creates being. Its intellectual fathers are French: Descartes, Sartres, Derrida. This is the world of identity politics.
In the world of reality, existence spawns words and images. We start with facts from our experience, and we build a model that fits those facts, and reject models that don’t fit. Inductive reasoning is the dominant mode of thought: the human mind is a tabula rasa. It is experience that leads to understanding. Its intellectual fathers are English: Bacon, Locke, Mill. This is the world constitutional politics.
Problems always seem to occur when these two worlds get out of sync. And they seem very much out of sync today. We’re in a recession with 3.3% GDP growth; Iraq is a disastrous quagmire with rates of violence comparable to many US cities; global warming is destroying the planet with lower temperatures; immigrants and off-shoring are stealing American jobs with an unemployment rate of 5.7%; abortion should be rare when there are more than 1 million each year.
Lincoln’s address was a classic because it left a perception with the reader that perfectly aligned with reality. Gettysburg was all too real, and the Gettysburg Address expressed the meaning of that reality in shockingly few words.
I continue to hope and pray that our current misalignment is just a transitory phenomenon. The genius of the American system is that our checks and balances – including the most important, elections – provide regular opportunities to resynchronize.
Still: faster, please.
L3
Biden’s Address:
Biden Drunk On The Campaign Trail
ht – al-Bob
Gotta hand it to Joe:
Few Democrats move me to empathic embarrassment.
…or maybe he just gives me the squirmies.
@ YouTube, DrChill2 said…
“The treble on the PA is too low so you cant hear him articulate certain consonants.
On a bad day Biden is so much more articulate and thoughtful than Bush.
Most of the comments I’ve read here convince me that the electorate, if the posters are qualified to vote, need to up their game and use reason and good sense to make political decisions. Its embarassing to be among such juvenile Americans.“
one sad thing about the final campaign is that the whole “general betray-us” incident will be forgotten. if only mccain had time/opportunity to pick up that javelin and thrust it back thru the heart of soros et al….
If Wretch hadn’t trashed himself by failing to rethink given C.’s perception below about the cynical “strategic” case for Palin – He might have been in a position to point up where Sullivan really went off. Sully claimed that O “destroyed’ Johnny Mac. Straight talk is cool – but there’s a morality in style…O’s speech was pretty devastating to MaCain backers (who dared to watch it). But O ain’t out to “destroy” any American. He has a more generous imagination than Sully. Though he’s got some steel too.
By the way – Sully walked back from the Petraeus stuff – Have to say, I’ve NEVER seen Wretch walk back from anything – And he’s got a lot more to answer for lately than Sully…Here’s the C. line for everyone to consider again…
Wretchard, you’re conceding to your opponent’s arguments without any self-awareness. In using an OODA loop/dogfight analogy you buttress those liberals who claim that this choice was made only for short-term partisan political gain, not for the good of the nation. The choice “disrupts” the Obama campaign, it doesn’t provide the country with an experienced commander-in-chief should 72 year old McCain fall ill or worse.
Do fighter pilots really make the best strategic political thinkers and actors? By your analogy this is inferred, but you ignore how instinctive creativity, killer reflexes and ego-driven brashness can often lead to medium and long term social or political failure. Perhaps you can do a post on the stellar political career of Randy “Duke” Cunninghmam if you really feel secure with your analogy.
PS doug i – Obama criticized Move-On’s Betrayus ad in his speech on patriotism. Took some heat from it on left-wing blogs…
Sarah Palin has a fine mind. I have watched a video (watched it three times) of her discussing energy and Alaska, and America.
She has a fine mind.
She anticipates the question, and, when it comes, she considers it for a millisecond, and then, the entire answer, the whole answer, all of it, is in her mind, and all she has to do is speak.
Sarah Palin is a bright woman.
Oh, a fighter pilot is running for president? That’s news to me. I seem to remember that GROUND ATTACK missions in general require clear thinking, cooperation, and precision as opposed to the stereotypical Top Gun-esque macho man act. Going all Lone Ranger on a SAM battery or a field of ZSU’s simply doesn’t work. IMO squadron managing must have given McCain at least some executive experience.
But for all its benefits I doubt a career in the USN teaches you how to shower $100 mil. on every little red Windy City Maoist who approaches w/cap in hand. For THAT kind of skill you need someone made of sterner stuff than Johnny M. An unpublished Harvard Law grad might do the trick-no?
It looks like calling Stanley Kurtz a “slimy character assassin” and threatening to sic the DOJ on people prove that the Magic Negro and company “ain’t out to destroy” anyone. I realize that deep down, not even the Obamicans themselves believe their own garbage about post-partisanship, but anyway:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/what-lurks-in-the-ayers-annenberg-files/2/
Benj:
There’s not one thing in Wretchard’s post that references the Obama campaign, so you don’t need to trash him again for some imagined “dishonor”. You only weaken your own (limited) credibility.
Wretchard was merely comparing and commenting on how words once meant something, and were powerful, by virtue of the events they describe. Today, it seems, it’s the words themselves that seem to count, not actions, and not events. “Spin” is in. “Truth” is out. “Abstraction” is everything.
His point of illustration was Andrew Sullivan, who as a professional writer should know how to use words effectively. And he referenced Camille Paglia, who again, is a professional writer. His reference to the political left and indirectly to Obama merely illustrate the point, as it is the left who seem to value words over action, and legend over accomplishment. It’s the “if we intend good, and we feel good, then by gosh we are good..” mentality.
By denigrating your host and bringing Obama and the campaign back into this discussion as centerpoint, only confirms the problem the left has confusing language, characterization, and image with concrete acomplishment.
Wretchard- Hats off to you. Your introduction was some of the better original analysis that I’ve read in some time.
Benj, boy, you’re the rhtorical gift that keeps on giving. Reading your comments is just an absolute hoot.
“The choice “disrupts” the Obama campaign, it doesn’t provide the country with an experienced commander-in-chief should 72 year old McCain fall ill or worse.” – Benj
Please keep hitting those narrative themes, over and over and over again.
1) “McCain is too old.” Not a single person over the age of 50 would think so, and guess what, they (a) vote 2:1 more than people under 40, and (b) vote for conservative candidates by about 3:1.
2) “Palin lacks experience, and is unready to become President”. Hmmm.. thank you for validating that experience is significant. What DEMONSTRATED executive experience does either BHO or his running mate have?? You know “executive”, as in Presidential. The same kind of experience that a “Commanding Officer”, “Governor”, or even, maybe a company CEO exercise?
3) “Do fighter pilots really make the best strategic political thinkers and actors? … Perhaps you can do a post on the stellar political career of Randy “Duke” Cunninghmam if you really feel secure with your analogy.” – Benj
BING.. BING .. BING.. BING ..BING.. BING .. BONUS ROUND!!
Yes. Fighter pilots who are senior Navy officers, with significant COMMAND (oh..oh..there’st that word again!) experience do actually make pretty good strategic political thinkers and actors. They make good President’s too (and, I don’t really even like McCain). If you had been a senior Navy officer (as I was), or perhaps knew a few of them, or perhaps even wore a uniform, you might better speak from experience about that you know.
Oh, and regarding the Duke. Yes, he sinned and made his mistakes. He admitted them, even plead guilty. Even apologized for his ethical errors. And, like every Republican politician who makes such mistakes, he paid the price. (By contrast, William Jefferson, of refrigerator bribe cash fame, is still in office and walking free. He’s lauded by the Democrats). By the way, did you know that Duke is still, after all that, a true American hero? Duke’s resume better prepares him for the office of the Presidency than the pair the Democrats have put forward. It’s actually, a very sad truth.
Thanks for bringing all this up. It really helps provide contrast to the discussion about Obama. Oops, we weren’t discussing Obama. Only you were.
Andrew Sullivan and Paglia’s disease is confusing the West Wing and American President TV and film, respectively, for reality.
Most Democrats and Media people (but I repeat myself) do.
It’s a fantasy where world problems are “solved” by walking around and talking real fast. They don’t get solved that way. They weren’t in 1945, and won’t be any time after it.
The Mediacracy, and Obama-nuts (who “pray” to Obama-Messiah) think that Pakistan’s 100+ nukes will be “solved” by a really good speech. They are that deluded.
[Fighter pilots may be "macho" but very few successful fighter pilots are macho swagger. They're flying against people trying their best to kill them, and now ground launched missiles, anti-air. Hardly the time for cowboy-action, though guts and smarts in spades. It does take a special breed to go up against people doing their best to kill you. On the combat infrantry and in planes.]
Wretchard,
Let me take a contrarian position. Lincoln’s Getteysburg Address isn’t appreciated by as many for its true brilliance or the real pathos of the setting as for its brevity. Once literate people read, pondered and then drew analogies and debated. Even the illiterate knew the key references to the Bible or Shakespeare and could attend to public debate. Rhetoric was a serious and respected skill. A politician of any ideology was expected to spend hours before an audience of the general public laying out their positions in a detailed and formal manner. If they could not explain it they could not be caught voting for it. What has changed? The obvious villian is television that chopped the viewers attention span down to shorter and shorter sections. MTV can no longer base its programming on 2 minute videos because their audience can not stay focused that long. Another cause of the decline of rhetoric in America was the 17th Article of Amendment to the US Constitution. The Greatest Debating Society on Earth has become a home for bloviating hacks like Biden.
Benj,
Sophistry is nice. However, you are leaving out McCain’s strategic dimension all together.
Palin is from an oil state.
Johnny Mac and Sarah Barracuda are going to clean their clocks. Sarah is not just a tactical move, she is also a strategic one. A twofer.
Repeal 17th Amendment, and add one that sets house and senate rules a little harder to change than just the majority deciding to any old time.
Well with all respect my attitude towards Sullivan is that he is almost certainly more than a little ‘off’.
He used to be readable but since his falling out with Bush over the only issue that Andrew truly cares about, he has become increasingly unhinged.
Sullivan’s Law( a new analytical tool) is or at least should be the precise equal of Godwin’s Law. The first one to refer to that ‘source’ —- Loses.
No do-overs.
“It’s Only Words” (‘Words’ –Bee Gees)
Smile an everlasting smile, a smile can bring you near to me.
Don’t ever let me find you down, cause that would bring a tear to me.
This world has lost its glory, let’s start a brand new story now, my love.
Right now, there’ll be no other time and I can show you how, my love.
Talk in everlasting words, and dedicate them all to me.
And I will give you all my life, I’m here if you should call to me.
You think that I don’t even mean a single word I say.
It’s only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away.
oughtta be the Pied Piper’s theme song. To be hummed while organizing communities.
Great post, W
Yes, in the Beginning was the Word. To paraphrase Maggie, in the End, there’s just you and me, and so it will always be.
Superb input, L3. The best explanation for why words fail, why there is a Left and Right, why there are Greenies and Petrol Heads, ever. To paraphrase you, in the Beginning there’s just you and me, in the End, there are the Words.
You either get it, or vote for O’Bamalam.
ADE
Quick, Simon, back to your Counter!
Other than that Barack, how was your weekend?
It is a little sad that the pundits compare most of Obama’s speeches favourably with those of the likes of Lincoln.
He as best a glib talker bolstered by the politically inspired praise of others.
Wretchard, thanks for the excerpt of the Brooks piece. I regret not finding it before the free access period had expired over at the NYTimes site.
I took the liberty of excerpting your lead-in para and the quoted text over at my blog. Please let me know if you don’t consider that “fair use”.
Amen to that davod, including even some “conservative” “critics.”
Achingly phony. The header for a blog entry on Just One Minute.
Achingly Phony
“America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future.”
The Gettysburg Address was a rhetorical masterpiece. Its phrasings, figures of speech, and metaphors have been studied extensively. A highly readable and insightful analysis of those words appeared on the website of the American Enterprise Institute on or about September 11th, 2006. The title is “Rhetoric of Remembrance: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address” by Paul C. White.
Here’s a link
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.24894,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
Interestingly, White considers an issue that came up in the discussion here, i.e. words vs. actions. In his closing lines White weighs in on the question whether Lincoln’s words are “only words” or whether his they were so powerful as to constitute actions.
Also of particular note in the analysis is White’s quote of Everett who said to Lincoln the day after: ““I should be glad, if I could flatter myself, that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
Benj writes:
“O’s speech was pretty devastating to MaCain backers (who dared to watch it).”
Thanks, Richard, for the citing of the Brooks satire. Very amusing.
Satire will skewer an adversary better than straight talk.
How Palin Got Picked
Andrew is not in politics, he is in love. And while I may have fallen for Gov. Palin it is like, you know, totally Platonic and, you know, about ideas and stuff. Gas, for instance.
Obviously, that was not a parody of a Sen. Obama speech because 16% of the words would have to be “I,” as in: “I will cure cancer. I will get your children to read. I will, leading like minded statesman, get I-ran to I-nnihilate Israel — I mean! Drop its bombs, I mean, drop its guns, I mean, uh, disarm. And. This election is not about me.”
I just saw McCain on Fox News Sunday work in the Gen. Betray-us thing. Was there a Senate resolution on that item that Sen. Obama neglected to vote for? I think Sen. McCain hit on that. Sen Obama was afraid to stand up to Move On Dot Org. Or is it arugula? Move On Dot Arugula. And if Sen. Obama will not stand up to Move On Dot Aurgula, and instead stands up for the One World Aurgulas (minus a throw away line in a speech) — who will he stand up for? Oh, right, the most vulnerable of voters. And the most storied of the Most Monied.
I know it’s considered poor form to attack a source, but in Sullivan’s case there is no need. That one word; “Sullivan” says it all.
Meanwhile, I grant you that the economy HAS been better, which is a LOOOOOOG ways from it being bad. Notice that whenever someone uses the term ‘bad economy’. They NEVER provide evidence to support their statement. That is because there is none, due to the economy not being bad.
The entire bad economy thingie is a propaganda ploy. If elected ( doubtful, but in politics NOTHING is impossible) the Economy will collapse under Ohhhhh…..BAAMA. It will be spun as a mild downturn.
Reality will set in as reporters and editors receive their pink slips and find out just how lacking in marketable skills they are.
The Grand Poobah of the MSM (Misogyny Stream Media),Tom Brokaw, on “Meet The Press” has defended the deep inexperience of Barack Obama by saying his experience is augmented by the fact that he has been running for President for twenty months. That is obviously a new Democratic talking point. Let me remind the Democrats and Tom, Pompous of Mumble, that this is the same resume of Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton is famous because she is famous. Barack is qualified to be President because he has experience running for President.
Used properly, Palin can snatch Pennsylvania away from the Democrats. I would keep her in three states, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan and save the travel expense to the others.
Wow! Who are you guys? Really great analysis. Thanks.
@2164th,
Agreed but I think a full court press in Colorado also makes sense. RealClearPolitics No Toss Ups map has Ohio marginally for McCain, and Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado in Obama’s column but within striking range. I am expecting massive vote fraud in Ohio because of the new instant registration and absentee vote law. McCain needs to have a “Mac Attack Pack” moving around these states, in a group of at least 4 at a time. The ideal team would include Mitt Romney, Carly Fiorina, Rudy Giuliani, Eric Cantor, Joe Lieberman and Meg Whitman. If McCain holds onto what he has and gains one contested state from Obama he has it to win. Once the numbers show McCain winning the electoral vote for three days running the air will go dramatically out of Obama’s hot air balloon campaign.
You think David Brooks has cutting parody? Check out Iowahawk’s priceless prose: http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/08/the-idiossey.html
Spinning Gustav
This is a period in history that needs to be documented in art and literature. The Delusion of the Illusion.
Supposedly intelligent people, some of whom are paid millions of dollars for their ability to chronicle events, are saying with straight faces and in all sincerity that Obama is experienced in foreign policy because he has been thinking about it and talking about it for several months.
The authenticity of Sarah Palin gives me some hope – but it certainly is not apparent yet that we are not heading straight off the cliff.
Doug:
I saw that video of Biden too.
If McCain had acted that way on the stump, the entire planet would have seen it by now.
Please, Salt — don’t engage him.
Pretty please.
I just want to remind all you good folks that Our Lady Palin was bred, born, and educated in, as Habu says, The Great State Of Idaho.
I am sending in a check to the Palin/McCain campaign tomorrow morning, and I hope you all do the same.
Watching old CSPAN footage and listening to talk radio reruns this weekend illustrated a pattern. We have a choice (warning: my site – a bit presumptuous, eh), a selection. We can choose:
A Prophet, nurtured as a Nomad, selected an archetypical Artist from the previous saeculum.
An aging Artist, kicked in the teeth by life, chose a GenX Reformer.
We are in a prototypical ‘Fourth Turning’ as defined by Strauss & Howe in ‘The Fourth Turning’. We have a choice of two teams. One ‘led’ by an indecisive ‘Prophet of Words’ who most likely had his second selected by others. The other led by a nomadic, but culturally structured, individual who chose a fighter.
I think we are all in for a surprise, eh.
Sarah Palin is a colorful character.
I now risk a prediction: (pay attention, Eggplant).
She proceeds to steal the scene from all others from now through November.
John McCain is counting on this. Obama is not—to put things mildly.
Won’t be the first time the Second Banana has
taken center stage. I’ll wager that even at the Belmont Club, there are a few people who do not know who was the Commanding Officer of the Rough Riders.
Leo III’s analysis is spot on.
A classic case of the bad effects of an out-of-sync narrative was the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown. The operators were taught and had internalized that certain symptoms reflected certain conditions and required specific responses.
Unfortunately, the narrative was wrong and they were blinded to the correct problem. It took a new-to-the-scene relief supervisor to make a correct diagnosis, break the wrong narrative and respond by flipping ONE switch. That single timely action saved the plant from an end-state nuclear engineers call “core on the floor.”
In our political world today, we are seeing the last gasp of what I call the “mindf#ck elite.” Their power rests on the creation, distibution, and acceptance of specific narratives. The selection of what narrative to propogate is based on that elite’s worldview and self-interest, and maybe a little grant money or strategic collaboration.
Fortunately for them, one of the great political innovations of the US Constitution is that we Americans can replace our elites when they no longer serve WITHOUT killing them. We don’t need to cut off their heads (in spite of the temptation) to remove them from power.
That change of elites is what we are seeing today.
Very nice, wretchard. The vapidity of Obama is breathtaking. Has America ever chosen a candidate on that basis? I think not. It’s not that Obama is not authentic, btw, I think he is authentically – vapid! It is a way of life, I know of other (non-public) examples. It often succeeds, to some modest degree, or more so in our celebrity society, yes, like Paris Hilton, and there ya go.
Long-winded, academic, and empty. So why shouldn’t he chose Biden, who just might top all such qualities amongst Democratic senators?
Sullivan is a loon anymore, Paglia is a mixed bag, but I’m glad she saw something good in Palin, Paglia is after all a media philosopher, above all.
When you have nothing better to do, read Pericles’ Funeral Oration from “The Peloponesian War” by Thucydides and then read Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”. I know that Lincoln read classical literature (Lincoln mentioned learning mathematics from Euclid). I’m pretty sure that Lincoln drew some of his inspiration from Thucydides.
As we know, Lincoln was extremely intelligent and very well read. However, Lincoln liked to come across as a frontier’s man. That was a tactic to fool his political and legal opponents into thinking he was a country bumpkin. B. Hussein and his motley crew are falling into the same trap concerning Sarah Palin.
Dave said:
“I now risk a prediction: (pay attention, Eggplant).
She proceeds to steal the scene from all others from now through November.”
I’m watching with rapt attention and hoping that Dave is correct (if I made the prediction, it would be wrong).
Dave also said:
“I’ll wager that even at the Belmont Club, there are a few people who do not know who was the Commanding Officer of the Rough Riders.”
Based upon context this is an obvious trick question. A quick check with Wikipedia and we find:
“The original nickname for the regiment was “Wood’s Weary Walkers” after its first commander, Colonel Leonard Wood “
“…one of the great political innovations of the US Constitution is that we Americans can replace our elites when they no longer serve WITHOUT killing them. We don’t need to cut off their heads (in spite of the temptation) to remove them from power. That change of elites is what we are seeing today.”
Whitehall, we can replace the elites, but that still leaves in place the supporting core/corps of civil servants tasked with implementing policy. And, as we can see increasingly, if those civil servants in the State Department, the CIA, the universities, the Justice Department, the IRS, etc., REFUSE to comply with the newly-elected elites, then it’s same-ole same-ole.
How many Secretaries of State have we gone through now who have been unable to stem the flow of anti-American, pro-Leftist leaks and judgment calls? The CIA is flaunting its indiscretions and leaks on the front pages of the NY Times, aiding and abetting all of America’s overseas enemies in its on-going attempts to embarrass and hurt Bush.
Homeland Security had to be bludgeoned into building a damned fence along our border, and they *still* aren’t allowing border patrol to shoot at the invading Mexicans, nor have they figured out a logical way to board increasingly disgruntled and frantic American passengers onto their flights of American airlines that are going belly-up and bankrupt … because no one wants to fly any more, because it’s such a ginormous hassle, because Homeland Security thinks it’s more important not to hurt the feelings of wannabe jihadist Achmed than to be polite and expeditious to the little old lady from Pasadena flyiing to see her grandchildren in Boca Raton.
Once Bush is gone, do we think that State or the CIA or Homeland Security are magically going to reform themselves and behave professionally (and Constitutionally) with a new administration, no matter who the new elite is?
Wretchard,
I’m no Theologin and this may not help to answer your question, but God weighed in on his opinion of words in the book of Job. Job and his friends talked and talked about the nature of God with great imagery. However, when it came time for God’s imput he basically said “I am, deal with it”. God never seemes all that interested in words, he likes to comunicate by demonstration.
My comment is awaiting moderation. Kinda just checking to see if that is because I included a link. If this gets through than it is the links.
Watching old CSPAN footage and listening to talk radio reruns this weekend illustrated a pattern. We have a choice, a selection. We can choose:
A Prophet, nurtured as a Nomad, selected an archetypical Artist from the previous saeculum.
An aging Artist, kicked in the teeth by life, chose a GenX Reformer.
We are in a prototypical ‘Fourth Turning’ as defined by Strauss & Howe in ‘The Fourth Turning’. We have a choice of two teams. One ‘led’ by an indecisive ‘Prophet of Words’ who most likely had his second selected by others. The other led by a nomadic, but culturally structured, individual who chose a fighter.
I think we are all in for a surprise, eh.
(Note: I presumptuously linked to my site in which I discuss this futher and Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning site – which is my primary source. Obviously, the PajamaMedia team seems a bit concerned about links so I just removed them in this comment)
Hey, Benj, that Duke Cunningham smart-assery…a real zinger!
But what I really want to know is if you’re simply a plagiarizer, or a sock puppet?? (See last sentence below…)
“coyotl:
Wretchard, you’re conceding to your opponent’s arguments without any self-awareness. In using an OODA loop/dogfight analogy you buttress those liberals who claim that this choice was made only for short-term partisan political gain, not for the good of the nation. The choice “disrupts” the Obama campaign, it doesn’t provide the country with an experienced commander-in-chief should 72 year old McCain fall ill or worse.
Do fighter pilots really make the best strategic political thinkers and actors? By your analogy this is inferred, but you ignore how instinctive creativity, killer reflexes and ego-driven brashness can often lead to medium and long term social or political failure. Perhaps you can do a post on the stellar political career of Randy “Duke” Cunninghmam if you really feel secure with your analogy.
Aug 30, 2008 – 11:36 am”
If anyone would like to listen to the WGN show “Extension 720″ interview with Stanley Kurtz it is available in mp3 podcasts from WGN Radio.
WGN uses feedburner (dot) com to host their shows.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/wgnradio/x720uncut
This interview is in 8 parts.
The host of the show is Milt Rosenberg. There is more information available at wgnradio (dot) com including audio archives.
Extension 720 airs on WGN AM720. M-F 9-11 CST.
I am indebted to the Obama Campaign for bringing this man to my attention.
That coyotl quote was from the August 29 ‘Bounce’ thread, by the way…
Here’s Benj at 12:29am above…
“Perhaps you can do a post on the stellar political career of Randy “Duke” Cunninghmam if you really feel secure with your analogy.”
Aug 31, 2008 – 12:29 am
First, great post L3.
Palin is going to be America’s sweetheart – everybody’ kid sister – everybody’s daughter.
A good friend of mine drove F100′s in Nam. His wife and children spent a lot of time with my family when he was over there “killing trucks”. To ride in a car with him was an experience. Knew the situation all around him. Drove precisely the speed limit. Signaled his turns at the precise point specified by the law. The instrument scan. He later became a General.
Boghie:
One link per post will get through. Maybe two.
Katrina and Kyoto are like the Left’s magic chant words. But with the election coming up they could become millstones around their necks.
There are indeed some great — and no-so-great — untold stories from Katrina. Starting with the need for good foundations — for the levies and much else — before disaster hits.
I’m wondering if Gov. Palin could critique the handling of Katrina by the Corrupt Democrat Political Machine in Louisiana — as compared to Bobby Jindal’s performance. Likely, he’ll be too busy to do it himself. Of course we don’t want to make political hay from a disaster — that’s for Democrats to do! But we can talk about lessons learned. For instance, evacuating the most vulnerable before the storm hits. When Amtrak calls and says they have a two hundred car train ready to get people out, the state government should have the people (the sick and the elderly) ready to get out.
When the President calls and ask you to declare a state of emergency to get federal assistance rolling, why not declare a state of Emergency — instead of saying, “I can’t find my pen.” because it could have nothing to do with Federal Money coming with Federal Auditors — and half your government being under indictment (which calls for isolating Federal Monies).
It’s not enough to have an emergency preparedness plan (which you must have to get Federal Monies in advance of the disaster), you must put it in action when the emergency arrives. The Plan of the Political Machine in Louisiana was to shift the blame onto anyone else — which it did with the knowing and enthusiastic help of the Bush hating media.
And don’t leave 600 buses in the city. Put people on those buses and get them out.
I’ve had the experience of personally demolishing the whole Katrina narrative in about 30 seconds. When Democrats run across someone who knows what really happened, they shut up real quick.
And of course, the rescue stories — barely covered unless the rescue involved the heroic efforts of the media stars.
Kyoto is demolished as soon as you mentioned it does not cover China and India. The Democrats have made themselves “The party of Kyoto.”
Just fighting back on the Media lies will really energize America — not just the base.
Sullivan’s man-love for Obama, sad in itself, reveals a clueless global naivete that assumes the average Arab sees a brown American face and fully embraces the American for that reason:
What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. … The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power…. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.
The soft, hard power of his face.
So why didn’t Zalmay Khalilzad do the trick? Or Abizaid?
Forget Sullivan.
Thx for the props, ADE, Whitehall, and Roy.
One additional thought:
In Pride and Prejudice (the greatest book written in English, IMHO), early in the novel we see the disconnection between perception and reality in the cases of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. Everyone thinks Mr. Darcy is a bad man: prideful and prejudiced. He is aloof in his social relations, finding country dances beneath him and preferring to spend time among others of his station.
Mr. Wickham, on the other hand, is everyone’s favorite. Smooth, witty, a great dancer, card player, and bon vivant. His status is further elevated when it becomes known that he was a victim of a grave injustice: he was deprived of his preferred career as a clergyman, and effectively forced into military service. And when it is learned that the perpetrator of this injustice was none other than Mr. Darcy, it all makes sense. Everyone becomes convinced of Mr. Wickham’s virtue and Mr. Darcy’s wickedness, even an observer as astute as Elizabeth.
Eventually, however, we learn the truth: Mr. Darcy is a hero, and Mr. Wickham a pathological liar. But much damage has been done in the mean time, and if not for the extraordinary efforts of Mr. Darcy, all would have been lost.
When the novel ends, two feelings linger in our heart:
1. Happiness, for we are delighted that two (actually, four) such good human beings could end up with each other in spite of the messy nature of the human condition; and
2. Humility, for we were all taken in for a time by evil, and, if not for God’s Providence, things could have turned out much, much worse. And almost did.
I leave it as an exercise to the readers of BC to map Jane Austen onto our current situation.
L3
Found it, the video of Bobby Jindal and his staff reviewing evacuation plans with Ray Negin.
Jefe – good catch on coyotl. When you’ve run out your welcome using one name by posting too much Stoopid Stuff, then switch names and you’re good for another 100,000 miles or however many new threads that equals, until everyone catches on that the new name is just posting equally Stoopid Stuff.
(Scarecrow)
I would not be just a nuffin’ (Obama)
My head all full of stuffin’ (his worshipers)
My heart all full of pain (after the election)
If they only had a brain
*Tom Brokaw, on “Meet The Press” has defended the deep inexperience of Barack Obama by saying his experience is augmented by the fact that he has been running for President for twenty months.*
Well, McCain’s ran in 2000, too, so can Brokaw give him props for that?
What a joke.
(Dorothy)
With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’
You could be another Lincoln (R)
If you only had a brain
Boghie, Very astute post. I’ve been feeling that very thing, but didn’t have the framework you present.
NahnCee:
Jefe – good catch on coyotl. When you’ve run out your welcome using one name by posting too much Stoopid Stuff, then switch names…
——————–
Dueling sock puppets?
How the GOP Convention should deal with Gustav.
Seen posted over at FreeRepublic. A Professional PR guy makes a bunch of suggestions including running a telethon to raise cash for hurricane victims.
mccain is the rock upon which the msm will be destroyed. palin is the siren drawing them closer.
Let’s hope that B. Obama’s path is similar to that of Jane Austen’s Emma. Arriving on the scene with a blinding self regard, involved in misguided schemes, but with enough charm to make it through to the 2016 elections having learned from his mistakes.
A Professional PR guy makes a bunch of suggestions including running a telethon to raise cash for hurricane victims.
http://exurbanleague.com/2008/08/31/pr-advice-for-the-gop-convention-gustav-and-palin.aspx
It looks like the way to keep an information post from being modded is give the entire link–without any extra coding to highlight the link words
The Russian trolls have largely gone away. Should we feel insulted?
GOP drops convention’s opening night as Gustav nears
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/5976307.html
Maybe I am a bit too muh of a fan of this movie, but I think that a speech with this particular quotation in it, expressing agreement with its ideas, might swing the balance a little in an election and also jolt some other countries’ governments out of their complacency:
“My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!” Few prizes for guessing which movie.
It also might be interesting to see what certain foreigners might think if someone seriously proposed changing the US National Anthem. To what? To the Battle Hymn.
After all, a lot of your current anthem deals with the conflict with my country, the UK. After two hundred and twenty years, is it not time for that particular hatchet to be buried?
Allow me to say again: Andrew Sullivan is very smart, but he’s not very bright.
Allow me to add: He has well utilized his wunderkind status from his NR days, but that ended 12 years ago.
His Wiki entry says he’s a conservative, which can only be true if they are talking about the David Brock/Arianna Huffington part of the conservative movement.
Life: besides the fact that for the moment the situation in Georgia has moved beyond their brief, don’t you imagine that now with Palin in the mix, American political considerations moves to a stage that is almost unitelligable to outsiders, particularly GRU operatives or their private epigones.
Perhaps a Canadian or even a Brit might get it — if they have some knowledge of (and sympahty for) the US, but few Continentals or “citizens” of the CIS region could scarcely comprehend her import in the least.
What Palin represents is unthinkable to them — unknowable, in fact.
Fletcher,
What is “The Return of the King”? I’d like to keep with this category: Movies That Speak to Our Times for $400.
L3
LOTR movies were ok but both two much CGI and to little of the character and plot and philosophy of the books. Also the fact that Viggo Mortensen proved to be such a flaming moonbat partisan ruined the film for me. I think the producers should have sued him for causing a needless controversy and hurting box office.
@Mongoose,
Aren’t you hurt? They weren’t here because of our charm and wit?
@LL3, Try this one.
Lt. John Brickley: Oh, Snuffy… how about getting some torpedoes from you?
Submarine commander: For those cracker boxes of yours? No telling when we’ll see a mother ship again.
Lt. John Brickley: How long have you been on patrol?
Submarine commander: Since the day the war started.
Lt. ‘Rusty’ Ryan: What did you get?
Submarine commander: Two small freighters. We had hard luck.
Lt. John Brickley: Well, while you’ve been cruising around the Pacific, those ‘cracker boxes’ have sunk two converted cruisers, an auxiliary aircraft carrier, a 10,000-ton tanker, a large freighter, a flock of barges and numerous sons of Nippon!
Lt. ‘Rusty’ Ryan: And also in our brief career, we’ve carried more messages than Western Union!
Submarine commander: Well, if…
Lt. John Brickley: Snuffy… who played the leading lady in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” in 1932 at the Academy?
Lt. ‘Rusty’ Ryan: And does your crew know about it?
Submarine commander: [after a long pause] How many do you want?
Lt. John Brickley: You’ve got sixteen?
Lt. ‘Rusty’ Ryan: We’ll take eight.
Lt. John Brickley: And we’ll try and put ‘em where they belong.
Submarine commander: Thanks.
[walks away slowly]
Life: Horror show!
erh…ahh…Хорошо!
Moscow guns down critic hosting anti-Kremlin blog:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7590719.stm
Apparently, enough people thought Magomed Yevloyev’s blog carried more than ‘just words.’ This reminds me how lucky I am to be able to post here, ‘on record’ without a moment’s thought to potential personal consequences.
1. I take it he refused the radiation laced tea.
2. We are all grateful in that manner, though we should be mindful of the Clintons’ treatment of The American Spectator during the 90′s.
Fletcher, there ain’t no forgettin’.
Yeah, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn’t go.
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn’t catch ‘em
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.**
We fired our cannon ’til the barrel melted down.
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round.
We filled his head with cannon balls, and powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.
We fired our guns and the British kept a’comin.
There wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin’ on
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
Yo,
The Belmont Club is the coolest place on the web, thanks to the inhabitants, comparing their ears at the bar. I always imagine it like the basement restaurant in the Star Hotel in downtown Jo-burg, within dusting distance of the diamond mines, where they serve very hot chili with a cold radish and all the beer you want.
Have you guys posted about The Strongest Tribe? Bing West’s latest in his Iraq trilogy? Sorry if I’m covering plowed ground.
Bing West is the author of “The Strongest Tribe” – he was Marine in Vietnam, Asst SecDef, and has been to Iraq at least 15 times. Given his resume, and membership in St. Crispin’s Infantry Society, I guess, he gets to talk to everyone from lowliest combat soldiers to four star generals.
West says GW Bush acted like a Chmn of the Board instead of a CEO, and West considers it a failing that Bush didn’t dig in deeper into strategy understanding so he could operate as the Commander-in-Chief the way FDR did.
West says Rumsfeld was always debating and demanding of facts and expected results from the Pentagon and his generals in the field. West uses the term “rebarbative” – you can look it up, I think he’s trying to suggest, in an upper-class accent, that Rummy actually IS the supreme prick he appears to be on TV.
Rumsfeld, from the very beginning of the war in Iraq, wanted to win and get out. Rummy always wanted to win. He said the Dept of Def “doesn’t do nation building.”
West asserts that Bush, upon not finding WMD’s, decides that creating democracy in the Middle East is the new mission. And then we all rely on elections as some holy wish and prayer to create a peaceful republic in Iraq.
From Mr. West’s point of view, the Military POV, these 3 elections were all extremely disruptive of the mission. It’s hard to argue with his points.
Most of the book is Bing West’s contemporaneous notes of following troops into combat and generals into game-changing confrontations. He is no friend of Bush or Rumsfeld, and as a former Asst Secretary of Defense, he writes with a gentleman’s courtesy.
Bing West does call out the politicians who declared the war lost. Harry Reid comes in for detailed opprobrium, as Senators and Congressmen also bear a responsibility when the country is at war.
Mr. West’s concludes with his own Lessons Learned, and he most fears a nation that has lost its will. He concludes that the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington stumbled around, while the Marines and Army on the ground got close to the locals and finally figured out how to bring peace in Iraq.
Bing West most worries about the fact that our heroes are ignored, while America’s mistakes are magnified.
He does the best he can to show us our heroes, give us their names and histories and accomplishments. Reading Bing West, you have no doubt that America is the gentlest giant in human history.
Tony c/o Belmont Club
http://www.amazon.com/Strongest-Tribe-Politics-Endgame-Iraq/dp/1400067014
Are we supposed to take the content of Andrew Sullivan’s diffused mind seriously?
>>NahnCee:
Jefe – good catch on coyotl. When you’ve run out your welcome using one name by posting too much Stoopid Stuff, then switch names and you’re good for another 100,000 miles or however many new threads that equals, until everyone catches on that the new name is just posting equally Stoopid Stuff.<<
Relax NonSensCee. Benj quoted me from a previous post, referring to me in his blurb as “C.” Go ahead and reread it before you go off, yet again, half-cocked. BTW, here’s Ramesh Ponnoru from NRO asking some vital questions about the Palin candidacy and what her pick means for the ticket. In particular, I’l like to hear the Belmont Club take up the charge of tokenism:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWY0YmM3N2JhMTVkYmI0ZjU0OTBiYTY3NmUyMjgxNTc=
Cold Water on Palin [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Both the pros and the cons are pretty obvious. I’m going to focus on the cons, mostly because conservatives right now seem to be paying them less attention.
The pros: She’s a pro-life conservative reformer from outside Washington, and a woman. The pick signals a boldness and willingness to mix things up that the McCain campaign, like Republicans generally, need.
The cons:
Inexperience. Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain’s decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain’s age raised the stakes on this issue.
As a political matter, it undercuts the case against Obama. Conservatives are pointing out that it is tricky for the Obama campaign to raise the issue of her inexperience given his own, and note that the presidency matters more than the vice-presidency. But that gets things backward. To the extent the experience, qualifications, and national-security arguments are taken off the table, Obama wins.
And it’s not just foreign policy. Palin has no experience dealing with national domestic issues, either. (On the other hand, as Kate O’Beirne just told me, we know that Palin will be ready for that 3 a.m. phone call: She’ll already be up with her baby.)
Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?
“This is a period in history that needs to be documented in art and literature. The Delusion of the Illusion.
Supposedly intelligent people, some of whom are paid millions of dollars for their ability to chronicle events, are saying with straight faces and in all sincerity that Obama is experienced in foreign policy because he has been thinking about it and talking about it for several months.
The authenticity of Sarah Palin gives me some hope – but it certainly is not apparent yet that we are not heading straight off the cliff.” – Peter Boston
Best comment of the evening I’ve read so far. Andrew Sullivan knows absolutely jack shit about military matters and foreign policy, and he expects us to believe that a man who knows even less than Sullivan does is somehow going to get inside McCain’s OODA Loop? I’ve read a lot about Barack Obama, and being a former Leftist myself, at times I think I can get inside his head. His mind does not read the reality of evil accurately. He doesn’t understand the enemy’s motives. It’s all some variant of class struggle and resentment, in that kind of brain. Obama would make a terrible general and a disastrous Commander in Chief.
What’s truly scary is that there are a lot of smart people who seem to think the opposite of my conclusion.
The real trick is to know when inductive reasoning is appropriate and when deductive reasoning is appropriate. Reality will dictate this. Narcissistic personality disordered people tend to engage in way too much transference for reality to enter into the picture.
Lifeofthemind (do you pronounce that like it’s spelled?), I’m thinking They Were Expendable directed by, let’s see, John Ford. John Wayne starring. PT boats in the leading role. Made, I believe, near the end of the war and a bit more realistic — in part to prepare the nation for a bloody ending of the real war (the Invasion of Japan). That’s from memory. How’d I do?
lol @ Mongoose
That’s a very keen observation that has not immediately occured to me. You’re right people outside US and Canada, and maybe Outback, will not understand the US race. To them Palin would seem like a ridiculous choice.
@sfblue
That was a typical Russian story. Guy flew in and was picked off the plane by Russian cops, he was shot in the head and thrown from the car. His relatives, who were supposed to meet him in the airport found him and got him to a hospital. He died there later.
Official version: The suspect got unruly and in attempt to subdue him an officer’s gun misfired.
yep –the demon is back –i guess that’s why KGB was so keen on finding the burnt bones of the previous host, in the ditch outside the Feurher bunker.
Great post, Tony –Bing West couldn’t get a finer rec.
Movies that speak: Mrs. Minerva.
The Russian story is so transparent that one has to wonder if it was put out there in that form specifically to intimidate would be imitators. Much more elaborate stories, you would think, in Russia, are summarily assumed to come down to political expedience.
How far could Moscow go, with the thinnest of pretense, in ‘rolling the tanks’ into neighboring states, in gunning down critics at home or abroad? It seems they’re using every opportunity to puff up the air of impunity that surrounds them in a strategy to intimidate as many as possible.
before putin is done there won’t be any foreign invetment or dealings with russia. he will impoverush that country.
sfblue, had the same thought re the Pollonium 202 (?) in London –they WANTED the world to know.
Three pertinent Palin links from National Review (one on Global Warming, two on her defense duties as far north ICBM outpost –please see Headmaster C4′s earlier post on this –this fills it out)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWQ2YzMyNGViMmIyY2I0MTliYjRjYmU4MmMxOWZjODA=
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjJiYWJmMzZjZGM5ZTIyZmFiNDNlOTRkZjFlNmZlMjI=
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmQwN2U4NGRmZWUyMzkwMWFhYWJhNzdmYmUyYWU5M2I=
Indeed. But, neo, I am a little hurt that no one liked my cross language pun.
Buddy, Mrs. Minever moved me greatly. My wife said I had a crush on Greer Garson. Maybe so. William Wyler made the film after flying bombers over Europe.
I think Ramesh Ponnuru is dead on. If Sarah were Samuel Palin, an athletic, evangelical, father of five and recently elected governor of a very small state (pop. wise) with no foreign policy experience, he would be nowhere near the OVP.
This is rank “tokenism” at its worse, a play for short term political advantage in which qualifications are discounted for gender. When did the GOP become the party of affirmative action?
People like Putin and Ahmadinejad eat people like Obama for lunch and defecate them before supper.
Barak Hussein Obama is not qualified to be President of the United States based on many things. Where is his birth certificate for one thing; anyone running for President should be able to prove that he is a natural born citizen, as the Constitution stipulates. In addition to this he sat for twenty years and listened to an anti-American so-called Christian pastor spout anti-American propaganda, saying things like “God damn America.” Lastly Obama disqualified himself from being our Commander in Chief when he spoke these words:
“I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems; I will not weaponize space; I will slow our development of future combat systems….I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons; to seek that goal I will not develop new nuclear weapons….and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”
Watch and listen to the video here:
http://infidelsarecool.com/2008/02/26/results-of-obamas-national-defense-plan/
This defanging of America is at the top of the wish list of our enemies around the world: The Totalitarian Islamo-Fascists, the Totalitarian Soviet Union – excuse me – Russia, and Totalitarian Communist China.
By the way, here is a link to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div2;q1=of%20the%20people,%20by%20the%20people;singlegenre=All;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln7;node=lincoln7:40.1;start=1;size=25;hi=0#bottom
coyotl: Yeah, and if Kaine or Pawlenty or Crist were picked for VP of their respective parties nary a soul would speak of tokenism or lack of experience.
Where does that leave you?
LOTM,
Sorry for the delayed response – had to round up the critters for dinner.
I’m pretty stumped. If I had to guess before httping off to imdb.com, I’d say Midway. But like I say, this is a WAG. If this were Final Jeopardy, I’d only bet $1.
Tony,
Great post! Lemme buy you another Castle, and light your Partagas Lusitania for you. The quality of the public is the measure of the quality of the pub.
I haven’t read Bing West, but your description of his analysis is interesting when compared with Doug Feith’s. Feith said that there was a plan for post-Saddam Iraq, a plan that was based upon Afghanistan (turn over the helm to Iraqis day one). But the State Department slow-rolled it, and ended up with Bremer’s occupation. GWB allowed Bremer to overturn his express policy, perhaps because he wasn’t embedded enough in the details. Feith also said that if Rumsfeld didn’t intervene with Bremer to convince him to turn over a couple of years ahead of (Bremer’s) schedule, the result would have been unmitigated disaster.
No idea if that is what really happened, but it does bring us back to where this discussion started, in a peculiar way. In his book, Feith describes the way the DoD operated under Rumsfeld: everything was written. Staff reports, “snowflake” memos from the Sec’y, inter-agency position papers, everything. He contrasted that with the State Dept, which relied mainly on Powell’s personal charisma and Armitage’s political skills and very little of the written word.
If this depiction is true, the implications for future historical research are significant. It means that there will be lots of documentation from the DoD to explain their “side” of the story, and very little from State. It may mean that Rumsfeld will ultimately be rehabilitated, and Powell demolished. Maybe this is just, maybe it isn’t, but it is certainly the opposite of today’s situation. Powell has told his story to Woodward, and it has become conventional wisdom, saving his reputation during his lifetime. Beyond that, it remains to be seen.
In the future, history may not be written by the victor, but by the documenter. The Holocaust is certainly consistent with this hypothesis – if we didn’t have as much documentation as we have, it would be hard to believe it ever happened. Heck, even with the documentation, when I walk through the Holocaust Museum here in Houston, I find myself on the edge of incredulity.
But then the regime that gave us the Holocaust were masters of creating perceptions. Perceptions that were profoundly out of sync with reality. So if the documenter wins in the long run, perhaps this is a triumph for reality over perception.
And that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, now would it?
Cheers.
L3
Zim:
In the case of Pawlenty, unsatisfied. Unsatisfied with his lack of foreign policy experience to which he would be roundly criticized by those patriots who take national security seriously. Crist is just a bit better, but in these times I wonder why McCain didn’t go with men like Robert Gates and Michael Hayden?
coyotl: None of the men mentioned have been in office any longer than Palin, but no one was harping on their lack of experience. Now a woman comes along and suddenly “experience” is of great concern to many. I, frankly, smell a rat.
coyotl: None of the men mentioned have been in office any longer than Palin, but no one was harping on their lack of experience when discussing their possible VP nomination. Now a woman comes along and suddenly “experience” is of great concern to many. I, frankly, smell a rat.
Sorry for the double post. I got some transmission error thingie that befuzzled me.
Coyotl, authenticity. That is what McCain decided is his primary selection criterion.
He needed to do something to contrast the phoniness of the opponent. Palin did fit the bill the best.
as usual, 2×4 is 5×5 –
Of course, there is more to it. For instance the issue of experience. It is not much the length of time that is relevant, but the actual doing, the results. In short–an executive aptitude, a mind set. Also, another factor was, no doubt, the ability of strategic thinking and tactical tasking. If Palin’s successful battle with entrenched Republican ole boys network does not bear witness, then I don’t know what would. McCain has a keen sense to recognize the desired traits. That Palin’s a woman? Icing on the cake.
What are you talking about? Robert Gates (SoD) and Michael Hayden (CIA) don’t have foreign policy experience? You must be joking, or, more likely, you didn’t recognize their names. I smell a rat.
I would be unhappy with Pawlenty, only slightly more satisfied with Crist. I want someone with Voinovich’s experience, but not his stance on guns (too wimpish, too liberal). I know, hard to please, but this is a vitally important position, yes?
Here’s Charles Krauthammer on the tremendously short-sighted Palin pick:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/08/the_palin_puzzle.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
The Palin Puzzle
McCain had been steadily gaining on Obama (before the inevitable convention bounce) and had the race in a dead heat in a year in which the generic Democrat is running ten points ahead of the generic Republican. He had succeeded in making this a referendum on Obama. The devastating line of attack was, “Is he ready to lead?”
The Palin selection completely undercuts the argument about Obama’s inexperience and readiness to lead — on the theory that because Palin is a maverick and a corruption fighter, she bolsters McCain’s claim to be the reformer in this campaign. In her rollout today, Palin spoke a lot about change. McCain is now trying to steal “change” from Obama, a contest McCain will lose in an overwhelmingly Democratic year with an overwhelmingly unpopular incumbent Republican administration. At the same time, he’s weakening his strong suit — readiness vs. unreadiness.
The McCain campaign is reveling in the fact that Palin is a game changer. But why a game changer when you’ve been gaining? To gratuitously undercut the remarkably successful “Is he ready to lead” line of attack seems near suicidal.
By Charles Krauthammer | August 29, 2008; 4:15 PM ET | Category: Krauthammer
Authenticity 2 X 4? Can you fake national security credentials?
Here’s NRO’s Rick Brookhiser on the “mystical and childish” reactions you call authenticity:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDQ5ZmE5NjU4MmRlOWUyZjM0MTBlYWY2NWEwZDczNjg=
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Palin [Rick Brookhiser]
I have not had a TV to watch all week, though I have had internet, so I have followed the Palin pick entirely through the medium of the Corner.
I share the initial reservations of David, and to a lesser extent, Jay. The Palin pick shows a low opinion of the vice presidency, and it shows conservatives in a bad light.
1. The Vice Presidency. Either McCain thinks the war on terror isn’t serious, or he thinks the vice-presidency isn’t. Since the former is obviously untrue, it must be the latter. McCain is certainly following a very old conception of the job. One nineteenth century veep was reputedly so underutilized that he kept a tavern in his home state. But that is not our conception. Vice Presidents have grown in clout and responsibility. In the last fifty years, four former vice presidents have run for president (Nixon, Mondale, elder Bush, Gore), two of them successfully, while since Carter/Mondale, veeps have been given more and more to do. McCain, bless him, intends to do everything himself. Good luck! Perhaps the Palin pick is a sly diss both of Obama/Biden and Bush/Cheney. Palin will go to funerals.
2. Conservatives. Palin will also be assigned to pacify conservatives. On the evidence of the numerous emails reprinted here, that will be easily done. Reader after reader said that the base was now energized. You would have thought the base was energized by being in a war. If not, perhaps we need a new base.
We have shown the same color-by-numbers mindset that liberals did when they rallied to Obama. Liberals love Obama because he is a Numinous Negro. Conservatives love Palin because she has a Downs baby and an M-16. For both sides, that is all on earth ye know and all ye need to know. You might call it mystical and childish.
May I be so wrong that a hundred harpies will pluck my eyeballs.
08/30 06:26 PM
palin is a first rate vp candidate. people who insist on “purity” should grow up and join the real world. the misogny on display is breath taking. on the dem side you have marion barry II and one of the most peculiar people in the government. how that is considered better (in some minds) than mccain and his partner is bizzare.
coyotl: I was referring to the 3 I mentioned. you know, the 3 that were actually serious considerations for the VP slot.
Palin’s nomination completely wiped out Obamination’s bounce. Usual after-convention bounce is 10-15%. Was none. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.
McCain’s primary focus is to win elections. He can tap Gates and Hayden in their respective capacities, either as advisors or in their particular portfolio. I seriously doubt that he would get with them as much traction amongst voters as with Palin. Voters can identify with her. It is not Gates or Hayden or Pawlenty who decide elections, it’s voters.
well, there is the advantage that Mr. Obama has past mentors and associates who could serve as special envoys or liaisons in his new administration
and regarding Hezbollah …should be wary of the Russian precedent (war in response to the killing of peacekeepers). That UNIFIL contingent in southern Lebanon is composed of numerous NATO members
Yeah, hd, gas.
Like she wants nothing to do with a flatulent old fart like you, that’s why it’s platonic.
The Washington insiders at State and CIA all think that we can dance a complicated minuet with people like Putin and Ahmadinejad and convince them to stay in their boxes. We the ordinary people are less nuanced about those kinds of people: we see them what they plainly are when they show their fangs. I rather suspect that Biden, given his long record, is one of the “Band, give me that minuet for Ahmed and I!” kind of guys. Palin knows what kind of animal they are, which is why that we think she has the right instincts. Plus, she’s reported to be studious and a quick learner.
I can’t see how the current denizens at Foggy Bottom and Langley have any edge on that. After all, word is getting around that they colluded to sabotage a sitting President’s policy. It’s going to cost them very, very dearly in the long run. The American people no longer have faith in the State Department or the CIA. Good fo’ nuthin’ leakers, the lot of ‘em!
Start over with Bolton in Charge, Fred.
“Michelle Odrama”
– Miller
CJM, you misunderstand me. I’d never vote for Obama/Biden or Obama/Anybody, but I’m very troubled by the short-sightedness of the Palin pick — and what it says about McCain — and many other conservatives are adhering to that position as well (Ponnuru, Krauthammer, Brookhiser, etc.)
Even 2 X 4 is tacitly admitting the myopia behind the pick: it was all to screw up the Obama campaign, not to add real expertise or weight to the office of Vice President during war time. Real weight can be added later at the lower levels(according to 2 X 4), as to Palin, think of the TACTICAL advantages. We need deeper strategic choices, one’s with more gravitas and hands on experience in command, control and intelligence. This is a letdown, and we should be principled enought to join with other conservatives and reject a Harriet Miers faux pas.
@hdgreene has it, They Were Expendable. My favorite scene is at the repair yard where the old American sits with his jug and his shotgun waiting for the invading Japanese. Almost everyone in the movie, except John Wayne, was supposedly either in the Reserves or just released from active duty. That even went for most of the crew from what I heard. And it was basicly true. Bulkelely (Brickley in the movie) did get MacArthur out of the Philippines. 25 years ago seasoned officers were in awe and terror at the mere thought of then Vice Admiral John Bulkeley possibly coming onboard to inspect our ship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDJCg_xWaRc
Our host can speak to how deep the connection with America feels when you are in the Philippines and how shocked most people there are to learn that most Americans could not find their country on a map. Of course now John McCain is being criticized for choosing his running mate by people who cannot find America’s largest state on a map.
C – Thanks for setting the wannabe gotcha twins (trio?) straight…When I read their accusations, I thought for a sec there might have been some kind of transcription error. Nope – I referenced you twice in the course of my short post. How long do you think I’ll wait for an apology from those who just claimed (with glee) that I was a plagiarist?
Old Salt – Not sure how you could think the campaign was not at issue in Wretch’s post though he may have been reaching (and that is the word) for a larger point…The stuff you attacked in my post were passages I quoted from Coyotl. He’s been doing a good job making his own case in this thread so I’ll let you argue it out with him. And since C.’s lines were directed at the Host, maybe he’ll even belly up to the bar though he seems a rather shy and retiring type (lately)…
Like a few other of my honorable accusers in this Club who come quickly to mind?
Even before this last interlude, Wretch’s slippery behavior had me thinking of a lesson I learned when I was about 14 (thanks to my pop). There was a German college student who was acting as a sort of pied piper to left-leaning high school kids in my town. He told us about Bertrand Russell/Sartre Viet Nam War Crimes Tribunal and assured us the dope the Tribunal had uncovered was so hot the American government had censored the material, refusing to allow the Tribunal to publish accounts of its work in America. I told my pop about that claim at dinner one night. He didn’t say anything But after sup – he disappeared for 45 minutes – Came back from the college libary with a copy of a 600 page book of transripts from the Russell Tribunal. Didn’t rub it in – just handed me the book. Next day I confronted the Hun with the evidence. Don’t recall his exact response but the memory of his shamelessness – and my (implicitly anti-American) credulousness – stayed with me. It prepared me to deal with Chomskys & Cockburns & Michael Moores. And (I’m beginning to fear) with the Wretchs of this world as well.
PS – I thought DAvid Brooks’ satirical piece was a cop-out. If you want to know where he was (before his GOP instincts kicked in?) check how he spoke directly about Obama’s gifts and “core” last December. http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/12673107.html?page=1&c=y
It’s not the sort of piece that Wretch would point you to as it undermines his whole case about the “mystery” of Obama – Here’s a swatch… ANd please do recall, Brooks is a Man of the Right.
David Brooks: Obama possesses uncommon qualities
With the presidency, character and self-knowledge matter more than even experience. There are reasons to think that, among Democrats, Obama is better prepared for this madness.
Many of the best presidents in U.S. history had their character forged before they entered politics and carried to it a degree of self-possession and tranquillity that was impervious to the Sturm und Drang of White House life.
Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones. He was forged by the process of discovering his own identity from the scattered facts of his childhood, a process that is described in finely observed detail in “Dreams From My Father.” Once he completed that process, he has been astonishingly constant.
Like most of the rival campaigns, I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none. The unity speech he gives on the stump today is essentially the same speech that he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, and it’s the same sort of speech he gave to Illinois legislators and Harvard Law students in the decades before that. He has a core, and was able to maintain his equipoise, for example, even as his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall.
Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. Though neither Tom DeLay nor Nancy Pelosi were able to deliver much to their own believers, these warriors believe that what’s needed is more partisanship, more toughness and eventual conquest for their side.
But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.
Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. In her outstanding New Yorker profile, Larissa MacFarquhar notes that Obama does not perceive politics as a series of battles but as a series of systemic problems to be addressed. He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.
Obama also has powers of observation that may mitigate his own inexperience and the isolating pressures of the White House. In his famous essay, “Political Judgment,” Isaiah Berlin writes that wise leaders don’t think abstractly. They use powers of close observation to integrate the vast shifting amalgam of data that constitute their own particular situation — their own and no other.
Obama demonstrated those powers in “Dreams From My Father” and still reveals glimpses of the ability to step outside his own ego and look at reality in uninhibited and honest ways. He still retains the capacity, also rare in presidents, of being able to sympathize with and grasp the motivations of his rivals. Even in his political memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” he astutely observes that candidates are driven less by the desire for victory than by the raw fear of loss and humiliation.
David Brooks’ column is distributed by the New York Times News Service.
True, Fred. CIA has become a farce in the last 30 years. To what degree it is due to incompetence or leftoid infiltration, hard to tell, although I’d surmise there is a direct correlation.
As for the lair of the nuanced diplos, it reminds me of a black hole–no light comes out of it. Maybe the venue should be relocated, I think that the Foggy Bottom somehow imprinted on its respective denizens and turned their brains into a shades of gray mush. Point in case–Rice.
L3 – a pleasure to find you sir.
As to the matter of Mr. West, Mr. Rumsfeld et. al.: The recent disclosure by the NYT of the decision making process in the WH discloses that GWB is the decider. I believe that an historical analysis will show that the conduct of the Iraq conflict will compare quite favorably with previous conflicts. The proof is in the pudding. We are winning. I won’t say we have won only because a certain brother in law would hound me for the rest of my days if things turned around.
As to Ms. Palin: Let’s have this discussion in about a month. Is she the new Geraldine or the new Ronnie? Fascinating. Most interesting election for me since 1952.
Fletcher Christian: After 232 years, shouldn’t you blokes with the British accents
stop wearing red coats and marching in a straight line?
In the US, a very influential book of the 1990s was Thomas Cahill’s “How The Irish Saved Civilization”.
Is there such a thing as a copy in the UK?
Take McCain at his word. He choose Pallin for a very straightforward reason. She has the right enemies. Just like McCain she has proven herself willing to risk her career by saying “No” to corruption and incompetence. She has proven that she will kick ass and take names without regard to party or privilige.
Even 2 X 4 is tacitly admitting the myopia behind the pick:
Nope. You are trying to reinterpret. No such a thing I said.
No myopia. Brilliance. Not only McCain resolved the current voters landscape to his favor, he also picked the “best man for the job”. Period.
For where it may do good.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prolix
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/logorrhea
Why did it not prepare you for a pathological lying demagogue like Obama, Benj?
Sorry, forgot you have a pathological need to see no evil in The One.
Alas I got slapped with the moderation tag again.
Had posted links, without using a href=, to the definitions of prolix and logorrhea. Inquiring minds can ponder them as they judge the need to.
The debates are going to be awesome.
VPs are always chosen on the basis of “identity” first, ability to do the job of President a close to distant second. A week ago, folks were saying Joe Biden was picked to bring in white males. To Help with Pa. Personally, I think he would be a lousy President. The fact that he might well be a disaster in the top job is apparently not a disqualification.
Gov. Palin does not have much room for error, it is true. In her case, the question is: Can she handle national security as good as, or better than, Sen. Obama? Obama is more like Henry Wallace, who was Roosevelt’s VP and extremely well qualified to be President — on paper. Any one regret that he was replaced by Harry Truman?
They’ve been showing that clip of Gov. Palin saying, in effect: “Before I would accept the nomination for VP I’d have to know what the job entails.”
Now the media shows her saying this as if to say, “Hey! She don’t know what the VP does! What a dunce!” But she knows. She was telling McCain she would only join the ticket if his VP had a substantial job — not just casting tie breaking votes in the Senate and going to funerals. I predict he will give her a portfolio (in fact, they have probably already agreed in principle) and probably let it out before the election. Energy production, perhaps. Or budget cutting.
I hate to break the news, but the base does not read The National Review — which is overall favorable to Gov. Palin in any case.
For Benj:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXr1mkYWeCU&NR=1
Here’s Heather MacDonald (who coauthored a book with Victor Davis Hanson) on the GOP’s adoption of identity politics:
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0830hm.html
Heather Mac Donald
Sarah Palin (R-Diversity)
Republicans betray their principles by playing identity politics.
30 August 2008
Thanks a lot, John McCain. With his selection of an unknown, two-year female governor as his running mate, he has just ensured that the diversity racket will be an essential component of presidential politics forever more. Had the 44-year-old Sarah Palin, whose greatest political accomplishment before being elected Alaska’s governor in 2006 was serving as mayor of Wasilla (population 9,780), been named Stanley, she would have had exactly zero chance of ending up in the Oval Office in the next four years. But from now on, any presidential ticket that consists solely of white males—no matter their qualifications—will likely be dead in the water. . .
Palin herself drew on hackneyed feminist bromides at her first rally as vice presidential nominee, quoting no less an establishment diversocrat than Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s run had “left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America,” Palin said in Dayton, Ohio, yesterday. “It turns out that the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.”
I thought that conservatives scoffed at the idea that American society systematically blocks accomplished women from advancement. But within less than an hour of the vice-presidential announcement yesterday morning, the diversity epidemic had spread rapidly in the Republican political machinery, including among analysts for whom I have only the highest respect. Talk-show host Laura Ingraham enthused about Palin’s identity profile: “A lot of women are calling in excited,” Ingraham said. “The women of America will see that she might be the first woman vice president.” Palin’s identity-based advantages go beyond gender, in Ingraham’s view: “Palin has an Eskimo husband, a Down’s Syndrome son, an Iraq-bound son.” CNBC host Larry Kudlow echoed Ingraham’s assessment: “This is a breakthrough for the stodgy Republican party.” . . .
Nevertheless, it’s a sad day when Republicans decide to match the Democratic predilection for chromosomal consciousness, since there will be no turning back.
I may have had some doubts at first, but now that I know Andy Sullivan is against her, I am positive that she was the perfect choice.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I’ve voted a straight Republican ticket every year of my life since 1975, when I first came of voting age, but I was stunned and horrified by McCain’s choice of Palin.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/the-shock-of-pa.html
Hd, yea, that is how I understood Palin’s reply to the question about the potential VP nomination. But what do I know, I am just an unnuanced twobyfouric dunce, I need to wait for our librul better ones to get me straightened up on that matter.
I dunno, have to wonder… what it it… is it something in water?
coyotl: The woman is as qualified in foreign affairs as most of the men that were talked about for VP(Romney, Kaine, Crist, Huckabee, Pawlenty etc.), get over it.
The ”experience” attack line is very very shallow. Since history and process are handy in records, what is needed is experience with people. One person will have all he/she needs very early in life, while another may never have enough, despite large amounts of time trying to gain it. Big empty word. Palin has experience making people want to follow her –that’s why she had the courage to reform –and why her effort worked.
Reform. Voters know DC is a mess, and they know why. Look at approval numbers –they are NOT healthy for gov’t-by-consent. People are not consenting! Where will this lead? Tax revolt? Civil disorder? Financial crash due to loss of the critical factor–confidence? without a healty financial system and the consensual tax system that follows, how can we maintain the military that is keeping the lines of communication open for the mutually-beneficial trade that is the world’s last best hope to avoid Big War for Resources?
The problem is big and serious and will brook no second chance. And Palin is a rifle-shot into the heart of that problem.
“Inexperience” –jeez –could a complaint be more superficial? And meaningless?
coyotl, I don’t care what Heather Mac Donald has to say. Flying fig, as they say. As I said, the fact that Palin is a woman was an icing on the cake.
Don’t doubt that McCain did his research. There were groups of people, in substantial numbers, that thought Palin would be the best choice. Likely a majority. They just did not think he would pick her. He did.
Palin picked “for chromosomal consciousness, for identity politics” –that’s another line that cannot stand up to test-by-reciprocal. “Governer of oncoming power state, successful reformer of entrenched corruption; due to chromosomal consciousness and identity politics, not picked.”
I meant to say “VPs are always chosen on the basis of identity and political considerations first…
I’m thinking of Al Gore, too. Great VP selection. A guy who was “right to life” until he started favoring fourth term abortions upon joining the Clinton ticket. Now there is a flexible fellow. Abortion is murder one day and no big deal the next. But he was qualified. Now he’s just nuts.
And that story where Sen. Biden said, in effect “Let’s makes friends with the Arabs by sending Iran 200 million, no strings attached.” Now, that is what I call a qualifier.
No. I’m sorry. If you are worried about National Security, the first requirement above all others is moral fortitude and guts. Who among the named has more of that than Gov. Palin? I’m not knocking them. They may have as much. But more?
P.S. I think Benj would have liked Henry Wallace as President. If he had become President there would not have been a cold war. We would have just surrendered.
coyotl just don’t get it –her record indemnifies McCain against those charges. Period. End of story.
Selection background:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/30/AR2008083002377.html
And another thing!
Then there is Gerald Ford. He was already President for three years when he declared Poland Free. I mean that whole Solidarity thing was based on some sort of misunderstanding. Talk about “on the job” training. President Ford sounded like he needed remedial on the job training. And he was picked by the DC political elite.
How come we still got a country? Adam Smith said there’s a lot of ruin in a Nation, a concept the congress is putting to the test.
And Doug, as to your remark, allow me to quote a famous philosopher: “I resent the resemblance.” Was it Mo or Curly who said that first?
Another funhouse mirror, the party of affirmitive action and identity politics is now complaining because their message finally got through to the other party?
Why, THAT sort of reasoning would lead that party to keep people poor because poor people support that party.
Why, THAT sort of reasoning would lead to higher taxes if for no other reason than to prevent too many voters from rising into the ownership society!
coyotl, you’re nearly a laugh, you’re nearly a laugh but you’re really a cry…
“Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?”
Yes, and how do you keep that straight face? Can anyone say that Obama would have gotten picked if he were a white man?
@Mangoose Fedya and nichevo weren’t around, otherwise you would’ve gottent more nods. I liked the pun.
As to Palin, it is clear that her being woman was a factor, however, it was not the sole one, nor even the biggest one. Experience is important, but it has its limits. Which is exactly what Obama campaign loved to point out before Palin’s pick. The bottomline is simple, if “experience” is the crucial factor in the pick of POTUS/VEEP, then I fully expect everyone who believes that to vote for McCain. McCain’s experience does not deserve to be mentioned with Obama’s “community organizing” efforts in the same sentence. Palin, in contrast to Obama, has some (though little) executive experience. In fact, she is the only one of the four. If you attack Palin based on experience, you have to concede that Obama doesn’t have it either (in fact, he has much less, but I take it to be too much for Obamabots to accept) and that Dem’s ticket is upside down.
The great paradox of Conservatism is that conservative theory says that the powers of the central government should be reduced and local communities should be free to solve their own problems. In an ideal world a marketplace of policy would evolve and vibrant local and community governments would act on behalf of people who can closely observe them. The reality is painfully different. Horrible and bloodsucking as the Federal bureaucracy is, it still can demonstrate remarkable competence and hires some people who adhere to professional standards. Local and state governments are by contrast complete disasters and awash in corruption. More important than that is the fact that people have no control over their state and local governments. Voting rates for non-national elections are a fraction of the already low percentage that vote for Congress. Therefor Republicans are in the peculiar position of advocating the shifting of real power and tax authority to bodies like local school boards that are usually controlled by a small faction of cranks. Those special interest groups that seize control of local elected and administrative bodies use them as sources of patronage and plunder while pushing policies that are anathema to conservatives. The presence of Sarah Pallin and Bobby Jindal attempting to buck the tide does not refute my argument. Would anybody trust the state legislatures of AK, LA or NY with a burnt out match? If anybody has a bright idea as to how to get Federalism working again please share it with me.
“Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage..”
Sounds more like Hunter S. Thompson than David Brooks.
There’s something that I find very deceitful about many Obama supporters in their efforts to cast Barack as an “fatherless African American” who rose to the top. I find that this paints an image that is far from accurate, and really a bit dishonest. To call Obama an “African American” is really stretching the meaning of words to the point of ridiculousness. This is a man who has no connection with the historic experience and culture of what most people commonly regard as African Americans: people descended from slaves who worked through centuries of not just slavery but subsequent ongoing discrimination. He has really no connection to these people of any significance at all, save for nothing more than the rather faint appearance of notably low concentrations a similar pigment in his skin.
His supposedly “fatherless” childhood was first filled by the presence of his step-father, Lolo Soetoro, a scientist and government relations expert for Mobil Oil. He was then lived with his white grandparents in a high rise condo in Hawaii while going to a highly regarded private school. Again, not much to this that connects to what many people would regard as the African American experience. But I guess “fatherless African American” sounds a little more inspiring than “son of some foreigner and a priviledged, educated, world-travelling white American woman.”
Stanley Crouch, a notable African American who knows has strong connections to the African American experience has noted this, saying quite simply that ,’when black Americans refer to Obama as “one of us,” I do not know what they are talking about.’
This seems to me to be the ultimate tragedy of Obama’s candidacy. The first African American candidate for president isn’t African American.
Hot damn, seems I touched a nerve there, Benj/coyotl.
You’ve just been on fire posting since I mentioned the nexus…
I also note that you ‘two’ seem to show up at the same time…
“If anybody has a bright idea as to how to get Federalism working again please share it with me.”
I wish I knew.
Federalism in the old school sense of it, with the American School of economics, is something that I certainly miss. The democrats are all for the spending aspects, but they have little interest these days in significant and meaningful spending projects designed to provide further economic integration of the states, like the federalists of old. Their spending seems to be focused primarily on paying off their supporters in the state and local governments.
Secondly, the dominant strain of leftism working within the democrat apparatus appears to be strongly opposed to such things as the general welfare and particularly opposed to any discussion of how we could make the United States a stronger and more vibrant nation.
The general welfare is never even considered; when watching many of Hillary’s speeches throughout the last year I was very much struck by the fact that all of her spending priorities were directed at very specific groups of people, and not the nation itself: she was gonna pay for your medical care, your kids tuition, your parents prescriptions. There is little interest in that which benefits all, total interest in appealing to the most self-centered and short-sighted needs of the electorate.
For more fun, if you ever run into a really zealous leftist who tries to pass off being highly informed about “the issues”, try this: ask him to name a good left-wing author who offers powerful ideas on how to make the US a stronger, more prosperous nation. Ask him what the left’s vision is for how the US can truly compete in an increasingly globalized, networked world. If you’re very, very lucky, you might get some random yammering about trade policy or investing in education or our kids (with no concrete idea what they are really after, other than more money.) That’s if you’re lucky.
Unfortunately, on the Republican side the memes of absolutely bizarre libertarian economic notions have absolutely taken over. The astonishing spread of many of the ideas of people like Ayn Rand is really quite breath-taking, resulting in all sorts of conservatives who view the free market as absolutely infallible, all government spending as bad, and who generally have absolutely no idea of the role of men such as Hamilton, Adams, and Clay and their ideas in the astonishing growth of the young American economy.
It’s also sadly apparent in even well-educated people with technical backgrounds, people who really should know better. Some of America’s most profitable and strategically important industries, such as information systems, software, aviation, aerospace, and several others would not be what they are today without the massive research funds directed their way by the Federal government. Any attempt to explain Silicon Valley or the Massachusetts tech sector – which left out the role of the Federal government – would be deceptively incomplete.
Federalism is dead. The common good is no longer fit for discussion. And no one gives a damn about the general welfare. We are basically left with fractured groups of voters crying out for handouts and established, antiquated industries seeking vast subsidies while pumping money into non-profit think-tanks which talk about the glories of the free market.
None of this is to say that the free-market is bad. But attempting to explain America’s dynamic growth solely through the free-market misses a very important point that in the old days the primary concern of the Federal government, and its spending priorities, were focused around increasing trade and interaction within the US via investment in infrastructure.
Re Palin and identity politics:
Right now, the Republicans have been assigned and tagged with an identity: Rich Old White Men.
In a Republic of almost 4 million people, half of whom are women, I see the choice of a woman with limited executive experience in a secondary role (VP) as an understandable choice.
If you start talking about a minority (10% of population) candidate for Chief Executive, who has no executive experience, then I see identity politics more clearly.
Examples of minority candidates who would qualify for reasons other than identity politics, think Colin Powell, or better yet, Condi Rice.
@Lifeofthemind:
Of course now John McCain is being criticized for choosing his running mate by people who cannot find America’s largest state on a map.
Good one. And so, if WAR is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, has he now added politics for extra credit?
@Lifeofthemind:
If anybody has a bright idea as to how to get Federalism working again please share it with me.
Well, not me, unfortunately. However, if this “system” of Federalism supplied us with Sarah Palin, ain’t it at least doin’ a leetl sumthin’ raht???
@neolox:
Dollink, spasibo za pointer в монгусе, I wudda missed it udderweiss. (sorry) Ladno!
А сторожне монгуса! Извените глупно-плохо говорю по-русский я. пожалуиста, drink lots of Georgian wine, life is otherwise even more too short. Stay away from the fake versions from other countries, however.
AND, Neolex, “dollink”, Извените, пожалуисте… плохо пить: плохо говорить (got to stay away from cheap 5-liter packs of California wine) … and thanks agian for the pointer, I may be awfully simple, but I do like to be pleased!
@whoever:
Yes, who in this world could possibly comprehend this over the top enthusiasm of “neocon” intellectoids [like myself] for Sarah Palin? Sorry guys, its an American thang! We be as surprised as y’all, so keep on wonderin’ dudes, cuz we be’s right up there along with y’all. (for an excellent comedic exploration of American racial schiziphrenea go now, do not wait, see Tropic Thunder you may not laugh, but you sure as H*** might could weep!)
Otherwise:
Farther along we’ll know all about it;
Farther along we’ll understand why.
Cheer up my brother, live in the SunShine.
We’ll understand it, all by and by.
@Ricardo:
Examples of minority candidates who would qualify for reasons other than identity politics
Wot u say? Doh! Me no comprehendo, savvy?
Nothing is free, and especially so a free market. And doubly so the market of ideas. Keeping the market open and effective is not just a matter of keeping it free for while a free market is the most effective at getting the more goods in the most hands at a reasonable fee, it is no guarantor of fairness or does the market have a conscience.
There is needed a means of attaining balance between individuals and large overpowering institutions. We have a system that for the most part works well at maintaining that balance, if we let it. Vigilance is a requirement for maintaining that system, and ever so often the house needs to be cleaned out, the bums tossed out and rules of conduct and civil behavior reestablished between individuals, institutions and each other.
No matter what the tendancy is to go overboard even if ever so slightly, with one fix or another.
I mean like, Condi Rice = Con dolcezza?
1) Black American
2) female
3) academician (THE silent minority)
4) Она говорить по-русский (AHA!)
5) Habitué of Foggy Bottom
Could anything be less obvious?
RE: “Farther Along” by Brad Paisley
It’s Sunday, folks, I went to Choich, this morning, y’know? Too bad nobody played “Farther Along” though. Buncha Calvinists at choich, fabulous enuff as folks go, but they prob’ly don’t even know about that great old tune…
God Bless America, anyhow!
Indeed, cjm:
—
When history is not repeated
Russia’s government-controlled media is engaged in Soviet-like frenzied demonization of US leaders.
The CIA has pointed out through demographic attrition, Russia’s population will decline more than 20 percent over the next 40 years.
And due to “underinvestment, incompetence, corruption, political interference and crude profiteering,” Russia’s oil production will decline this year for the first time. Its production rates are expected to drop precipitously next year and in the coming years as well.
In December, Russian political insider Stanislav Belkovsky told the German media that during his two terms as Russia’s president, Putin amassed a fortune in excess of $40 billion, making him the wealthiest man in Europe. Putin’s wealth has been built through his ownership of vast holdings in three Russian oil and gas companies.
Were Putin invested in the long-term prosperity and strength of his country, he would have invested that money in Russia. Instead he has squirreled it away in bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
And of course, Putin is not alone in betting his wealth against his country’s future.
Through his fascist cultivation of a cult of personality and his jingoistic aggression and incitement against the US, Putin, like Peter the Great and Josef Stalin, will enter the pantheon of Russia’s great heroes after he abandons his devastated country to be reunited with his money.
He cares not for the consequences of his actions for his fellow Russians. His loyalties are to immortality, and his bank accounts.
—
Westhawk – “The problem may be much bigger than just Putin”
—
Subhuman Swine
Remember, benj, you still have to vote Obama:
Putin’s not on the ballot.
NahnCee,
I’m willing to let John Bolton give it a try!
Richard R. – The line is from Brooks – google it…Crouch has become a very BIG admirer of Barack Obama – Backed off the he-aint-black enough line before Rangel and the rest of the NEw York delegation! Here’s a DAILY NEWS piece of Crouch’s from July of this year…
The most interesting, even thrilling and inspiring thing about what Barack Obama has done to American political discourse is to redefine patriotism. He has taken the definition beyond the familiar body of platitudes that the phoniest of our conservative broadcast journalists and talk show hosts have made their stock in trade. As an extremely sophisticated man and law school graduate, Obama has mastered the basic skill of those in his profession. That is, the ability to create an easily comprehended narrative with compelling facts whenever possible.
In his novel “The Human Stain,” Philip Roth wrote about how higher education had been hijacked by special-interest groups and so-called “victim studies,” concluding that just to be accused was to be convicted. No proof was needed, no history of actions to the contrary was of any help. All that was needed for someone to meet the worst career fate was to have them be hysterically charged with a version of bigotry in the arena of race or sex and that was it. Down for the count.
That is usually the way conservatives in media handle those whom they seem – or pretend – to think are poison in person. Either submit to the creakiest platitudes or face their wrath. Don’t ask questions. Don’t be skeptical. Don’t demand proof.
Instead of bridling at the question, Obama has remade patriotism with the proof that remains in high profile and is easily accessible to those who would like to know or to challenge it. He embraces all of the tragic elements of American history instead of pretending that they are either exaggerated or no more than radical distortions. Obama steps up to them with examples of tough-minded goodwill, courageous action and optimistic foresight that are right there on the historical record.
Yes, we had slavery, but we also had the abolition movement, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Yes, we had the terrible treatment of blue-collar workers by fat cats who were not above hiring ruffians and killers to either assault or murder the men who complained about working conditions and bad pay. Yes, the right to unionize and use collective bargaining also emerged, as did women getting the vote, the defeat of European fascism during World War II and the destruction of unconstitutional law.
That reminds me of the irrational thought that Jimmy Carter, a Southerner, deserved to lose to Ronald Reagan for allowing the former actor to say during a 1980 presidential debate that when he was young the United States didn’t even know it had a racial problem. That must actually have been before Reagan was born because several books about him tell the story of when two black members of Reagan’s college football team were refused service by a segregated hotel. It was the 1930s, in Illinois, and instead of having them sleep on the team bus, Reagan had the two young men, who were welcomed by Reagan’s parents, stay at his home.
That sounds to me like he knew a racial problem when he saw one. The future President also must have missed the fact that the Ku Klux Klan boasted 2 million members by the 1920s.
Memory of our social tragedies or those periods when our most despicable beliefs perverted our national principles is a subject that conservatives don’t like to talk about or even hear brought up. Those who do will be accused of being unpatriotic, ungrateful or hating America.
Such people will never understand the new patriotism of this startling Democrat who has snatched the flag from them and is waving it in a new way. As I have said before, doctors who either have a cure or are on the verge of discovering one never fear public discussion of a terrible disease. They know that they can either handle it right now or will soon be able to. That is what makes Barack Obama so impressive at this moment.
“this startling Democrat who has snatched the flag from them and is waving it in a new way.”
—
Yeah, like that lapel pin that went with his convictions, and then returned when he realized the votes he could gain with some cheap faux patriotism.
I’ll look into it benj, ’cause I don’t know the context, but it looks to me like Reagan might have been saying large segments of society conveniently didn’t see blatant racism because they chose not to.
Like you choose not to see the blatant lies and obvious corruption of Barrack Hussein Obama.
Benji,
You’re getting quite tedious in randomly posting large articles by other sources when simple links would suffice. Worse yet, nothing in that post in any way comes close to addressing my point, a point I thought I made abundantly clear but which you so clearly missed. Your missing of this point was clear in your characterization of the Crouch quote I offered as being “the he-aint-black enough line.” A point I didn’t make, and a point I don’t believe was made by my Crouch quote.
My point is the sadness of many people who are making a big fuss about him being an African American. He’s not. It’s not even a question of “enough” of an African American.
You know, I note that you’ve made many posts here, and as I’ve noted, you like to do a lot of copying and pasting of other people’s thoughts. And that’s quite fascinating because you, like every single Obama supporter that I’ve spoken to, is absolutely unable to explain why they support him or elucidate a single coherent policy of Obama’s. Of course, Obama’s incapable of elucidating a single coherent policy or strategy of any kind, either.
And you, like all of his supporters, and him, reveal the Obama movement for what it really is. Obama is nothing but the charismatic center of a cult of personality. The closest in recent history I could compare him to would be Baghwan Sri Rajneesh, a man who boasted that he had no ideas, he had no doctrine, and he had nothing to teach. A man who boasted that he was history’s greatest con man. And yet even despite all of that, despite all of the evidence of corruption, his followers flocked to him and cheered him. Somehow, he made people feel good.
Take Rajneesh, shave him, give him a haircut and a suit, lose the accent, and increase the tempo of the speech and you’ve got Obama. No ideas, no strategy, no legislative achievements whatsoever, no clearly defined priorities, no worthwhile experience of any kind. That’s evident from listening to Obama’s speeches. Read his books. You’ll find not a single meaningful discussion of economics, international relations, his understanding of the world as a system, and the United States as a component of that system. It’s absent from every page. The title says it all: The Audacity of Hope. Don’t worry about confusing ideas, learning a doctrine, having a strategy. Let’s just feel good.
It’s a cult. And like all cults, by definition, the members do not realize that they are in a cult. They’ll even desire to confront those who have the audacity to point it out to them.
Far from a new kind of patriotism, Obama and his supporters represent something quite different: a new kind of treason. (At least in the American experience, this form of treason has destroyed many other countries) A betrayal of their country and its future for the pleasures of their cult.
What should we think someone feels toward this country when he gets up in front of a group of men, women, and children, and screams,
“God Damn America!” ?
Just Curious.
“Read his books. You’ll find not a single meaningful discussion of economics, international relations, his understanding of the world as a system, and the United States as a component of that system. It’s absent from every page. ”
—
And present in almost every page of the (tens?) of thousands of pages Ronald Reagan wrote.
IOW, “dissent is the highest form of patriotism”.
But how much? There’s no limit in the slogan.
The way it can work without limit is through the words.
If “Patriotism is love of country” –just have “country” refer to geography, rather than nation.
Voila!
Doug,
An interesting point regarding Reagan.
Benji,
I also must add a further note about the new kind of treason. I’ve spent a significant part of my life outside of the United States and had the opportunity to meet scores of deeply anti-American people. These are not people who are simply against George Bush and aren’t even people I’d consider to have any distinct political ideology. They are characterized simply by a burning desire to see the United States humiliated, to see its power and stature lessened, to see its influence reduced. People who can’t help but betray a little bit of glee when discovering any news that might be considered negative for the US.
All of them that I know, without exception, are enthusiastic Obama supporters. All of them.
“dissent is the highest form of patriotism”.
If Obama is elected I can promise you one thing: Dissent will be considered the lowest form of racism.
Yes, racism will quickly move from personal moral failing to class political crime –and it will be defined anew by its victims as only perpetrable by white people. A new Constitutional Convention will be called, and the debate will sound like that time when you were a sophomore and y’all stayed up all nite in your dorm room talking political science.
Fedya, I don’t want to be picky but…
Она говорит по-русски. No й on the end.
However, русский язык.
говорить is an infinitive.
Она говорит на русском [языке] is currently quite common.
Richard R – You offered up this wisdom from Crouch as per below (BTW -I passed on your problematic assumption that Crouch – “who knows who has strong connections to African Aermican experience” – is the the perfect cultural gatekeeper. Lots of intelligent black people would disagree with you there. For years, Crouch has been known for having heavy problems with anyone who emphasizes the AFRICAN dimenion of African-American experience. That’s one reason why he was initially so resistant to Obama. (BTW – he’s not all wrong re his harsh lines on the excesses of black cultural nationalism but he’s not all right either…(If you’re actually interested in this subject as opposed to scoring points against O – and you like Jazz! – you might try this piece http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2005/12/back_to_life.html – There’s some bits in there about encounters with Crouch that touch on the issues of African-Americaness. But -just so we’re all clear – You offered Crouch as somebody who buttressed your position on O’s distance from African American experience. In the past Crouch did just that. But that’s no longer the case – I posted the piece he wrote last month praising O to the skies to underscore that to you. Figure you’d be glad to have some correct your mistaken impression. But not too many Clubbers seem to enjoy being contradicted lately…Human, of course, but a little cheap.
“Stanley Crouch, a notable African American who knows has strong connections to the African American experience has noted this, saying quite simply that ,’when black Americans refer to Obama as “one of us,” I do not know what they are talking about.’”
buddy, that definition of racism is nothing new. It is a standard uber-leftist fare.
According to them, only whites can be racist, because racism is an expression of power in their book. Other folks aren’t racist, they may be bigoted, but not racist.
Of course, if you present a scenario in which whites become a minority and become the oppressed group, the uber-lib would reply that would never happen as the color people are noble by nature.
So, what about Philadelphia…if one is white there they get treated like dirt. [followed by a real life example].
U-L: No, that is bigotry, not racism.
But within the city, it is blacks that are in power.
U-L: No, they are still a part of racist USA.
OK, so imagine that blacks are a majority in USA and treat whites like dirt.
U-L: It would be bigotry, because people of color are incapable of racism.
Now hold on a sec, you said that racism is an expression of power, so if people of color had power and oppressed whites that would be racism according to your definition.
U-L: Only whites are capable of racism.
Paraphrasing a discussion from one uber-lib forum. I kid you not.
Jim Jones was another charismatic center of a cult of personality.
It was equally surreal to read contemporaneous accounts by Dave Horowitz of the corruption, child abuse, confiscation of people’s homes and life savings and etc, while at the same time he had the full approval and financial backing of the Bay Area Democrat Political Establishment, as well as Speaker Willie Brown, and the MSM was giving him glowing coverage.
Doug, despite the characteristics of a cult of personality in Obama’s case, I think that is not the whole story. Yes, the Narcissist One is full of himself and can be as cultist as he desires, but I think there is somewhere a “gentlemans’ agreement” behind it. As long as Obama “delivers”, he would be encouraged to cultivate the cult.
I know that it sounds a bit conspiracy-theorish, but really it is not. The goals were stated a long time ago and are in general knowledge base. It is just people don’t believe it can be pulled off.
However, Obama stated: “Yes we can!”
I tend to take him seriously.
Neo – now I feel better. Thanks a bunch.
Jim Jones delivered the Kool Aid.
Oy! Doug, indeed!
“I also must add a further note about the new kind of treason. I’ve spent a significant part of my life outside of the United States and had the opportunity to meet scores of deeply anti-American people.”
International anti-Americanism has also been encountered by Mark Steyn and others who have begun distilling it. International anti-Americanism is rooted in either elitist secular Marxist/Socialism or in elitist religious Islamo-Fascism. International anti-Americanism is rooted in one of the collectivist ideals for humanity rather than good old American individualism; and American individualism is rooted in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights which contain ideas which are anathema to both elite collectivist Marxist/Socialism and elite collectivist Islamo-Fascism.
Progressives Reveal Their Motivation and Agenda for Obama
“This seems to me to be the ultimate tragedy of Obama’s candidacy. The first African American candidate for president isn’t African American.”
More correctly, the statement should read: The second African American candidate for president, as with Clinton, isn’t African American.
PS: I should say that Obama is not the first Black candidate. In recent times w have had Jesse Jackson and Keyes.
Only Words:
Former head of the Democratic National Committee:
“Hurricane Gustav is God’s gift to the Democrats.”
And also, later:
“I had not realized that anyone would be recording what I thought was a private conversation.”
And more inportantly, he did not realize that the Democrats could no longer control the dissemination of his quotes.
Only words….
If the Pubs are smart, they will showcase Bobby Jindal, w/a word of appreciation also for a repeat performance by Haley Barbour.
Too funny.
And this appears on a democrat blog as a supporting rhetoric, not as a cautionary tale..
<br
I think that one thing that we are missing here is that portions of the democrat party have now had their own tactics and stratagems used against them by the Obamaistas. The shoe is on the other foot for once.
Not that they will not quickly forget, but still, this is a merry contretemps. And here I thought this would be one of the most boring elections of my lifetime — not to mention one of the most bitter of results.
It is instructive to read these blogs: they deconstruct their side’s rhetoric much faster and with much less resort to intellectualism than the rest of us aaccustom to respondingre. All work-a-day, off the cuff analysis; it is like listening to a counterfeiter consult the FBI.
A parody of the “regan democrats”?
Maybe the Ike campaigns are better references.
The movie ends with the former beauty queen shaking out her pinned-up hair, taking off her glasses, slipping on ruby red peep-toe platform heels that reveal a pink French-style pedicure, and facing down Vladimir Putin in an island in the Bering Strait. Putting away her breast pump, she points her rifle and informs him frostily that she has some expertise in Russia because it’s close to Alaska. “Back off, Commie dude,” she says. “I’m a much better shot than Cheney.”
Then she takes off in her seaplane and lands on the White House lawn, near the new ice fishing hole and hockey rink. The “First Dude,” as she calls the hunky Eskimo in the East Wing, waits on his snowmobile with the kids — Track (named after high school track meets), Bristol (after Bristol Bay where they did commercial fishing), Willow (after a community in Alaska), Piper (just a cool name) and Trig (Norse for “strength.”)
“The P.T.A. is great preparation for dealing with the K.G.B.,” President Palin murmurs to Todd, as they kiss in the final scene while she changes Trig’s diaper. “Now that Georgia’s safe, how ’bout I cook you up some caribou hot dogs and moose stew for dinner, babe?”
- Dowd
Benj:
…
That reminds me of the irrational thought that Jimmy Carter, a Southerner, deserved to lose to Ronald Reagan for allowing the former actor to say during a 1980 presidential debate that when he was young the United States didn’t even know it had a racial problem.
…
Sep 1, 2008 – 12:41 am
—————————–
I agree, that thought is irrational.
I thought the reason Carter lost to Reagan was:
(Choose all that apply)
( ) Energy crisis
( ) double-digit inflation, coupled with very high interest rate
( ) Intervention in Afghanistan. See also: Operation Cyclone
( ) Iran hostage crisis
( ) Jimmy Carter, a Southerner, deserved to lose to Ronald Reagan for allowing the former actor to say during a 1980 presidential debate that when he was young the United States didn’t even know it had a racial problem.
Doug,
I clicked on that link to the Naomi Klein presentation. Funny how that Canadian Trotskyist thinks she can meddle in our political decision making. Yep, she’s not an American citizen – she’s a Canadian, along with her producer husband.
I really resent foreigners meddling in our elections and political debates. But it should indicate the INTERNATIONAL character of the socialist movement and how all these networks and cells come together to exert influence in our political debates and decisions.
It is really quite cute and funny watching folk here now argue (since Palin nomination) that experience is, as Buddy so eloquently put it”
“The ”experience” attack line is very very shallow”
Brilliant strategy from McCain – take his greatest asset, experience, and nullify it.
Zim said: >>The woman is as qualified in foreign affairs as most of the men that were talked about for VP(Romney, Kaine, Crist, Huckabee, Pawlenty etc.), get over it.<>Mr. McCain’s advisers said Friday that Mr. McCain was well aware that Ms. Palin would be criticized for her lack of foreign policy experience, but that he viewed her as exceptionally talented and intelligent and that he felt she would be able to be educated quickly.
“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.<<
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/29palin.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
This is a terrible admission that you can’t simply wish away.
Thanks Buddy, thanks L3, for your kind comments.
I’m still forcing my way through Feith’s “War and Decision” – it’s tough going because it’s like reading an extremely long legal brief. And it gives me waking nightmares thinking what it would be like to work under Rummy!
Colin Powell is a back-stabbing bastard. When Armitage blabbed about Plame to Bob Novak, kicking off the whole “Bush outs CIA spy!” will-sapping drama, he went to his boss Gen. Powell and told him what happened. The two of them sat on this crucial piece of info that would have demolished the entire Plame propaganda attack on the Administration, and let the nation suffer through two years of pointless questioning and vicious Bush hatred from the Dems. Y’know, when they got a majority in Congress in 2006, during war time, they used their position to do between 100-200 hearings on the Plame lies. And now the Convetional Wisdom is that Bush outed a spy. Of course, that’s as “true” as the “Bush Lied” bullshit, and equally as true as Obama’s latest recitation that the government “sat on its hands” during Katrina (while performing 32,000 helicopter and boat rescues of idiotic Democrat voters in New Orleans who refused the federal call for evacuation. I notice they are getting their lazy asses on the buses this time.
Btw, if Obama is the new Lincoln, as Al Gore declared a couple of days ago, you think he will consider the Democrats’ demands for surrender during war time as treasonous, as old Abe did?
Zim said: “The woman is as qualified in foreign affairs as most of the men that were talked about for VP(Romney, Kaine, Crist, Huckabee, Pawlenty etc.), get over it.”
Zim, that doesn’t change the fact that she isn’t qualified. None of the men you listed really appealed to me either, owing to their lack of national security experience, which is part of the reason why they were rejected.
Even McCain’s advisers admit that Palin isn’t ready NOW:
“Mr. McCain’s advisers said Friday that Mr. McCain was well aware that Ms. Palin would be criticized for her lack of foreign policy experience, but that he viewed her as exceptionally talented and intelligent and that he felt she would be able to be educated quickly.
“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/29palin.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
This is a terrible admission that you can’t simply wish away.
Tony,
And the Conventional Wisdom is that Powell is a great Patriot.
Which I never bought.
Obama minus the Marxism and Black Liberation Theology?
“International anti-Americanism has also been encountered by Mark Steyn and others who have begun distilling it. International anti-Americanism is rooted in either elitist secular Marxist/Socialism or in elitist religious Islamo-Fascism. International anti-Americanism is rooted in one of the collectivist ideals for humanity rather than good old American individualism; and American individualism is rooted in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights which contain ideas which are anathema to both elite collectivist Marxist/Socialism and elite collectivist Islamo-Fascism.” – Storm Rider
The best description of who these people are (people like Naomi Klein)and what their project is. This is who they are and I know this well because I used to be one of them. Not so much of the activist kind was I, but more of the bookish Jesuit types who was studying and researching to see if there was a way to get around the best critiques of socialism coming from people like Michael Novak and Willian Buckley, Jr. When I found that human nature is irrevocably incompatible with the utopian teleology of various forms of collectivist/statist thought, I gave it up and began moving in the other direction.
I do not know of any recent attempts by Leftist intellectuals to scientifically take apart anti-utopian thought. Certainly no successful attempts. And what is startling is that there seems to be so little interest over there to take the best critiques of socialism seriously. As a naturally curious person, I simply do not understand the evolving anti-intellectual nature of the Left. Surely there must be some bright people over there who are capable of self-criticism and can take on the other side’s best shots? Or, could it be that there is no further evolution of socialist thought beyond the Frankfurt School thinkers, and that now the Left’s various permutations of the Marxist corpus have ossified into a pure faith?
Anti Americanism
I was in the military in the early 60′s. I spent two years traveling the Middle East and beyond – Turkey, Libya, Kenya, Madagascar, Bahrain, Pakistan. I almost visited Georgia once. Little mistake in navigation.
During my travels I saw lots of Russian propaganda – magazines in airports and hotel lobbies. People knew I was US military. I saw nothing but smiles when I met people. From government officials to people plowing a field with oxen. The anti-Americans are loud but must be few in number. In two years I saw nary a one.
Roy,
That “lots of Russian propaganda” was the evidence of a massive Johnny Appleseed approach taken by the KGB. They figured out that some day all of those seeds tossed about would yield fruit. And you know what? It has, but the flowering and then the budding of the fruit has taken place long after the demise of the Soviet Union. Marxism is more diffuse now, but strangely more effective in undermining the West.
Not a few of the activist types I knew when I was on the Left were, I am convinced, closet Communists. And they were the ones most hostile or condescending towards me when they found out I was a Catholic and looking for ways to modify socialist thought to take into account the critiques of socialism.
I am convinced that the Left is now anti-intellectual, right at the moment that it is lapping at its high water mark in the West. It is politically ascendant while it is intellectually in rapid decline. But, even as this rot spreads throughout its ranks it has managed to pull off THE PERCEPTION that it is the anti-socialists who are anti-intellectual.
There are certain people you look to when you’re not certain about something. When you’re basically in the dark about what to think about something. When the context of the issue is unknown. There are certain people who I would look to During the 1990′s to make my opinion. If that person was on one side of an issue. I knew it was best to be on the other side. During the 1990′s that person was Senator Joe Biden. Whatever position he took on something about which I was uncertain–I knew the right position was the opposite of whatever line he took.
In recent years that role has been filled by andy sullivan.
I may have had some doubts at first about Palin, but now that I know Andy Sullivan is against her, I am positive that she was the perfect choice.
Doug,
Colin Powell was lucky to be sitting where he was during Gulf War I. That’s all he has going for him. The rest of his career is self-admitted Affirmative Action.
As for anti-Americanism, some of the most devoted zealots of this depravity are our fellow Americans, the intensely partisan Democrats and self-declared enlightened “liberals” who believe that all evil flows from America, from “illegal wars” to Global Warming Bush. Why the liberals can not carry on an intellectual defense of their disgusting positions is a mystery, Fred. The only explanation I can understand is Limbaugh’s old chestnut that liberals have feelings, not thoughts. Weird, huh?
Re anti-americanism – I first encountered the scary type of anti-americanism in the ’60s when I read “The American Challenge” by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schrieber. A quote from a review by Time magazine of the book follows:
Even more alarming to Servan-Schreiber is the fact that 90% of the capital needed to finance this “American invasion” was raised from Euro pean investors eager to take part in U.S. ventures. “What threatens us,” he writes, “is not a torrent of riches. The war is being fought against us not with dollars, oil, tons of steel or even modern machines, but with creative imagination and a talent for organization.” Last week Servan-Schreiber told TIME Correspondent James Wilde: “What America has done is to change the entire concept of culture, the values of civilization. The new American culture is not Chartres or Versailles, but the organization of talent. The Americans organize intelligence so that it creates. They have an industrial and scientific strategy. That’s real culture.”
As I remember from the book, he feared speciation, the gradual mutation of a species seperated from others of its kind by some kind of barrier, in this case, culture. He felt that America was on the path to evolving to a new type of mankind, unfortunately leaving behind Europe. If you can find the book in a library, dig it up and read it. It sets the stage for understanding a lot of the European attempts (especially by the French) at throwing a stick into our spokes.
Weird, but true.
I’ll never forget your initial description here of Afghanistan, Tony!
The best scholarly work on “World Socialism” was that of Igor Shafarevich, a brilliant Soviet mathematician, who witnessed the destructive effects of socialism on the liberty and creativity of real human beings. I can’t link you to his book “The Socialist Phenemenon” because my comments are being moderated when I provide such links. Try this, but you’ll have to add the prerequisite URL beginnings:
robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
“The fact that the adherents of socialism themselves have expressed so many contradictory views ought to put us on guard. In addition, notions about the nature of socialism are as a rule strikingly vague, and yet they do not elicit doubt and are perceived as truth needing no verification. This is especially apparent in attempts to make critical evaluations of socialism. Pointing out the tragic facts that so frequently have accompanied the socialist experiments of the twentieth century usually evokes the objection that an idea cannot be judged by the unsuccessful attempts at its implementation. The task of rebuilding society is so immeasurably complicated, it is said, that in the initial stages errors are inevitable; they are, however, due to the shortcomings of certain individuals or the heritage of the past; in no sense do they follow from the fine principles enunciated by the founders of the doctrine. The fact that even in the earliest declarations of socialist doctrine there are schemes which in their cruelty far exceed any real system is dismissed as insignificant.” Igor Shafarevich
“But how to understand a teaching which in its ideal version includes both an appeal to freedom and a program for the establishment of slavery? Or how to reconcile the impassioned condemnation of the old order and quite justified indignation at the suffering of the poor and the oppressed with the fact that the same teachings envisage no less suffering for these oppressed masses as the lot of whole generations prior to the triumph of social justice? Thus Marx foresees fifteen, perhaps even fifty years of civil war for the proletariat, and Mao Tse-tung is ready to accept the loss of half of humanity in a nuclear war for the sake of establishing a socialist structure in the world. A call for sacrifices on this scale might sound convincing on the lips of a religious leader appealing to a truth beyond this world. But not from convinced atheists. It would seem that socialism lacks that feature which, in mathematics, for example, is considered the minimal condition for the existence of a concept: a definition free of contradictions.” Igor Shafarevich
Anti-Americanism, Dissent, and Patriotism
Anti-Americanism is a vague term that encompasses everyone/thing that wants to diminish American power, to those who are philosophically opposed to what “America” stands for (capitalism, democracy, etc)
Dissent in America is an vague term that encompasses everyone/thing who have a different opinion of how we pursue the advancement our national interests (free enterprise, democracy), to those who oppose our national interests, i.e., they are opposed to free enterprise, democracy, and America’s standing in the world.
Patriotism is the ideological desire to advance our national interests and standing in the world.
So, yes, the second group of dissenters who is opposed to free enterprise and our standing in the world IS unpatriotic. Their saying it ain’t so doesn’t make it patriotic. Those who say dissent is the highest form of patriotism are confusing differences of opinion in how to pursue our interests with antagonism to our national interest. When they translate that antagonism with action, such as handing our power to international bodies, or publishing information about how we monitor our enemies, they commit treason, because they are acting against our national interest.
Hiding behind the word “dissent” is disingenous at best. What modern day dissenters want is not the advancement of our power, but our comeuppance.
CNNMoney: Oil falling as Gustav fears ease
Crude spikes then falls as hurricane bears down on region that is home to 25% of U.S. crude production and 56% of imports.
That damned refinery liability again!
Drill, drill, drill!
Build, build, build!
Programmer: Take a look at the book “Anti-Americanism” by the late Jean- Francois Revel. Earlier he had written a book entitled “Without Marx or Jesus” that makes the same point about the U.S creating a new form of civilization.
A great quote he provides, from Hubert Beuve-Mery, founder and editor of the French newspaper Le Monde:
“The Americans present a real danger to France – different from the threat represented by Germany or that may eventually emerge from Russia. … they cling to a veritable cult of liberty, they don’t feel the need to liberate themselves from … capitalism.”
He wrote this in May of 1944. The month before the Allied invasion that freed France.
here’s a rumor everyone can be happy with: john edwards is actually the father of joe biden (a time machine and lots of blindingly cheap liquor were involved).
one thing to keep in mind when reading the sour words of “dissapointed conservatives” is that they wouldn’t be happy with any pick. they don’t want America or mccain to win. their dissapoinment is with America and until it meets their standards, everything is s***. they are pathetic worms, feeding on the fecal matter produced by their brethren on the left.
“Today’s Neocommunists prefer to call themselves Marxists, which has again become a respected word on college campuses. But Marxism is Communist ideology. What else could it be? If you read carefully, Neocommunism is really out there, only slightly disguised. Just as Soviet propaganda insisted America was rotten to the core, so does the Hard Left and the institutions it controls parrot the line. The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, now a favorite history textbook in the colleges, is proud to “revise” everything we think we know about America, from the true people’s point of view. The heroes of today’s aging New Left are the Old Communist Left, not the democratic liberals of the past. Karl Marx is considered the most important “philosopher” in Britain according to the BBC.”
“Anti-Americanism has come roaring back like a bad rash, flaring up after years of remission. Anti-American rage is pervasive on our Left and the dominant media….Why do they hate us? It’s truly not our fault. The Euro-Left hates us for winning the Cold War, and for showing capitalist democracy to be far more beneficial and compassionate than any State-controlled society. It still drives them to rage”
americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/10/the_evidence_for_neocommunism.html
Jeeze I’ve missed them worms, cjm,
‘course I’ve been spending my time marveling of how uniquely American Alaskans tend to be.
It is accepted wisdom that the Stryker Brigade and others trained there gain the most discipline and attention to detail.
If you don’t you freeze.
The same applies to the civilians, throwbacks to how we all used to be.
Marxist/Socialists define equality in terms that reduce people to numbers, cogs in the state mechanism, or economic molecules. Igor Shafarevich explains this brilliantly, and he points out this Marxist/Socialist definition of human equality dates back to Plato. The Marxist/Socialists have also incorporated Plato’s anti-democratic, elitist philosophy whereby some people are superior to others; they are the “Socialist Philosopher Kings;” and never mind that this elite class engenders an even greater level of human inequality. Marxist/Socialism, like Islamism, precisely requires irrationality and “doublethink.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” George Orwell
“Plato argues for the necessity of communal property and wives, since only under these conditions will the citizens take joy in and grieve over the same things. In other words, he considers the communality of property and the abolition of the family as means for achieving equality. He regards equality, however, not in the usual sense of equality of rights or opportunities, but as identity of behavior, as the equalization of personalities. Both these traits–the abolition of private property and of the family as a means to achieve equality, and this special understanding of equality–run through the majority of socialist teachings.” Igor Shafarevich
“The revolutionaries who drew up the “Conspiracy of Equals” understood equality in such a way that they alone formed the government, while others were to obey implicitly–and those who did not were to be exiled to certain islands for forced labor. In the most popular work of Marxism, the Communist Manifesto, one of the first measures of the new socialist system to be proposed is the introduction of compulsory labor.” Igor Shafarevich
“The usual understanding of “equality,” when applied to people, entails equality of rights and sometimes equality of opportunity (social welfare, pensions, grants, etc.). But what is meant in all these cases is the equalization of external conditions which do not touch the individuality of man. In socialist ideology, however, the understanding of equality is akin to that used in mathematics (when one speaks of equal numbers or equal triangles), i.e., this is in fact identity, the abolition of differences in behavior as well as in the inner world of the individuals constituting society. From this point of view, a puzzling and at first sight contradictory property of socialist doctrines becomes apparent. They proclaim the greatest possible equality, the destruction of hierarchy in society and at the same time (in most cases) a strict regimentation of all of life, which would be impossible without absolute control and an all-powerful bureaucracy which would engender an incomparably greater inequality.” Igor Shafarevich
“Finally, “scientific socialism” proclaims that the historical process is controlled by immanent laws which are independent of human will. An understanding of these laws makes history predictable. This conception was formed under the obvious influence of the advances of natural science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, above all, the success of astronomy in predicting the discovery of planets, the return of comets, etc. Fourier asserts that mankind is ruled by the laws of “attraction of the passions,” which are in his view precisely analogous to Newton’s law of gravitation, whereby “the unity of the physical and the spiritual worlds is manifest.” In terms of this analogy, individuals correspond to the elemental particles of matter, which must be identical (at least, from the standpoint of properties essential to the phenomenon under consideration–that is, history). As for Marxism, one thinks of an analogy with another physical theory. This is the kinetic theory of gases, according to which a gas is the aggregate of molecules that come into collision, with the result of each collision determined by the laws of mechanics. A very great number of molecules transform the statistical laws of their collision into the general laws of the physics of gases. The only form of social contact of the producers of goods in capitalist society is exchange (just as for gas molecules the only form of interaction is collision). The interaction of a great number of producers engenders that “social production” which, in its turn, determines their political, legal and religious notions, and the “social, political and spiritual processes of life in general.” It is evident that such a conception makes sense only on the assumption that separate “molecules” (producers) are identical. Otherwise, instead of an explanation (or an “understanding,” as Marx puts it), there would be only the individual properties of a huge number of people, and one enigma would be replaced by a mass of enigmas.” Igor Shafarevich
robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
people who “analyze” leftism as if it were some kind of science are jerking off. all the pseudo science is just window dressing to get the nimrods hepped up. hitler greatly envied the communists for their superior “theory”. and in terms of recruiting the manifesto is pretty good; the nazis never could come up with anything more involving than the typical speilberg script. in short, it’s *always* about getting and keeping power, everything else is noise and gorilla dust.
O-Dogg grabbed the flag of a new patriotism, but the jester stole his coat and crown. Billy Ayers ran in the room waving an NVA flag. The good Doctor Most Reverend Wright waved the flag of the coming Farrakhan space ship.
people who harp on about how much foreign policy experience palin has are missing a big point. it’s her American policy credentials that are breath taking. which area of expertise do most Americans value most, now? which team has the broadest and deepset overall policy coverage? here’s a hint for benj; it’s not your team.
Dennis Prager made a good point. The amount of “experience” is the wrong argument. The correct argumet is about relative “achievment.”
Sarah Palin has achieved a remarkable amount in a short period of time. Biden has 30 years as a .220 hitting bench player. No notable achievments. Obama the Joke cannot name a single achiement in his entire adult life.
“They are characterized simply by a burning desire to see the United States humiliated, to see its power and stature lessened, to see its influence reduced. People who can’t help but betray a little bit of glee when discovering any news that might be considered negative for the US.
My Wife was born German, lived there until 2 and spoke no English until she was 6. She is a naturalized American citizen. She has said to me over and over again, since we were dating, “They hate us. Don’t ever forget they hate us.” I pray daily that we remain the Strongest Tribe, to borrow a phrase.
As to Naomi Klein, I “get” her and her cult of personality less than I get that of Andrew Sullivan, though I am grateful to her for admitting on the vid at The Elephant Bar (link above @ 5:55 a.m.; h/t Doug) that “progressives” must lie, cheat and steal (she phrased it more delicately) to win this election.
Programmer, thanks for the tip on the book by JJ Servan-Schreiber. I found ten copies available on Amazon.com
I created a customized “tiny url” to make it easier to find
http://tinyurl.com/theamericanchallenge
Mine is one order which means there are now nine copies left!
again, thanks.
That’s right, Peter Boston, and thank you for pointing that out.
She went to school here in my home town, a town that my ancestors had a good part of building.
Then, she went back to Alaska, became a mom and went into politics.
She is very good, and it makes me proud.
Some of these American women are the best there is.
She didn’t have any rich corrupt backers.
She did it by herself.
She might make a mistake or two. That’s ok, everyone does.
She’ll learn from it, and land on her feet, like a nimble cat.
“achievment.”
That’s the word.
McCain/Palin in 08
Igor Shafarevich also understood that “World Socialism” is a religion, and that explains the fervent and sometimes irrational and violent adherence to socialist ideology; the religious aspects of Socialism are, in a word, evangelistic.
“We can see that all elements of the socialist ideal–the abolition of private property, family, hierarchies; the hostility toward religion–could be regarded as a manifestation of one basic principle: the suppression of individuality…Finally, human individuality finds its greatest support and its highest appreciation in religion. Only as a personality can man turn to God and only through this dialogue does he realize himself as a person commensurate with the person of God. It is for this very reason that socialist ideology and religion are mutually exclusive.” Igor Shafarevich
“An even more radical contrast between socialism and religion emerges from their views of the essence of man and his role in their respective “anthropologies.” All religions proceed from a recognition of some higher meaning in life, some goal deriving from a higher sphere. Presupposing the existence of God and the possibility of man’s communication with Him, religion thereby admits a certain commensurability between God and man, which is indispensable if only to make possible some sort of contact. (An ant, for instance, cannot enter into contact with man.) Socialism, on the other hand, proceeds in almost all its manifestations from the assumption that the basic principles guiding the life of an individual and of mankind in general do not go beyond the satisfaction of material needs or primitive instincts.” Igor Shafarevich
“the religious aspects of socialism may explain the extraordinary attraction of socialist doctrines and their capacity to inflame individuals and to inspire popular movements. It is precisely these aspects of socialism which cannot be explained when socialism is regarded as a political or economic category. Socialism’s pretensions to be a universal world view comprising and explaining everything (from the transformation of a liquid into steam to the appearance of Christianity) also make it akin to religion. A characteristic of religion is socialism’s view of history not as a chaotic phenomenon but as an entity that has a goal, a meaning and a justification. In other words, both socialism and religion view history teleologically. Bulgakov draws our attention to numerous and far-reaching analogies between socialism (especially Marxism) and Judaic apocalyptics and eschatology. Finally, socialism’s hostility toward traditional religion hardly contradicts this judgment–it may simply be a matter of animosity between rival religions.” Igor Shafarevich
“it is certainly true that socialism is hostile to religion. But is it possible to understand it as a consequence of atheism? Hardly, at least if we understand atheism as it is usually defined: as the loss of religious feeling. It is not clear just how such a negative concept can become the stimulus for an active attitude toward the world (its destruction or alteration) or how it can be the source of the infectiousness of socialist doctrines. Furthermore, socialism’s attitude toward religion does not at all resemble the indifferent and skeptical position of someone who has lost interest in religion. The term “atheism” is inappropriate for the description of people in the grip of socialist doctrines. It would be more correct to speak here not of “atheists” but of “God-haters,” not of “atheism” but of “theophobia.” Such, certainly, is the passionately hostile attitude of socialism toward religion. Thus, while socialism is certainly connected with the loss of religious feeling, it can hardly be reduced to it. The place formerly occupied by religion does not remain vacant; a new lodger appeared.” Igor Shafarevich
robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
Some from the other side (centrist dems) do get it:
John Coale, a prominent Washington lawyer, husband of Fox TV host Greta Van Susteren and a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, announced today that he was supporting John McCain for president. Coale, who traveled with Sen. Clinton, President Clinton and her family through out the primary season, complained of sexism, and said the Democratic Party is “being taken over by the moveon.org types” in an exclusive interview with Newsweek.com
Is Joe Biden Drunk On The Campaign Trail? You Decide.
You want this guy to own the nuclear football?
What’s really scary, is not that Joe was drunk, but that he might have been sober.
Think about that.
Andrew is in a dither because Sarah is both more masculine and more feminine than he.
Anybody here old enough to remember this song?
“Sarah, Sarah Palin
Queen of the wild frontier”
(kilt her ‘bou when she was only three)
Jefe’s TV time cut down by an evil imperalistic plot:
A power blackout hit swaths of Venezuela on Monday, including the capital of Caracas and a major oil-producing province, darkening office buildings and homes and knocking out traffic lights, witnesses said.
It was the second time this year the OPEC nation’s electricity grid, creaking from outdated infrastructure, suffered a major outage.
Venezuela’s oil refineries are hit by frequent outages. But it was not immediately possible to reach officials from the state-run oil industry for information on Monday’s blackout.
Roy: Andrew is in a dither because Sarah is both more masculine and more feminine than he.
Sarah is not more masculine, but she is a wild she-wolf to Andrews’ poofy little French poodle, like comparing Xena the Warrior Princess to some 40 year old Star Wars fan who lives in his mother’s basement.
Doug sez: “Doug: I’ll never forget your initial description here of Afghanistan, Tony!”
That is so sweet of you!
Doug – I tried googling it – you know, the Old Belmont Club, and my first hit on the subject is not old enough, unfortunately: “Cedarford, Have you ever set foot in Afghanistan?”
In late 1977, Afghanistan was the least civilized place you would cross in going around the world overland. Not counting the jungle, of course.
Calling Afghanistan “least civilized” in context: you ridd a Turkish bus from Istanbul to Tehran (across days of high rock and sand desert with a mud town here and there), then the packed Iranian train to Meshad (across salt desert). But when you take the mini-bus from the Iran/Afghan border to Herat, you knew you are entering a lawless world.
Each town looked like Dodge City, with open sewer trenches running down both sides of the wide dirt road they call main street. The unruly thoroughfares were lined with heavy trucks, mountain-going transports decorated on every surface with gaudy sequins, reflectors and baubles.
In Kandahar, the Blue Mosque was the background, same wide dusty roads through downtowns of two-story wooden roadhouses. The Afghani mountain men walked in the dust as the trucks rumbled by, wearing the blooming Afghan pants and turban. Each man had a heavy rifle hanging habitually over his shoulder as he strolled through town, good guns like Lee Enfields and M-1′s. More often than not, these bearded grizzly mountain men would be walking down main street holding hands, one seeming to be the girl, one the man.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There certainly wasn’t anything wrong with it back then, especially considering the quaint custom of the rifles they all carry. Now they all have AK’s and Iranian EFP’s, btw, not as picturesque as 30 years ago, the good old days..?..
OTHER TOPIC:
I wonder what a Prez Obama would do in the event that Russia really breaks out a new Cold War, and China goes along with them, like they did in the First Cold War?
I’d prefer a McPrez in that situation, just for old times’ sake.
Doud slips up and says something nice every once in awhile
I’m less worried about a new cold war than i am about a hot war. Ivan doesn’t seem to much give a sh*t whether he gets in a hot war with us or not.
Relative achievement, is a nice way of measuring experience. Certain experiences in life tend to change the person who has experienced the stuff. Thus Combat vets come away from duty with a deep respect for the fallibility of mankind, and the certainty of death.
Certainly Governor Palin has gained experience aplenty in going toe to toe with corrupt politicians in her hometown as Mayor, in the region as empowered by the previous Alaska governor, and most recently as governor herself. Her perspective is different from those who engage in fraud and dabble in corruption. Her experience should stand us all in good stead going toe to toe with Putin or Reid or Pelosi in large part because it is not the experience of a District or US Atty, but rather the experience of someone who not only stood for change but delivered.
On the question of experience, in most of America it is “what have you done?” In Chicago and some other areas known for Urban decadence and intellectual blight and moral decay, the question must have been, “what have you done for me?”
Being able to grasp what is at stake, is only part of the equation, having the cojones to take on and take down a known evil is something you cannot learn in school, and do not experience dolling out dollars for Marxist front groups especially when that front group is a major part of the problem.
Buddy: I’m less worried about a new cold war than i am about a hot war. Ivan doesn’t seem to much give a sh*t whether he gets in a hot war with us or not.
If that was true, then Ivan would sink the navy ships in the Black Sea.
And the prospect of poor rusty old Ivan trying to fire it up to have a hot war worries you, Buddy? Really, don’t you think the Russians stretched the limits of their capabilities in invading Georgia, which is smaller than South Carolina, with a population of over 5 million, which means it’s got about as many people as Wisonsin or Maryland.
As an invading force they were (and are) pretty pathetic, stealing toilets and toilet paper, for god’s sake. Do we *really* think they have the wherewithal (still) to fly a bomber to the United States, avoid all our Star Wars paraphenalia and Top Guns shooting back at them, and then have either a bomb or a missile actually go off once it’s been targeted on which ever is the lucky city the drunken Russian navigator has been told to aim for?
Personally, after 50-some years of playing Russian roulette with a ditzy bear with hurted feelings, I would really rather enjoy the opportunity to get down and dirty with that bunch of lying, stealing, AIDS-carrying, orphan-abandoning drunken bullies.
If they insist on being paranoid about EVERYthing, let’s give ‘em something to be paranoid about.
Obama as Napoleon? Somehow Sullivan is better when preaching at the bath house than selling the Dalibama’s military genius. If the Dalibama actually had command of a military force I expect he would have commanded the Romans at the at Adrianiople. He’s a few shilling short of a pound-both the annointed one and Sullivan.
Great link, Storm-Rider. I like this guy Igor Shafarevich. I wish I had been exposed to him way back in college (1978-82). I would have skipped the detour I took into revisionist Marxism. But, you know, it was a valuable experience. I think I know and understand a lot of contemporary socialist thought. More than your average, activist, placard carrying “progressive.” There is value in knowing your enemy intimately. So, ten years of my life were not wasted after all.
Today, as my wife and I were enjoying the pool in the backyard, I was thinking about how perhaps this “experience” thing is overrated. What really does matter is accomplishment. But what is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT than accomplishment is having a sharp mind and solid thinking skills. Sarah Palin has it in spades. Sen. Joe Biden does not have this. Listening to any audio clip of his rambling thoughts, one can only conclude that his is a mind seeking a clear mathematical equation. (my metaphor). He’s been wrong on just about everything in his career in the Senate. He came into the Senate in January of 1973. I was a senior in high school then. My God, that’s a long time to be spinning your wheels! What’s even more pathetic is the fact that Delaware’s voters keep sending him back, despite his lack of achievement and wisdom.
I think Sarah Palin has better instincts than Joe.
Fred, I’m glad you are enjoying Igor Shafarevich; he is a giant in my mind along with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote the introduction to “The Socialist Phenomenon. These men were not only giants intellectually, they were moral giants; and Alexander Solzhenitsyn came face to face with the Soviet Gulag – it’s a wonder he didn’t get the old bullet through the head. I’ve spent a great deal of time picking out these jewels from my reading Mr. Shafarevich’s most excellent book on “World Socialism.” Here are the concluding excerpts; I’ll provide a summary of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s introduction to this book as well.
“The proposition that a striving for self-destruction is the main impulse in socialism has been extracted from a multi-stage analysis of socialist ideology, and is not taken directly from the writings of socialist thinkers or the slogans of socialist movements. It seems that those in the grip of socialist ideology are as little governed by any conscious understanding of this goal as a singing nightingale is concerned with the future of its species. The ideology’s impact is through the emotions, which render the ideology attractive to man and induce him to be ready for sacrifice on its behalf. Spiritual elation and inspiration are the kinds of emotions experienced by the participants in socialist movements. This accounts, too, for the behavior of the leaders of socialist movements in the thick of the fight, down through the ages–their seemingly inexhaustible reserves of energy as pamphleteers, agitators, and organizers.” Igor Shafarevich
“We have arrived at this view of socialism in attempting to account for the contradictions evident in the phenomenon at first glance. And now, looking back, we feel confident that our approach indeed accounts for many of socialism’s peculiarities. Understanding socialism as one of the manifestations of the allure of death explains its hostility toward individuality, its desire to destroy those forces which support and strengthen human personality: religion, culture, family, individual property. It is consistent with the tendency to reduce man to the level of a cog in the state mechanism, as well as with the attempt to prove that man exists only as a manifestation of non-individual features, such as production or class interest.” Igor Shafarevich
“There is, first of all, the profound experience of Russia, the significance of which we are only now beginning to understand. The question therefore arises: will this experience be sufficient? Is it sufficient for the entire world and especially for the West? Indeed, is it sufficient for Russia? Shall we be able to comprehend its meaning? Or is mankind destined to pass through this experience on an immeasurably larger scale? There is no doubt that if the ideals of Utopia are realized universally, mankind, even in the barracks of the universal City of the Sun, shall find the strength to regain its freedom and to preserve God’s image and likeness–human individuality–once it has glanced into the yawning abyss. But will even that experience be sufficient? For it seems just as certain that the freedom of will granted to man and to mankind is absolute, that it includes the freedom to make the ultimate choice–between life and death.” Igor Shafarevich
robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
the russians know if they get into it with us, either we wipe them completely out, or we maul them so badly that the chinese eat them for hors d’ourves (sp?). they are in a terminal decline and know it; gutshot and staggering.
Here is an excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s introduction to Igor Shafarevich’s book, and following this is an excerpt from David Chilton’s summary of “The Socialist Phenomenon.” Mr. Shafarevich’s book is rather long, but obviously rewarding; Mr. Chilton’s summary essay is probably the best place to start.
“World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them–all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis…. The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct–also laid bare by Shafarevich–these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach…. The author also convincingly demonstrates the diametrical opposition between the concepts of man held by religion and by socialism. Socialism seeks to reduce human personality to its most primitive levels and to extinguish the highest, most complex, and “God-like” aspects of human individuality. And even equality itself, that powerful appeal and great promise of socialists throughout the ages, turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality qua identity, equality seen as the movement of variety toward uniformity…. It could probably be said that the majority of states in the history of mankind have been “socialist.” But it is also true that these were in no sense periods or places of human happiness or creativity.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
“Shafarevich begins with a question: How can we explain the remarkable fact that socialism, which criticizes society for its injustice and inequality, results in even greater inequality? How is it that a system which agitates for freedom has so consistently produced slavery on a massive scale? ….. This Shafarevich says, is the basic allure of Socialism; this is the secret of its seductive power and its driving force; it is nothing less than a deeply emotional, ecstatic urge toward self-destruction. The prospect of the utter annihilation of oneself and of mankind is precisely the attraction of Socialism, and possesses a subliminal motivating power far surpassing any rational economic argument. For Socialism is the final religion of the Theophobians, the God-haters; and God has told us of the inescapable psychological condition of those who deny Him: “He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate Me love death.”” David Chilton
freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/newslet/preface/03pref.pdf
Sounds like Los Angeles Tony!
Encounters with Barnyard Animals, unlicensed food vendors, MS-13 members and tribal politicians becoming ever more common.
“More often than not, these bearded grizzly mountain men would be walking down main street holding hands, one seeming to be the girl, one the man.”
—
I liked the original picture of a man and young boy coming down from the mountains together better.
Doug,
Aloha.
I’m outta here on Thursday, so the wife and I can do our week-later 20th anniversary on The Big Island at a resort on Hapuna Beach. It will be a very long flight going and coming, on account of the fuel costs and American Airlines having changed our itinerary several times since April.
Sorry, Wretchard, for interjecting a bit of a personal message on the board. It won’t happen again (I hope). Just thought a member out there would appreciate my appreciation for his state.
“Ivan doesn’t seem to much give a sh*t whether he gets in a hot war with us or not.”
Ivan cares. His problem is he is stuck in the box within which Saddam found himself. Run your bluff, Ivan. Steal what you can. Frighten our ninnies and the Euro-ninnies. Just be very certain not to give us the chance to play Highway of Death, Vol. II on you.
EU had their emergency meeting today –check it out –Russia as much as said, ”do anything we don’t like and we’ll kick your ass” (meanwhile overflying Bear bombers along the northern edge of Europe). Yesterday some Red admiral said he could sink the Nato flotilla in 20 minutes. That’s quite a pop-off, from an admiral. And the latest dead dissident newsman –gov’t agents arrested him, and dumped his body 20 minutes later, bullet thru the head. Unmistakable signal: ‘we no longer care what you think’. Today they accused USA of smuggling weapons to Georgia in the humanitarian aid. USA denied it –but why? –why SHOULDn’t we be re-arming Georgia? We’re just having to tread lightly because they got a bunch of arty trained on Tblisi, and are giving every appearance of a hair trigger. And the invasion itself –Ivan is spoiling for ”settling the frozen conflicts” –and is setting it up so that our every counter becomes their further “national security need” to settle those ”frozens”. He’s assuming these border wars will stay limited, and that fighting along his borders he can win. This means that every bordering neighbor is now a hostage against us fighting back anywhere at all. Interior lines of communication –what made Germany so hard to defeat. And it’s September –be cold before long. Aggression verbal & real –sure he’s running a bluff that NATO won’t declare war –EU today didn’t do much to disabuse him. Whole thing is a”stolen march” –that will take some effort and will to redress. Nato needs to start a build-up. That 40% of its oil & gas coming from the target of the build-up –that situation ain’t in the books anywhere i know of. Unknown territory.
Buddy,
I hope the Georgians make their country a death trap for the Russians and their animal Chechyns and Ossetian cossacks. Seriously, I hope the Georgians find it within themselves to do a fierce guerrilla war against those savages. Especially the Chechyns and Ossetians. Really make it terrifying for them. For Russian soldiers, an honorable death will suffice.
It’ll be a long cold European winter. No matter what path this takes. Question will it bring out the best or the worst of Europe and it civilization.
I think Ivan has more to bargain for and with, I don’t believe it is all a large bluff but mostly, still call it we must. Or prepare to face greater consequences.
Eventually the oil prices are going to collapse back to a fundamentally realistic level, and when that happens it is going to hurt Russia big time. And I will laugh my ass off at the thought of those thugs not rolling in as much dough. Russia does not have much of an economy outside of natural resources. So, right now they are flying high, but eventually things settle back to the norm.
Well, in a couple of months the Caucasus passes will be snowed in, meaning that the only way to resupply its army in Georgia will be by air or by sea. The Georgians could use some surface to air missiles to make life doubly miserable for the Russian army. Give them a taste of what it was like for the German Sixth Army up there on the Volga in the winter of 1942-43.
calling Winston Churchill….
What about the Chechens and Cossacks burning cop cars in the streets of St. Paul? At least Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were funny in an acid addled sort of way. These guys are scary in their delusional nihilism. They need some cracked skulls. The last time Brownshirt thugs tried to subvert the political process was in Weimer Germany.
If those guys want to wreck stuff, they oughtta go wreck about 10% of the unsold house inventory. Do the common folk a REAL favor and put a bottom in so’s the banks could start lending again. Then after they fix the housing mkt air drop ‘em in South Ossetia.
already russian companies are effectively frozen out of the credit markets. no western companies will operate or invest there much longer. soon russians won’t be able to legally travel anywhere. the thing is, we can anhilate them if it comes to that, whereas i don’t believe they can do the same to us. there days are numbered.
Have a great time, Fred!
I think Kamuela, right up the hill, is one of the nicest places in Hawaii. (Probably because it most reminds me of San Luis Obispo County, CA, which I will always miss.)
You might want to take a few virtual trips via Google Maps between now and your departure. Amazing what you can see from space.
Kamehameha’s birthplace is not far, but it’s mostly just volcanic rocks in the middle of nowhere!
Enjoy!
Jeez I don’t have time to run with it but it seems to me that a lot of Shafarevich’s comments about socialism could be applied to Islam.
Those would be universal world views and their animosity towards individuality give them a lot in common including hostility towards The Great Satan.
Benj said: “I posted a few days back on what I thought was most valuable in Marx (avec caveats). But I’ll underline it one more time. As long as millions of folks have no choice but to sell their time – whether in factories or Thai whorehouses – Marx’s analysis of their dailiness on-the-cross will matter bigtime…”
Karl Marx was a nut; he saw people as “economic molecules” and cogs in the state mechanism. Karl Marx viewed human rights as reversible privileges provided to us little cogs and molecules by an all-powerful Socialist State – which he worshiped. Our founding fathers, on the other hand, viewed people as individuals – each made in the image of God – and each endowed with sacred irreversible human rights. Karl Marx did not believe that just government power derives from the consent of the governed; he believed that government power derives from an elite cabal of “Philosopher Kings” such as himself – no consent required. Karl Marx was the philosopher of the all-powerful Socialist State, the philosopher of tyranny.
As for people selling their time in factories, there is nothing wrong with that. Many peoople in my family worked in factories and/or farms. What is different under Marxism, is that the Socialist State owns those factories and farms, and the Socialist State is the worst possible employer imaginable; you are employed as a slave by the tyrant state. Human life, human liberty, human creativity and human prosperity are crushed by the all-powerful Marxist Socialist State; it can’t be otherwise because at the end of the day those little factory workers are recognized as economic molecules, and molecules do not deserve any God-given human rights.
“The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.” Karl Marx
“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” Karl Marx
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.” Karl Marx
“Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution….Workingmen of all countries, unite!” Karl Marx
“The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.” Karl Marx
“I declared to them point-blank: we have received our mandate as the representatives of the proletarian party from no one but ourselves.” Karl Marx
Benj said: “America IS a secular state. thank (ah) God. Maybe you’d prefer to live in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Baathist Iraq”
Only partially true, Our Constitution is secular law, but its purpose is to secure our God-given human rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Our Declaration of Independence refers to Divine laws which are higher than our Constitution. “All men are created equal” is a Divine law which was violated by the original Constitution, and which was amended first by war and later by the pen.
“The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.” Abraham Lincoln
“That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” is a Divine law which means that these essential human rights are sacred and cannot be justly revoked by any man, any Marxist Politburo, or any other government of man, including our own.
The difference between the United States and Saudi Arabia is that our Divine Laws establish human liberty and justice; Saudi Sharia Law, on the other hand suppresses human liberty and justice. Their god is not the same God found in our Declaration of Independence.
Oops, those two preceding comments were meant for another article: “Who is Barak Obama?”
ht
tp:
//ww
w.gutenberg.
org/files/13202/13202.txt
(trying to trick filter –put above together with no spaces)
Re Gettysburg topic –this complete on the web, 1st-person account of a confederate soldier is riveting.
Fred: To me, the most devastating critique of Marxism comes from Popper, Kuhn et al. philosophers of science. They destroy not only “economic determinism” but also any determinism. For some reason, these philosophers don’t seem to be regarded as anti-Marxists by either Marxists or non-Marxists.
As to Palin’s inexperience, I suggest foreign affairs is not all that difficult for people of principle. The same basic ideas apply to negotiation in foreign affairs as to a mayor negotiating a site plan. Add in solid and principled understanding of what’s right, good and leads to success and you have about all you need. Rinse and repeat.
People like Biden are said to have 36 year’s experience. Actually, he has six month’s experience 72 times.
”Actually, he has six month’s experience 72 times”
i like that a lot –maybe even ”three month’s experience 144 times”
Nugget of truth, that.