Friday, December 31, 2010

New Year, 2011


When the tyre tracks have filled with sand and the sand has worn away the footprints and all that's left of the windmill blades is the windmill of your mind; when there is no one left and bread crusts drop from Heaven because there is no human hand cast; when all our yesterdays are black and white and faded sepia, dune colours and rust; when all of that has worn away and one is left to look at the creak that spun and now is still in the wind; then the windmills of your mind meet no mind, those minds having flown like yesterday's wind.
Some of my friends do not greet this new year. They live in my mind, memories gliding across a stormy sky, grit flying and stinging, sand drifting and settling on a deserted beach where we used to be. Dead.

But some of us still live, and new people come about to bring pleasure to the world by their lives and being. You might be one of those new people in the world. I hope you live a long time and well. Happy New Year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXFoPFDDN-Q

"The Windmills of Your Mind" (Les moulins de mon cœur) is a song with music by Michel Legrand, as well as Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman, and lyrics by the Bergmans, from the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair. Noel Harrison performed the song for the film score.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windmills_of_Your_Mind

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Fear of Flying

"So... what happens if you get an erection while your getting pat down? Is it considered a weapon and if so how do they confiscate it?"

Infamous M.

http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=13752120

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas card for Muslims

A merry Christmas to all our Muslims readers.

Best wishes for the New Year.

We are hushed

Titian has Joseph hush the crowd. How good it is sometimes at Christmas. A father concerned about a baby.

A painter who thinks about such a thing. He knows the whole of the story of the life to come and go. He thinks of the baby. Tomorrow is later. For this time, we hush and let it be in peace.

Annunciation

Who would guess that Tanner could have such a life? Who would guess that a woman sitting in a hovel could have good news? We are blessed. Yeah, even though it seems so often that scepticism is the right road. Good things do come, even if not for you or me specifically all the time. But look how lucky we are to see even a copy of such a beautiful painting. We are blessed. What a gift to Man.


Tanner, Henry Ossawa

The Annunciation
1898
Oil on canvas
57 x 71 1/2 in. (144.78 x 181.61 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Friday, December 24, 2010

Christmas '10

R. M. Rilke, "Ich bin nur einer deiner Ganzgeringen" (Trans. R.Bly)

No one lives his life.

Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures,

We come of age as masks.
Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.

Maybe all paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived things.

I expect this to be my last Christmas in Canada. I'll be moving to a non-Christian country, Buddhist, for a start, and perhaps Hindu in the long-term. There are things to learn and things to wonder about, and that requires confrontation with the real rather than the merely imagined. I find that it's often easier to confront the real when one is confronted with the strange, with a face of reality that doesn't resemble the known. There won't be a final understanding, I suspect, of the True, but there can be glimmers.

I hope to see you all here, all of us pilgrims in search of something more than the assumption.

Merry Christmas.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Obama hands over Presidency to--

And now for something completely... Clinton!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dODwyYpDmqY

This is so funny I can't stop laughing. Maybe not our first worst president, but certainly our worst worst president. Obama just handed the job of President of the United States of America to Bill Clinton. Well, why not, Clinton has more experience at it, and Obama had to nog with his sleeveless wife. But still....

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Wheels: Life on a Roll

I've been thinking about the wheel. I've been thinking about how damned useless it is in the world of nature.

Vegetables don't go very far from home, trees rooting and branching, and that becomes the game over. Some creeper vines move a bit, but not so much over-all. For the vegetable kingdom, life is where they find it. Not so much so with the fish world, most water creatures being mobile, a few things remaining anchored to one place waiting for the world to come to them. Birds, lizards, middling things move. Animals move. Man moves a lot. Man covers nearly all places on Earth, which perhaps only microscopic things do as well; but man moves because he can imagine, and it prompts him to move often times for no other reason than simple, impulsive curiosity and a sense of adventure.

Man, too, is compelled in his movements to take with him things not of his own self, unlike most creatures. It would be a rare sight to see a group of naked people wandering far from home. To carry what the person and people need to move and survive, they, we, carry things. We are our own transportation at worst and least. One might assume that the first form of transportation other than packing things of ones own back was the pack animal that is another man. If a man can use less than too much of his own energy to make another man use his energy for the sake of the stronger, the stronger has all his left-over energy-- and whatever he can squeeze from his slave. It might be less than ideal, but it's probably likely that the strong did the least while the weak did the most. But there is curiosity and ambition. It makes a strong man want more. Maybe he wanted more slaves to take him in greater ease to explore farther than ever. Or maybe he put his slaves to use to make better transportation. Man is not content to be still.

[Musical interlude.]

To move far, move fast, and to efficiently carry what we might need and retrieve what we might get in our travels, one of the earliest forms of transportation other than walking and carrying ourselves was the waterways, and rafts. Even such a mechanical retard as I can easily intuit a raft from mere observation of water and land. Using ropes and poles, one can master a river with relative ease. It beats walking, and man is prone to labour saving. Man is even prone to saving the labour of slaves if that energy can be put to more efficient use elsewhere.

Raft-builder slaves and bargemen make better slaves than those who walk, I would assume. One gets a better return for the slave labour energy put out, which costs in food, if nothing else. If slaves are scarce or hard or costly to replace, the incentive to make things easier for them is compelling. I think we're talking water-ways here.

It's easier and safer to tame a river than to tame a horse. River transportation must have come long before domesticated horses began the long haul they are made for now. Domesticated horses might have a long period with man before they were ridden or packed, but in such a case they must have been livestock meant for eating. Transportation horses must come later, c. 4,000 years ago. Or more.

[T]he evidence is extremely persuasive that these steppe horses of 2100-1700 BCE were domesticated. Shortly after the period of these burials, the expansion of the domestic horse throughout Europe was little short of explosive. In the space of possibly 500 years, there is evidence of horse-drawn chariots in Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. By another 500 years, the horse-drawn chariot had spread to China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse


So I got thinking about the wheel. I look at this and see the wheel precedes the domesticated horse. I edited this piece below severely for length:

The oldest wheel known to-date was found in Mesopotamia and is believed to be over 5,500 years old.

Development of a Functional Wheel

Humans realized that heavy objects could be moved easier if something round, for example a fallen tree log, was placed under it and the object rolled over it.

They also realized that to move heavy objects one can use a sledge. Logs or sticks placed under an object drag the heavy object more easily. Then came the use of round logs and sledge together, using several logs or rollers in a row, dragging the sledge over one roller to the next. Then, a primitive axle. With time the sledges started to wear grooves into the rollers and humans noticed that the grooved rollers actually worked better, carrying the object further. If the grooves had a smaller circumference than the unworn parts of the roller, then dragging the sledge in the grooves required less energy to create a turning motion but created a greater distance covered when the larger part of the log roller turned. Cutting away the wood between the two inner grooves creates an axle.

http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/wheel.htm

The wheel works well for us in the modern world, and we would likely die en masse without it today. But fewer than a mere 250 years ago, aside from mill stones and such, pottery wheels, and so on, there can't have been a great deal of use for wheels. Wheels are useless in a forest, in a swamp, jungle, mountains, deserts, and so on. One needs roads or paths of some solid kind to make the use of wheels work. Most places to this day do not support the use of wheeled traffic. Without wheels, most places are either mostly inaccessible or very difficult to get to, i.e. probably not worth the effort without some other, easier form of transportation than wheeled. Lacking that some other easier mode of transportation, one can assume that most people did as little travelling by choice as necessary.

Some people will walk, no matter. And there are boats and animals. But give a man wheels and a way, and away he goes.

Even for those to whom comfort is not essential for travelling, the Via Dolorosa lives up to its name. As far as Roman roads go, it's in fair good shape. For a man in fair good shape, a twenty mile ride in a cart over that would be a long stretch. Anything fragile in a cart, not to mention the cart itself, would soon enough be broken on those wheels. Mass transit? Maybe if people were outrunning the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Otherwise, transportation would be mostly restricted to soldiers and merchants and the merely curious, maybe including the motivated pilgrim who had suffering on the agenda in the first place. As recreation or as aesthetic experience travel is unlikely for most but the richest who could afford the Grand Tour in the height of Romantic style, for what it was worth. Travel would be for the common man a matter of need, and dire need at that, driven to the road in the hope of food in times of famine, safety from plague, perhaps, or simple exile. Coaches? For the well-to-do. Carts? Few and far between when it is cheaper and easier to walk and carry. Most of history will show that most men were rooted to the ground like trees. Wheels would be unimportant to the majority. If the wheel hadn't been invented till 250 years ago, life would still have been the same for most. Wheels without roads? Kind of pointless. Wheels without solid and flat roads? Terrible and nearly worthless. But wheels attached to fixed axles and travelling on a smooth, hard-surface road? We are talking paradise. Freedom for the man. It's the Modern world. A wheel world in which we are blessed to be able to roll through life laughing all the way, should we so choose.

[Musical ending.]

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Remembering our war with Japan

On this anniversary of Pearl Harbour Day I like to think of those who struggled against Japanese fascism long before it became a matter of life and death for our nation, those who flung themselves into the war without prompting and command, without social sanction, without, one might say, need. I think of the Rape of Nanking, and I think of The Flying Tigers.

This day I remember too those who flew into battle early, leading our whole nation by example.

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2007/12/tiger-tiger.html

Monday, December 06, 2010

What could go wrong?

She got a sweater for her birthday, a big Ess embroidered on it. I said, "You must be a supergirl."

Happy birthday, Super Girl.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Howard Rotberg presents Jamie Glazov in a new Western Classic, "Showdown with Evil"

I thought it was going to co-star Clint Eastwood. Well, turns out this is a different kind of Western, one a little more important to our lives at this time in the West.

Jamie Glazov has a new book out recently, Showdown with Evil, featured at Front Page Magazine. You can read the review there, or you can trust what you know about Glazov and order the book directly from the publisher, Howard Rotberg's Mantua Press, or from Amazon if it's still in stock [which it is as of this writing]. Frontpage writes:

In this extraordinary collection of interviews, Jamie Glazov demonstrates that consistent, searching questions can both enrich and impart coherence to disparate answers: for what emerges from 29 interviews conducted over eight years is an illuminating and important commentary on the largest issues facing America and the West.
We here at Covenant Zone in Vancouver, Canada know both the publisher and the author to an extent, prompting this promotion in particular. However, it is on the strength of the work itself that I suggest looking at this book closely. Glazov is a good thinker and writer, and the subject is important to us generally. As readers and writers I think this is worth our consideration. Link to Glazov's work at Mantua Books directly here.

More at Jihad Watch.

And at Blazing Catfur.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Hallelujah, Chorus.

This video came in the mail recently, and though it's a bit early for Christmas, it's good for everyday.

I was one of the lucky visitors to the Seaway Mall that day. At first when I
heard the singing start I thought it was a recording but then I looked towards
the food court and I saw a man standing above the crowd singing. It was
absolutely compelling and we were drawn to witness an unforgettable
performance.

I even found myself joining in the singing! Thank you Chorus Niagara and Seaway
Mall for treating us to such a visceral expression of the joy of
Christmas.

Subject: Christmas Food Court
Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!

Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE&feature=youtube_gdata_player>

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Thanksgiving

As a boy I used to work myself to exhaustion after school loading sacks of cement so I could have a couple of hours riding in the forest after. Ah, you gotta know the smell of horse on a leather saddle in the mountain pines to be so thankful of life.

I came close to buying a hand-tooled saddle in the jungle at a village by the river a while back. I'd been in the jungle for close to a year then, and I came across a big hacienda as I crossed a river in the wilds, like Disneyland carved out of the jungle, men on horses herding cattle. Alligators and vultures and snakes, and, hanging from a raw beam, the finest damn saddle I have ever seen. All I had to do was carry it out and keep it.

Next time.

But you might wonder, what on earth will I do with a saddle in the middle of a city? I'm on the move, too, planning to go to Asia for a few years or so, and why would I put my thoughts into a saddle. 'Cause when my last visa comes through, off to the undiscovered country, I want to be set for the trip, to have with me the things of worth in this life that I live, that I can lay down my head full of antistrophes, and rest on fine leather and old thoughts of home.

Man's feeble race what ills await,
Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,
Disease and Sorrow's weeping Train,
And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate

No sorrows for me. I'll ride home plain. I'll turn to you in my saddle and wave you at the border on the far horizon.

1 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.

2 Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

3 Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

5 For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

In site of the journey's hardships and the load to bear, having come to this clearing and seen, I have much to be thankful for, and much to come.

[Thanks to CGW for Psalm 100]

Friday, November 19, 2010

Drive the leftards nuts

This is almost enough to prompt me to swap my bike for a Hummer.

In keeping with the Tea Party’s spirit of resistance and freedom, you may soon be able to express your defiance with a Gadsden Flag license plate. As reported first by Right Side News in October, the original idea was the brainchild of Virginia Tea Party group 912 Richmond. On October 14thHenrico County, Virginia, Delegate John O’Bannon proposed HB 1418 to make this plate official.


Full story here: http://biggovernment.com/jmsimpson/2010/11/18/gadsden-flag-license-plates-a-nationwide-movement/

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Brilliant line. Not my policy.

"Submissions will be accepted without judgement. This is a safe place, a nest of trust in a tree of understanding."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/american-narcissus-cont_516834.html

Monday, November 15, 2010

Palin America/Obama America

Below are three links that show America as it is this day. The first two, photos and video, show patriots supporting the nation and its children. The last is from Zombie's explorations of San Francisco. All three links are likely to raise a visceral reaction, the first two of pride and wonder, the latter of sickness and disgust.

http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/11/wow-hundreds-of-riders-with-us-flags-escort-cody-alicea-to-school-today-video/

http://livewire.kcra.com/Event/Many_Rally_To_Support_Boys_Flag_Display

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/11/14/nancy-pelosis-san-francisco/

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Who Hates Sarah Palin?

I haven't really been curious about those who write hate-comments about Sarah Palin on the Internet, but it turns out they are known. Zombie, essayist/photographer from San Francisco, has them on film, if you want to look. Not for the weak.

We here at TLC realize that our fabulous new hit series Sarah Palin’s Alaska may not appeal to all our viewers. We understand that a substantial segment of the population has no interest in watching Sarah Palin or taking a tour of Alaska.

And so it is with great pleasure that we’d like to announce a new show carefully designed to appeal to those of you who don’t like Sarah Palin, her state, or her values:


http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/11/14/nancy-pelosis-san-francisco/

So, this is where we get the anti-Palin comments from. Yeah, Palin is a moron. Those people know.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Remembrance Day, 2010

Georges Clemenceau (1841 – 1929) says, "War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military."

Aside from that quotation and a silly-looking hat he wore, he is also known for his determination to continue the struggle against the Germans in WWI, which many French were willing to quit: "La guerre jusqu'au bout." [War until the end.] He had some German sympathisers in the French government tossed into prison, and after the war, he was a significant force behind the Paris Peace Talks, which economically crippled Germany for some years afterward. His quotation above is perhaps in anger over the American general Pershing's refusal to send American troops into battle as Clemenceau saw fit. I read a biography of him when I was a young man, and I heard family stories about him as a boy. Like most British families, mine suffered losses, and they remembered. For me now, those who died would mostly be my childrens' age. Today, those would be pot-smoking metro-sexual skateboarders.

I don't have any kids, and if I did, I don't think I'd be keen on them going to war with our military as is. I'd prefer they stay home and raise children of their own while I fight instead. War is too serious to be left to the military, and it's too important to be fought by youths. It's better left to men of age and experience, men who have a settled understanding of its importance, men who understand that victory is essential in war, and who will fight to win. War becomes a man's task, not a task for boys.

For the Modernist, war often means applying technology against remote figures rather than actual face to face combat with a remorseless personal enemy. People who push buttons and kill with remote controlled missiles would probably panic if they had instead to stick a pencil into a man's eye or cut off his thumbs with a pair of rose cutters. The saving grace of the military is that if one is part of it, the killing is abstract, for the most part, the responsibility for death being on the shoulders of the organisation rather than on those of the individual. War becomes a sacred activity, in the sense that one is distant from it. But one is also alienated from it. One isn't personally involved in it the way one is personally involved in a bar fight. It's not personal, so one is not personally responsible for the greater effort, only for following through with ones private duty to the greater whole, the nation and the state. There's a place for that, and a good one. Patriots are good. Killing some guy because one has a personal hatred of him is not good.

However, I do think war is too serious a business for the military and too important to leave to governments. I like to think it is the right occupation of citizens, free and thinking men who fight for their nations and people. Governments can organise it well in times of need, if there is another government doing the same against them. But in our time, for the most part, such is not the case. Our Modernist governments can organise so well that few need to go to war, and when they do, the government must do all in its power to restrain its ability to destroy the enemy. We could, for example, annihilate the entire Muslim world in a matter of weeks if we chose to. They are totally defenceless against us. Their only salvation is our refusal to destroy our own self-worth by letting ourselves indulge in such a hideous murder. Unfortunately, we allow the enemy in small numbers slip into our open lands to do their evil and we, being so strong, do nothing from fear of over-acting. We are mis-matched in this struggle, too powerful to fight back. So, our military is not the appropriate vehicle to wage war on our enemies. Instead, old men are the right men to do so. Our old men against theirs. Single combat, more or less, rather than the slaughter of the masses, which we remember this day, Remembrance Day, 2010

A Rose is a Jose is a Rose by any other name

Are you having a kid and wondering what kind of metro-sexual name to hang on him? Here's a link to some real help in that area.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-09/boy-baby-names-gender-neutral-trend-from-cullen-to-cameron/

I find that life is definitely still unfair, and that any girl who would agree to my first choice is a girl I'd flee from pretty damned fast: Dexter.

Still, it's metro enough for the day.

Evil People [This means you] Must Die!

I don't know anything about the author, Ted Rall, but this sure seems like it was written, if not for me, about me. I like it!

From Rall's new book:

Christian fundamentalists, the millennial end-of-the-worlders obsessed with the Left Behind series about the End Times, neo-Nazi racists, rural black-helicopter Michigan Militia types cut from the same inbred cloth as Timothy McVeigh, allied with "mainstream" gun nuts and right-wing Republicans, have been planning, preparing, and praying for the destruction of the "Godless," "secular" United States for decades. In the past, they formed groups like the John Birch Society and the Aryan Nations. Now the hard Right has a postmodern, decentralized non-organization organization called the Tea Party.

Right-wing organizational names change, but they amount to the same thing: the reactionary socio-political force-the sole force-poised to fill the vacuum when collapse occurs. The scenario outlined by Margaret Atwood's prescient novel The Handmaid's Tale-rednecks in the trenches, hard military men running things, minorities and liberals taken away and massacred, setting the stage for an even more extreme form of laissez-faire corporate capitalism than we're suffering under today-is a fair guess of how a post-U.S. scenario will play out unless we prepare to turn it in another direction...

A war is coming. At stake: our lives, the planet, freedom, living. The government, the corporations, and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an Axis of Evil. Are you going to fight back? Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?...

Yes, I'm joking. The author is insane, in a clinical sense, says Dr. Dag. But don't take my word for it if'n you don't want to. Read the 30 some odd pages, very short, and decide for yourself just what the Left is all about too often.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36016527/The-Anti-American-Manifesto-Ted-Rall-EXCERPT

Excerpt lifted from American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/someone_please_take_pity_on_te.html

NB. I've read some of Robert Paxton's work on fascism, referred to in the body of the linked text. Paxton seems to be an average scholar and not insane. Maybe he's different in person, or maybe he's changed over the years, or maybe the author above is just insane and Paxton is a normal person after all. Regardless, this quotation above is just about what we should expect from a leftist of any true degree.

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Conformity Hippies and the Dictatorship of Servility

In this day, Obama is seen by many to be a genius, in part due to his careers in quango money-grubbing, getting money from corporations to do good for the poor; and his genius is further demonstrated in that his father is a Black African. Obama has a Harvard law degree, and he can talk and talk and talk, if only with a tele-prompter, saying leftist clichés with some flair. Obviously, that impressed too many people. Obama is our president, on the strength of public gullibility and a willingness to conform to the demands of their peers in the pursuit of coolness, i.e. electing a "Black" president, regardless of who he might be, so long as he is a Leftist, i.e. an "authentic" Black.

Obama is Black, but he's also see-through thin. America elected to the presidency a talking store mannequin. Democracy produced for us a dictatorship of conformity and servility. We elected a figure because he looks good in a suit, and many of those who doubted his abilities fell into line with the time's fad and voted for him too. Who wants to show up at the dance in last year's fashions? Hard to get laid doing that. As is, we're all getting screwed now, though not as pleasantly as so many had hoped.

Below is some of an excerpted essay from a book that looks promising. We might see Obama voters in it. We might see ourselves, and find clarity about ourselves, and clarity too about the transparencies of Obama and his groupies.

Morals & the servile mind

by Kenneth Minogue

On the diminishing moral life of our democratic age.

Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians, and most sensible governments in the past left moral faults to the churches. But democratic citizenship in the twenty-first century means receiving a stream of improving “messages” from politicians. Some may forgive these intrusions because they are so well intentioned. Who would defend prejudice, debt, or excessive drinking? The point, however, is that our rulers have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in their exercise of authority—they are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. Nor should we be in any doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step towards totalitarianism.

We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into demanding political solutions to social problems. To demand help from officials we rather despise argues for a notable lack of logic in the demos. The statesmen of eras past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to take over the risks of our everyday life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded to politicians seeking to bribe us with such promises with derision. Today, the demos votes for them.

Our rulers, then, increasingly deliberate on our behalf, and decide for us what is the right thing to do. The philosopher Socrates argued that the most important activity of a human being was reflecting on how one ought to live. Most people are not philosophers, but they cannot avoid encountering moral issues. The evident problem with democracy today is that the state is pre-empting—or “crowding out,” as the economists say—our moral judgments. Nor does the state limit itself to mere principle. It instructs us on highly specific activities, ranging from health provision to sexual practices. Yet decisions about how we live are what we mean by “freedom,” and freedom is incompatible with a moralizing state. That is why I am provoked to ask the question: can the moral life survive democracy?

[....]

It is this element of dehumanization that has produced what I am calling “the servile mind.” The charge of servility or slavishness is a serious one. It emerges from the Classical view that slaves lacked the capacity for self-movement and had to be animated by the superior class of masters. They were creatures of impulse and passion rather than of reason. Aristotle thought that some people were “natural slaves.” In our democratic world, by contrast, we recognize at least some element of the “master” (which means, of course, self-managing autonomy) in everyone. Indeed, in our entirely justified hatred of slavery, we sometimes think that the passion for freedom is a constitutive drive of all human beings. Such a judgment can hardly survive the most elementary inspection of history. The experience of both traditional societies and totalitarian states in the twentieth century suggests that many people are, in most circumstances, happy to sink themselves in some collective enterprise that guides their lives and guarantees them security. It is the emergence of freedom rather than the extent of servility that needs explanation.

Servility is not an easy idea with which to operate, and it should be clear that the world we live in, being human, cannot be fully captured in ideal structures. But in understanding Western life, it is difficult to avoid contrasting courage and freedom on the one hand with servility and submission on the other. We think of freedom as being able to do what we merely want to do, but this is a condition cherished no less by the slave than by the master. When the cat’s away, the mice will play! Here is the illusion that freedom is merely having a lot of options available. What freedom actually means is the capacity not only to choose but also to face the consequences of one’s choice. To accept employment, to marry, to join a cause, to sustain a family, and so on, all involve responsibilities, and it is in the capacity to sustain self-chosen responsibilities, the steadiness to face up to the risks and inevitable ennui inseparable from a settled life, that we exhibit our freedom. And its essence is that each individual life is determined by this set of chosen commitments and virtues (whatever they may be) rather than by some set of external determinants or regulations. Independence of mind requires thinking one’s own thoughts: poor things many of them may be, but they are our own, and we have found some reasons for thinking them.

The problem about identifying servility in our modern Western societies results from the assumption that freedom and independence are admirable, and their opposites not. Hence the strong human tendency to trade off freedom for some other condition of things—money, security, approval—must take on the appearance of a virtue. A further problem with servility is that its opposite might seem to be a swaggering parade of one’s own independence, but this is just as likely to be a cover for a servile spirit. Since the essence of servility is dependence of mind, independence is compatible with situational caution....

The real opposite of servility is individualism, as it has long been understood in European thought. But the very word “individuality” itself is often confused with egoistic self-interest and the pursuit of mere impulse. [...]

[S]ervility is also evident in the state’s concern to protect any set of people from prejudice, offense, or danger to self-esteem. Immigrants in earlier times did not need, and many would have regarded as demeaning, the current apparatus designed to protect supposedly vulnerable people. Courage and resilience did for these people what the state now does for their successors. Such legislation, in protecting people from victimhood is, paradoxically, simultaneously an education in how to be a victim.

To legislate opinion is itself to create a servile relationship. Codification of this kind destroys the freedom to respond to each other (within the law) as we choose.

[....]

The European societies that became democracies in the course of the last two centuries understood themselves as associations of self-moving individuals. Rich and poor alike made their own arrangements within a civil society containing a large and increasing range of associations: social, charitable, religious, mutually supportive, unionized. These associations expressed that capacity for spontaneous institutional creativity which so impressed visitors to Europe, and especially to Anglophone countries. The crucial mark of independence was the ability to generate the resources needed for life without dependence on governmental subsidy, and it constituted “respectability.” No doubt it was sometimes easier for the rich to sustain such independence, but moral character was the crucial point. The respectable poor in the nineteenth century recognized themselves, and were recognized by others, as having a proud sense of their independence.

The major change from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is thus one in our very conception of society itself. In Europe, and even to some extent in the United States, it has become less an association of independent self-moving individuals than an association of vulnerable people whose needs must be met and sufferings mitigated by the power of the state. The idea of “vulnerability” has become such a cannibal of meanings that it has now acquired a remarkable range. The victims of crime were evidently vulnerable; in modern usage, however, the perpetrators of crime have also become vulnerable. The reason underlying this remarkable semantic development is that “society itself” has failed in its duty to instill decency and integrity in those who have turned to violence and crime. Here we have the most direct possible challenge to the basic idea of moral agency.

It is considerations of this sort that lead me to assimilate the moral order of Western societies in some degree to that of the slaves of the ancient world. We must today as citizens accommodate ourselves to increasing regulation and dependence on authority even to the point of falling in with the correct opinions. The moral world of the classical individualist emerged from the coherence of self-chosen commitments. His basic duty was to his own conception of himself. Contemporary moral life by contrast is marked by a greater involvement of external elements. It is not only that states regulate ever wider areas of life so that even family life becomes subject to demands for compliance. It is also that we have learned to pick up signals about respectable opinion from the responses of others—a feature of modern life that the sociologist David Riesman (in The Lonely Crowd) called “other directed.”

“Democracy” is central to this change in our condition not because it “causes” the change, but because most changes in our moral and political sentiments will sooner or later be recommended and justified as some form of democracy. What causes what in social life is so complicated that we can hardly be sure of any particular connection; we only ever grasp parts of it. Technology and economic enterprise, the secularization of life, changing opinions, new moral tastes—many such things are implicated in these changes. But the drive to equalize the conditions of a population, to institute something called “social justice,” to make society a model of “inclusion”—all such things will eventually be advanced as an element of “democracy.” Household democracy is men and women equally sharing the burdens of running the household. It may also involve granting children a vote on family matters. Educational democracy consists in switching resources to the pupils currently less capable of getting good results. No remnants of hereditary constitutions are safe from this homogenizing steamroller: Democratization is the most dramatic of all the corruptions of constitutionality in which separation and balance are to be replaced by a single ideal believed to solve all problems. The moral life can no more be isolated from this drive than anything else. It too must be democratized. And the result is to destroy individual agency.

[....]

Excerpted from: http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Morals---the-servile-mind-5318

This article has been excerpted from The Servile Mind, by Kenneth Minogue (Encounter Books, August 2010).


Monday, November 08, 2010

Commentators

I am becoming seriously interested in reading Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club, via Pajamas Media. Here he is in his own comment section:

One advantage the blogging format has over traditional news is the ability of the commenters to argue back. Paul Krugman closed comments because it was alleged he was being worsted by his commenters. To be worsted by your commenters is probably a good thing. Nobody’s blog is worth anything unless he can attract commenters who are at least occasionally smarter than himself.


I'm lucky often.

Nazis beat up Communists in Calgary, Canada.

There's news and there's news. Sometimes we just report it anyway.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/11/08/16037731.html

In other news, earlier this evening two crows fought in the alley over a dead rat. The larger crow, bearing down on the rat with great ferocity, managed to pin the thing to the ground and then twist, yanking the dead rat out to the smaller crow's beak. But, not to be left without, the smaller crow lunged and grabbed the rat again and jerked hard. I lost interest at that point.

Canned Thinking

"The intellectuals are not, as is so often said, men who think: they are people who have adopted the profession of thinking, and who take an aristocratic salary on account of the nobility of this profession."
Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence. (1908)

When Destutt, comte de Tracy (1754 – 1836) formalised and "intellectualised" Ideology , he meant it as a form of thinking akin to bureaucratic systematising for clerks. If one has the process outlined and then rigidified, all anyone need do thereafter is follow the process to the inevitable conclusion, like basic arithmetic, one plus one equals two, no matter what, so long as one follows that process properly. For the clerk, such as below, following the process makes them think they are, (and maybe by this definition it's true that they are,) "intellectuals."

[O]ur nation needs a good dose of liberalism, and all the informed and progressive ideas associated with this great political tradition which has been responsible for most all of our nation's success. Newspapers fell into decline because of an increasingly ignorant population incapable or disinclined to read and now too consumed by entertainment, playing video games and texting to have any desire to be informed or be a part of any civic enterprise. The attack on the idea of government service from the political right has contributed to this decline in our society. The Republicans only use government as a revolving door for their special corporate interests, which ironically to the legions of their working class supporters, has nothing to do with supporting or sustaining them.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-06/rick-perry-re-elected-as-texas-governor-shunning-the-press/#comment_892593

It seems more and more that people are fed up with the bureaucratic form of thinking that passes for intellectual, and that more and more, people are seeking intelligence in their political and cultural representatives. Clerks, as is so often the case, are flustered and angry at the encounter with a public causing trouble with the process. The process is perfect; the clerks are intellectuals; therefore the public must be stupid, evil, and so on. Smart people are finding the courage to fight back at long last. I hope for more of that. Intelligent people should trump intellectuals every time. I won't begin to hope for that, but at least for some push-back.

On Whiteness as Racism and Sacred Negritude

Blazing Cat Fur has a post worth noting on "racism." His is related to a post in draft that I'll put up here as soon as I have time to revise it to make it readable. There are issues in Balzing Cat fur's post that neither of us nor his commentators address, and I might get to that as well. Meantimes, this link is worth the effort:

EDMONTON - Controversy is brewing over a city-sponsored anti-racism campaign that calls on Caucasians to recognize their "white privilege".

Here's a sample of their racist claptrap; "Racial "whiteness" is many things, but one of its consistent qualities is power. As people granted unearned privileges by our own whiteness, and as people who have likely harmed non-white people with our own whiteness, it's our moral and ethical duty to find ways to combat racism."
http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2010/11/being-white-is-now-hate-crime.html

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Petras: Credo quia absurdum

Atop stones aspiring are sometimes known to be small animals, rodents, clingers living on dew and blown-by seeds, occasional bugs. The living life is dropped by birds, perhaps, and then, for life, live the wretched in exile from the ground so far away, the reaching of which ever again would be death. But there are never found there within the round the bones of the dead. One must assume, then, that God in His infinite mercy reaches down and scoops them up and takes them straight to Heaven. I believe this to be true.

It is very difficult to believe much else. We stand below, wondering. Listening. Hearing the wind, "les sourdes cogitations de pierres."

Turn Back

The beetle clicks and ticks like a clock as it lies in the woodwork burrowing. It's called the Death-Watch beetle, heard in the quiet of the night. Reset the clock. Turn it back.


Song of the Death-Watch Beetle

Here come I, the death-watch beetle
Chewing away at the great cathedral;

Gnawing the mediaeval beams
And the magnificent carved rood screen

Gorging on gospels and epistles
From the illuminated missals;

As once I ate the odes of Sappho
And the histories of Manetho,

The lost plays of Euripides
And all the thought of Parmenides.

The Sibyl's leaves which the wind scattered,
And great aunt Delia's love letters.

Turn down the lamp in the cooling room:
There stand I with my little drum.

Death. Watch. You are watching death.
Blow out the lamp with your last breath.

John Heath-Stubbs, (1918 - 2006)

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Tis done, tis done. Virginia at rest.

The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all [those that be] bowed down.

Psalms, 145: 14. King James Bible

It's easy for the likes of me to write about such as Virginia with a less than gentle brush, but here and now I remember Virginia, not the likes of. Even in my own memory, I'm not a gentle man. Virginia, "earthy" as sophisticated folks might term her, was, in her way, a gentle woman. I remember:

Virginia was tall for her generation, being close on to six feet, and large-boned, as we call it. Even as a young woman her taste in clothing was "grandmotherish," tending toward straw hats strewn with plastic flowers, below the knee smocks, and broken-down shoes. No rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters, she bought plain from them instead. She was a plain lady, plain in her presence, in her directness. She was all that many hope Sarah Palin to be. In that, those hopeful are lost. Virginia was not so.

Virginia would approach me sometimes and tell me the story of her day, of her ailments and of the coming of the end of the world and my need to repent or be damned for eternity. She had Bible verses to match each and any event, occasion, or even none at all. She was a serious woman, sitting like Lincoln, staring sternly at those whose sinfullness she disapproved of, ready at a moment's notice to tell them of Hell and Damnation. She was bold. She was upright. She would belch unblushing. She disapproved of much; but nothing, to my knowledge, embarrassed her. In her faith she would not bow down, not even to social conventions others assume. She was raised up in her faith. One might envy her. She's dead.

Virginia was in many ways a nineteenth century woman. She was ready for the farm and it's hard labour, satisfied with the Bible and her husband, unaffected by the goings on of the greater world. For all her busy-ness regarding other people's souls and salvation, she was intensely private. She extended that privacy to others as well, never concerning herself with the interior lives of those she knew beyond her adamant demands that they repent and follow the prescriptions of the Bible as she understood them. A true democrat, all men were sinners equally, and all deserving of redemption if only. She never had a harsh word for anyone personally, not a judgement of character or being other than the state of their souls. As direct as she might have been, she didn't approach the unwilling or foist herself upon strangers. Having said her piece, she would sit, arms akimbo, a wide stance sitting, and burp loudly.

Virginia had a relatively large circle of friends, the broken among the fallen, whom she tended with deep care. She saw many go to the grave, and she sat with them on their ways out, unblinking, irreversible, unbent. She is raised up by such gentleness.

We're so stupid

Why did Democrats lose the election so badly last Tuesday? Well, because they weren't boldly radical enough to thrill the nation; and thus, people were disgusted by the timidity in place of the promise of full-blown socialism and didn't vote for the Democrats.

What’s left to say after this wipeout? – Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, says this: “Democrats lost because party leaders never truly fought for popular progressive reforms like the public option and breaking up the big banks, leaving voters uninspired to come to the polls and vote Democratic…. Progressives will be stepping up and insisting that the Democratic Party be bolder, not weaker. We will demand boldness, reward bold leaders, reject ‘leaders’ in name only, and hold Democratic politicians accountable when they don’t fight for popular, progressive change. In short, these next two years, progressives will push Democrats to fight strongly for popular progressive reforms — and save the Democratic Party from its own incredible weakness that savaged Democratic candidates in 2010.”

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/11/05/brutally-crushing-progressives/

I've been reading this kind of argument for days now, and in all this time, because I'm a slow thinker who just doesn't get it fairly often, I assumed that the line comes from teenagers totally out of touch with reality, living in ideological cocoons, kids who play-act at life, regardless of the chronological age of such "kids." But, slow coach that I am, I have come to realise that these kids are serious. They really think they're onto the truth of the matter, that America rejected wishy-washy liberalism and demanded a real and deeply radical programme that would transform the nation into a pale imitation of a failed Euro-state. Yes, I can be dense. I thought this was a joke. I'm not nearly smart enough to be a Leftist.

A couple of quotations come to mind here, and I'll slip them in while no one is looking:

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
Friedrich von Schiller

Even better is this from Sorel, whom I might quote too often for my own good.

"The intellectuals are not, as is so often said, men who think: they are people who have adopted the profession of thinking, and who take an aristocratic salary on account of the nobility of this profession."*

Leftists are intellectuals, as they never tire of telling us, and they are very smart. Look at what they say:

Senator John Kerry, failed presidential candidate (2004) says of Americans who "refudiate" the elitist Left narrative:

"It's absurd. We've lost our minds," said a clearly exasperated Kerry. "We're in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don't weigh in. It's all short-order, lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics."

Glen Johnson, "Kerry voices frustration with US political scene, " Boston Globe Online. October 28, 2010

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/10/28/kerry_says_democrats_have_been_fixing_gop_problems/
Accessed 4 Nov 2010
***.

Of the inimitable television newsreader, Katie Couric, shown pensively holding her chin between her thumb and index finger, wearing heavy framed 'intellectual' eye glasses "she has devised ways to slip out of her $15 million-a-year prison" by 'reporting from the field' rather than sitting in a studio. Escaping her prison and seeing in Americans in the field, We read:

"What she has learned on her latest excursions is that 'American voters are slightly schizophrenic—they want compromise, and yet some of them are ideologically so fixated to one point of view…' "

Howard Kurtz, "Katie Couric, On the Move" The Daily Beast. 25 Oct. 2010

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-25/katie-couric-on-her-contract-cbs-and-love-of-the-campaign-trail/full/

Bill Maher, a television 'personality' of some sort, says this of American:

We have Democrats for one reason – to drag the ignorant hillbilly-half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th.”

[....]

“I’ll tell you this about Americans – about the American electorate, the voter,” Maher said. “They love a winner. You know, as soon as he passed health care, [his approval rating] went up 15 points. They don’t understand the issues. They’re too stupid. They’re like a dog. They can understand inflection. They can understand fear. They can understand dominance. They don’t understand issues.
Quoted from : Jeff Poor, "Maher Mocks American Electorate: 'They’re Like a Dog,' 'Too Stupid' " Newsbusters. 27 Oct 2010

Read more: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2010/10/27/maher-mocks-american-electorate-they-re-dog-too-stupid#ixzz14OpEA0sy

From California, that leftist paradise, we get this work of genius:

It's not completely your fault these dimwit Repubs were allowed to ooze back into a bit of power so soon. As many analysts have pointed out, this wasn't a vote for the Republicans, but against the limp-wristed Dems who didn't step up and lead with more authority and clarity of purpose. Truly, libs and independents of every age are frustrated Obama isn't governing with the same kind of magical, balls-out visionary zeal that fueled his campaign.

And let's not forget a shockingly unintelligent Tea Party movement that stands for exactly nothing and fears exactly everything, all ghost-funded by a couple of creepy libertarian oil billionaires -- the leathery old Koch brothers -- who eat their young for a snack. Who could've predicted that gnarled political contraption would hold water? But hey, when Americans are angry and nervous, they do stupid things. Like vote Republican. It happens. Just did.

Mark Morford, "Letter to a whiny young Democrat," SFGate. November 3, 2010. Accessed 4 Nov. 2010.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/11/03/notes110310.DTL&ao=2#ixzz14R9UYAuk

And there is Cher. Sigh. Why can't I get a date with a geriatric tatooed babe like her? I'm not smart enough, I guess. Cher:

[P]rior to George W. Bush being elected president, Cher registered an opinion of the Republican candidate in the following way: "I don't like Bush. I don't trust him. I don't like his record. He's stupid. He's lazy."
Usually when one person calls another person "stupid," it's because the name-caller views himself or herself as more intelligent than the callee. Evidently, the way Cher throws around the word "stupid," the high school dropout clearly considers diva brainpower superior to a traditional Yale and Harvard education.

By Jeannie DeAngelis, 'A Dumb Woman Is a Dumb Woman," American Thinker. 6 Nov 2010

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/a_dumb_woman_is_a_dumb_woman.html

To summarise:

President Obama’s observation, delivered last month at a Democratic fund-raiser: “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.” Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who also knows a thing or two about losing elections, had this to say to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce: “We’re in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don’t weigh in.” Kerry also told reporters: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.” Then finally there was one of the great Democratic politicians of our time, Bill Clinton, who said of Harry Reid’s close race in Nevada: “The only reason this is a tough race is because it’s a tough time. People are having a tough time and they’re frightened and confused and they’re mad. It’s hard to think.”
Andrew Clavan, "What Just happened?" City Journal. 3 Nov. 2010

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon1103ak.html

There's a good chance I am never going to get it. I'm so stupid. I just wish I were as stupid as Sarah Palin or Allen West or Marco Rubio. As is, I'm not as smart as Cher. No tatoos.

*Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence. (1908) Trans. T.E. Hulme. (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications; 2004.) P. 162, f.n. 19.

Beverly Giesbrecht's public life.

Beverly Giesbrecht's public life.


http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/11/beverly-giesbrecht-reported-dead-there.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/09/did-anyone-see-beverly-giesbrecht-at.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2009/04/sympathy-for-west-van-jihadi-running.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2009/03/heads-or-tales-fifty-to-one.html

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/11/convert-to-islam-founder-of-pro-jihad-website-dies-in-taliban-captivity.html

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Beverly Giesbrecht reported dead. There is a change here?

I've written a number of posts on Beverly Giesbrecht, and there has recently been a fair amount of interest in some of those posts. Now we know why: She's reportedly dead. I took some slight interest in this lunatic because she's not only a Taliban-supporting fool, she lived across the way from me in Vancouver.

Here's some of the background, followed by news of her demise.

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/09/did-anyone-see-beverly-giesbrecht-at.html

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/204721.php

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/abducted-canadian-journalist-dead-sources/706027/

Vancouver's Local "Tea Party"

Each Thursday evening from 7-9:00 p.m. we meet at the Vancouver Public Library in the atrium outside of Blenz coffee bar for a couple of hours of discussion regarding issues surrounding Islam and Left dhimmi fascism. We're a bit bookish, but we're open to all comers who care to join us for discussion on topics of general interest. We drink coffee, as a rule, but tea is certainly not frowned upon.

This meeting has gone on for a bit less than five years. Sit in and see how Canada manages its own local version of a Tea Party. It means I won't be posting much this day but will return tomorrow with more.

Yalla, Dag.

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Georgia Voters Tip Over; Guam Remains Stable

Hank Johnson, for those who don't know, don't recall, or just don't believe it, has won re-election in Georgia. This is the guy who worried that if a few thousand more American military members went to the island of Guam, the island would tip over. He's a Democrat. He was re-elected. I kid you no.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/guamtip.asp

For those who think I made it up, please look at the You Tube video above. Here's a bit of the election story, which shows that some Georgia voters are at least as brain-dead as California's voting majority, which is some achievement.

The Republican sacrificial lamb went down in flames against Hank Johnson. I will admit, I was not surprised by the Johnson victory. After all this is an overwhelmingly democratic district. What was surprising was that Liz Carter did not get a higher percentage of votes. Historically, Republicans have gotten about a third of the vote. Carter got only 25 percent. She lost all three counties, but kept it close in Rockdale and Gwinnett. In GWX she won 43 percent and I Rockdale she won 47 percent. It was DeKalb that cost her big time. DeKalb was won by Johnson 79 percent to 20 percent. That is a pure rejection by DeKalb voters of the Republican candidate. I cannot wait to see actual precinct numbers. Carter showed her face at events in South DeKalb more than Johnson, so I would like to see how bad she actually did in southern precincts. These numbers confirm to me that no Republican no matter how moderate can win in the fourth short of redistricting which is coming soon.

http://southdekalb.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/mid-term-elections-my-final-analysis/

Dems double down on dumb

Proof that the Democratic Party is filled with fantasists and fanatics:

Chris Bowers, "Progressives Caucus remains intact, becomes a plurality of House Dems," Daily Kos. 3 Nov 2010.

Due to extensive losses by conservative and moderate Democrats, another shift in power occurred in the House last night besides Republicans taking the majority. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has replaced the Blue Dogs and the New Democrats as the plurality ideological caucus among House Democrats. For the first time ever, the CPC is larger than Blue Dogs and New Dems combined.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/11/3/916876/-Progressives-Caucus-remains-intact,-becomes-a-plurality-of-House-Dems

Only the worst of the worst of Democrats were sure of re-election in America yesterday. Today they stand ready to further destroy the party and the nation. Normal people dropped the Democrats and opted for others. Not the maniacs in the Democratic Party. They stuck with the losers, and the Democrat losers are the worst of the lot. They will destroy their own nests, and the losers will continue, no doubt, till they die in the streets of starvation. Or, more likely, they'll demand bail-outs or show up on your door-step.

A Kos comment?

"[A] certain segment of the population of this country is fucked up. But it's a BIG segment."

California Dreamin': Day of the Dead:

California has voted, and they decided, by a majority, to elect Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Boxer, and Pete Stark, among other hippies, psychotics, morons, thugs, and even dead people.


Governor Moonbeam.

They did so just in time to celebrate The Day of the Dead.


Nancy Pelosi: "Are you joking?"

California will be dead, as an economy, in some short order, and we can all dance on the grave of the Democratic Party there. It's good for the whole world to see the eighth largest economy die from politics. It's a lesson we might all look at and learn from.

Barbara Boxer: Call her "Senator."


Pete Stark: "Who needs the Constitution. The government can do pretty much whatever it wants to."

If that's not enough, Californians even voted for a corpse on the Day of the Dead, (or so.)

Voters in Southern California would rather re-elect a dead woman than a Republican.

Democrat Jenny Oropeza swept a Southern California district in the race for Senate on Tuesday with 58% of the vote, but won’t be returning to office — she died of complications from a blood clot less than 2 weeks ago.

Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/03/dead-senator-re-elected-in-california/#ixzz14GWC8ePz



Two short excerpts from a City Journal post:

Fred Siegel, "Indebted and Unrepentant: New York and California stand virtually alone against the rest of the country." 3 November 2010


While most of America turned toward the Republicans in this election, Democrats strengthened their hold on California and New York. In California, they won all the statewide offices and even made gains in the legislature, prompting the Orange County Register to describe the Republicans as having been reduced to “almost total irrelevancy in Sacramento.” In New York, Democrats similarly swept all the statewide offices and may have held on to the state senate, too, though three contests are still too close to call. Those three races are all that stand between New York’s GOP and a similar irrelevancy.

[....]

This sets up what could be an ugly fight in which a Tea Party–inflected national Republican Party, encouraged by its strength in the interior states, forces California and New York—now heavily dependent on federal subsidies—to reduce their spending sharply. The coastal giants would no doubt respond by threatening defaults, which could affect the credit standing of the entire country, since many of the bonds are held by foreign investors.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon1103fs.html

Some innocent folks will be burned in this coming conflagration, and that is too bad, of course, but there is no reward for innocence in this world.

It'll be a great place to rush to when the fire dies down. Lots to rebuild.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

A Brighter Future

The election results are looking good from here, the wrong side of the border of the far left coast, but the results are still spotty, so I won't be sure enough till tomorrow to know exactly how I feel about this. I'm optimistic.

Results seem to show that California is electing the worst gang of lunatics and old hippies it can find, e.g. Jerry Brown for governor. I see this as good news. California's population is dwindling in almost exact proportion to the increase in population of Texas. It means that, as California sinks further into bankruptcy and is further swamped with illegal immigrants and criminals of a higher degree, and as California is ruined even more by government employee unions, that the wealthy and job-creating classes and individuals are sickening of it and are leaving, allowing the Left to become the greater force all the time. With the system as it is now in California, there is little a Republican governor could do to make a significant good difference. We will very likely see California as a state go effectively bankrupt in the next two years, and then there will be the Democrats obviously holding the bag. Californians will obviously, even to themselves, have screwed themselves to ruin. There won't be anyone to blame but themselves.

Democrats are picking up some big wins in New York state, and the same scenario holds there: financial ruin and Democrats in power making it worse. As Texas is a reverse image of California, so is New Jersey to New York. Normal people lost in California and New York, and they are leaving for better places to let the rot deepen without them. Those who leave strengthen strong states like Texas and Florida, and they leave behind the rot of the Left. I think it's to the good that Republicans are losing California and New York.

So too with the Senate: It looks that the Republicans are not taking a majority. I'm relieved at that. It means that the Democrats will have the Executive and the Senate, and that with that kind of power they can still do pretty much as they please to the nation. Yes, Republicans will have a large number of governors and the House, and to an extent we have the Supreme Court while the Democrats have the Appeals Courts. I see the results tonight as something like 60/40 in favour of the Democrats, but in places where the social rot is worse than elsewhere, where it will be obviously Democrat-made, and in contrast to Republican success stories. Republicans will have less, but it will be healthy, and the Democrats will have more, but most of it completely rotten. I see this as a success.

The line is drawn now between the Left states and the Right. We have a couple of years to prove by deeds what works and who is shit. I'm counting on the Republicans to show us the good and the Democrats to destroy the states they rule. Republican have two years to organise and learn and recruit new faces. The Democrats have nothing but the next two years of old hacks to re-present to the public. I can't see Harry Reid looking any better in two years than that thieving vote-stealer does today.

I'm excited about our future this evening. We have two years to grow and become strong enough to make a real and crushing defeat of the totally rotten Democrats come next election. We have two years to weed out rotten Republicans, and we have these two years to learn about what it is that America should be, has been, and will become again. Ours is not supposed to be a nation of hippies. All the bad shit that happens in the coming two years will be on the shoulders of the Democrats. They're the ones with the political power right now, even if they work with the Republicans. Democrats have to take responsibility for what goes wrong. I'm thinking that will be a lot in Democrat ruled states and overseas from our Muslim cousins. It should piss off the average person intensely to see the Democrats make further ruin in the nation. In that time we'll have time to learn and grow.

I'm not advocating the Republican Party. I've never voted Republican in my life, and I am amazed that I write anything good about that party. If they become a new party in the coming two years and retain the traditional name, I'm registering Republican with pride.I'll sleep tonight with a smile on my face and I'll have good dreams. Tomorrow is a new day and will last for a couple of years that I look forward to.

Monday, November 01, 2010

Freedom

From the porn factories of California to the corn fields of Wisconsin to the fog horns of Maine, we are coming back! America is rising and becoming again the nation it is meant to be.

Freedom.

I'm pumped. We're going to open up again to the future. We're going home.

God Bless America! Let Freedom Ring!

The way the cookie crumbles

Dear Hippies,

You have a new fortune to consider.

I'm laughing already, filled with delight that our nation is on the verge of a new American Revolution.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

My Scariest Halloween Ever

The scariest Halloween I ever had was as a boy when our town had its first murder in living memory. It still scares me when I think back on it, now close to forty years after.

Things started out innocently enough with me and my friend Jimmy being told we were too old to dress up and go door to door for candy, trick or treating. I said to Jimmy that it was OK, really, since it meant we were almost grown-ups if it were true that we couldn't go out with the kids to trick or treat. I recall Jimmy saying that if we were grown-ups, then we could go, like our fathers, out to play golf. So Jimmy went into the garage and got my dad's golf clubs and some balls, and he took me to the cemetery for a few rounds. I warned him that we shouldn't do it because when we hit the balls, who knew where they'd land, smacking into a tomb stone and bouncing any which way. I said, "Jimmy, this could be dangerous." He laughed.

Across the field some way we heard a couple shouting at each other. The lady was furious at her husband over something, but that's real adult stuff, so we, and I mean mostly Jimmy, kept whacking the balls all over the place. They were going anywhere at all. Jimmy thought it was hilarious, as I recall it. I wanted to go home and study for school next day and get lots of sleep. Not Jimmy. He didn't care. He just kept hitting my dad's golf balls.

Suddenly, there was the worst Halloween scream I have ever heard. It was serious, and we got the hell out of the graveyard and went home. It was the lady fighting with her husband. She was hollering like a lunatic.

The police came and arrested her for killing her husband, which she denied, just what you'd expect from a murderer. She said he was yelling at her, and the next thing she knew, he fell over dead with a big dent in the side of his head, and that she had nothing to do with it at all. Yeah. Like she'd admit she hit him and killed him. Some people!

We were pretty lucky to get away too, given that if she'd seen us, she might have killed us too. One can never be too careful on Halloween. That's why I stayed home for the next week. I had the flu or something, though my mom couldn't find much wrong with me. I mean health-wise. I never saw Jimmy much after that. I don't know if the lady got the electric chair. I didn't like hearing about it. Whatever it was, she likely deserved it. Me? I was a good kid and never did much wrong. Hey, that's just how I was.