Washington Rebel

Did someone say more boobs?

that's all the boob's I can stomach to post right now...jeezz..I want to rip my own eyes out!

Virgil sends.....

So, you want to be a REBEL

 

America, you have become dull. Dull in your philosophy, mind, body and spirit. You are dull in your pursuits, your conversations, your thoughts, your pursuit of a greater meaning and lastly in your pursuit of excellence.

You are the instant gratification nation. You have lost your grounding. The spirit of rugged individualism and resiliency while not completely dead lies dormant in your heart. Your soul has been exchanged for Lord knows what? Pick a distraction. Plenty abound and your appetite for shallowness, low browed pursuits and immediate gratification is insatiable. Righteous pride has been set aside and replaced with acquiescence. Acquiescence to every whimsical fancy, every shallow desire and you wonder why we have the leaders we have.  Righteous anger has been replaced with tolerance. A tolerance born of the weak, born of those who want to make right that which can never be, and a tolerance that demands you shed your rational self interest in pursuit of the latest fad even if it mean your self destruction.

America, you have forgotten your exceptionalism. You have not only forgotten it, you have killed it. You stand in awe and wonder as you are repeatedly told that you are not exceptional. Misty eyed, doe like in your acceptance of this drivel you gasp and beat your chest. Why yes, we are not exceptional. We have done much damage to the world. You weep and gnash your teeth at the injustice of it all. Oh how low have we become. What great wrongs we have done to the world. We must level the playing field and right these tremendous wrongs.

You have surrendered yourselves to the equity adjusters. You have torn asunder the foundation that your fathers built. You have run rampant like spoiled children over the morals that your mothers have instilled within you. Filled with faux sophistication and the faux appearance of intellectualism you murder the inner voice that screams out at you. You ignore it though it gnaws at you and instinctively you know something is wrong though you willfully refuse to acknowledge what that something is. It is guilt, shame and a lasting sorrow that will not leave you due to your purposeful self destruction.

No one is going to destroy you but you. There is no need to worry about economic chaos, about the loss of your freedom and your associated pursuits of life, liberty, and property. YOU have wrought your self destruction. Bleat all you like, lie to yourself that you are the exception. Sit and fantasize as to how you and you alone are the last individual, the last man standing, and the one who will survive while the sheep are led to the slaughter. You are wrong.

There is still time America. There is time for you to stand, to remember and seize upon your birthright. Remember the lessons of your fathers; remember the love of your mothers. Remember what it is to be exceptional and to live for larger purposes other than the purposes of self gratification, self aggrandizement and ultimately self destruction.

When you are ready to seize your liberty and emancipate yourself you will begin a long journey home. You’ll be welcome here with us as a fellow REBEL though until then you are no more than the hollow men and we’ve no use for you.

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

Want to be a man? Welcome to the Reb! Want to be a hollow caricature of one? Go away…

Virgil sends….. 

Surreal States of America

Best I've seen yet: Your Own Personal Jesus.  Via Liberalguy

I coined the phrase Jesus Obamasattva last year, before the election.  I knew he'd get elected, because Americans wanted a savior in a president.  The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy has called it.  It's a part of our national "dialogue" -- a disgrace in place of fortitude.

Also via Liberalguy, the Left's Blind Eye to the Obvious, per Jack Cashill.  This is a great aricle.  I'm sure we can all add other examples of how the press . . . .

Only wanted to lecture us about bad Republicans.

Strange, isn't it?  Where are our robust reporters?  Where are the college age kids that rebel against their parents' superficiality?

 

44 Seconds: Leather-Bound Complete Sets

Biggest Story of 2009: The Rise of the Virtual Newsroom

Washington Rebel Reader, Not Andrew Breitbart

The single most important news event of 2009 was the emergence of The Virtual Newsroom. A newsroom run by a virtual army of conservative journalists famous and unknown, their individual and collective impact multiplied exponentially by millions of Internet users, radio listeners, readers and television viewers.

How did this happen? How does it work in practice?

First, perspective is needed here. Like other big news events, it didn't happen overnight. There is history, lots of it.

In the afterglow of World War II, at the dawn of the Cold War, the ideology of American liberalism reigned supreme. What began at the beginning of the 20th century as the "progressive movement" -- an ideology that believed government control in some fashion was The Answer to the everyday lives of Americans -- was now riding herd.  Jeffrey Lord

This article by Lord is just too juicy to be summarized.  It needs to be savored, dessicated and snorted, taken to the bathroom for privacy, dreamed on, shared.

Throughout the Vietnam-Watergate years my poor ol' Dad bemoaned the bias of the press.  I think it was the influence of his years studying drama before World War II interrupted those ambitions.  He could see what a crock of shit the television news was.  Before it was over he despised Walter Cronkite beyond description.  Now that I'm ripe in years, I can only guess what my World War II vet Dad was thinking: 'What happened to my country, Dude?' was not how he would have expressed it.

There was a cultural shift in America, such as outlined by Neal Postman, away from any pretense of conversation toward outright propaganda.  One of the things you never hear a Leftist confess is that Corporate America's presentation of the "news" almost always supported their favorite causes: people were poor because of greed; America's economic might was destroying cultures, the environment, and so on; polar bears were swimming because of Americans.  I didn't see very many 60 Minutes episodes where the mantras of the Left were parsed and laughed at.

No one was allowed to laugh in Soviet America.

The two worst developments in my lifetime:

The Coarsening of American Culture and, along with that, blaming whites and corporations and whoever else for one's own shortcomings; and

Political Correctness, a veritable tyranny in America.  If you're white, male and middle-aged, you find yourself whispering a great deal, for fear of retaliation.  Hence, I never admit "liberals" are liberal.  They're intolerant, and often psycho, assholes, in my experience. 

Lest you think I'm talking about a white thing, I just spoke with an Canadian-Asian (or is that Asian-Canadian?) friend in the International Corporate World who has been admonished about what to say, and not say, with respect to Indian executives.  Can't insult their culture.  Now, really, who would even suspect a Canadian of that?  This isn't about race for me.  It's about freedom.

Why aren't there more news stories on the mistreatment white males receive from Warm Fuzzy Liberals?  Seems newsworthy to me, not because I'm white, but because I support freedom and prosperity.  Currently the freest country in the world dictates who can talk, what they can say, and under what conditions.  How did American free speech get reduced to whispering and veiled, sometimes explicit, threats?  And what gave our Press confidence that they could and should determine the outcome of a presidential election?  These folks who say FOX News is biased!

A president who attacks a news organization from the White House?  Who demeans the one half of the country that didn't vote for him. 

Can anyone spell Third World Country?

Both of these developments are killing us, like a cancer.  When people say to me, "You're dark because of the work you do", my answer always is, 'It's not me who's dark.  I'm just reporting what I see.'

I hope our readers will take time to read Jeffrey Lord's article Biggest Story of 2009: The Rise of the Virtual Newsroom and comment on it.  This article is really a gift to us all!

 

American Heart

Born November 30, 1835: An American Icon

Mark Twain was an American icon because without the help of a speechwriter, a teleprompter, a pair of fake Greek columns, and a larger-than-life broadcast screen, he could move an audience with his spontaneous oratory.

Mark Twain was an American icon because without using a ghostwriter, he could write from his own head and heart and wondrously transmit the American experience onto paper.

Mark Twain was an American icon because his travels abroad never turned out to be apology tours.

Drawing the distinction between those in the world who do "things because they have been done before," Mark Twain explained that "an American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before." Mark Twain believed in American exceptionalism. In fact, he reveled in it. Mr. Twain thought America was best and that the last thing on our minds should be emulating Europeans.

They sure don't make American icons like they used to.

Harold Witkov Thinks About Mark Twain on His Birthday

"An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before."  How many Warm Fuzzy Liberals would be at home with that sentiment?  They spend hours and hours and hours suprressing innovation and individuality and liberty, a trend that can be seen with the NEA's Recommended Reading: Saul Alinsky.  Alinsky wasn't an American.  He was one of those wormy little leftists that sprouted up all through the Sixties who couldn't keep his hand off his cock.  The only manly thing about Alinsky was the day he died.  As Christopher Chantrill said:

No wonder the liberals hate [Sarah Palin]. The whole point of public education, of business regulation, or rampant credentialism is to smother people like her before they have a chance to get anywhere.  Palin and the Future

The modern "liberal" is an undeveloped little creature who has not really done anything, but considers himself superior; who regards meddling in the lives of others as his prerogative, one that is forbidden conservatives; who will whine for a decade about anthropogenic global warming without ever questioning whether he's been lied to.  "Liberals" are Sinister Little Shits, far more capable of SS tactics than any Republican I ever met.  "Liberals" are America's teenage children, pissing all over the carpet while the parents work.  They are a problem.  The problem won't go away on its own.  They have to grow up.

At a terrible price.

Bernie Reeves outlines the liberal chimera in The Hidden Truth -- how we live in a "free" country where journalists and educators are cowards, allergic to truth.  Political Correctness is the most destructive weapon in the Leftist Arsenal.  It rules the workplace, litigation, and law enforcement.   Slowly, but surely, it destroys the American Psyche.  The fruit of our moral and intellectual flaccidity is a world where real dangers stalk, while politicians play with themselves.

And the voters fall to their knees.

I want my America back.

We'll get it back.

But at such a cost.

7 Stories Obama Doesn't Want Told

Eric Holder, ACORN, and Cloward-Piven Justice

Hoh Rain Forest Thanksgiving

 

Where I Grewed Up

Matt Spivey asked his students what they knew about Thanksgiving.  Here is how your future responded:

"Isn't it to celebrate the final time we showed unity with the Indians before we massacred them?"

"I think some important document might've been signed that day, right?"

"Does it symbolize how the Native Americans taught white people how to cook?"

The Truth About Thanksgiving

As Steve McCann says, This Has Been a Dismal 12 Months.

I was fortunate to have grown up in a house where the human spirit did not have to compete with television commercials; where the intellect had the opportunity to grow under the stimulation of books and conversations.  To be absolutely honest with you, I don't much like your country: it's noisy, shoddy, and disrespectful.  It has buried the human soul under a mound of commercial stupidity.  Your kids spit and swear in public, expect things to be given to them without any effort on their part, and you are foolish enough to elect a con like Barack Obama on the same "moral authority" as you have raised your children.  In other words, you are children.  And not very nice ones, I might add.  What can I say?

You have a date with Satan.  I hope you like forced anal sex.

I'll tell you what I can say for this Thanksgiving.  I'm going to share with you the America you gave up.  Dare to take a walk back in time with me?

America was founded as a constitutional republic.  The nature and operation of that republic was immortalized in the Lincoln-Douglas debates (reenacted on C-Span), about which Neil Postman wrote:

From Citizens to Stakeholders

A Prime Ciceronian Fantasy

Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum.  It wants to produce a certain kind of human being.  This intention is more or less explicit, more or less a result of reflection; but even the neutral subjects, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person.  In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious.  Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle.  Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality.  Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge and character supportive of a democratic regime.  Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime.  We began with the model of the rational and industrious man, who was honest, respected the laws, and was dedicated to the family -- what in its decay has been dubbed the nuclear family.  Above all he was to know the rights doctrine, the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation" conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  A powerful attachment to the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man's reason, was the goal of the education of democratic man.   This called for something very different from the kinds of attachment required for traditional communities where myth and passion as well as severe discipline, authority, and the extended family produced an instinctive, unqualified, even fanatic patriotism, unlike the reflected, rational, calm, even self-interested loyalty -- not principles -- required in the United States.  This was an entirely new experience in politics, and with it came a new education.  This education has evolved in the last half century from the education of democratic man to the education of the democratic personality.  Allan Bloom

So This is What Change Looks Like!  When and where the thief broke in and kidnapped the Baby is the subject of much dispute.  The Sixties radicals?  New Dealers?  Consumerism?  Corporations who, with their alien friends, plant chips in our heads as we shop?

Dude 

Somewhere America shifted from Citizens to consumers or, as Angelo Codevilla puts it, we've become "stakeholders."  In what ranks as the definitive description of my lifetime, Codevilla nails what ails America:

The trivialization of American citizenship into an audience format.

Suitius Emptius

Jesus Obamasattva

"If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field." -- French writer Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592)

Narcissist, Empty Suit, or Radical?  "Too young for caution, and too old for fear", S.E. Cupp (?) takes a stab at the Obamanom in Barack Obama: Empty Vessel.  What Cupp concludes is actually more frightening than the other speculations:

So why all the radical friends and the radical proposals and the radical rhetoric if he’s not himself a radical? Because his lack of conviction and his inability to forge his own philosophical and theological identity, have made him incredibly susceptible to external influence and pressure. He is easily led. He is, as such, the perfect prospect for someone like Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright, whose radical agendas require vulnerable recruits who are malleable and willing. I don’t know if President Obama is a man of conviction, if he is a man of faith, or if he is the intellectual giant the left really wants him to be. He very well may be all of those things. But I haven’t seen proof of any of it yet, and neither have you, because there hasn’t been any.

So, I guess we'll have to start calling him Obamazombie, because that's what Cupp describes.  Why not?  (My best work yet was Narcisso and Malevola!  If anyone's funnier than me, please notify Iowahawk.)

How Democracies Become Tyrannies

How I Became a Pessimist

This is exactly what I think about our Teleprompter-in-Chief:

*He was elected only because a substantial number of Americans accept, on some level, that their rights come from government.  That's a basic misfire in our system.  That's how we've transitioned from a republic to a democracy.

*A second systemic misfire for America is the Amusing Ourselves to Death syndrome.  We elect entertainers more than leaders.  In fact, it is safe to say very few people under 50 know what a leader is (and that's a liberal cut), the strong exception being those with military backgrounds, where leadership is still generated and necessary.

*A third systemic misfire is the brutalization of education by America's indigenous Soviet mentality.

In sum, Obama was elected strictly because of the numbskull factor, i.e., people who worship the office of the presidency as some sort of godhead.  If you don't believe me, watch them rage when you question basic "liberal" assumptions.  They go mad.

Because they are.

The key to American freedom is separation of powers plus an ironclad committment to the Bill of Rights.  To the extent either of those is seriously compromised by our own deterioration, prepare to be Europeanized.

Where and How Will it End?

Lefward, Harch!

A Little Cheese with Your Whine?

Principle vs. Personality

Neil Postman in the Late 1990s, Part I

Here are the opening paragraphs from his Foreward to Amusing Ourselves to Death:

We were keeping our eye on 1984.  Whe the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves.  The roots of liberal democracy had held.  Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.