Washington Rebel

This is Washington REBEL!

 

Darkness has descended upon our land. It has enveloped the heart, soul and minds of those who recognize and acknowledge purposeful, willful evil has been set upon us.

What are you doing America? How long will you continue to suffer this long train of abuses? What are you doing about it?

The time to act is now. Liberty and the exercise thereof is a daily event. If you fail to exercise your liberty, if you fail to be free, then ultimately you have no one to blame but yourself as your liberties diminish and eventually disappear. No one is taking them from you. You are giving them away.

Accordingly there has been some activism; rallies, meetings, protests, and other meaningless activity that has done little if anything to stem the statist juggernaut steadily grinding your liberty to death under its boot. You are and have been of little consequence to them. Like masturbation it feels good and accomplishes little. You can continue to protest, continue to vent your spleen. In the end it will amount to nothing.

As we move into a new year you had better contemplate what it is that YOU are going to do to stem the totalitarian tide that seeks your very destruction and that of your family, your society, and anything else that you hold dear. We are here to assist you though we will not be holding your hand. It’s your liberty. You need to earn it to keep it.

Gentle reader you must become active. You, the individual, are one of the most powerful forces on the planet if you simply chose to exert yourself. There are any number of activities that you can launch and participate in that will assist in defeating your would be masters. As all actions have consequences many of these activities don’t come without a price. However freedom and responsibility are inseparable thus translating your will to action should be of little concern to you.

In this New Year we fully expect you to take action. Deprive the machine of the tax revenue required to fuel the engine of your destruction. Buy from the grey market, sell in the grey market, and participate in cash only transactions. Don’t buy from government motors. Don’t conduct business with banks or other institutions that participated in the TARP or other government programs. Become active in your local community. Become active in local politics. Hold your local leaders accountable for their actions and/or inactions in regards to their defense of liberty. We will assist you in identifying meaningful ways in which you can assist yourself in resisting the leviathan that has become a threat to all though it is going to require that you get up off YOUR ASS and participate.

With or without you we will move forward. We will eventually be victorious. What say you? What are you going to tell your children and grandchildren? Are you going to tell them that you were a man and did the right thing regardless of the cost or are you going to tell them that you sat out and shucked your responsibility?

We’re men ‘round here. We do what needs doing. If you can hang with us then you are welcome. If you are part of the pragmatic mob that is too afraid to do anything meaningful to secure liberty for its progeny then you need to move on. You and your soft hands need to go find more comfortable surroundings. We’re not here to be nice. We are, after all, Washington Rebel with an emphasis on REBEL.

We’ll see you in 2010. You best be ready to get to work. If not we’ll be eating you in the future. You probably won’t taste too good but we’re sure you’ll be fattened for the slaughter.

Virgil sends….

The Dark Side

Pessimistic, or Just Plain Tantalizing?

One of the tricks of being a Big Time Writer is that anxiety and depression and sexual arousal are masks for having something to say.  Old rounders like me hide behind cat shadows, when there are no Librarians around to irritate.  These considerations have led to a continuing debate: are we pessimistic, or optimistic?

I think I'm pessimistic because, in the words of a logger friend of mine, "our roots run deep."  That is to say, I was raised in the country.  My Old Dad had me digging when I was eight and wasn't afraid to snap my head with a whistlin' fist when I wasn't diggin' fast enough, see?  I was lucky enough to see animals in the wild, and had animals and birds whose welfare I was responsible for.  To this day I still dream about our two old pack horses.  They were as much friends to me as any human friend I've ever had. 

By the time I started getting exposed to city specimens of mankind on a regular basis, I was repulsed.  For the most part, I still am.  There's something missing from them.  Their souls are absorbed in manic narcissism.  What else can I say?  They talk more than they listen; their "sexuality" is mercenary and exhibitionistic; they put great stock in their own vanity, which to me is empty, nihilistic.  I think that's why corporate folks seem girly to me.  The men, I mean.  They were never really boys, so they can't really be men.  Likely their mothers were more receptacles of consumer vitality than actual mothers.  They produced children as one would exhibit jams and pies.

Dark?

Oh yeah.

I summarize my pessimism this way: All systems, of whatever kind and origin, evolve to a level of complexity wherein they are doomed to die.  An old Goodyear training manual put it this way:

To evolve you must eliminate; to develop you must discard.  This is unfailing law.  Nature is constantly eradicating remnants in order that she may weave new fabrics unhindered.  She purges to progress.  And man is ever abandoning the useless old and adopting the useful new.  He rejects in order to revise and reform.

In my world, Barack Obama is not a bright, articulate leader.  He is a boy, as in, not yet a man.  He is symptomatic of a society that no longer knows the difference between the two, a society that seeks security from a lonely little boy who needs attention.

For our folly, we must and will pay.  Him I do not resent.  In fact, I don't resent any of it (though I am grateful to be old enough to know my eyes won't have to watch the complete cycle!).  I see what has to happen, that's all.  I feel sorry for Barack and people like him.  There's a big chunk of them missing.  He's acting out his absence on the absence of those who need to believe.  You see that?

Our thanks this morning to The Barrister for these links:

The Frightening 'New' Side of Barack Obama.   No offense to Charles Hurt and you other fools for failing to recognize adolescent resentment and self-righteous narcissism in a man barely qualified to run for city ward.

When Clinton won in1992 with a Democratic House and Senate there was no partisanship. There was a mandate. An agenda. Progress. When America reacted to the big government Democrats tried to enact in 1993 and 1994 by electing a Republican House and Senate the dreaded "partisanship" arose.  Grover Norquist

Yes, Gazans Suffer.  But Israel is not the Reason.

Reliving '29

Stimulus Program

Because of the ideological grindbox Democratic monkeys have been cranking for three generations, we are told to believe that "the Republicans did nothing during the Depression.  Roosevelt rescued the economy."

Thank God for people like Henry Hazlitt and Thomas Sowell, who know better.  And thank God for Murray Rothbard (America's Great Depression), who has a piece out called Reliving the Crash of '29.  Check out these paragraphs with the propaganda you've heard over the years:

[T[he Republicans had never been the laissez-faire party. On the contrary, it was the Democrats who had always championed free markets and minimal government, while the Republicans had crusaded for a protective tariff that would shield domestic industry from efficient competition, for huge land grants and other subsidies to railroads, and for inflation and cheap credit to stimulate purchasing power and apparent prosperity.

It was the Republicans who championed paternalistic big government and the partnership of business and government while the Democrats sought free trade and free competition, denounced the tariff as the "mother of trusts," and argued for the gold standard and the separation of government and banking as the only way to guard against inflation and the destruction of people's savings. At least that was the policy of the Democrats before Bryan and Wilson at the start of the 20th century, when the party shifted to a position not very far from its ancient Republican rivals.

The Republicans never shifted, and their reign in the 1920s brought the federal government to its greatest intensity of peacetime spending and hiked the tariff to new, stratospheric levels. A minority of old-fashioned "Cleveland" Democrats continued to hammer away at Republican extravagance and big government during the Coolidge and Hoover eras. Those included Governor Albert Ritchie of Maryland, Senator James Reed of Missouri, and former Solicitor General James M. Beck, who wrote two characteristic books in this era: The Vanishing Rights of the States and Our Wonderland of Bureaucracy.

Check out Classical Liberal's Lindsay's No Mystery.  And Either is Inflation.  Damn Fine Bloggin'.

Ideology: A Dull Man's Substitute for Intelligence

Cover Me

A persistent irritant of mine are my so called "liberal" friends who can't handle alternative thought.  If I send them one of my posts I can feel the alarm bells ring back over the ethers.  They jutht don't know what to thay!  As das and I have frequently remarked, "liberal" ideas have to be digested by us.  It's impossible to attend school in the United States, listen to the news in the United States, read book reviews in the United States, without getting the prissy little school girl version -- that is to say, the "liberal" view -- of life.  Once, when meeting for lunch with several influential bloggers, the question was posed: what turned you conservative?  With the exception of das, who was shocked into reality by 9/11, the rest of us had been challenged by books we read when we were younger.  For example, two books that challenged my Seventies worldview were

The Incredible Bread Machine

and

The Mainspring of Human Progress

Both of these books are zippy, tremendously interesting, and very, very mind-bending.  Here is a pertinent review of The Mainspring of Human Progress:

Real Women

Real Women

Back in the Nineties I was fortunate enough to have spied on the library shelf (you know, one of those ancient buildings filled with books) a collection of Robert Graves' essays called Mammon and the Black Goddess, which contains a piece called Real Women.  The essay highlights a number of points that are too often neglected in this era of sexual exploitation -- the era of the "hookup" and "friends with benefits."  Spiteful sounding words if there were any!

Before I get to Graves, let me provide two quotes that set the stage.  The first is from Dick Meyer's Why We Hate Us:

We hapless moderns have discovered that the much-hyped self can't just create itself and get happy.  Human beings are not amoebas.  It is not at all clear to us anymore what an invented or discovered self is to be forged from.  Our communities have been neutered, and our traditional, inherited, moral, religious and aesthetic sensibilities have been discredited.  The philosopher Charles Taylor talks about the "sources of the self."  Well, what "sources of the self" have authority and credibility anymore?  We're good at organizing self-centered lives, with faux chateaus, wealth, nostalgic kitchens, and sensitive therapy talk.  We create what  have come to be called "lifestyles."  A lifestyle is thinner than a life.  We hate not having something more (67).

Character and manners do, substantially, maketh man -- and woman.  This is exactly why we used to spend so much time and love instilling character and good manners into our children and why some people still do.  After loving them, this is the primary challenge of parenting.

But parenting isn't enough.  Character and manners make up what Alexis de Tocqueville called "habits of the heart . . . . Cultivated habits of the heart, [Robert Bellah] argued, were a lubricant for politics and for happiness (203).

The second quote comes from Founding a Republic of Virtue, by Daniel N. Robinson:

Thoughts on Committees of Correspondence

Practices Zealously Pursued Become Habits

Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations. The Colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitution . . . . . If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study readers men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources . . . . .They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.  Edmund Burke's Speech of Reconciliation.

Among the numerous problems our country faces, the primary spiritual or moral conundrums might be summarized as follows:

1) The growth of the Leviathan national state, commandeered by ideologues.  In other words, the debate between Republican and Democrat isn't really a debate.  The debate is whether our citizens choose slavery over self-rule.  That is the debate.

The Discovery of Freedom

The Incredible Bread Machine

2) Our Leviathan is a fascist state.  (See Michael Ledeen's review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.)  We haven't transitioned to socialism yet, nor do I think we ever will -- in part because no one has.  It can't be done because it contradicts human nature.  The great communist states are criminal enterprises, not Giant Daycares.  What's pawned off as socialism is analagous to the what Rome did: the upper classes held all the land and hired out its legions.  It kept Rome free from riots by bribery, "bread and circuses."  Everyone else was a slave, or so close to slavery you couldn't tell the difference.  Once the system broke down -- and Rome had several close calls, the big ones being in Cicero's time -- Rome was lost.  It had no middle classes, no religious structure, no cultural commonalities to fall back on.

Even the idealized "communism" of Native Americans is an illusion fostered by the Warm Fuzzy Liberal.  First, the Indians' technology didn't go very far.  You can't survive winters very well when you're living in a Neanderthal economy.  Second, Indian societies had their wealthy, their privileged.  It's built into human DNA.  Trying to legislate it away does just the opposite: you create a de jure ruling class that can't be removed.

Except by fire and blood.

Look at the folks from Goldman-Sachs who have taken over our government.

Probably the best solution to our problems would be 1) a consensus to restore the vitality of the Tenth Amendment (and also repeal the Seventeenth Amendment).  This would limit the corruption ideology of by restoring authority to states, where politial extremes are easier to contain; and 2) our politicians instituting the same sorts of financial reforms we have been imposing on debtor nations for decades, to wit . . . .

We'd have to dismantle the entitlement structures!

You couldn't do it all at once, of course.  It would have to be done strategically.

Our entitlement state is our slavery of Lincoln's time.  Those of us with guts know it can't be sustained.  The poofters among us can't think past the next bumper sticker.  And they vote Democrat.

Of course, we aren't going to institute those reforms, which means a social and legal breakdown is on the way.

Right?

Meanwhile, our Warm Fuzzies believe that man can have NO FUTURE!! unless people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi regulate the markets.

If you believe that sort of drivel, you are truly pathetic, weak, and dangerous.

Swamp Things

Our Masters at Work

Two strange bedfellows have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate President Obama's right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, for his potential role in the near collapse of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, just as Treasury lifts the cap on their bailout money.

The real story of our time is how the United States government is being manipulated to trash our dollar at our expense.  In the name of "compassion" and "hope and change", you and I are slaves.

The Thirteenth Amendment has been de facto repealed.  This is a president who lectures us, not shares with us as an equal.

And you voted for it.

Merry Christmas.

Naughty Bits

I spent a lot of time studying our Founders and people like Samuel Adams and the original Tea Party. What Adams and the Sons of Liberty did in Boston was spread the word about the abuses of the British. They had Committees of Correspondence that got the word out to the colonies. We need Committees of Correspondence now, and we are getting them. That is what is happening with the Tea Parties. I wrote a column called "The Second American Revolution" about the fact that people are acting for themselves as it happened with the Sons of Liberty which spread throughout the colonies. That was a very important awakening in this country. A lot of people in the adult population have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights.  Nat Hentoff, America Under Obama

 

These elites are not simply milling about waiting for “the next chapter of trouble.” I think in too many cases they -like troubled eldest siblings, the “first children” who have never quite gotten over the subsequent additions to the family- have been actively fomenting chapter after chapter of trouble, for some 40 years. They are complacently building little fortresses, but they are doing so for a reason. Having written all of these chapters of trouble, they are feeling quite confident that their story is solidly structured, and they are ready for the dénouement they have planned. The anticipation of their surprise ending is making them almost giddy.

The ending, of course, is the coup d’état. Believing that the rest of us, now disillusioned, are no longer clinging to romantic ideals of honor, or truth or nobility, these always-restless First Children, devoted to deconstruction, believe they are about to take down the presidency, the churches, the “old” government and even the “old” media. They expect to put into place something “brand new.” But believe me when I tell you what they are building is older than dirt. And up from it. Which is why they will need their fortresses. Castro lives in one, too.

They’ve been practicing all of this, by the way, perfecting the Art of the Painless Coup so thoroughly that most ordinary folks do not even realize what has occured. Anchoress, Art of the Painless Coup

 
2009: A Year of Spectacularly Squandered Opportunity.

"I Fought a Battle in the Snow"

Whenever anyone asked my Dad, "Why do you hate the snow?" he might mutter, through a clenched pipe, "I fought a battle in the snow."

Our friend Stormbringer is doing a series on the Battle of the Ardennes -- the Bulge.

Stormbringer brings a perspective someone like me could never have.

It's depressing but . . . .

To honor the United States and all the brave persons who suffered during those years, you owe it to yourself to read Stormbringer's series:

Christmas Season 1944

Christmas in Europe 1944

White Christmas 1944

That's some damn fine bloggin'.

 

 

Merry Christmas from Washington Rebel

Logger Babes for Peace

Via the Barrister:

The 10th Amendment Foundation.  What is the Federal Government's genuine strategic role?  A strong dollar, strong defense, and firm foreign policy in a wicked, deceitful world.  In America, it's at the state and local level where society is built.   The "progressive" mania to build the ideological state at the expense of community is partly a hangover from Mother Jones' 19th Century, and mostly a masturbatory refusal to take one's own inventory.  Show me a "liberal", and I'll show you a meddling school girl.  I have yet to meet a bumper sticker liberal with a fully formed character.

Believe me, when I do there'll be an entire post dedicated to that discovery.

David Freddoso: Rude Awakening for a Naive Left

Good Morning, Obamacare

Scientists on Mirror Lake: Trying to document actual climate change, without the hysteria.  They say.

Merry Christmas!  A radical Muslim preacher linked by U.S. intelligence to a gunman who killed 13 people at a U.S. Army base is believed to have died in a Yemen airstrike on al Qaeda militants, a security official said on Thursday.

We'll be praying for a bountiful harvest at the Reb.  We entertain no illusions about Islam.

Peter Wehner: "When it comes to the public outrage that will emerge based on the deals that took place to secure passage of the Senate health-care bill, the degree of tone-deafness among Democrats is nothing short of startling."

Via our good friend, the News Junkie:

The Socialist Revolution Has Come to America  It's not Obama.  It's three generations of simpletons who prefer watching football to having a brain.

Jonah Goldberg: From Poverty to Prosperity

Robert Samuelson: A Parody of Leadership

Via Liberalguy: Ask a liberal what he most dislikes about the "right"? "I resent the attempt to tell me how to live my life," he'll say.

 

Merry Christmas to our Loyal Readers.  You're Appreciated.

Stuff You Won't Read in the Times Today

 
Thanks to My Friend Sarge for These Links:

Dr. Tim Ball: Obama Led The Total Failure of World Leadership in Copenhagen

Great Resource for you Earth Killers: International Climate Science Coalition

Via Liberalguy, How Obamacare Will Alienate Americans

Larwyin's Lynx: The Reid Bill is Coercive and Unconstitutional

The Other McCain: Nuke the Federal Reserve

 

This is How We Treat Our Friends

Taps

Citizens! A Progressive Triumph!

Call us what you will, but Cicero and I wrote-off America 30 years ago.  We could see what was coming, i.e., the people we saw from urban areas exemplified what we discussed in From Citizens to 'Stakeholders'.  Is there room for optimism?  More on that in a moment

John Perrazo has written a very instructive article called The Communists Behind Obama's Health Care Goals:

The polls have been clear for quite some time: By a substantial margin, Americans oppose the efforts of Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats to enact a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, one that would greatly expand the federal government’s role.

The fact is, our country is under a Leftist seige.  This is a huge powerplay.  A Revolution.  That's just how it is.  You're living through history.  In both the Soviet and the Nazi revolutions, there were opening years where things seemed normal, natural.  You know, those guys can't do that!  We'll change things!

But then Change took root, and people started going to prison.

Cicero and I take the position that to preserve a republic you nee a Republican Citizenry, i.e, one that puts individual and civic virtue before personal appetites.  We don't have that.  Haven't had that in 30 years.  30 years ago, the men and women who ran the shops in downtown Port Angeles had style.  Class.  They understood that private morality and public virtue determined the fate of this nation, America.  That's a big deal, you know: when you take pride in public virtue by nursing character, you're creating a safe environment for children, prosperity, and happiness.

How many of your children could understand the two sentences I just wrote?

That's your country, friends.

Newsflash for you "liberals": If virtue comes from the State, you may as well cut your throat now.  You're useless as a human being.

Dennis Prager gets his knickers in a knot with The Undoing of America.

Got news for you, Prager.

That's a done deal.  It's history at this point.

Is there room for optimism?

Yes, but not in my lifetime.

What I believe will happen is this:

1) The dollar will collapse;
2) America will either be brought under an international order or, more likely, a world war will break out over resources in the next 10-20 years; and
3) America will suffer a civil breakdown, in which the country breaks up into regional states.  America the superpower will be no more.

At some point in your children's, or grandchildren's, future, our spiritual heirs, American patriots, will establish a new republic.

This one ended 30 years ago.  You're just hearing Taps now. 

Make sure and visit our friend Liberalguy for news updates.  He's no Instapundit.  He's more succinct.

Mission Creep: The Goals of Obamacare

Born Again American

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

How to explain Cuba Care to your Brain Dead friends:

The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline.  Change Nobody Believes In

Sighs Among the Bones -- What I Learned from the Hoh Rain Forest, Part II

 
Healing Place of the Soul

Modern man describes his situation in terms of "ADD" and "ADHD."  Whereas his ancestors' focused on seasons, and the phases of planets, the modern specimen's concentration, is enslaved to artificial stimulation.  An animal that operated for thousands of years upon the "gentle predictabilities of rural life" is now a rat in a cage administered by his corporate keepers.  The man-rat borrows money like a crazed gambler in search for the next piece of cheese.  Not even the prospect of a lonely, meaningless death deters him from an eerie, ritualistic barrage of nervous, agitated grasping which he luridly calls "life."

The difference between American government now, and American government three generations ago -- as illustrated by the "hope and change" mantra of the charlatans in charge of us -- is that the State has every intention of managing our slavery.  In truth, we are witnessing the consensual repeal of the 13th amendment.  Americans have voted with their souls: from Lawrence Welk to Marilyn Manson in two easy steps: starting with dependence, and then the auction of imagination to the most obscene bidder.  Our devil is cloaked with "compassion for the poor."  What we mean to say is, we're too torpid to take responsibility for our own welfare.

The average American no longer comprehends well-crafted sentences.  He is conditioned to the Soviet-style slogan.

Hope!  And Change!  (Arise Comrades!)

Strange times.

In rural settings of the past, folks understood that Nature was the Liber Mundi: Nature had a face.  "She" was referred to by names, whether comforting names, such as Demeter, or strange and terrifying names, such as Hecate.  The wise taught that her love must be won!  It could not be taken by force, not without a penalty.

"'Let no rash mortal Disturb this veil,' said he, 'till raised by me; For he who dares with sacrilegious hand To move the sacred mystic covering, He'--said the Godhead--" "Well?"--"'will see the truth.'"   The Veiled Image at Sais

With sacrilegious hand.  Who among you dares consider that you may wield a sacrilegious hand?  You claim salvation, whether in Jesus, or in "liberalism."  How can you be so certain of your superiority?  Suppose the Life Force regards you as ungrateful, and lazy?

How prophetic were these words, written in 1200 A.D.:

Modesty is a capstone over all the virtues.

Quite possibly our condition is simply diagnosed: like ADD or bipolar disorder, it may be chemical.  Not patriarchy, as self-righteous feminists aver, but the side effects of industrial, then post-industrial, then post-modern, successes.  Man has become the rat in the cage, and he has done so willingly.  Without even knowing it, he has altered the structure of his brain to render himself more obedient to the artificial rat-a-tat of busy-busy.  Like "mesmeric operators" of old, his captors mistakenly believe themselves free o'the con.  Look at Obama.  Do you see freedom in his face, or the distortion of our age?  That man is not free.  He's not even a man.

Magicians and healers of the past knew full well the power of suggestion.  In rejecting the operation of this principle as unscientific, we have become enslaved to its more negative manifestations.  We no longer power our own souls.  Our souls are captured in the large-scale machinery of our time.  How many of you sing?  How many of you see color?  How many of you swoon with ecstasy in the presence of silent, luxuriant Isis?

Will man escape?  Will he assert his freedom?

I think he will, but at a cost.

We'll take a look at the lever of freedoms in the next installment.

Merry Christmas!

Update From Sonnon

The Original Washington Rebel: Nez Perce!

In response to today's email exchange, Scott Sonnon adds:

I hope to represent our country with honor as athlete and asst coach of the US National Team at the 2010 World Martial Arts Games. We've gotten a bad rap internationally as overindulgent, overentitled babies. I intend to rewrite that falsehood by properly sharing our incredible culture the best way I know how - through sportsmanship, the honorable tradition of hand to hand fighting, and training our forces and allies overseas. Keep spreading the word with pride, brother

I'm sure if you're interested in supporting this all-American endeavor, you can gain information at Scott's site.

Busted!

Born to Fail; Made to Succeed

There are lots of times, when you're a Big Time Journalist (so we fantasize) where you wonder -- three nanoseconds after you hit the send button -- should I have said that?  For example, last night I said about Scott Sonnon "He theorizes too much, and yaps around the subject like a Pomeranian with a boner."  Well now . . .

Imagine my surprise when I received, today's date, an official looking email entitled "A Pomeranian with a Boner."  'Great, I thought.  Here we go!'

Here's what the email said:

I was just sent your blog post. That was some hilarity. Thanks for the chuckles, and the props for CST and the Clubbell.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

V/R,

Scott Sonnon

(Gulp!)

You bet, Coach!  And just so you know we can make fun of ourselves around here, I want you to know I am going through the Intu-Flo routines, and most assuredly resemble a Belgian Baker with an inner tube stuck to his ass!

That is a man's man, boys.   America used to be filled with that kind.  A gentlemen with muskles.  We need more.

Having said that, I believe Sonnon has done three things:

1) Rescued resistance training from stupidity;
2) Introduced a ancient form of warrior training to a 21st Century audience; and
3) Read my blog.

A True Washington Rebel!  Our highest respect to Scott Sonnon!

P.S.  I stand by criticism that what you have to offer is somewhat inaccessible to those of us who forsake gobbledygook whenever possible.  What I'd really like to see is a '1-2-3 this is what you do, you see' for us Belgian Baker types.

My two bits.

Thanks for writing, Coach!

High school friend KD adds:

[I]f anyone ever told me they'd shaken hands with [Sonnon] and not felt like something profoundly human had happened... well... I'd have to wonder about them.

 
This is how we treat our friends.

Afraid For Our Country

Aurora Boreewoodsus

Cicero said to tell you he's busier than a one-legged paper hanger and to not fret, as I was supposed to essay ya as best I can this Christmas week.  I'll get back to you soon with the first two installments of a "What I Learned Series."

In the meantime, let it be known that we agree with Mr. Michael Goodwin:

I am a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting.

Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.

I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within. FUBAR FROM WITHIN

 

Let it further be understood that Cicero left me with the Keys to the Kingdom.

If I Had Children

The Original Sarge

If I had children, I would introduce them to two things in preparation for the Hell to come:

Scott Sonnon's Circular Strength Training.

Two things to say about Sonnon:

First, he's a little ADD, if you ask me.  He theorizes too much, and yaps around the subject like a Pomeranian with a boner.  An hour or so of Sonnon-talk can give you the jitters, if you haven't taken your Zanax.

Second, he's a goddamn genius.  The whole idea of weight training was a bastardization of how warriors trained, literally, for thousands of years: with clubs.  In Russia it was the Bulava; in Persia the Meel; in India the Gada, Jori, Karela, Ekka.  Great Britain and America adapted it as "club swinging", but that degenerated into the bonehead's manual still practiced at gyms across our fair nation.  "Clubbell" training is motion with resistance, the exact combination involved in weapons use.  It builds stamina, strength, and longevity, and I don't mean just arms and shoulders.  CST works the abdomen and legs, the entire body.  Sonnon, Talky Tom that he is, must be credited for resurrecting this ancient training.  It's well worth looking into.

Think of it this way: the toughest human beings in the world were likely the Cheyenne, the Souix, the Iroquois, et cetera.  Did they go to gyms?  Jog?  Inflate big rubber balls?

Nope.  But they sure knew how to swing a club!  We're talking about ancient killing techniques, my friend.  Ask any Frenchman, Englishman or Yank what it was like battling an American Indian in the field.

Tough.

It takes a little while to get the "swing" of things with Sonnon, but it's a top-notch method for conditioning the body into upper fitness levels.  It would prepare your children for dealing with problems.  It's also a lifetime fitness program.  Take ol' Cicero's word on this one.  It's a Blue Ribbon program.  You have to step around all the dog shit in the yard, but the end product is worth it.

Meet "Yogi Ramacharaka"!

This clever lawyer wrote the most intelligent book I've ever seen that "digests" Indian wisdom: Hatha Yoga.   Did you know that thousands of years ago the Indians worked out a complete system of diet and exercise?

They certainly did, and this little book is a mind-blower.  Read it.  It will change how you look and do everything.  This reviewer at Amazon got it right:

This book is one of the best I have ever read. It is not about postures, it is about the way to take care of your body and your health. It is chock full of information on how to improve your health in a variety of ways (some of which you can begin while you are reading the book), and many of which are very painless! From breathing, to chewing, to what to eat, to sunning, to ventilation, to bathing, to fresh air, to exercise and so on, he gives you fantastic advice for improving your health and your life. And he also explains WHY you should do the different things, and how they affect your body.

An absolute gem of a book; most highly recommended!

Just wanted to add that this same author's book, The Science of Breath, is also a must have book, for health. He explains how to breathe the ''full yogi breath'' and ''rhymthic breathing'' as well as other types of breathing for different things; the book is WONDERFUL! I would highly recommend these two books for anyone that wants to improve their health (and even if they are already healthy). The information in both books is just a goldmine!

It's good to be American.

And individualistic as all hell.

UPDATE: There appears to be some dispute over whether Atkinson was British or American.  I'd always hear that he was American, and a friend of Paul Case, with whom he co-authored the Kybalion.

Get On it

   

Hentoff took to heart the words from his mentor, I. F. "Izzy" Stone, the renowned investigative journalist who died in 1989: "If you're in this business because you want to change the world, get another day job. If you are able to make a difference, it will come incrementally, and you might not even know about it. You have to get the story and keep on it because it has to be told."  America Under Barack Obama -- an Interview with Nat Hentoff

This is a Rebel Blog.  Some of the folks who read here -- or post here -- are more traditional in their Christianity than I am.  My "religion", if you would call it that, would come under the specific heading, Celtic-Dreamer-Jewish-Hindu-Egyptian.  Take your pick.

(On the subject of Christianity, I try to avoid disputes.  Suffice it to say I believe the literalists commandeered that historic moment called Jesus Christ and turned it into a Wal-Mart display.  That's all I have to say on the matter.)

As a Rebel, I take the position that America is a Roscicrucian nation.   (Some would say Masonic.)  What do I mean by that?  There was a critical period in European History (not taught much in the schools, I'm afraid) called the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.  It boils down to this: the very educated and rebellious European elite of the 17th Century saw formal religion as a detriment to science, and saw science as a method of proving and confirming religion.  It was the early Rosicrucians that gave us Deism (an outgrowth of utilizing Science to study the "Mind of the Maker"); who insisted that no civilization worthy of the name civilized proscribed or prescribed religion (by their standards, truly, Islam is, and remains, heathen); it was them who championed the idea, via secret societies, that liberty was the natural destiny of man and his sole key to happiness and should not be impeded by the State.  This alone is the single Key to understanding the precipice we're perched on.  You can read about that aspect in The Discovery of Freedom.

The Enlightenment, as we understand it, and, therefore, the United States, began in an intellectual rebellion with the publications of two controversial "manifestoes", the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio.  Didn't know that, did you?  Think ol' Cicero's pulling your leg, don't you?  Aren't Rosicrucians those dumb asses with the stupid ads in stupid magazines?

The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross is what people like Dan Brown are sensationalizing with his books (the People Magazine version of history).  Think of it this way: the rose super-imposed on a cross is symbol of the spiritual flowering of a human individual.  One bar of the cross is scientific inquiry (horizontal), the other bar revelation (vertical).  Think about that for a bit and ask yourself, Does this not describe the direction taken by the West?  Did you not know you were given a key to your freedom by these courageous geniuses, your spiritual forbears?

Whether you acknowledge it or not, that is what has shaped your destiny as a Westerner.  Think about what I just told you in light of this observation:

When Systems Crash

Pictured Above: Not Garry 

Reader Garry Writes:

Democracy is the result of the democratic process and someone is now trying to hijack that process. Personal freedoms (life) are being threatened and are endangered.

(Read the Whole Kit)

This raises an important point in the simplest terms.  What happens when the Democratic process becomes the enemy?  What do you do?  What dynamics are created?  What unintended consquences arise as a result?

In dealing with my own pessimism, I very much recognize the following:

a) My own pessimism is my own.  Since I didn't have children, I don't have to watch my own fleshly heritage pay the price for this madness.  I may have sinned against God in some sense, but my own sufferings are circumscribed to that extent.

b) The real source of my 'pessimism' is anger.  I am angry that Americans rejected their heritage in exchange for adolescence, masturbation, and yes, slavery.

The 13th Amendment repeals by implication under our first African American president: the Anti-Lincoln.

I understand the Democrats accused us Conservatives of committing the same sin under George Bush.  There are differences between the two.  Here is one:

What's affecting freedom in this country is a reversion to a fetal position.  Real freedom is competitive, often harsh, and involves criticism.

Real racism in this country means, for example, not being able to tell black folks the truth: you are your own problem, not me. Political correctness, if nothing else, is guaranteeing the destruction of freedom for many, many people.  Freedom is an inside job.

Real Freedom ain't pretty.

I saw a cartoon the other day to the effect of: you want health care?  Try exercise and eating right!  I should have kept it for this moment, but didn't.  You get the picture.

 
Real Freedom

Climate Deal?

 

AWWWW Shucks!

"It is not what everyone has hoped for," Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Copenhagen. "We will try hard to have this legally binding treaty in 2010."  UN Climate Summit "Takes Note'' of Copenhagen Accord

We Are Doomed

Apocalypse

I consider myself an American first, a pragmatist second and, third, a conservative. I am also a pessimist. Not because I hate sugar and spice, but because of my pragmatism and my conservatism. This is how I see things: All organizational structures reach a point where they can no longer sustain themselves. Great men go mad, beautiful actresses mutter to themselves about George Bush and Hitler, old courtroom titans become a source of pity and frustration.

I am an American. I believe in what my country was. I don't mean the constitution. I mean its people. I no longer believe in my people. Any human group that digs Barack Obama and thinks Michael Moore "has something to say" is doomed. I don't know how to make it any plainer. Why do our children kill?  Because we have gone insane, that's why.

Do I hate Obama? Nope. I just know he's a phony, self-centered boy who has imposed his masturbatory Dreams on the rest of us.

With our full consent.

As Reiben says in Saving Private Ryan, I got a bad feeling about this one.

When I really want to feel reality I read John Derbyshire's A Day That Will Live in Infamy. This is history folks. Saluting the flag and praising Wal-Mart won't stave off the inevitable, will it? (Derbyshire's little piece was written 4 months before 911, prophetically enough. It's always good to follow up with his Crusading They Went. Talk about 'Bush is Hitler!")

Matt Patterson reviews a new Derbyshire Book: We Are Doomed.

Yes, I'm going to read it!

In the news:

A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste, by Paul Barrett.

Our 'Human Rights' Culture is Now an Anti-Semitic Tyranny, by Charles Moore.

Love is Like Jesus

 

Extreme Kamasutra

Obama Loves Me!

Climate Change for Iconoclasts, Skeptics, and Humorous Cranks:

Climate Depot

Canada's National Post was there early! The Denier Series

Belmont: Escape From Copenhagen.  The Last Best Word on the Worldwide Global Warming Religion.

Weekend Tea & Rain Reader:

The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series

Act Now!  Gormogon Lynx

 

My Corrections Officer Told Me to Avoid These Situations

Babes for Biden. Not Really. Made You Look, Though!

 

Somebody (Besides Me) Thinks I'm Funny

Because.  Well.  I Am!

Have you ever noticed that the Establishment always promotes and honors fools?

Yes.  Since the Seventies I've noticed this.  The blogosphere is the only antidote we have for that crap.

Oh Shit:  Bloomberg is reporting this troubling information: As vanishing credit spurred the government-led rescue of dozens of financial institutions, Harvard was so strapped for cash that it asked Massachusetts for fast-track approval to borrow $2.5 billion.

Gator's Not Overly Impressed with the Wheels of Justice.  If could happen to you, you know.

"Hang 'em!"

Four out of five doctors agree: Health care debate causes mental illness.

So does arguing with Democrats.  Who Don't Like America.

Our President.  Plotting Despotism.

Because that's what he does.

O, Shut the Fuck Up, Bozo.

The Totalitarian, Collectivist Impulse.  They're Everywhere.  Same with these:

Bitchgate

Global Domination.  It's called the Belgrade Process. Ya can't make this stuff up.

Ed Driscoll Has the Top 10 Under-Reported News Stories of the Year.  Parts I and II.

Larwyn's Lynx.  What are your Brother and Sister Bloggers Bloggifying?

 

Humping Heavy

What Cicero Was On About

 

In his final installment of What I Learned as a Prosecutor, Cicero offered that I should run the next lap.  He meant something specific, which I aim to address.  Sometimes El Cicerooney is shy about expressing what he knows to be true, as you all know.  I have heard him say, often, 'The world is filled with yapping Pomeranians pretending the fingerling between their legs makes them a giant."  He takes delight in the cryptic, you may have found.

Quoting Paul Case:

You yourself are completely filled, at all times, with the real presence of the hidden force.  All that you are is an assemblage of manifold veils that hide it, and by hiding it make it "occult."  Your body is made of it.  It is the substance of your food and drink, of the air you breathe, of the earth beneath your feet, of all your possessions.  This is the One Reality, manifest in all the things you know, and present in everything outside your present range of knowledge also.

The universe is a great ocean of vibrating electro- magnetic energy.  Psychologists assure us that this energy appears as "objects" when its vibrations are distinguished within relatively narrow fields perceptible to our senses.  If our sense organs should change very little, we should find ourselves in a new world, full of things unknown to us now.  Therefore these things actually exist, even now, though we can form no clear idea of what they are like.