Count the Chads

Myths of the Ivory Tower.  I was 14-years-old when Kent State went down.  Say what you will about the Sixties, good or bad, the elections this country has had since 1976 are a referendum on the Sixties.  The two main political parties in this country have straddled the competing catechisms: Republicans, conscious that they can't compete nationally unless they advocate -- or at least, defend -- existing entitlement programs, keep the System in place while promising cuts; Democrats, fearful of gun-toting Bible quoters, formulate moral justifications for expanding the federal government while steering clear of gun control, and paying lip service to pro-life sentiments.  The truth is, this country's been wrestling with the Big Turd called the Sixties ever since 1971-72, when four kids bit the turf at Kent and a handful of Nixon operatives got caught playing Trickster.

Republican Party Leadership.  Times have changed, the catechisms haven't.  It makes no sense to lose your temper over the philosophy of Social Security, for example, when no one is interested in re-thinking the existing Social Security program.  Are there better ways of taking care of our mentally and physically handicapped folks, the most vulnerable beneficiaries of the Social Security apparatus?  We'll never know -- until the dollar fails.  Does it make more sense to sack the retirement aspect of that apparatus and keep the SSI aspect?  How can you tell?  No one ever talks about it.  When George Bush whispered the idea of privatizing retirement funds, Warmy Fuzzy Liberals brought out the Mace and the Rack, while Bush retreated into an undisclosed location.  (Please note, in the wake of banking fiascos, which the press blames on capitalism,  no politician in his right mind would broach the topic of private retirement in lieu of Social Security.)   This is where my friend Classic Liberal and I part company -- slightly -- on the parties.    He is impatient with their apparent lassitude, not to mention historically recurrent corruption.  I view them as extensions of dominant catechisms, the weather vanes of belief.  Unless and until Americans come to grips with the the regressive anachronism called Social Security, for example, the political parties aren't obligated to talk about it -- counter-intuitive as that sounds.  Parties reflect the dominant myths people have believed in, catechisms that are reflexively repeated at the New York Times and U.S. News and World Reports.  Both parties, presently constituted, were set in stone in 1976.  Gerald Ford is the head Republican; Jimmy Carter the head Democrat.  It is, unfortunately, altogether too rare when an Eldridge Cleaver evaluates the falsehoods of his youth.  How exciting it would be if the Democratic Leadership embraced the elder Cleaver and rejected his younger incarnation, but we can't expect it, whereas 10 years from now, Tea Party "radicals" will be old hat at Republican conventions.  Wait and see.  In the meantime, uncertainty and agitation probe the perimeters of both parties.

Does Providence Draw a Veil Over Our Eyes as a precondition to collective upheaval?  I have to tell you: I believe it so.

They Just Don't Get it.  It makes no sense to infuse Faith into an exponential increase in the size of Federal entitlements for the purpose of "providing health care."  The system will cost trillions, reduce the quality of health care and, ultimately, will be sacked, by repeal or by necessity.  Yet here we are: Democrats tell us Justice depends on this boondoggle; Republicans shrink from the possibility that they'll be criticized.  Result?

Revolution.  Both political bureaucracies have maneuvered themselves into the margins.  Neither party, presently constituted,  will survive the decade.  America, to me, feels as it did in 1965: an eerie calm ready to explode into a cauldron of passion and angst.  Who can we thank the most for this change?

Why, Barack Obama.  He is the Mephistopholes who is dissolving the catechisms which have defined my life time.

I wonder, what's next?

Paul Ryan: Should Americans Bid Farewell to Exceptional Freedom?

Warning Signs: Our Warrior Class

The Other McCain: How About a Union of Liberty-Conscious Americans?

Collectivist Catechism is a post from: The Classic Liberal Blog

The Day After Hell Wins the Election

It was a story my Dad used to tell about the Bulge: he, a staff sergeant, was asked by a green lieutenant, "Sergeant, how I do get these men to dig foxholes?"

"Just wait" was his reply.

Sure enough, when the German "daisy clippers" blasted overhead, turning the white wasteland dark with evergreen boughs, there were "foxholes everywhere."

Such is human nature, even American nature, that the story was told over and over, in different variations, across the battlefields of World War II.  It was told as Admirals and Generals who were "up there" in the 30s cocktail circuits passed out of range and were replaced by names heretofore unknown to the American public.  The same thing happened during the Civil War -- during the Revolution.  Human beings, even alert, highly trained human beings, are not proactive; we are reactive.   We go from "crisis to crisis", as a mentor in my youth once explained.  American democracy cannot solve problems, can it?  We "throw money" at poverty, drug addiction, education . . . . What do we get in return?  Bureaucracies, dumb as oxen, that do little to improve life and much to retard economic innovation.  A vital component has been missing from the American experiment: innovation.  We have deadened our nerves and enervated our limbs with empty rhetoric and creeping tax increases.  I doubt the average American even knows what being an American means anymore.  We are lost, adrift in a sea of warring bumperstickers.

And there's fear, a palpable, stomach-chilling fear in the land of my birth.  What are we fearful of?  Obama?  I don't think so.  I think, deep down, most Americans know that what Dr. Zero says is dead on:

The future holds the final, systemic crash of the New Deal and Great Society. How far away is it? It’s hard to recalibrate the doomsday clocks fast enough to keep up with our current tidal wave of deficit spending. I think we have about fifteen years, after factoring in the poisonous effects of desperate measures taken to hold off disaster, like the Value Added Tax. I can imagine many world events that would accelerate that timetable considerably.  A Word to the Weary

The problem of torpor is only part of America's problem.  A deeper problem is what has to be called ideological: a good portion of Americans have handed over their hopes and security to the government.  These Americans -- Democrats and "progressives" -- have stopped thinking in terms of personal responsibility.  If there's a problem on the street or in the schools, the State is expected to solve that problem.  Those of us who fear the state understand the other half of the equation: if you don't want to be controlled, you have to exercise self-control.  "Everything we needed to know we learned in kindergarten" wasn't some phony-baloney warm, fuzzy hustle: it included enough discipline to push us past a willingness to surrender of our wills.  This isn't true of many Americans.  Who would believe in Al Gore's lies about the weather?

Someone waiting for someone else to do his work for him; someone who wants to be told, as Erich Fromm described, what to do.  Eerily, there are hundreds of politicians who know this, and feast on it, like ghouls.  That is my America at the moment.

A variation of that is the Western Woman's love of effeminate men.  How long do you think that will last?

It won't last.  When the fire comes from heaven, when all Hell breaks loose, and those you love lay dead in the snow . . . .

You'll do what needs to be done.  Drug addiction, fashion, sytlin' and profilin' . . . . will be slaughtered without mercy as we revert to survival mode.  "Liberalism", as it's been called, will be skinned and roasted with glee.  Fantasy will be rejected with hellish vigor.

For now?

We wait, and watch, in disbelief.

Wyblog: How to Derail Socialists and Restore America

Rolling into The Day After is a post from: The Classic Liberal Blog

We Interrupt this Soiree . . . . .

I would like to interrupt your tea and cakes party for a little explication of the obvious. First and foremost, what I am trying to do is save Nancy Pelosi's life, here. Her and all of her ilk. You folks seem to think, unlike the Founders, that polite politics will be sufficient to the maintenance of your liberties. To repeat myself, this bill demands that we -- every living soul in this country -- pay or play in their brave new tyrannical system. If we refuse, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will be arrested. If we resist arrest, we will be killed.   Dutchman 6

Communist.  Government takeovers of banks.  Auto companies.  Insurance companies.  Radically enhancing the powers of the Federal Reserve and the authority of the IRS,  fortifying the power of labor unions and altering social relatiosnhips at the levels of life and death -- literally.  What we're witnessing simply has no precedent in American history, given its scale and the criticalness of the hour.  We have a political elite dedicated to nationalizing not just the U.S. economy, but every aspect of our lives.  It has been 15 months since Obama took office but the relentless Drumbeat of "progressivism" has only one end: POWER.   What crisis are they trying to solve?  They're not solving a crisis.  They're exploiting one.

The Dawn of Democracy.  What is left of the American Republic is being pushed to the breaking point by those who announce their compassion for an electorate of sheep who have grown accustomed to accepting Leviathan's bribery.  The results are disastrous, but predictable, as they have been assiduously courted by those who have "educated" us and provided our "news" the last 50 years and more.  In such a climate as ours, Time Magazine can freely argue:

The advocates for nationalizing U.S. banks have been out in force recently. Senator Lindsay Graham, who almost certainly does not have a PhD in economics or finance told ABC News that banks were in such deep trouble that government ownership of the institutions may be the only way to save the financial system. Economist Nouriel Roubini, who probably has several advanced degrees, wrote in The Washington Post that the Swedes set a precedent for bank nationalization nearly 20 years ago. The first counter to his argument is that it is dark over 20 hours a day in Sweden during the winter which causes a level of depression among the population that may undermine their judgement and views of how dire any economic situation is. If this theory is true, banks in Panama will never face being taken over by the government.  The Case for Nationalizing the U.S. Economy

The Stimulus Scam.  Who is this elite?  Do they hate us?  Are they conscious of their hostility toward us peons, or merely Orwellian in their porcine predilections?  The question is often more complex than meets the eye.  For example, how would you build a sewage treatment system from scratch for Los Angeles County?  You can't do that very well with a 19th Century state, as some conservatives seem to argue -- or, at least, liberals say they argue for.  You need a modern bureaucracy armed with engineers, computers, and enough cash to contract out to gargantuan, techno-centric corporations seeking profit.  But the difference between a genuine communitarian and a communist is not subtle at all: communism is necessarily about coercion.  Communitarianism will resort to force only under exigent circumstances.  The elite who seeks to rule us are not communitarians in the American colonial sense.  They are Orwellian pigs.

And then there is the ideological factor -- isn't there?

Dictatorship of the Proletariat.  How many times have you heard, "I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal"?  This is what passes for high discourse in America today.  It's mostly a brain dead thing to say, but it does sum up where we've been since the 1980s: people want a lean government with maximum social freedom.  Okay.  Then why do they tolerate exponential expansions of the State?  Decade after decade, both political parties -- see, CL? I learned something from you -- cannot address the financial and bureaucratic reform that would ensure a prosperous American future.  Prosperity is not their aim.  Control is.

Reading Mark Steyn today, he mentioned in passing one of my persistent observations about the strange new world being engineered in Washington; a world in which all, except for the elite, lead smaller, much smaller lives than ourselves or our parents. Lives made smaller because they were sold and bought stunted dreams from a wilfully diminished history. Where all are equal all are smaller.  Welcome to Your Small World, Suckers

Not a Revolution, But a Coup d'Etat?  Social Security provides the perfect analogy.  How much wealthier would we be if there wasn't a 15.8% payroll deduction in America?  Yet the minute you so much as breathe the idea that freedom would be the better course, those who say they are "fiscal conservatives" resort to Jesse Jackson mantras and the subject is closed.  This debate preceded my physical incarnation in this earth and did not get resolved with the Reagan presidency.  Reagan was a diversion, not a denouement.  Leviathan continued to grow, and American society continued its degradation.  Is leftist ideology the sole cause of that deterioration?  I don't think so.  Will conservative ideology be what saves us?  I doubt it.  We are living through a communist revolution whose ostensible root is the New Deal Class War, but in reality is the fruit of a godless, post-modern devotion to the State -- an American Maoism.  While the average American seems impervious to ideology, "liberals" drive us ever onward on the supposed moral superiority of their ideology.  We who like to say we are "fiscal conservatives and social liberals" are now under a full scale humping by Leviathan, courtesy of our "liberal" brethren.  That cute little blue jeans and microwaved bumper sticker slogan doesn't cut it now.  We're in trouble.

We are living through a Comminist Revolution.  What else can we call it?

And yet, consistent with blue jeans and microwaved dinner, it doesn't seem like a Soviet Revolution (where are the stormed barricades, the shop lootings?), even if it should.  Many in the country labor along under the impression that this is business as usual.  It is not.

What they are trying to do is to create an America very unlike the America that has existed for centuries — the America that people have been attracted to by the millions from every part of the world, the America that many generations of Americans have fought and died for.   Thomas Sowell

Obamacare Threatens U.S. Future.  Regardless of whether Obama Care passes or not, we have a team of rabid dogs in political power right now who mean to fully commandeer America.  Not just its economy; not just its people.  The whole goddamned country.  When does it become advisable to protect ourselves from them?  They will continue the fight.  No amount of wishful thinking will change that.  It is all or nothing for them:

If Obamacare is defeated this time around, look for the Alinskyites to start rioting for bigger government and more largess; the right not to work, and of course, free taxpayer subsidized education with healthcare. After all the coming insurrectionist have been practicing; lately in the University of California school system, perfecting tactics taught by community organizers who know how to stir up the easily agitated, self-indulgent sociopath dupes doing their bidding for a greater evil.   Friend Fuchs

I do not think the end will be as apocalyptic as others think.  I think America will go broke and become a 2nd -- perhaps a 3rd -- world nation:

As anyone who has ever looked at a government program knows, if HCR is this junked-up at the start, then it will take no time after passage before it becomes the biggest bureaucratic mess ever inflicted upon a free people. We all -- or or at least most of us -- will rue the day. Never mind the lost jobs, tax increases, medical rationing; that's just the tip of the iceberg that we can see from a distance. This thing will be worse. America's medical system will become riddled with government inefficiencies, politically-correct tinkering, and endless corruption. A two-tiered medical system will emerge, each coexisting as separate worlds: one for well-connected elites, and one for everyone else. Chills will crawl up your neck the first time you hear that someone in this country had to "tip" a hospital staffer in order to make sure a loved one got clean bed sheets. If government-run health care is bad in Europe, it will be a disaster here in America, where that magnificently American concept, E Pluribus Unum, went out of fashion at about the time the Me Generation got its hands on the culture.  Jed Skillman, Democrats Have Painted Us into a Corner

Government services will be cut at every level. Potholes will deepen, infra-structure problems will worsen, pension plans will become insolvent, school systems will declare bankruptcy, police and fire protection will be reduced, etc. etc. You will be "nickled and dimed" in terms of new fees and taxes. Public unions will strike, providing further disruption. But when there are no funds, there is nothing to gain.  Monty Pelerin, Is Government at All Levels FUBAR?

I believe the fighting objected to earlier today is unavoidable, but I don't think it will be the stuff of World War II movies.  I believe it will be more along the lines of  lawless sectors of the country marauding rural redoubts.  I don't think we will be able to rescue ourselves from our own moral deterioration.  We are fated, I believe, to have to live through the consequences of our spiritual emptiness.  I don't mind being wrong, of course, but as I look around at the huge evil that is being perpetrated against my country, with so many Americans' assent, can you blame me for saying YOU ARE NOT UP TO THE TASK OF SAVING YOUR COUNTRY? 

By the way, did I tell you I'm a lawyer?  No?  I need to work on that, I guess.  One thing is for sure: I want to thank my friend CL for allowing me to post here.  It is an Honor.

It's a Mandate, Stupid

Victor Davis Hanson:  Reflections on the Revolution in America

Today's Revolutionary Aristocracy, Part I

Today's Revolutionary Aristocracy, Part II

Leviathan is a post from: The Classic Liberal Blog

My friend -- The Classical Liberal -- was gracious enough to extend an invitation to yours truly to lodge a post in this fine establishment. Since I'm here, let me tell you a little about myself and what we're doing at Washington Rebel, and why CL and I see eye to eye on most things.

I am a true Pacific Northwest boy. One of my mother's grandfathers was a newspaper publisher who was active in Oregon and Washington politics during his adult years. Both sets of her grandparents were living here before Washington became a state in 1889. They were Welsh and Scots people, with a fair swath of Irish in them. They were industrious, proud, conservative, and solid. They viewed life as an opportunity to build one's character, not as an excuse to whine. They were Republican, as they favored Lincoln's view of the Union over that of the South and were willing to die for the same. There was a peculiar haughtiness to them: grounded as farmers, stand-offish in matters of discretion. From them I inherited a love of religion, and literature, and good manners, though my manners aren't always so great! And I have no formal religion. There was a depth to them that can best be described as reverent, and romantic, simultaneously. Poets, in other words. Proud, Celtic Poets who carried a frontier rifle and had a library full of books at home. Americans, you'd call them.

Of all the things I am most proud of -- and had the most cause for shame -- it was their view of what love between the sexes meant. In these days of aggressive feminism, and effeminate men, we can hardly comprehend how they looked at those things, four generations ago. We assume they were ignorant, sexist, and probably sexless. I maintain just the opposite. I say the Celtic kernel in America produced a very high regard for women that you won't see in lots of other European countries. We Americans are not "Englishmen with poetry and literature squeezed out of them." The boys who marched into battle during the Civil War were well versed in the Bible and Emerson, and that's not just a legend. Before radio, and television, and work commutes and Ho' Rap, people actually read. Reading was the icing on the cake of a strange rite called "conversation."

One of the things that irritates me about Dan Brown's success with his books on the Grail is that he misses the point -- and in our readerless age, others miss the point -- that an entire genre of literature and psychology grew up out of the emergence -- the irruption -- of the Holy Grail into the European imagination in the early 13th Century. 250 years before the printing press, all of Europe was ablaze with stories about Great Britain's King Arthur, and Merlin the Magician, and Gawain and
Guinevere and all the other tragic, stupid, loving, noble, magical figures of the "Arthurian Round." What had been a Celtic tale about a magic cup, or dish, even a shield, became a symbol around which an entire psychology was built. The emergence of the Grail legend is truly mysterious. And truly magical. The story spread like wildfire before there were books and pamphlets and newspapers, such as fueled the Reformation and the American Revolution. No one can explain how, or why. It was a psychic emergence, literally.

Enter one of the greatest women who ever lived: Eleanor of Aquitaine, the female personality who transformed the face of Love. Believe it or not, Romantic love is almost entirely a Christian invention. The intoxication of love has been well known forever. Such love was mostly lust, i.e., seeing another human being about the same as one would see a toilet. Marriage and "love" were usually considered two different enterprises altogether, and with good reason. The emergence of an ennobling inspiration called Romantic Love is bound up with Christian theology, i.e., the animal part of man cannot know Grace unless and until he opens himself to higher forces -- higher intelligence. What makes the human brain emerge from the mud of Pigdom and Dogdom are the same creative forces that raised Jesus from a grave. Men repent and become new beings because of Love. Men remain wretched until they are transformed. This is the nut of Christianity, though many have literalized the method. The Grail legend tossed out literal rigidity and replaced it with romance. In the process, two very critical conditions were imposed:

1) Chastity (not celibacy) was a condition to courtship. He or she willing to throw love away wasn't worthy of Love. Love was seen as a living being, sometimes -- but not always -- equated with historical Jesus. Just as in the Kabbalah Wisdom and Understanding and Justice are living aspects of a living God (and, therefore, the non-literal equivalent of the Cult of Jahveh), so is Love an actual being, or energy (our pre-scientific ancestors would not have understood what you and I call "energy"). In Von Eschenback's Parzival we find frequent reference to "Love's countenance" and lips or hands or eyes being touched or beautified by Love. The greatest boon of all was Love, and Love had to be won. People humping like pigs in the mud were excluded from the enterprise. Their minds and hearts were like stone -- lifeless, not capable of nobility. Another way of saying it is like this: How is lover number 19 really more special than number 17? And when number 25 comes along, how is he (or she) more special? Answer: they never were special. They were shells spent in the scatter gun of greed. In such matters, rape is not far behind. This was an essential insight of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the noble souls of history. The real cause of abuse of women is . . . promiscuity, not the other way around. Or, let us say, promiscuity is bound up in the abuse of women, by necessity: where there is more greed than love, soon greed will turn violent, or oppressive. How could it be otherwise? Indeed, the natural state of us testosterone creatures is hardly admirable. We are the stunted creatures in this cycle. Until we are raised from lust, we are very capable of murder, plain and simple. Therefore chastity on the part of both men and women is an invitation to love Love. It shows you are ready to be changed.

If you disagree, please let me know. I'm willing to argue it with you.

2) Men must cherish, honor, love and protect not just women, but the Feminine. Indeed, women must also protect the Feminine! The Feminine is bigger than your mother or your wife. The Feminine is the Receptive. And, speaking of Jewish mysticism, the meaning of the word Kabbalah is, essentially, The Bride. The Bride is the receptive. Think of that poem of Von Schiller.

Schiller was making the point that one cannot take the Feminine. She must give herself to you. If you have taken it, you have sinned. And you will pay for that sin. I believe we do. I believe we're paying for it now. The more casual we are about sex, the worse our lives become. I'll return to that in a minute.

Eschenback describes this very elaborate ritual involving the Grail that is presided over by "pure" women, i.e., women undefiled by lust. Now, obviously, there is no human undefiled by lust. Lust is the goad that ultimately teaches us to choose differently. It is a lash that exposes our follies. What Eschenback is demonstrating is the pure operation of the Receptive through open channels, i.e., people who have rendered themselves worthy of that service. They are not egoists. They are not sluts. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are priestesses to the Feminine. The scene described by Eschenback can only be described as holy. Lustful, greedy eyes could never see this ritual performed.

What we have here is a most profound realization: when the Feminine is exploited for animal greed, she retreats to the high ground and withholds her blessings from us. She does not cast her pearls before swine. To know Her you must earn Her. To earn Her means you are willing to change your character into strength, honor, and chastity. Not popular words in these days, but they'll return full force. Here's why:

What Williams and C.S. Lewis understood about history is that honoring the Feminine is a cyclical process. It is not, as the feminists aver, a reversion to tribal life. There are plenty of indigenous tribes who view women as slaves. It is not, as feminists aver, a matter of doing your own thing sexually. Actually, a woman who does her own thing sexually is at much at war with the Feminine as any self-respecting Patriarch. The way it really works is like this: when individuals understand that they are supercharged, transformed, by the complementary force, so to speak, they will choose that path. If a man wishes to know Love, he must honor and serve the Feminine. And . . . .

If a woman wishes to know love, she must actually serve the masculine. How does she do this? She must know what masculinity is, for one thing, and she must insist on its demonstration from her would be lover. She must say, 'I wish to share Love with you. If you prove yourself worthy, I will honor that with you.' This is not patriarchal control or sentimental mush. It is a courageous, life-tranforming undertaking. It's a pain in the ass. And . . .

It requires education.

When my mother's grandparents were helping establish the State of Washington, their expectancy was that the human being was polished by literature, and by work, and by character transformation. They did not assume they were right about everything and go about telling others how wonderful they were. What an odd thing that would have seemed in a living room in 1910! Only drunks and outlaws talked the way people commonly do now. This loud, in your face Dr. Philism was, of course, the stuff Mark Twain would have slaughtered ruthlessly. But I'm not talking about Dr. Phil. I'm saying that, if you were my great-grandmother or great-grandfather, you would have been raised to read, for one thing. You would have been schooled in conversation. You would have known the Grail through its principle methods of transmission, the Arthurian stories. And you would have dreamed about the day when you met your one and true Love.

And you would have paid any price, in terms of self-sacrifice, to earn that moment.

Is that a bad thing?

At Washington Rebel, we maintain Love needs us now. Needs you. Love is looking for Knights and Ladies.

Which side will you be on?

What’s Cookin’ at the Reb is a post from: The Classic Liberal Blog