Posted by Andy

         WISHING YOU AND YOURS
          THE MERRIEST OF SOLSTICES

                And may the Spirit
                  of the First Amendment*
                    Smile on you
                      Throughout the New Year
              
                             
Save the three-toed Patagonian warthog!
FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING
PURCHASE A POGO STICK

*revised version               

The great blue/red schism that has launched a thousand columns and blog posts, has spawned a pair of matching apparitions staring at each other in the mirror. On the red side of the looking glass we have the fearsome bogeyman of the Christian Right, on the verge of turning what’s left of our democracy into a fundamentalist theocracy. On the blue side is the multicultural monster of political correctness devouring Christmas and all other symbols of what was once a great Christian nation.

I realize that what with post-election exhaustion, holiday doldrums, and millions of bloggers joining in the punditry competition, good material is hard to come by, and we are all forced to grasp at whatever straw men are to hand. Keeping the public passions aroused is a never-ending, mostly thankless task.

But com’n people, we have to do better than these vaporous phantasms. A fractional relaxation of paranoia, and they vanish into thin air. The Christian Right of Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, and the Moral Majority made its bid for power years ago, and failed. They’ve been in slow decline ever since. They have their constituency, but it’s as large and enthusiastic as it’s ever gonna be, and it’s not big enough to be more than a colorful thread in the rainbow tapestry that is America.

On the other hand, the pathological aversion to giving offense that has caused the word Christmas to be banned in public, and creches to be removed from the public square, is silly, but it is not a threat to America’s Christian foundations. Eighty percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Christians are not an endangered species. Nobody is taking the Christ out of your Christmas. You can cover your house and yard with blinking mangers, shepherds, and wise men, to your heart’s content. Cards that say Merry Christmas are still available. They may even be marked down. The Passion was a huge money-maker.

Perhaps a holiday season moratorium on pumping up the dichotomy, is in order. A temporary cease-fire until after New Year’s. In the meantime maybe we can fill the empty space with thoughtfulness, a little vamping until ready to resume the struggle.

My brother, Steve, turned me on to these great little books from Penguin. They are biographies, but short, 200 pages or so. I have finished Napoleon and Buddha, and have started on Winston Churchill. St. Augustine and Joseph Smith are next. I bought used copies on Amazon for a pittance. They’re written by good people and are fascinating, like classic comics without pictures. I am amazed at how little I knew about Napoleon. He killed off upwards of 5 million people in Europe, when there weren’t that many Europeans. Not to mention several hundred thousand horses. And it wasn’t that long ago, early 19th century. Those were the glory days for France. Thank God they’re over. And thank God for Great Britain and Wellington.

The Buddha biography by Karen Armstrong is also great. It gives you a feel for the Buddha’s times, attempts to separate myth from history, and does it all with a profound respect for the Buddha’s attainment and message.

Here are a couple of pictures taken in Nashville with my Sony DSC-P41 digital camera:

I was talking to my son, Morgan, this evening, who is a second generation hippie leftist, and he made a salient point. America may not be the great satan, but we have the power to be, if we so choose. And that is what many people in Europe, and even here in the U.S., and elsewhere, are freaked out about. We have the power, and we have a not completely unblemished record, e.g., Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, the fascists in Guatemala, and other scumbags that we supported in the “cold” war. So it is not utterly irrational to be somewhat paranoid about America’s current hyperpower hegemony.

Whether or not we are on the side of all that is good in Afghanistan and Iraq, the fact that we are in a position to be on whatever side we want and there is precious little anybody else in the world can do about it, is an occasion that must give pause to any thinking person in the world who is subject to America’s whims, which is basically everybody. I have a great faith in America’s history, destiny, and intentions, but I must admit that it is understandable that there are people in the world, perhaps most people in the world, who do not share that faith. America is a Christian nation, but it is also a religion of its own, the revolution, that is only beginning to play out, and all people everywhere have a stake, but not much say, in how we go about it.

So, while we can’t ever surrender to corrupt bureaucracies like the U.N and the government of France, we do need to develop a foreign policy style that does its best to alleviate the inevitable fear that our overwhelming power engenders. And we must constantly guard against the hubris that comes with such power. This is where the liberal voice has a role, to which I sincerely hope they, we, are able to rise.

I’ve expanded the previous post into a longer essay, which has been featured, with minor editing, on frontpagemag.com.

If Abraham Lincoln were president today, there’s a good chance that the doors would be shut at the New York Times and CBS, and Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, and even John Kerry would be rotting in jail. I’m not saying that would be a good thing. I’m just saying that the line between what is and is not treason in the U.S. has moved a considerable distance in the last 142 years.

In 1862 Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, on his own authority, as a means of dealing with the “Peace Democrats”, better known as copperheads. The copperheads were advocating letting the Confederacy go its own way, rather than going to war. They were actively interfering with enlistments in the Union army. Many of them were congressmen and other elected officials. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton decreed that anyone “engaged, by act, speech, or writing, in discouraging volunteer enlistments, or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or in any other disloyal practice against the United States” was subject to arrest and trial “before a military commission.” Some 13,000 people were arrested and held without charges as a result of Lincoln and Stanton’s edicts, and prosecuted by military tribunals instead of civil courts. Historians have generally considered this to be somewhat of a blot on Lincoln’s otherwise exemplary record, and that may be so. On the other hand, had the Peace Democrats prevailed, there would be no United States of America, with all that that implies.
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If Abraham Lincoln were president today, there’s a good chance that the doors would be shut at the New York Times and CBS, and Michael Moore, Terry McCauliffe, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and even John Kerry would be rotting in jail. I’m not saying that would be a good thing. I’m just saying that the line between what is and is not treason in the U.S. has moved a considerable distance in the last 200 years. Tom Hayden has a recent article in which he outlines how to organize an effort to ensure that the United States loses the war in Iraq. Michael Moore has compared the jihadists to the Minute Men and has predicted their victory in Iraq.

David Horowitz, the former editor of Ramparts, now an agressive conservative, has been demonized as a racist, fascist, sell-out, but I have always found him to be not only a very good writer, but someone who consistently backs up his well-reasoned arguments with fact, and who readily and graciously concedes to liberal opponents when they are right. In a speech at Georgetown University, Horowitz lays out his indictment of the “‘unholy alliance’ between radical Islam and the American left”. Here is a quote from that speech:

Before proceeding further, there are certain issues I need to discuss that float beneath the surface of our political conversation and are rarely directly addressed, thus having a powerful effect. I am speaking of the issues embedded in terms like “patriotism,” and “treason,” as well as the matter of what constitutes legitimate criticism of American foreign policy, particularly in a time of war.

To listen to the left, you would think that conservatives are just waiting to charge anyone who criticizes the President’s war policy with borderline treason and worse. Liberal complaints would lead one to suspect that John Ashcroft’s agents can’t wait for an opportunity to indict any leftist who steps verbally out of line. Let’s introduce a grain of reality here. In the first place, if the charge of “treason” is really an issue, Democrats are clearly the preemptive aggressors. Al Gore has already called the President a traitor, while President Bush hasn’t even mentioned Gore’s name. So far, the Democrats’ attacks on Bush are that he lied to the American people and misled them into war; and that he is sacrificing American youth to line the pockets of his cronies at Halliburton. These are accusations of treason. And there is almost nobody on the left, high or low, who hasn’t made them in some fashion or another.

The whole speech is worth reading. It is a very clear analysis of what is and is not legitimate criticism of the government in a time of war.

I don’t think IQ is the key, and I agree that certain qualities of character and doggedness and judgment and boldness and also a certain kind of flexibility are probably more important (after a certain minimum of intelligence, of course). There is a kind of analytical intelligence, though, that allows a decision-maker to understand quickly the essential issues that are dividing his advisors and separate the clear bullshit from something that makes sense. I have the sense that Lincoln had that and FDR and Eisenhower and Kennedy and Nixon. I think Clinton has it, too (but in his case this asset is overwhelmed by his character deficiencies). I don’t think Reagan or Bush have this. They both are willing to be bold, and they both have a bull-headedness that can be a real strength if your instincts and intelligence are carrying you in the right direction. But both of them were capable of being led off into la-la land because they weren’t able to detect the bullshit spewed out by key advisors in their administrations. I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief when George Bush the Elder took over from Reagan. Reagan scared me; George reassured me. I will be very relieved when somebody takes over from George the Younger. I could live with a very hawkish guy like Giuliani, for example, because I think he is very smart in the ways that count and could be the master of his own staff in a way I don’t think George ever will be. I don’t think history will be all that kind to either Reagan or Bush.

As for you and me, I think our IQs are about even (I have this on good authority from Mom), and I think we would both be disastrous Presidents. You would get suckered into buying in whole hog to some crackpot ideology, and I would crumble and resign if a crisis ever required me to sustain my resolve for more than about six months. I think we would both make terrific advisors to a President, though, as long as we weren’t given any actual operational responsibilities for anything.

Much has been made of late of the probablity, which I am willing to accept, that the average IQ of Kerry voters is higher than that of Bush voters. The dumb states went to Bush for the most part, and the smart states went for Kerry, as defined by the Education State Rankings Annual Survey. But then, crafting your campaign to appeal to those with an above average IQ and ceding the rest to the opposition, and then calling everyone who you wished had voted for you, dumb, is not a very “smart” strategy, is it?

Apparently, as best as can be determined from more or less comparable military tests, Bush’s IQ is slightly higher than Kerry’s. This doesn’t surprise me. Kerry doesn’t seem all that bright to me, and Bush’s dyslexia makes him appear dumber than he really is.

It would be interesting, though not possible of course, to correlate all of the U.S. presidents’ IQs with their success in office. My favorite president, and homosexual, is Abraham Lincoln, and I’m sure his was monstrously large, his IQ that is. Bill Clinton may have had the biggest one of all, IQ that is, and reasonable people may disagree, but I would not consider him to be a great president. Reagan, low IQ, great president. FDR, probably not all that high of an IQ, great president. Truman likewise. Jefferson, very smart, great expander of American hegemony. Nixon, high IQ, pretty good president before his psychosis prevailed. I don’t think there is a high correlation. Qualities like courage and integrity count for much more. And likewise for voters. In other words, “moral qualities”, which I put in quotes so as not to offend any highly intelligent, liberal sensibilities.

Of course IQ and all standardized testing have always been portrayed, by liberals, as racist and irrelevant, until now.

Posted by Harcamone

Here’s an extraordinary example of cultural violence committed by people claiming to be dedicated to non-violence. You might not know the original song — Tramp on the Street —  but Candance almost surely does. And if you don’t, google the Blue Sky Boys’ version.

There are so many detestable things about the wackoid left, one hardly knows where to begin. This polemical variation of a great old gospel song (not that old, actually) shows how the wackos hate poetry. They have to fill in all the blanks left open by the metaphor — homeless people, pimps, interest rates, higher prices in ghetto supermarkets, whatever etcetera, etc. It is sooooo boring. I am dumbfounded as to why beautiful artists get seduced by their own preachy egos to commit such acts of poetic absurdity and stupidity.

Warren Zevon never did shit like this Alas, he died. Nor did Townes van Zandt. He died, too.

Warren Zevon describes a terrible situation without blaming anybody. That’s poetry.  Motherfukkin commies can shove their songs. I grew up on that BS. (Exception, Woody Guthrie — e.g., Deportees, and such)

Original Tramp on the Street (Hank), being a Christian song, asks everybody who is listening to reckon with their own response to the tramp, and the meaning of it. But Commie versions assume that the commies are Jesus’s friend. This is why I hate Liberation Theology. It sounds great on the surface, but it is as arrogant as any Jerry Falwell.

Anyway, Warren Zevon:

I hear Mariachi static on my radio
And the tubes they glow in the dark
And I’m there with her in Ensenada
And I’m here in Echo Park

Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town

Well, I’m sittin’ here playing solitaire
With my pearl-handled deck
The county won’t give me no more methadone
And they cut off your welfare check

Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town

Well, I pawned my Smith Corona
And I went to meet my man
He hangs out down on Alvarado Street
By the Pioneer chicken stand

Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town

Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town