Sunset of the West
We hear that Guantamo is a Stalag or Gulag; but the real disaster is the rising number of early released killers—so unlike the fate of our enemies caught out of uniform in WWII—who have gone on to kill the innocent, such as the former Gitmo murderer who blew himself and seven Iraqis in Mosul recently. The essence of modern liberalism: agitate to eliminate the theoretical and distant wrong to find alleviation of guilt, then absence of any contrition when in the here and now the innocent are killed for that magnanimity. The ultra liberal always feels good at someone else’s expense.
The Blame Game
Now Gen. Sanchez has a book out blaming Rumsfeld etc. for the botched occupation. I just reviewed Douglas Feith’s book for the next issue of Commentary. I tried to read the Tenet, Franks, and Bremmer memoirs (but could not finish them), as well as the “I accuse” volumes of Ricks and the Cobra II authors. No one wishes to defend the occupation, all wish to say it was someone else’s fault. For the final verdict–wait decades.
If one were to find out who did not close the gap at Falaise in August 1944, you can find all sorts of “not me” accounts in the memoirs of Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery, and various letters of Patton–and the most likely culprit on the American side—Bradley— is the least blamed. So I doubt we will know the full story for decades, and the decision will be predicated on the ultimate fate of Iraq.
One of the most disturbing facts of this war is how various officials in mediis rebus give a party line–and then,when out of office, suddenly offer the opposite take, claim they were coerced or framed, and that now they are finally speaking the truth.
I will read Gen. Sanchez’s volume, but at some point I would have wished he had taken some responsibility for the fate of the troops under his command and the pulse of the war. No one was stopping him in 2004 from implementing Petraeus-like tactics over most of Iraq. In the past I have been charitable to him, in the sense that he didn’t lose the war, and attrited the enemy despite the dismal news from the front.
I wish I could say all this blame-gaming is new and representative of our ‘me’ generation, but in fact it is no different from the rehashing of the Civil War and WWII for the next thirty years following those conflicts. Sherman’s memoirs caused a near riot; poor Lew Wallace begged Grant to write kindly of him. Eisenhower was hurt by Montgomery’s story; and Bradley published two memoirs, and got meaner in the process. Nihil novum sub sole.
Peace at Home Was the Natural Order of Things After 9/11?
We grandstand about “lost liberties” and a “new fascism” due to the elements of the Patriot Act and wiretaps of terrorists, although few Americans can point to any liberty lost since 9/11—only that Americans have not been slaughtered by Islamic terrorists as promised. Note that there is indeed a loss of freedom since 9/11 in the Western world; just ask a European novelist, film-maker, opera-producer, or cartoonist.
May Day
If illegal aliens wished to gain public support for their plight, then once again it was a terrible mistake to choose the international communist day of liberation (”Workers of the World Unite!”). When watching some clips of the mostly failed May Day immigration parades in California, I noticed the de rigueur Che posters. That is especially incoherent: immigrants come to a capitalist, democratic society in illegal fashion, and then glorify a communist cutthroat, who, had he had his way, would have ruined North America in the way he and his friends tried in Latin America.
How can one’s feet be so at odds with one’s head. Here is the message of the protestor with the Che placard: the feet say “I’m running as fast as I can from a failed Mexico to get to El Norte,” and the head responds, “I want to arrive in a place with revolutionary social fervor just like Mexico.”
Couric, Stephanopoulos, et al.
Very strange to see the Latino outrage at Katie Couric for simply suggesting in her film piece that anchor babies allow illegal aliens to enter into the entitlement bonanza—reminiscent of the left’s furor at Stephanopoulos. I guess no one ever thought that by creating identity politics and hypersensitive victimization that such things would not be, Frankenstein like, turned on their creators.
Obama’s Folly and Left/Right Brain Racism
The true crime of Obama is the silence about Wright’s grotesque “left brain/right brain” lecture in front of the NAACP. He sort of, kinda disowned Wright due to his National Press Club rants, but was silent about his racist, pseudo-scientific exegesis about genetic differences in learning—and the irony of delivering it in front of the premier civil rights organization.
Again, Obama et al. are systematically destroying race relations. Had any other African-American ran who made it a point to make race irrelevant, it would have advanced conciliation. But what Obama accomplished is the following: to demonstrate that the outrage over the Bell Curve, Imus, Michael Richards, etc. was merely politics, not based on principle or substance, since Wright, to either approval or silence, has trumped them all; to demonstrate by his “clingers” comments, “typical white person” cast-off sneer, Michelle no-pride speech, etc. that there must be two standards of acceptable speech, and that “victims” cannot be “victimizers” no matter what they say.
The Backlash
The result?
I don’t think I’ve heard or read more white cynicism in my entire lifetime. And it is a sort of “I’m tired” attitude, in which, after what Obama has said and done, the white middling class no longer cares all that much about minority angst, since it senses that minority leadership is hypocritical and shows a hatred of whites as voiced by Wright and euphemized by Obama. We owe all that to our first trans-racial candidate.
And because Obama either could not or would not tell the truth, the so-called typical white voter now believes not that he was inexperienced or clumsy, but in fact silently shares the Wright world view that peeps out in Michelle’s speeches, Barack’s off-the-record remarks, and was fully voiced long ago by Michelle’s Princeton thesis.
Note Well:
BO (Before Obama) my use of “white voter”, which is used routinely by the media these days, would have been considered too racialist for polite usage; but AO (After Obama) it is perfectly acceptable (again, cf. “typical white person”).
A Hope?
I think, nevertheless, that most black churches would reject Wright and privately most African-Americans are getting tired of Wright, and concerned that Obama is blowing what was a golden opportunity to run as a post-racial candidate, whose record and performance would make race irrelevant, not essential to his identity.
Superdelegate Fright
I think this is the current Democratic insider position:
Obama is a disaster. Yet, we’re stuck with him, and if we were to dump him at the convention (in the manner that for decades conventions used to do just that with primary leaders), African-Americans would sit out or worse, and leftists and students would try another 1968. In that calculus, they will probably nominate their McGovern and be willing to lose the fall election.
Final Note on Wright
I posted this today on the NRO corner:
Wright Postmortem
Why the Obama Pass?
I think we have sort of reached an impasse on Rev. Wright. Most Americans, I think, accept the following realties. Obama, by what he wrote in his memoirs, by what he said when he spoke in his early campaign speeches, by his frequent praise of Wright, and by his 20-year presence in front of, and subsidies to, Wright knew exactly the racist and anti-American nature of his odious pastor.
But many also seem to accept that they have invested too much in Obama and have come too far to accept anything that might end his candidacy. (Hence their hysteria over the Wright “smear”.)
In other words, privately they acknowledge:
—that their candidate made a devil’s bargain with a racist to create an authentic black persona in order to jump start a political career in Chicago;
—that their candidate was so inured to de rigueur anti-American speech from his church days, black-liberationist friends, assorted reverends, and former radicals like Ayers, that he never really thought things that Wright said were all that big a deal — hence his deer-in-the-headlights approach to the initial scandal and serial hedging. After all, in Obama’s adopted world, his church really isn’t “particularly controversial;”
—that their Obama messiah is hardly a new politician, but instead a very gifted and charismatic actor, who, in skillful fashion, can talk about utopian politics but then backstep, hedge, and get away with more than anyone since Bill Clinton in his prime in 1992 (one of the reasons that those two dislike each other so is that they are so much alike) — and that is not such a bad thing after all.
So while Obama is hurt in the primaries, and perhaps mortally so in the general election (the white working classes have a long memory), he will probably get the nomination, because his base will overlook all the above: they despise George Bush, will do anything to prevent another Republican in the White House, are tired of the Clintons, and feel Obama offers them symbolic capital, making them liked abroad and free of guilt at home.
Bottom line: unless Obama was caught on tape nodding as Wright screamed his obscenities at the United States, or an angry and spiteful Wright produces some letter, e-mail, etc. that reveals a kindred soul in Obama, or Michelle gives another speech “from the heart” about how hard she has struggled and how in return she has had no pride in this country, or there is another off-the-cuff, but recorded sneer at the white working class (50/50 chance on all four counts), I think he will weather the current storm and get the nomination. Obama evokes pure emotion and raw politics now, and logic, honesty, and accountability have little to do with his nomination bid.
05/02 05:13 PM
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16 Comments
Ed:Off topic, but I miss the brief note about Hesiod that you used to have at the top of this blog. It sort of set the tone, and grounded this place and its writings.
I’m sure there were good reasons to get rid of it… but I am struck most by its absence.
May 3, 2008 - 12:03 am don L:Elections really have become about image, deceit, and polarization. I believe if der Furer were running against Bush right now, Bush would lose - condemned in liberal history to be the man that Bombed the twin towers from Crawford and personally stole the election from Al Gore in order to place Halliburton in charge of the world’s oil. Dick Cheney, and Rummy would be treated more harshly, of course.
May 3, 2008 - 5:04 am Bill S.:RE: Obama’s Folly and Left/Right Brain Racism
“that there must be two standards of acceptable speech”…..
Interesting, and one should note the “two standards of acceptable speech” used in the politics of the Middle East. One form of speech is for the religious Muslims, and the second form of speech for secular and Western consumption. (Western media gorges itself on it.) Arafat was master at it, and all of the Mid-East megalomaniacs use, or used “two standards of acceptable speech”.
We also see Al Qaeda use “two standards of acceptable speech”. It has it’s religious platform, and it’s political platforms - which often contradict one another.
May 3, 2008 - 7:54 am Brian O'Connor:Obama must be asking himself: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome Reverend?”
Hmmm . . . Chicago . . . hmmmm . . .
May 3, 2008 - 8:20 am Ron Kean:Liberals care more about caribou in Alaska and crooks in Cuba than the average ma and pa Iraqi who’s trying to sort out what it’s like to be free for a change.
I read that Che hated gays and killed a bunch with his pistol.
I let go of my guilt for blacks in 1983 when I was interviewing for a job at a TV station and the guy said if I was a black woman I’d have it wrapped up. Then he said if I told anyone he said that he’d call me a liar.
As far as Hesoid, I tried to read ‘Who Killed Homer’, and ‘A War Like…’, but nothing compares with ‘Soul’, ‘Carnage’, ‘Ripples’, and ‘Between War…’.
Although I did like some of H. G. Apostle’ translations, there’s nothing like reading about a guy named Ixtlilxochitl.
I still hope cool and biting TV ads from Republican 527’s don’t go over the line.
May 3, 2008 - 9:31 pm minerva:Andrew Sullivan’s only response to having read this is to call it another “screed” by you about his darling Obama. You wrote last year that slander must never go unanswered and then followed up by writing a lengthy series of refutations of a particularly nasty critic. Time to teach Dr. Sullivan to tighten up his sloppy thinking, but closer to how you taught your slobby Santa Cruz roommate: a verbal clobbering.
May 3, 2008 - 9:57 pm cfbleachers:We have to forgive Andrew, he has clearly lost his ability to start at a mid-point of objectivity and work outward through the facts and evidence on so many issues these days, he has become what he once stood firmly against.
There was a time when Andrew could shed intense light on an issue that elsewhere was giving off nothing but heat. Now, he’s another log on the fire. This transformatin is an enormous disappointment. Where he was once a soloist, he is now simply a member of the echo chamber choir. He’s become…well, ordinary…pedestrian…predictable.
If one disagrees with him intellectually…or does not fawn over Obama’s outward charm, then one is condemned to working in the “right wing freak show”.
For some of us, moderate, centrist, independent types…we are apparently too thick to absorb the enchanting eloquence of Sen. Obama. It’s lost on us, because he is nothing but a Sharpton/Jackson clone in our feeble minds, being closet bigots after all, don’t you know.
The whole of Andrew’s point seems to be the hard left’s playbook on anyone who doesn’t agree with them:
1)If you aren’t a hard leftist you then must be stupid;
2)If you aren’t a hard leftist you then must be a bigot;
3)If you aren’t a hard leftist you aren’t nuanced;
4)If you aren’t a hard leftist you must love President Bush and his policies
5)If you don’t accept Obama as your savior, and instead wish to trust…but verify…you are guilty of writing a screed, conducting a fraud, and you are dealing from racial fear.
Andrew doesn’t want Sen. Obama to continue to be vetted, because he is in the bag for him. He’s lost his objectivity. He is no longer a critical thinker, he’s simply critical. That makes him shallow and common. It makes him part of the deadwood media cacophony. He’s lost his voice. He’s become a shill.
May 4, 2008 - 5:42 am David W. Majors:Blame Game:
Contrast Sanchez,Clarke,Tenet,et al with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant:
“I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. I might say the same thing of the assault of the 22d of May,1863 at Vicksburg. At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy losses we sustained (greater than 1000 KIA in an hour-DaveM) Indeed, the advantages, other than those of relative losses, were on the Confederate side.”
From “Personal Memoirs of U.S.Grant” ch. 55,Retrospective (on Cold Harbor and the failed assault at Vickburg-DaveM)
Another example: The speech Flight Director Gene Kranz gave to his controllers after the Fire-before anyone knew the sequence of events.
“Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, ‘Dammit, stop!’ I don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough and Competent.’ Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control” Gene Kranz-1968
Brian O’Conner:
May 4, 2008 - 10:26 pm Trudy B. Taylor:I wonder how many people recognized your Henry II/Becket reference?
golly gee, where are our gung-ho investigative journalists,along the line of woodward and bernstein, now that chasing down preacher wright might provide the initiation of a chain reaction that would place the obama campaign in mortal peril? all it would take is one intrepid reporter zeroing in on to the redisappeared preacher wright, catching him in a loquacious mood (and that’s gotta be pretty easy considering the man must have been born talking…) ,and sparking him off with a carefully placed query concerning wright’s response to obama’s tepid, marvin-the-martianesque (”i’m sooooo angry,pant, pant)performance the other day. you know wright has got to be chaffing at the bit to fire off another salvo at the bumfuzzled senator. why cant some born-to-root-out-the-truth , indiana jones type, devotee to investigative journalism get the scoop?
could it be that, despite all the chest thumping that goes on around the bar after these so called warriors of the word put in their long hours on the job, nobody wants to bring down a vaunted liberal? only crusty old conservatives are fair game. word up, new youk times–you’re missing a great opportunity.
note to mr’s. majors and o’conner: as a fan of the archbishop , i respectfully request that no equation-perceived or actual- be drawn between his lordship and the funky preacher wright. thanks.
May 5, 2008 - 7:47 am cfbleachers:VDH, I was wondering if you could help me out here. I am attempting to advance one notion and defend another, and I can’t seem to garner any traction. Perhaps I’m off base or maybe I’m missing a point or two. If you have the time and interest, your contributions to the topics would be greatly appreciated, as well as some of the best commenters here on these pages.
First, the shorter of the two topics. There has appeared on this Wright/Obama landscape, what I believe is the typical “nyah, nyah, nyah” response from the portside listings of our meandering political cruiserers.
Sen. Obama is no more to blame for not separating from Rev. Wright than Catholics are for not separating from the Catholic Church in response to molestations by homosexual priests. Or, if this was an SAT test question…Sen. Obama is to Rev. Wright what Catholics are to child molesting priests. To me, this syllogism is riddled with so many fallacies as to be overtly and patently ridiculous and absurd. Apparently, not to leftists who look for alibis for the former and any excuse to bash mainstream Christianity in all its forms.
The second is a bit longer and more involved. It has to do with Sen. Obama’s lifelong pathway in hard leftism, anti-Israel, anti-American worldviews.
There is a connectivity that I don’t believe is getting full study or disclosure.
1)Mom and Dad appear to both be hard leftists. Dad certainly is a Socialist, his feelings toward the West in general and America and Israel in particular has been only remotely discussed. This may be fair, since his absence in Sen. Obama’s life seems to have been nearly absolute, but what is important is Sen. Obama’s attachment to the thoughts of his parents, absent or present. What impact did they have on him?
Mom certainly treated religion as a curious artifact, not for a faith-based household guiding principle.
2)”Frank” Marshall Davis is said to have had an impact on young Barry Obama. The CPUSA mentor, and he is almost like a father figure, imprinting upon Obama his hard leftist worldviews.
Obama writes in Dreams From My Father that he saw “Frank” only a few days before he left Hawaii for college, and that Davis seemed just as radical as ever. Davis called college “An advanced degree in compromise” and warned Obama not to forget his “people” and not to “start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that ####.” Davis also complained about foot problems, the result of “trying to force African feet into European shoes,” Obama wrote.
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/
3. Sen Obama indeed goes off to college to seek out his most radical professors and to embrace their hard leftist worldviews.
4. He comes to Chicago and meets up with Saul Alinsky and also hooks up with Jeremiah Wright and he eventually adopts another father figure in Wright, who…not surprisingly…has extremely hard leftist worldviews. The Marxist inspired theo-politics of Wright, a former Muslim…is a draw for Obama…for precisely those reasons.
Obama says that the theo-politics were more “pliant” and the fact that Wright is a former Muslim (with strong ties to Farrakhan) are an attraction.
According to a NYTimes article…Obama takes NUMEROUS of Wright’s tapes to law school with him to study and infuse himself with Wright’s particular worldview.
(this seems to explain how the very PRECISE words of Sen. Obama, may be positively Clintonian…when he says he never heard “sitting in” THE PEWS OR IN PRIVATE CONVERSATION…any of the offensive ragings of Wright. He certainly had a very high percentage of hearing them in tapes, while standing and shouting and in the panels he was on, the discussion groups he headed or in non-private conversations involving several other people.)
5)The NYTimes article also suggests that Sen. Obama and Michelle were FREQUENT visitors to the church, they were active participants…not rare and distant.
6)Sen. Obama has a much stronger connection to the Nation of Islam than has been examined to date by the fawning likes of Russert, Matthews, Moyers et al. It has merely been mentioned that he participated in the Million Man March. What has not been examined, except by Debbie Schlussel is how deep that connection might be. He has hard leftists at the highest levels of his staff, witnessed not simply by Che Guevara posters, but by their associations with Marxist, socialist, and Farrakhan type groups.
Sam Graham-Felsen is his chief blogger, and also a Chomskyite socialist. Jennifer Mason and Cynthia K. Miller, Nation of Islam members.
Sen. Obama has a strong penchant for surrounding himself with very hard left worldviews. Taking any of them in isolation, provokes a “so what” from the left of center crowd. Taking all of them as pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle, it appears that he has actively SOUGHT OUT these hard leftists his entire lifetime and has joined forces with them, at every turn. He now says that the very things they espouse are antithetical to his worldview. Really?
7)Ayers and Dorhn are unrepentant urban terrorists. Dorhn was working at Sidley & Austin, and clearly had some overlap with Michelle, if not while Sen. Obama was an intern. The fact that Sen. Obama not only serves on a board for the Woods Fund, but actually DIRECTS an AYERS ORGANIZATION…as well as having a State Senate fundraiser at Ayers/Dorhn home…suggests not a remote and distant “neighbor” relationship, but one that involved extensive interaction. The very hard leftist worldviews of Ayers/Dorhn would not have offended a man and his wife who were comfortable with Wright, Farrakhan, Frank Marshall Davis, …they would have aligned nearly perfectly.
8)The Pro-Palestinian cadre involved with Sen. Obama (also at Debbie’s site) include Ali Abunimah, the late Edward Said, Shakir Muhammed…voices extremely partisan against Israel and America’s connection to Israel. This may explain more clearly why the likes of Malley (whose own parentage is quite interesting), Brzezinski, Power, Lake, McPeak…the whole of the Carter/”Apartheid Israel” contingent.
When people suggest that it is a “distraction” that anyone speaks about Wright or Ayers…I am reminded again of the magician who appears with his trinkets dangling from his sleeves instead of hidden inside them. “Don’t look here” is screamed from every deadwood media shill. These cloying, fawning, sycophants can spare me the vacuous homilies about post-racial this and hope/change/unity that. It’s all a canard. It is impossible to be more racialist than Farrakhan or Wright, that’s simply an open and notorious fact.
But the thread that weaves through Daddy and Mommy Obama, through Frank Marshall Davis, through the most extreme radical professors, through Wright, Farrakhan and their disciples, through Ayers/Dorhn, through Sam Graham-Felsen, through Said…is a hard anti-America, anti-Israel, hard leftism. Again, he has SOUGHT this out at every turn. If he has become a centrist, post-racial, “uniter”…where is the evidence?
And why can’t we ask him about his entire lifetime up until now…why the shroud of secrecy? If HE has moved on from that hard leftist search…THAT would be the most interesting journey to explore of this entire campaign. If he hasn’t…why is he hiding the fact? If he has, why is he not explaining the journey?
May 5, 2008 - 11:31 am Trudy B. Taylor:cf bleachers: that’s a new one for me. good eye.
all catholics did not sit in their pews for 20 years impassively listening to their monsieurs and pastors brag about molesting their youth. and in a time when one such as barack obama (a tabula rasa much before january of this year) presumes to take for his own the environs of the white house and the reins of the executive branch of this, our government, then-by god- we shall know the man by the company he keeps. we shall also know the man by the silence he kept.
there are, of course, individual catholics and lackeys-in-general who kept the dirty knowledge of what was going on in the american roman church, and they are to be roundly condemned along with the participating priests themselves. the fallacy, as i see it, is equating the sins of one man (obama) with the collective innocence of a large group.
because they cannot tell the difference,this goes back to my earlier point of how intrinsically useless modern “journalists” seem to be.you are exhibiting one of the good facets of the blogasphere., a pathway to transparency.
May 5, 2008 - 12:13 pm John Lewis:“Authentic black persona” : precisely. Obama Jr. is only nominally an American. His father was a man of some consequence in Kenya (enough so that Jomo Kenyatta personally destroyed his career after Obama Sr. attacked the mildly socialist economic program which Kenyatta and Tom M’Boya were implementing), his friend Raila Odinga is currently the Prime Minister of Kenya, and Obama doesn’t even LOOK like an American black (wrong side of Africa, I suppose).
Obama Jr. has a curious blind spot - he wrote “Dreams from my father”, attempting to make himself into an inner-city American black, and never thought that anyone would figure out what those “dreams” entailed - in particular a Mugabe-style Afrocentric Marxism.
Kenyatta was right to send Obama Sr. packing.
May 5, 2008 - 2:46 pm Misanthropicus:Obama’s Folly and Left/Right Brain Racism
“[…] The true crime of Obama is the silence about Wright’s grotesque “left brain/right brain” lecture in front of the NAACP. He sort of, kinda disowned Wright due to his National Press Club rants, but was silent about his racist, pseudo-scientific exegesis about genetic differences in learning—and the irony of delivering it in front of the premier civil rights organization. […]”
Curious as Wright’s remark was, even curioser was media’s (non) reaction at that element of his rants - rememmber the up-roar and fury following Jim Watson’s (of DNA repute) musing over the mental abilities of a certain race? Or the righteous hysteria that kicked out Larry Summers from Harvard?
May 5, 2008 - 7:54 pm Gary Ogletree:Had someone other than a lefty/liberal talked (sorry, nuanced) publicly in Wright’s terms about (the possible) racial/gender cognitive abilities differences, that person would have been torn to pieces in no time by the political correct executioners.
When Obama loses big like McGovern the explanation will most assuredly be racist America, never mind all the white folks who voted for him in Iowa, when he was pure. The next choice for Democrats will be whether to cling to their identity and socialist dogmas or to look for some responsible adults (assuming there are any left in their party) to restore the connection they used to have with typical American working people. A few years ago when I was a truck driver trainer I had a former Green Beret from West Virginia in the cab learning the business. I remarked one day that I hoped Hillary would run for Prez. Before he could hit me, I shouted, “For the entertainment value!” I had no idea.
May 6, 2008 - 8:12 am M.E.:Some notes on your notes:
- The liberal’s comparison between Guantamo (this kind of luxury hotel for murders that don’t deserve the name of human beings) and the Gulag (The Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies) is an insult to the memory of millions of men, women and children that passed and died in this Republic of Slaves. Only in the frozen Hell of Karelia 2 millions people died in 1939-1947 (all numbers are relative: no exact calculation is possible). This is what the philosovietic H.G. Wells said about the creator of this infernal republic, Stalin: “I have never met a man more fair, candid, and honest”. Another “liberal”, George Bernard Shaw, who visited the USSR in the 1930s when millions of peasants died as result of the forced collectivisation, said with incomparable sense of humour: “Never I ate so well while visiting USSR”. There exist more hypocrisy and cynicism than that of these western “liberals”?
- I always remember the maxims of Clausewitz about war as inevitable, when ordinary politics work no longer. The Iraqi War was masterpiece of this combination of “politics and war”. I have been reading with the greatest attention your book “Carnage and Culture”. Hannibal won many battles but lost the war above all politically. Roman generals were mediocre in comparison with genial Hannibal but they represented genial political system where a war was always in function of politics and not vice versa. That is why, I think, Gen. Petraeus had a success where Gen. Sanchez failed. But the main merit is of the truly great Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush.
- Yes, after 9/11 the terrorist lost the liberty to murder. In Stalinist Russia common criminals were called by the authorities “social allies”. Also for the “liberals” the criminals, dictators, terrorists are “social allies” whose “liberty” to kill they defend with so much ardour.
- It is natural and necessary that in a democratic country every citizen has the possibility to express his thoughts. But no democracy can transform a paranoid in an intelligent being, and when an absolutely perverse guy like Rev. Wright speaks before a public that greets and applauds him, that is not a democracy, but an idiotocracy.
- I think Obama’s nomination will transform definitively the Democratic Party in a typical socialist party of the most vulgar European type. It will be its end. Socialist parties became something absurd and anachronistic even in America Latina. But there is an explosive factor that should not be underestimated: Hillary, i.e. her deadly hate for Obama and for her democrat fellows that are going to nominate Obama. Fanaticism of followers of one and other should neither be underestimated. The fans of Obama (as I could conclude from the comments of the readers of Pajamas and Fox News) prefer to vote McCain if wins Hillary and vice versa. As a pure rationalist I can’t understand this strange passage from Obama to McCain (or from Hillary to McCain), but here, as you said, we are in the sacred realm of saints and prophets.
- “The white working classes have a long memory”, but also the political emigrants have a very long memory. I have read the comments of Cuban and Iranian emigrants. Their contempt (I use euphemism) for Obama is absolute. In the US there are many other political emigrants that conserve a memory of painful experience in their motherlands, and therefore they see in sympathizer of Islamofascist and communist regimes like Obama their natural enemy.
- I know the majority of Jews votes Democrats, but to vote for Obama is like voting for Hamas and the destruction of Israel. I know also that there are Jewish anti-Semites like Avram Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein (I suspect that Obama’s main adviser David Axelrod is Jew of Russian origin with an old socialist tradition), but these are pathological cases. I wonder if this time the Jews will have common sense to vote for their true friend McCain and not for the disciple of an anti-Semite like Rev. Wright.
- Democrats “despise George Bush”. This is an euphemism: they hate Bush. It is natural for nonentities to despise and hate a great man. The history of the Republic of ancient Rome is very instructive in this sense: tribunes fight against consuls and Senate. The enemies stay at walls of the City, but the tribunes negate the danger wanting to limit the power of consuls, exactly as idiotic Edwards who said that “war on terror is an empty world”. But hate is a bad counsellor and can lead only to catastrophe. There is other purely politic reason for these “despise and hate”. Politics is the art of possible (or limitation), not of “radical solution”. In this sense Bush’s politics was and is very constructive and successful. No American president has done so much for Africa as President George W. Bush, and not only for Africa: the list would be too long. The Democrats have no positive economic and politic program. Here we stay in the camp of pure negativity that can generate only hate.
May 6, 2008 - 11:39 am J.E. Dyer:“I predict very soon that we are all going to end up with about $50,000 in family net income, either earning that amount tax-free, or making five-times that and having it expropriated.”
But of course, we won’t — at least not in entrepreneurial business. No one will engage in entrepreneurial activity to earn $250K and keep only $50K of it, when he could just be someone’s employee and take home $50K for WAY less work.
People in professions they gravitate to because of a unique ability or an intense need — acting, sports — may indeed go into them, and end up fitting the “earn $250K, keep $50K” profile.
But others won’t. The professional couple you postulate would very soon figure out that there was no point in one of its members working at all. In that couple, one of the earners would be working entirely for the IRS, basically just so they could keep all of the other’s earnings. Why work so hard?
And of course, the other thing we’ll do is have fewer children. It’s hard enough to have one child on the “$50K a year” closed-loop economy you postulate. More than one would seem like a nightmare to most people. We would, indeed, become Europe — and become unable to keep shifting the burden of a social welfare state to future generations.
May 11, 2008 - 9:14 am