Washington Rebel

We like Poetry, bumper stickers are dull

From a friend of Cicero

For those of you living in a wilderness of mirror's or if you see through the glass darkly...well...better get your house in order. Hard time are here, like it or not, and starting with a self assessment and understanding your own strengths and weakness before we get to work in the New Year may be in order.

Thanks FoC!

 
THE MAN IN THE GLASS

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father or mother or wife
Who judgement upon you must pass;
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think your a straight-shootin' chum
And call you a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end.
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life
And get pats on your back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.

Peter "Dale" Wimbrow Sr.
also
copywritten in 1994 for the International World of Poetry contest
Honorable Mention Award
Jacqui Avila-Bell

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….. 

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:

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:

We Admitted that We Were Goofballs, that Our Lives Had Become Distorted by Chronic Pomeranianism

Klavan on the Culture: Night of the Living Government

Klavan: Well, I was always a dissatisfied liberal. I just never knew there was anything else to be.  I was born Jewish to a mother who worshipped FDR and a father who thought that any Republican victory prefigured the return of Adolf Hitler.  That’s not an exaggeration:  he thought Republicans were all just Hitler in disguise.  So going from that family into the arts, where everyone mouths this elitist, pseudo-sophisticated left-wing bushwa without any real understanding of the underlying issues:  leftism was simply the water I swam in.  Conservatives were the bad guys.  Everyone knew that.

FP: So how did your second thoughts begin? Tell us about your journey out of the Left.

Klavan: It was an experience that very much mirrored the pattern of the famous paradigm shift described in Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”  Anomalies started to occur, things that didn’t fit into what I thought of as a “liberal” world view.  The Bakke case, in which the Supreme Court supported affirmative action – that was a big one:  I thought it was a clear sign that the left – my side – had signed on to racism.  Feminism, political correctness, the disaster of welfare, the appeasement of the Soviet Union – I kept saying, “Well, that’s no good,” but I thought they were anomalies.  I still didn’t realize there was an alternative philosophy that described the world more accurately.  Then the Berlin Wall fell down – everything Reagan predicted – stupid Reagan, cowboy Reagan, dumb old movie actor Reagan – every single thing he said would happen, happened.  And it finally began to dawn on me, “Oh, I get it:  it’s not this and this and this that’s wrong.  It’s ALL wrong.”  And I started the long, difficult process of changing my mind.  Andrew Klavan: My Way Into and Out of the Left – by Jamie Glazov

Hat Tip, Maggie's Farm.

Other momentous mind changes:

Leaving the Fold

A Manifesto

Pessimism of the Intellect and an Optimism of the Will

Horowitz: Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me

Antonio Gramsci once described the revolutionary temperament as a pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of the will. For the veterans of my radical generation, the balance was tipped when we sustained what seemed like irreparable injury to our sense of historical possibility. It was not even so much the feeling that the left would not be able to change society; it was rather the sense that, in crucial ways, the left could not change itself.

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

Mark Levin 11/18/09

Mark Levin inerviews Sarah Palin the 2nd Hour. 

Download Levin11182009

Excellent commentary on the Sheikh trial in New York the first hour.  What are the rules?  Listen to Lindsey "Goober" Graham's interrogation of that Goombaugh Holder!! Scary!  "Criminalizing politics.  Criminalizing the War on Terror."

"Our country thrown away by amateur ideologues."

Why Did Sarah Begin Her Book Tour in Grand Rapids?

Andrew Sullivan: The Randall Terry of Anti-Palinism

Bee Gees- You Should Be Dancing

An Old Bull's Depression

The Cold, Hard Lessons of Fort Hood

The Muslim Brotherhood at Fort Hood   *   Jihad at Fort Hood   *   Radical Muslim Hails Fort Hood Massacre   *   J.R. Dunn: The Left and Terror

A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry . . . . He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged. But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? . . . . . . [A]fter calling America the “aggressor” in Afghanistan and Iraq, this Muslim jihadist traitor army officer picks up his semi-automatic weapons and heads for the center at Ft. Hood where soldiers are being deployed to fight the jihadists in Afghanistan to conduct his massacre. Yet this morning the Fox News Channel chiron says “Investigators search for a motive in the Ft. Hood killings.” Is Everybody Out of Their Mind?

Yes, David.  Most Americans are flinching at the idea of actually thinking.  It hurts their brains -- if they try at all -- so they pull back.

The Twilight of American Culture.  Take this blog.  One of the reasons why I blog is I made a decision years ago to not run for office.  If I ran for office, I would be pasted with all kinds of names -- courtesy of Warm Fuzzy Liberals who cannot truly distinguish between thought and ideology -- because they're ideological (and many don't really know that -- because it hurts to think).  I don't give them that satisfaction, but not out of fear.  It's because, for the moment, the average American would prefer to get a patty back and pablum via Oprah or Dr. Phil.   We live in a Tyranny of Kindness.

Dark?  Cynical?

Okay.  So it is.  But in a better informed, more vital America, I could serve my country without fear of folks going hysterical by merely . . . . discussing ideas and facts.  Couldn't I?  Is that such a far-fetched "rightwing" thing to say?

We watched the Media elect a president.  Those of us who read and write blogs know there's an elite in control that gets angry if we take different points of view from what is "required."  This isn't Communism, necessarily, and it isn't always "leftist."  It's a poweplay, homegrown in the Democratic Party of the Thirties, radical leftists of the Sixties, and astute Suits who understand how to close the game in their favor.  In fact, America has already ceded its sovereignty to international forces.  I believe at this stage, our bankruptcy and subjugation are done deals.  It's only a matter of months; maybe years.

N.I.C.E.  C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien saw what was coming.  Think of it: two men who dealt with rats and blood and mud in the goddamned trenches of World War I, who lived in actual dread of what might happen under Hitler . . . .

Global Economic Regime.  Saw perfectly well that the real threats to our tyranny would be corporations telling us N.I.C.E. things.  Not a free market system, mind you, but a fascist set up of police power plus banking power -- a stranglehold that can't be slipped.  They were old-fashioned conservatives, Lewis and Tolkien.  Like yours truly.  Believe me.  My kind can't run for office.  We're museum pieces.

The fact is I don't trust most of my fellow countrymen.   They're far more spoiled brat than American, and we're going to have to pay for that indulgence in some God-awful, self-generated Hell, while Muslims -- and Leftists, presumably -- cheer.

It's a madness we're talking about, not responsible politics.  This old Moose is depressed, but I'm accustomed to it: Irish genes and a good mind for history prepare you for the truth.

Get ready to sit out their nightmare.

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal

Diana West: Death of the Grown-Up

Larrey Anderson: Constitutional Chess  Brilliant analysis of how the game of American government is set.

Jeffrey Goldberg on the See-No-Evil Elite

American Power: Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano Apologizes, Reassures Arab Regimes for Fort Hood Massacre

The Deadly Curse of PC

Obams's Garbage Can Memos II (GCM I)

My friend Ex-Seattle Lefty called me this morning.  Had I seen this Larry King Video on the Fort Hood Massacre?

Former POW Shoshana Johnson Destroys Tom Kenniff for 'Dangerous' Assumptions on Ft. Hood Shootings

How the Left Was Won.  Dr. Phil and former POW Shoshana Johnson both say JAG officer Tom Kenniff's questions about whether Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was motivated by ideology is "a terrible innuendo" and "irresponsible" (Dr. Phil) and "dangerous" (Shoshana).  Note how Kenniff, the lawyer, is attempting to engage in genuine argument; Shoshona goes Warm Fuzzy Liberal by shouting down questions; and Dr. Phil is a snob who doesn't accept unacceptable questions.  In sum, as my friend DAS points out, more evidence that the West has gone AWOL intellectually.  We are not able to freely discuss things.  It is, in fact, "dangerous" to suggest Hasan was perhaps a Jihadist, as I found out yesterday: one of my prosecutor friends at their regular office meeting was asked to not put this incident in those terms.  He was silenced.

By the Deadly Curse.

Secondhand PTSD Contagion Kills American Journalism

Had I read "Wretchard's brilliant posts" on political correctness, das asked? To wit, Fort Hood:

Can there be such a thing as treason in a multicultural society or is that so yesterday? If so, Lincoln was wrong: a house divided against itself can stand. In a heap about an inch high perhaps, but maybe that’s cool. And cool in the end may best describe a house with no walls. Maybe Cole Porter got it right after all. Anything goes.

And Physician, Heal Thyself:

The US News report says “Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials six months ago because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades. Investigators had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press.” The Army refused to rule out the possibility that Hasan was not acting alone.

"A Natural Leader."   As das points out, the recent slaying of Seattle PD Officer Timothy Brenton was in fact motivated by a form of toxic political correctness -- the kind you pick up from college professors:

By God, You've Found Us

Damn Right I Read Washington Rebel!  It's the Real Revolution!

We blog because we enjoy it.

We Loves Cats, and Librarians.

We're Conservative, and Don't Apologize For it.

Our Picture is Next to 'Humility' in the Dictionary. 

We Are Proud Throwbacks to the Future.

We're Washington Rebel. 

And you are either with us, or you're Ordinary.

Poodle.

"First make sure you're right, then go ahead." -- Davy Crockett

Monday Whip

Annual Medicare Fraud: $60 Billion; Annual Profits of Top Ten Insurance Companies: $8 billion

We Love Rush.  Cool laugh when Chris asks him about keeping the country safe.  Great interview.  Rush voices the fear many of us have felt since Alinsky Central snatched the White House.  (We call the president 'Man-Boy'.  It fits.)

New Anti-Limbaugh-Beck Group Tied To Ex-Obama Czar Van Jones

The Villification of Rush

White House's Media Attacks Part of a Troubling Trend

WSJ: Pelosi's Bill the Worst Ever  Really?  It's straightforward and to the point.  I don't see the problem.

The Classical Liberal Has a Complete Analysis of Social Welfare Spending and Socialism.  Plus, pics.

Svetlana Kunin: Service.gov And Its Soviet Similarities  (Yes, we've linked it before.) 

Bad News for Democrats on Ethics Probes.

Revolt in New York: 

Saturday's decision by Republican Dede Scozzafava to drop out of tomorrow's special Congressional election in upstate New York is a potentially big political moment that could help to return the GOP to first principles—or could lead to internecine ruin. Much will depend on how GOP leaders and conservative activists respond.

Scozzafava Ex-Spokesman Speaks Out

Republicans Plot Coup

David Broder:  Key Votes in Virginia, New Jersey and northern New York state will tell us about 2010.

Times Online: When News is Good, Why are Americans Gloomy?

David Paton, who has died aged 89, was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore and forced to work on the Thai-Burma "Death Railway".

The Anti-Lincoln

The Emancipation Proclamation (1963); Inauguration Speech 1864

A subtlety not clearly understood by many, perhaps, is that Abraham Lincoln was not wild about unrestrained capitalism.  He once said:

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”

From what I know about Lincoln, it is safe to say that he abhorred man's inhumanity to man.  That, more than economic policy, was at the root of his revulsion to slavery.  In this respect he was in alignment with the Abolition movement, the 19th century versionn of our own "warm fuzzy liberal" -- refomers who were frequently not playing with a full deck, a condition that seems to go with the compulsion to reform.  Idealists, not pragmatists.

What is discussed less often is how, in many of Lincoln's earliest writings, he expressed many sentiments that a contemporary of his, Karl Marx, would have agreed with, to wit: that which a man earns with his hands is too often exploited by those who don't earn, i.e., "industry" is frequently thievery dressed up as virtue -- a public posturing and sleight of hand most likely to be found wherever one finds politicians and businessmen darting among the marble pillars.  Lincoln had a real problem with that.  He was not a huge fan of the corporate man of his day, though he did earn his money representing railroad clients.  Lincoln was a pragmatist.

Gary Andres: Squandering Hope, Channeling Nixon

 

From "Hope and Change" to Blame and Attack

In his book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, historian Rick Perlstein argues the seeds of today's polarized politics were sown during the 1960s and 1970s. He traces the fault lines of contemporary controversies such as marriage, abortion, the environment, the role of government and even the very terms of our national self-image, back to this earlier period. President Nixon stepped into those stormy times and helped define a language of politics still used today--a "silent majority" of middle-class, conservative-leaning, middle-American "people of faith," versus a more cosmopolitan, secular, and liberal-leaning "live and let live" crowd.

Last week Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee lamented that Mr. Obama's growing list of public spats with banking executives, the insurance industry, the Chamber of Commerce, and Fox News reminded him of the Nixon Administration (Alexander worked there until 1970), where White House Counsel John Dean and his colleagues schemed about ways to "use the available Federal machinery to screw our political enemies."  Gary Andres, Obamaland

That's an interesting take.  I, too, believe the current patterns were pressed out in the 70s.  While you can't blame Nixon for it all, he was right at the center of the national maelstrom.  His personality was tailor-made to feed the paranoia.  I put this book into my queue at Amazon.

I guess the good news is, is that Obama's so amateurish, he's making it easier to fight back.  There's no subtlety to Rahm Emanuel and company.

Quin Hilyer: Transparent Nonsense

Charles Krauthammer: White House Goes Too Far

Who's Pulling Obama's Strings?

Many believe that Obama is being manipulated by his political adviser David Axelrod and his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The aura of Chicago politics drifts over the capital like a smog. Ironically, the nasty assaults may be calculated to offset a growing view that the president is not tough enough to stand up to his detractors. He already looks weak as he “dithers” on Afghanistan, repeatedly blames George Bush for his problems and kow-tows to foreign leaders while apologizing for our nation’s past.

American Lion

 
So the Man-Boy Writes Like Caesar, Does He?

Funny!

Here's what a Lion looks like, boys:

Readers of Thomas Sowell's columns in IBD don't have to be told why he is considered one of America's greatest thinkers — maybe the greatest.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet has called him "our greatest contemporary philosopher," an opinion that British historian Paul Johnson shares in his book "A History of the American People."

Besides his weekly newspaper column, Sowell has written 43 books — 10 in the last five years — two monographs, 87 articles in periodicals and books, and 33 book reviews.

His latest two books, "The Housing Boom and Bust" and "Applied Economics," came out this year. The latter, subtitled "Thinking Beyond Stage One," is one of six he has written on economics.

Dr. Sowell has granted IBD permission to run one of the chapters of "Applied Economics" — "The Economics of Medical Care" — in its entirety. We are doing so because of its relevance to the debate over health care reform. The chapter will run in nine parts over the next week and a half. The first part starts below and continues in the Issues & Insights section, where the other eight parts will appear.

Sowell was born in North Carolina in 1930 and reared in Harlem. After dropping out of high school, he was drafted into the military and served in the Marines during the Korean War.

During his 20s, when he was a self-described Marxist, he attended and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a B.A. in economics. He also has a master's in economics from Columbia and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

He has taught at Howard University, Cornell, Brandeis, Amherst and UCLA, and is now the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

Now, if the NEA guy said the President writes like Thomas Sowell . . . .

I'd kiss his ass and give him a week to draw a crowd.

Sowell's a man.  Can't say that about the fingerlings in the White House.

See what Dr. Sowell had to say about Eric Hoffer, the Longshoreman Philosopher.

Certainty of Death. Small Chance of Success. What Are We Waiting For?

Tolkien, Hitler and Nordic Heroism

The ideal . . . . is that all citizens shall be equal and shall be good, so that they shall all rule in turn, and all have an equal share of power; and therefore the friendship between them is also one of equality.  A Theory of Republican Character

That line from Gimli in Lord of the Rings, "Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?", came to me after I scanned John Jay's most recent effort(s), the title of which I have appropriately shortened to The Death of the Western World.  There may have been a time when John and I disagreed about this.  I have long predicted the self-destruction of the United States, even though I want to be contradicted.  Apparently John now shares my pessimism.

Here is a true tale of what happens when your leaders become like our contemporary Democrats:

From the first hour of the memorable twenty-ninth of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day, when the sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. …At the principal door of St. Sophia he alighted from his horse and entered the dome… By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque…on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin, or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation, in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mohammed the Second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Caesars.  A Day That Will Live in Infamy

Blood on the Streets

Continue reading "Certainty of Death. Small Chance of Success. What Are We Waiting For?" »

The Only Thing Worse than a Warm Fuzzy Liberal is a Conservative Huckster, i.e., One who uses aggressive, showy, and sometimes devious methods to promote or sell a product.

Townhall is the worst conservative site on the net.  Jonathan Garthwaite runs a popup porn ring of an excuse for a news site, a RAM-suckin' matrix of Clintonesque facial bites.  I only go there when all other choices are absent.

That's why . . . . .

I love

Creators Syndicate

The Syndicate helps me avoid the indignity of pretending Townhall is principled, when that is so manifestly not true.

All readers of Washington Rebel are encouraged to show your support to

Creators Syndicate

Accept No Substitutes: Send Townhall to where it belongs.

 
This public service announcement courtesy of Irish Cicero, American.

Art-of-Facts: 45 Communist Goals

Admire? Look at Obama's speech at the UN General Assembly: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." Take the first half of that sentence: No nation can dominate another. There is no eight year old who would say that -- it's so absurd. And the second half? That is adolescent utopianism. Obama talks in platitudes, but offers a vision to the world of America diminished or constrained, and willing to share leadership in a way that no other presidency and no other great power would. Could you imagine if the Russians were hegemonic, or the Chinese, or the Germans -- that they would speak like this?  Spiegel Interview of Charles Krauthammer

Obama: The Best Thing to Happen to Republicans Since Billy Carter Had Sex with a Polar Bear in the Grease Pit

David Limbaugh: Obama's War on Fox Is Liberalism's War on Dissent

Capitalism: A Big, Fat, Smelly Love Story

Recovery:  Stimulate Real Recovery, Mr. President

Mona Charen:  Do you ever get the feeling that we are getting Holiday Inn Express government?

Thomas Sowell:

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?  Dismantling America

Shuttup and Take the Red Pill

Bush iz Hitlur

Take heart, Conservatives.  The Revolution Breweth. 

OPERATION LIBERATION LIBERALISM!

Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation offers one component of that strategy in his new book, "We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future." Mr. Spalding believes, "America is unique in that universal principles of liberty are the foundation of its particular system of government and its political culture." He lists them and explains their history: liberty, private property, consent of the governed, equality, natural rights, religious freedom, rule of law, constitutionalism.

Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me -- the Complete (?) Set

Meanwhile, the Left Faithfully Persecutes the Dissent: FOX and Foes, by Jacob Laksin

Indiana's Mitch Daniels, Reform-Minded Conservative

 
Over in Russia, they've been warned: Democracy is Deadly!

As opposed to . . . . Russian Road Roulette?

 
Glory Bloggin'

Obama has zeroed in on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fox News and doctors. There's nothing coincidental about this trio of targets, either: They are, respectively, the nation's most powerful business lobby, the television voice for Middle Americans worried about where Obama is taking the country, and the professional group with the greatest potential power to kill Obamacare. How the muscle is applied differs in detail from case to case, but the common message is there for all - you get in line or you pay a steep price for crossing Obama.  Killing America

Starry-eyed Idealists or Judgmental Bastards?  The latter -- the "party of Utopian rage."  Democrats and the Politics of Rage.

Despite his post-racial promise, President Obama and his fellow Democrats have continued to argue that disapproval of their agenda stems from hidden racial animosity. Claiming their critics are racists and making themselves the defenders of antiracism touches the long history of Americans treating minorities as monolithically-thinking groups that need to be cared for, rather than self-reliant individuals in communities that have a wide range of opinions.

Washington Rebel:

Attack of the Warm Fuzzy Liberals

Gone to Seed, or, How I Became a Pessimist

What I Learned From My Old Dad

Spiritual Sanctuary: Growing Up in the Hoh Rain Forest

What the Human Heart Provides

Is this true?

Conservatives do not have a slightly more radical version of the same beliefs as other Americans. They have a completely sealed-off belief system. Even the most right-leaning independents find the right-wing worldview, with its conspiracies and persecution complex, unrecognizable.  Jonathan Chait, Who Are You Calling Deranged?

I not only appreciated Chait's analysis, I agreed with it -- to a point.  There are two things driving the current impasse for conservatives, as follows:

1)  Verbal ineptitude, Thomas Sowell called it; and

2)  the long-standing anti-Americanism that grew out of the Vietnam War, coupled with conservatives' knee-jerk reaction to liberalism.  Even as we speak, Liberals are writing a new narrative while conservatives retreat to the barricades:

Liberals are also quick to applaud the epic achievements of their own luminaries, while showering many of their egregious character flaws with extreme leniency. The opposite treatment applies when it comes to noteworthy, but just as imperfect personalities in the conservative domain. The Moral Universe of Liberals.

For better or worse, the natural progress of civilization is toward greater liberalism.  What "liberals" fail to see is that they can be as authoritarian as anyone else.

Folks like Chait may see this as a conclusion.  I see it as a phase.

For now, we are spinning our wheels.  For the moment, Sarah Palin is the best man we have.

Purty, too.

 
Palin Offers Calm Critique of Baucus Bill

Liberal Fantasyland

Democracy Corps survey is the degree to which the GOP conservative worldview stands completely apart from the rest of America. Conservatives do not have a slightly more radical version of the same beliefs as other Americans. They have a completely sealed-off belief system. Even the most right-leaning independents find the right-wing worldview, with its conspiracies and persecution complex, unrecognizable.  Who You Calling Deranged?

American Conservatism, R.I.P.  We find ourselves in a position where 1) we cannot argue with children, but 2) we keep repeating assertions not being heard and, to the extent they are heard, they're not understood.  Republicans and Conservatives need to rethink how they present their arguments.  Last May, Dr. Zero hit the nail on the head:

Republican politicians often forget that conservatism is an argument, while liberalism is a promise. The conservative champions both the moral and practical superiority of liberty and individualism. The liberal promises tangible rewards in exchange for votes. The conservative argument will never be over, because any free-market system will always include a certain population who fare poorly. No matter how small that population is, or how much the overall wealth of society eases the burden of their poverty, they will always be extremely receptive to the seduction of collective politics: You’re not responsible for your lot in life. You were cheated. The wealth of others is unfair. Give us the “freedom” that wasn’t doing you any good anyway, and we will sharpen it into a weapon against those who took advantage of you. Give us your undying support, and you’ll never have to worry about feeling confused, guilty, or inadequate again. Voting for the Democrat ticket will fully discharge your moral and intellectual duty as a citizen – we’ll take it from there. In fact, we’ve got ACORN representatives standing by to fill that ballot out for you. You have a “right” to housing, a job, health care, a college education, easy credit, and a host of other benefits, and the liberal promises to provide all of these things, while making nameless rich people pick up the tab.  The Other Side

Therein lies the situation.

False Pride and the Liberal Imagination

Liberalism: Cruel, Corrupt, Unjust, Wasteful, Deluded

 
America

Continuing with my purge (and reorganization) of old links, begun yesterday . . . .

An excellent piece -- with excellent links -- from The Barrister:

The challenge of being politically conservative is that one seeks political power to reduce, or devolve, power to the people and to their localities.

Many was the time my "liberal" friends chided me for my conservatism, yet they are unable to see the danger of what they believe in.  They don't -- or can't -- think of themselves as authoritarian.  Which is why I call them Warm Fuzzy Liberals.  They are unable to take their own moral inventory.

Worse . . . .

Goddamnit, they can't laugh at what they believe in!  (See Global Warming, feminism, the tears about America, et cetera . . . .)

Peter Wehner: Responding to the Obama State

Obama Removes the Mask

Joshua Muravchik: Obama's Leftism

The God That Flails Bernard-Henri Lévy takes on the rudderless European left.

Why Europeans Love Obama

Europe Has Lost Confidence

Europe's Last Man:  "Three more different writers could hardly be invented. Which makes it all the more suggestive, I think, that their portraits of the spiritual state of contemporary Europe are so powerfully complementary. They show us a Europe that is cosmopolitan, affluent, and tolerant, enjoying all the material blessings that human beings have always struggled for, and that the Europeans of seventy years ago would have thought unattainable. Yet these three books are also haunted by intimations of belatedness and decline, by the fear that Europe has too much history behind it to thrive. They suggest currents of rage and despair coursing beneath the calm surface of society, occasionally erupting into violence. And they worry about what will happen when a Europe, gorged on historical good fortune, must defend itself against an envious and resentful world."

The Europeanization of the Democratic Party  

The President of Everything: Obama's Grasp Includes Our Entire Lives

Eat Sh*t, Townhall

The Only Thing Worse than a Warm Fuzzy Liberal is a Conservative Huckster, i.e., One who uses aggressive, showy, and sometimes devious methods to promote or sell a product.

Townhall is the worst conservative site on the net.  Jonathan Garthwaite runs a popup porn ring of an excuse for a news site, a RAM-suckin' matrix of Clintonesque facial bites.  I only go there when all other choices are absent.

That's why . . . . .

I love

Creators Syndicate

The Syndicate helps me avoid the indignity of pretending Townhall is principled, when that is so manifestly not true.

All readers of Washington Rebel are encouraged to show your support to

Creators Syndicate

Accept No Substitutes: Send Townhall to where it belongs.

 
This public service announcement courtesy of Irish Cicero, American.

The Master Plan

Art-of-Facts: 45 Communist Goals

Admire? Look at Obama's speech at the UN General Assembly: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." Take the first half of that sentence: No nation can dominate another. There is no eight year old who would say that -- it's so absurd. And the second half? That is adolescent utopianism. Obama talks in platitudes, but offers a vision to the world of America diminished or constrained, and willing to share leadership in a way that no other presidency and no other great power would. Could you imagine if the Russians were hegemonic, or the Chinese, or the Germans -- that they would speak like this?  Spiegel Interview of Charles Krauthammer

Obama: The Best Thing to Happen to Republicans Since Billy Carter Had Sex with a Polar Bear in the Grease Pit

David Limbaugh: Obama's War on Fox Is Liberalism's War on Dissent

Capitalism: A Big, Fat, Smelly Love Story

Recovery:  Stimulate Real Recovery, Mr. President

Mona Charen:  Do you ever get the feeling that we are getting Holiday Inn Express government?

Thomas Sowell:

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?  Dismantling America

Shuttup and Take the Red Pill

Surviving Our Post-Gracious President

Bush iz Hitlur

Take heart, Conservatives.  The Revolution Breweth. 

OPERATION LIBERATION LIBERALISM!

Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation offers one component of that strategy in his new book, "We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future." Mr. Spalding believes, "America is unique in that universal principles of liberty are the foundation of its particular system of government and its political culture." He lists them and explains their history: liberty, private property, consent of the governed, equality, natural rights, religious freedom, rule of law, constitutionalism.

Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me -- the Complete (?) Set

Meanwhile, the Left Faithfully Persecutes the Dissent: FOX and Foes, by Jacob Laksin

Indiana's Mitch Daniels, Reform-Minded Conservative

 
Over in Russia, they've been warned: Democracy is Deadly!

As opposed to . . . . Russian Road Roulette?

For My Country -- What's Left of it

 
Glory Bloggin'

Obama has zeroed in on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fox News and doctors. There's nothing coincidental about this trio of targets, either: They are, respectively, the nation's most powerful business lobby, the television voice for Middle Americans worried about where Obama is taking the country, and the professional group with the greatest potential power to kill Obamacare. How the muscle is applied differs in detail from case to case, but the common message is there for all - you get in line or you pay a steep price for crossing Obama.  Killing America

Starry-eyed Idealists or Judgmental Bastards?  The latter -- the "party of Utopian rage."  Democrats and the Politics of Rage.

Despite his post-racial promise, President Obama and his fellow Democrats have continued to argue that disapproval of their agenda stems from hidden racial animosity. Claiming their critics are racists and making themselves the defenders of antiracism touches the long history of Americans treating minorities as monolithically-thinking groups that need to be cared for, rather than self-reliant individuals in communities that have a wide range of opinions.

Washington Rebel:

Attack of the Warm Fuzzy Liberals

Gone to Seed, or, How I Became a Pessimist

What I Learned From My Old Dad

Spiritual Sanctuary: Growing Up in the Hoh Rain Forest

What the Human Heart Provides

Critiquing Conservatives

Is this true?

Conservatives do not have a slightly more radical version of the same beliefs as other Americans. They have a completely sealed-off belief system. Even the most right-leaning independents find the right-wing worldview, with its conspiracies and persecution complex, unrecognizable.  Jonathan Chait, Who Are You Calling Deranged?

I not only appreciated Chait's analysis, I agreed with it -- to a point.  There are two things driving the current impasse for conservatives, as follows:

1)  Verbal ineptitude, Thomas Sowell called it; and

2)  the long-standing anti-Americanism that grew out of the Vietnam War, coupled with conservatives' knee-jerk reaction to liberalism.  Even as we speak, Liberals are writing a new narrative while conservatives retreat to the barricades:

Liberals are also quick to applaud the epic achievements of their own luminaries, while showering many of their egregious character flaws with extreme leniency. The opposite treatment applies when it comes to noteworthy, but just as imperfect personalities in the conservative domain. The Moral Universe of Liberals.

For better or worse, the natural progress of civilization is toward greater liberalism.  What "liberals" fail to see is that they can be as authoritarian as anyone else.

Folks like Chait may see this as a conclusion.  I see it as a phase.

For now, we are spinning our wheels.  For the moment, Sarah Palin is the best man we have.

Purty, too.

 
Palin Offers Calm Critique of Baucus Bill

Closed-Off World View

Liberal Fantasyland

Democracy Corps survey is the degree to which the GOP conservative worldview stands completely apart from the rest of America. Conservatives do not have a slightly more radical version of the same beliefs as other Americans. They have a completely sealed-off belief system. Even the most right-leaning independents find the right-wing worldview, with its conspiracies and persecution complex, unrecognizable.  Who You Calling Deranged?

American Conservatism, R.I.P.  We find ourselves in a position where 1) we cannot argue with children, but 2) we keep repeating assertions not being heard and, to the extent they are heard, they're not understood.  Republicans and Conservatives need to rethink how they present their arguments.  Last May, Dr. Zero hit the nail on the head:

Republican politicians often forget that conservatism is an argument, while liberalism is a promise. The conservative champions both the moral and practical superiority of liberty and individualism. The liberal promises tangible rewards in exchange for votes. The conservative argument will never be over, because any free-market system will always include a certain population who fare poorly. No matter how small that population is, or how much the overall wealth of society eases the burden of their poverty, they will always be extremely receptive to the seduction of collective politics: You’re not responsible for your lot in life. You were cheated. The wealth of others is unfair. Give us the “freedom” that wasn’t doing you any good anyway, and we will sharpen it into a weapon against those who took advantage of you. Give us your undying support, and you’ll never have to worry about feeling confused, guilty, or inadequate again. Voting for the Democrat ticket will fully discharge your moral and intellectual duty as a citizen – we’ll take it from there. In fact, we’ve got ACORN representatives standing by to fill that ballot out for you. You have a “right” to housing, a job, health care, a college education, easy credit, and a host of other benefits, and the liberal promises to provide all of these things, while making nameless rich people pick up the tab.  The Other Side

Therein lies the situation.

False Pride and the Liberal Imagination

Liberalism: Cruel, Corrupt, Unjust, Wasteful, Deluded

Seeking Power to Increase Freedom

 
America

Continuing with my purge (and reorganization) of old links, begun yesterday . . . .

An excellent piece -- with excellent links -- from The Barrister:

The challenge of being politically conservative is that one seeks political power to reduce, or devolve, power to the people and to their localities.

Many was the time my "liberal" friends chided me for my conservatism, yet they are unable to see the danger of what they believe in.  They don't -- or can't -- think of themselves as authoritarian.  Which is why I call them Warm Fuzzy Liberals.  They are unable to take their own moral inventory.

Worse . . . .

Goddamnit, they can't laugh at what they believe in!  (See Global Warming, feminism, the tears about America, et cetera . . . .)

Peter Wehner: Responding to the Obama State

Obama Removes the Mask

Joshua Muravchik: Obama's Leftism

The God that Flails

The God That Flails Bernard-Henri Lévy takes on the rudderless European left.

Why Europeans Love Obama

Europe Has Lost Confidence

Europe's Last Man:  "Three more different writers could hardly be invented. Which makes it all the more suggestive, I think, that their portraits of the spiritual state of contemporary Europe are so powerfully complementary. They show us a Europe that is cosmopolitan, affluent, and tolerant, enjoying all the material blessings that human beings have always struggled for, and that the Europeans of seventy years ago would have thought unattainable. Yet these three books are also haunted by intimations of belatedness and decline, by the fear that Europe has too much history behind it to thrive. They suggest currents of rage and despair coursing beneath the calm surface of society, occasionally erupting into violence. And they worry about what will happen when a Europe, gorged on historical good fortune, must defend itself against an envious and resentful world."

The Europeanization of the Democratic Party  

The President of Everything: Obama's Grasp Includes Our Entire Lives