after all, flies are a major threat to world peace

a
b
c

What they did before the internets

From Buckley's Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription:

February 11, 1969
Dear Mr. Buckley:
I am a sixteen-year-old High School Junior who is going, slowly but inexorably, out of his mind. I have come to the conclusion that you are the only person on the face of the earth who can save my sanity. My problem, briefly, is this: for the past year I have been trying, without avail, to discover just what, in God's name, the phrase "to immanentize the eschaton" means.
I heard you speak the phrase once on Firing Line and immediately made a valiant attempt to look it up. Upon discovering that my dictionary did not list the words I instantly resolved to ask one of my teachers in the morning.
When I tried this course I drew another blank. I would ask a teacher the question, whereupon he would have me repeat it a dozen or so times and then plead ignorance. I would then be asked: "Where'd you hear it?" When I informed him that you had used it the night before he would generally give me a forlorn look, mumble something like, "Oh him eh?," and express his innermost conviction, i.e., that you had probably invented the words. I'm sure you'll be thrilled to know, Mr. Buckley, that I had faith in you. I knew you hadn't invented those words. And, sure enough, when I was reading your book The Unmaking of a Mayor I came across a passage which revealed a Mr. Eric Voegelin as the author of the phrase. Jubilant, I raced to our school library and asked the librarian for everything written by Mr. Voegelin. "Never heard of him," the woman answered. As I left, ruminating upon the intrinsic failings of the public schools, I encountered the teacher to whom I had put the original question. When I explained the matter to him he expressed the conviction that, not only did you make up the phrase, but you also contrived Mr. Voegelin!
Now, Mr. Buckley, more than anything else in the world I would like to know what that phrase means. I really think you should tell me because: 1) I have watched every one of your TV shows and have read all of your newspaper columns ever since I first heard of you. And 2) I've read all of your books (save only the last one, The Jeweler's Eye, which, curse my parsimonious soul, costs a small fortune. I'll wait 'til it comes out in paperback). Also 3) I subscribe to National Review and even read all of those silly renewal notices I keep getting.
If all of this evidence of my fidelity isn't enough then I promise you that, if you somehow communicate to me the definition, I will upon receipt of it: a) instantly proceed to use it on any and all occasions and thereby spread your fame far and wide (I make it generally known to my friends that you are the source of my esoteric bits of verbiage) and b) I will renew my subscription to NR the very next notice I get (which will, no doubt, be Valentine's Day) instead of when the thing expires as is logical.
Furthermore, I shall c) badger my school librarian until she finally breaks down and puts NR on the school subscription list. After all, if the school can subscribe to such egregious rags as The Nation and The New Republic they can at least give your fine journal equal time. Thanking you for your time in reading this
I remain

Sincerely yours,
Edward H. Vazquez
Old Bridge, N.J.

New Palin Blog

Palin for President, a more relevant blog than previously realized, has been launched: http://Palin2012.blogspot.com

On Obama and Liberal Condescension

This is a good post.

The problem for me is that I'm a Vulgar Marxist too. I've always believed that people need to eat, and want to get ahead and prosper. If you give them an avenue that lets them do that, they aren't going to let their religion, their music, their sexual habits, their families or their educational system stand in their way for long. The two most obvious contemporary applications of this economic determinism are 1) China (when the Chinese have a capitalist economy they won't be able to have a Communist government, Vulgar Marxists would say) and 2) the Muslim world (if Islam needs a Reformation in order to prosper in a global market, then Islam will eventually get a Reformation). I agree with both of those propositions.

Does that mean I'm condescending too? It's hard to avoid the charge. If a Chinese Communist Party Official somehow came to me and declared that, no, China would out-compete the West while maintaining Mao-era control over free inquiry, I'd think 'You poor deluded fool. Just wait.' I support Western policies of bringing China into the global marketplace in large part because I think that means Chinese Communism will collapse even if the Chinese Communists don't realize it. Same with fundamentalist Muslims--e.g. Pakistan, when prosperous, will no longer be such a breeding ground of jihadist fanatics. They'll be too busy making money to blow up the world. My attitude toward Pakistan is roughly parallel to Obama's attitude toward rural Pennsylvanians: if the economy really delivered for them, they'd stop clinging to their God. And their guns.

I'm especially appalled by the possibility that I'm as much of a snob as Obama because I've made a big deal about social equality--how treating people as equals, rather than redistributing income, is the essential goal of liberal politics. Condescension, needless to say, is not treating people like equals. (Obama himself seemed to be quite aware of the problem, in his 2004 Charlie Rose interview, when trotting out his "What's the Matter With Kansas" homilies:

"If we don't have plausible answers on the economic front, and we appear to be condescending towards those traditions that are giving their lives some stability, then they're gonna opt for at least that party that seems to be speaking to the things that are giving--that still provide them some solace." [E.A.]

Of course, he sounded a bit condescending when saying that. .....

Read the whole thing, but keep in mind that only a squishy liberal would be bothered by condescension toward primitive Muslim terrorists.

quote of the month

Democracy and Idolatry:

This was no ordinary love. The proof was in the posters—specifically, influential “street artist” Shephard Fairey’s iconic images of Barack Obama, which proved a huge hit at campaign rallies. Rendered in blood red and gray, with his face in silk-screened, Warholian black, the presidential hopeful gazes out toward some distant point, confident and contemplative at once. Only one word was emblazoned across the bottom, in large, block letters: “Hope,” or “Progress.” Fairey describes his work as propaganda engineering and explained that, as a staunch opponent of the Iraq War, making art about Obama, who had spoken out against the war from the start, was for him “like making art for peace.” Peace, however, is not the zeitgeist of this particular graphic style. On the contrary, it recalls Bolshevist propaganda in particular, and Third World revolutionary politics in general; it is power as spectacle, power in whose name millions have been oppressed. As Lisa Wedeen writes in her 1999 study of the cult of Bashar Assad, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria, such idealized, heroic portraits are meant to construct “an original founding moment that signals a new golden age and an end to the miseries of the past.” Judging by the posters raised by the ecstatic masses, the campaign was not just about Obama the Democratic presidential candidate. It was about Obama, America’s long-awaited Beloved Leader.

read the whole thing.

I'm not sure how I missed this nor how I came across it now, but the award for the best column on the torturous Obama torture debate goes to Rich Lowry here. For bonus points, the article is equally applicable to all Obama speeches ever given, even returning from Cairo bringing world peace.

caption contest

Hot Air:“Uh, Sir, that’s not the King of Saudi Arabia.”
and here's the runner up.

(One of the) stupidest quotes of the day

AP comparing barack the great to palin the pitiful, and how the latter must write a book despite her universally acknowledged illiteracy:

A memoir (or two) have become a virtual requirement for White House seekers, especially after Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father" established him as a stylist and storyteller with a vast following.

that's right. remember how in the elections of 2012 and 2016 everyone had written three memoirs so that they could have a chance of appearing like the greatest president ever? in fact, presidents nowadays in the twenty second century only write memoirs, following in the footsteps of the first memoirist in chief

Quote of the Day

Don't let anyone tell you that Joe Klein can't outdo himself:

Said TIME's Joe Klein: "comedy is by definition inappropriate. I mean, this is just comedy. And we're talking about a guy in Rush Limbaugh who is inappropriate half the time I hear him on the radio."

"He describes himself as an entertainer," said Klein. "Wanda Sykes -- entertainer. This is entertainment."

For a guy named Joeklein, he has a surprisingly inaccurate definition of comedy. Actually, comedy is defined as "something funny," by which Syke's comments manifestly fail.

Klein living up to his reputation is as newsworthy as "pigs still not flying" but James Taranto does a good job of providing some insight into the mindset which considers this humor:

By contrast, lots of left-wing bloggers are cheering Sykes on, and the president of the United States was visibly amused by her joke. So the question is this: Why do liberals find this joke funny when they should find it embarrassing?

The answer, it seems clear, is that this is an example of shock humor: a genre that relies on the frisson of violating taboos. By our count, Sykes runs afoul of five taboos in her Limbaugh joke: She equates dissent with treason. She likens a domestic political opponent to a foreign enemy. She makes fun of the disabled (Limbaugh's past addiction to painkillers would entitle him to protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act). She makes light of a form of interrogation that some people consider torture. And she wishes somebody dead.

Except for the last one, these are all taboos that liberals promote and enforce with especial vigor. If a conservative violated any one of them, he would be on the inside track to be named "Worst Person in the World" by that NBC blowhard (as indeed Feherty was).

What makes Sykes's joke funny to a liberal, then, is the sense of danger that accompanies her risky themes, combined with the secure knowledge that since the joke is at the expense of a liberal hate figure, the usual rules do not apply. It's the same reason people on the left evince particular glee when they attack Clarence Thomas or Michael Steele in expressly racist terms, or when they use antigay innuendo against their political opponents (regardless of the latter's sexual orientation).

Elmo Auditions for MSNBC Post

irony watch

from cnn's report on arlen specter's defection & rush limbaugh:

Earlier this month, Specter said Limbaugh did have a tendency to make "provocative" statements, but told radio host Howard Stern he didn't have a problem with the conservative talker. "Do I like Limbaugh?… yeah, I like him," he said then.

something Haredim would do well to ponder

Robert D. Kaplan explains why the Palestinians would prefer statelessness:

Grygiel explains that it is now “highly desirable” not to have a state—for a state is a target that can be destroyed or damaged, and hence pressured politically. It was the very quasi-statehood achieved by Hamas in the Gaza Strip that made it easier for Israel to bomb it. A state entails responsibilities that limit a people’s freedom of action. A group like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the author notes, could probably take over the Lebanese state today, but why would it want to? Why would it want responsibility for providing safety and services to all Lebanese? Why would it want to provide the Israelis with so many tempting targets of reprisal? Statelessness offers a level of “impunity” from retaliation.

But the most tempting aspect of statelessness is that it permits a people to savor the pleasures of religious zeal, extremist ideologies, and moral absolutes, without having to make the kinds of messy, mundane compromises that accompany the work of looking after a geographical space.

Quote of the Day

You know, the longer this drags on, the easier it is to believe The One really wasn’t in church during some of Rev. Wright’s greatest hits after all.

view of a liberal limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh's cousin writes about what it's like:

Then there are the questions. What's he like? Do you know him? Is he an a**hole?

Well, he's the relative you don't see much, who shows up on Christmas Eve on his own plane with an anchor lady you didn't know he was dating until your friend's dad told you the night before. He's fairly loud, but all the Limbaughs are. He's that one over there with the cousins singing rowdy Christmas carols around the piano. Yeah, the one with the cochlear implant, the guy holding a humidor. He's Cousin Rusty, and he's OK.

Sometimes he invites you to his house for Thanksgiving, you and every single one of your relatives, all expenses paid, and he puts you up in a resort that makes you feel like a movie star. He gives you a room key that doubles as his credit card and you can't help but charge Chanel sunglasses on it for everything he did the previous year that had made your job as a new teacher in a liberal high school any harder.

He's the guy who puts "March of the Penguins" on his home movie theater screen for the little cousins to watch and makes sure his candy bowls are filled with jelly beans and doesn't swear when my nephew tries to throw his antiques down the stairs. He's the guy who came from nothing to something and knows what it feels like to miss Missouri.

One Thanksgiving he stands in front of all us relatives in his Versailles-looking living room, and before my grandpa prays over our meal, Cousin Rusty apologizes. He says he's afraid he has made it tough to be a Limbaugh this past year, and his voice breaks like I have never heard it do before. Cousin Rusty is OK.

about the bias she faces as an (albeit liberal) limbaugh:

And a year later I find myself talking to my mentor the first day of the school year -- my first day as a high-school teacher. I ask my mentor if she thinks my last name will be a problem with the students or parents because the district the school is in tends to be very liberal. She looks surprised at my question and asks, "Why would it be a problem?"

"I don't know," I say, feeling silly. "It just sometimes is." And as we're talking, she walks me to the main office to show me the mailboxes and to introduce me to the secretary. Upon introduction, the secretary says, "So, do you do drugs too?" and I try not to look upset, but I also don't want to laugh it off, because I don't think what she said is funny.

Then I am standing at the ticket counter at LaGuardia Airport, trying to get on another airplane because my flight to Chicago has been canceled. The man behind the counter tells me, "You're out of luck because I'm the biggest Democrat you'll ever meet." And instead of sputtering and fuming with indignation, I sputter and fume with shame because as I walk away, I say over my shoulder, "I didn't even say I was related." Not too proud of my last name? Not too proud of my family?

Even though our ideologies do not align, I have always admired Rush for his humor and savvy. I would like to believe that he has created a semi-tongue-in-cheek persona for entertainment's sake, a self-aware self-parody, the original Stephen Colbert. While his haters have always been too busy running in angry frenetic circles to notice the irony, Rush Limbaugh, the caricature, has had the time of his life; and there's something to admire in he who gets the last laugh.

Rush once told me, "The only way to make millions is for half the nation to hate you." He told me this at his mom's funeral when I was 13, and I think the reason he was talking business was because he was trying not to look so sad. It's funny how the subject of half the nation hating him could effectively lighten his mood.

Is Gibbs Really That Dumb

or is he just pretending? from his interview with the washington post:

Romano: Should you be taking on the Rush Limbaughs of the world from the podium?

Gibbs: I'm happy to begin to ignore questions that I don't want to answer. I'm not sure the press would think that's a good idea. . . . Look, inherent in my job is that I don't get to choose what questions I'm asked.

Does Gibbs really think that the interviewer was referring to the many "Rush Limbaughs" in the press asking him questions, or is he uncomfortable defending his practice of answering every question with an attack on Rush? Either way, I'm sure he has the president's complete confidence.

msm lets the secret out

Politico:

By trade if not by choice, I have become something of a Barack Obama aficionado. POLITICO’s Mike Allen wrote last week that I have “probably listened to more President Obama speeches than any human besides [White House spokesman Robert] Gibbs.” Working at the Republican National Committee last year, I closely watched every public appearance by Obama. And I learned a lot about our new president along the way.

...
I’ve concluded that much of the conventional wisdom about Obama is wrong. Here are five of the biggest misconceptions:

1. Obama is bold. Actually, he is overly cautious. It’s no coincidence the first bills he signed into law were the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, two populist favorites. Signing these bills was not an act of courage any more than attacking lobbyists or selecting Joe Biden as a running mate. In fact, Obama’s entire agenda is cautious (sometimes to a fault, in the case of his housing and banking bailouts). Are the numbers in his proposed budget eye-popping? Yes. But eye-popping budgets are well within the Democratic mainstream now.

2. Obama is a great communicator. Cut away the soaring rhetoric in his speeches, and the resulting policy statements are often vague, lawyerly and confusing. He is not plain-spoken: He parses his language so much that a casual listener will miss important caveats. That’s in part why he uses teleprompters for routine policy statements: He chooses his words carefully, relying heavily on ill-defined terms like “deficit reduction” (which means tax increases, rather than actual “savings”) and “combat troops” (as opposed to “all troops in harm’s way”).

3. Obamaland is a team of rivals. Obama earned the label “No-Drama Obama” for a reason. His closest advisers — those who actually shape his thinking, strategy and policies — are loyal and, by all accounts, like-minded. Obviously, they regularly disagree with each other, as any group of smart individuals does. But reading the (many) profiles of Obama aides written since the election, it’s striking that there are no anecdotes of serious disputes inside Obamaland. Obama does try to bring political foes into the fold when it’s convenient, but his team is primarily made up of political friends.

4. Obama is smooth. Despite being deliberate, Obama is surprisingly gaffe-prone. Reporters on my e-mail lists last year know he consistently mispronounced, misnamed or altogether forgot where he was. (In one typical gaffe in Sioux Falls, S.D., he started his speech with an enthusiastic “Thank you, Sioux City!”) His geographic gaffes are not just at routine rallies but at major events, including the Democratic National Convention and his first address to Congress. Any politician occasionally misspeaks, but the frequency of Obama’s flubs is notable.

5. Obama has a good relationship with the media. Working with the hundreds of reporters who covered the Obama campaign last year, I was struck by how many of them would quietly complain about Obama’s borderline disdain for the press. Sometimes it is readily visible — like when he scolded a reporter for asking a question during a presidential visit to the White House briefing room. Other times it’s more passive, like long gaps between press conferences, or it’s reflected in his staff’s attitude.

Obama breaks his oath of office

and only two months in! (according to obama's own definition of defending the constitution of the united states)

as predicted on immanent eschaton

douthat reports:

As Marc is reporting (amid many undeserved compliments), I'll be leaving the Atlantic to join the New York Times next month. I'll have more to say on this front soon, but for now the only thing to say is thanks - to the Atlantic, for everything and then some; to my readers for, well, reading me; and to the Times, for taking an awfully big chance.

we predicted this ages ago

I wonder who she's talking about

NYTimes interviews Ann Coulter. Final question:

*Do you consider yourself as speaking for the conservative movement, or just someone who has attracted many conservative fans? Something else?

I THINK I SPEAK FOR ALL AMERICANS WHO THINK NEWSPAPER EDITORS WHO PRINT THE DETAILS OF TOP-SECRET ANTI-TERRORIST INTELLIGENCE GATHERING PROGRAMS ON PAGEONE IN WARTIME SHOULD BE EXECUTED FOR TREASON.

Jew vs. (self-hating) Jew

Jonathan Chait delivers knockout blow

The problem with making arguments primarily about motives is that it creates a stupid and poisonous public dialogue. Yglesias, without specifically citing it, is responding to my argument against Stephen Walt, the co-author of "The Israel Lobby." So let me explain what happened here, because there's something larger going on. Walt wrote an over-the-top blog post insisting that Freeman was being "smeared" without linking to the arguments made by the alleged smearers or even saying what Freeman was being smeared as. Indeed, my op-ed explicitly argued that Freeman's Israel views are not the cental issue, so Walt simply told his readers that my op-ed made the opposite case. When I pointed this out, Walt asserted that everybody knows what these people really care about.

Of course that assumption isn't true. Foreign policy idealists tend to believe in the value of supporting democracies versus dictatorships, and opposing genocide, even if this doesn't advance narrow economic or foreign policy interests. Realists disagree, which is fine. But the problem is that some realists not only disagree, but have defined the entire idealist worldview as being about Israel. In fact, foreign policy idealists have spent a lot of time defending, say, Taiwan. Not as much time as defending Israel, but of course Taiwan's citizens aren't actually under military attack from China the way Israel's have been from Hamas and Hezbollah. Now, it's true that a lot of Jews are idealists, and that foreign policy idealism is a good justification for the U.S.-Israel alliance. I'd argue that Jewish history before 1948 has more to do with Jewish belief in an ideology that elevates moral considerations over power politics and rejects the notions that a state can deal with its internal population as it sees fit.

And even if you suppose this entire world view is merely a construct to justify support for Israel, there are arguments to be dealt with. Walt refuses to defend Freeman on his ties to Saudi Arabia and extreme defense of China, thinking he can wave it all away by shouting "Israel-lover!" at the critics in the hopes that this will rally liberals to Freeman's side. The method of Walt's argument is vastly more distrurbing than the substance. Walt is arguing that any Jewish-American who does not roughly share his views on Israel (which, of course, disqualifies the vast majority) is presumptively acting out of dual loyalty, is probably coordinating their actions in secret, and should thus be dismissed out of hand. I think Walt has come to this conclusion on the basis of his foreign policy worldview rather than out of animus against Jewish people. But it's a paranoid analysis whose consequence is to make the debate about Israel much more stupid and mired in attacks on motive.

You can see why Jews who do share Walt's beliefs about Israel policy find his methods useful -- it disqualifies a vast swath of their ideological rivals from the conversation, and it elevates their role, as the special minority of good Jews who are able to see past the blinders of their ethnicity.Yet what Walt's promoting is an ugly and deeply illiberal form of discourse. Yes, there are people who shout "anti-Semite" at any criticism of Israel, but this doesn't justify errors of the opposite extreme.

(For the background on this story, read Chait's earlier takedown of Walt.)

quote of day

"The president compared the stock market to a tracking poll the other day. Somehow I think that if his tracking polls had slipped as much as the market has, he would be a bit more concerned."

after the death of the media, look forward to the death of the liberal arts universities. the nytimes is always writing about this, ironically, but here is andrew ferguson:

For behind the president's proposal is a contradiction set deep in the American understanding of things--deep in American democracy itself.

On one hand, the president takes the purely utilitarian view of what higher education is for: You get a degree so you can get a good job, and, as you work, you make the country more prosperous. On the other hand, by including traditional four-year liberal arts colleges and universities in his plan, he implicitly endorses the opposite view: Higher education is for spiritual advancement, the development of character, and the refinement of the mind, and it must be, moreover, accessible to everyone. It is the collision of American practicality and American romanticism. The second view considers the first crudely materialistic, the reduction of education to mere training; the first sees the second as .  .  . well, nice, I suppose, but pretty much beside the point. Haven't you heard about that global economy?

The idea that the two views can be reconciled is why the restaurants of our great country are overrun by art history majors spilling osso bucco on disgruntled customers; these delicate souls have been trained for everything but work. It's also why more than half of students who enroll in traditional four-year schools never finish; they didn't want be trained for everything but work. They wanted to be trained for work. It has also inspired a multi-billion dollar industry designed to help teenagers get into a four-year college whether or not they really want to go.

When he included four-year schools in his list of higher-ed options, the president was being very generous. (Why wouldn't he be? It's not his money.) But the traditional college was only one of four options. In practice the three others--postsecondary education understood as job training--will be where the action is and, if we're lucky, where the students are.

The democratic ideal of outfitting everyone with a liberal arts degree has always been vaguely unrealistic, and now the lack of realism is becoming unavoidable. Whether intentionally or not, the effect of pursuing the president's goal will be to reconfirm the utilitarian view and slowly -render the traditional view irrelevant--an overpriced indulgence that the country can no longer afford. For traditional colleges, this is a Day of Reckoning the president didn't mention.

Disillusionment Begins

In no less than Andrew Sullivan himself

Quote For The Day

"Change is not running up even bigger deficits that George Bush did," - Rep. Gene Taylor (D).

Agreed, but look: you don't expect a Democrat to act like a Republican, especially after the Republican, on spending, acted like a liberal Democrat. And I didn't expect the Obama administration to be the Ron Paul administration. I did expect more than what now looks like deceptive rhetoric on fiscal sanity in the long run. If the president thinks fiscal conservatives will be satisfied by hiking Medicare premiums for the very rich and a proposal to end ag subsidies that may be dead on arrival in Congress, he's mistaken.

But it's the Democrats' government now. And I think I see why Judd Gregg couldn't handle this. I couldn't either. There's a difference between patriotically supporting a new president inheriting some goddawful problems and betraying every fiscal principle you ever had.

smart Jews

Dead media attempts relevance, fails

If you find this compelling, subscribe to Time! if not, wait patiently.

If the election of Barack Obama truly signals a "post-partisan" America, then Andrew Sullivan should be appointed the country's blogger-in-chief. Sullivan was defying political labels long before it became fashionable. He describes himself as being "of no party or clique," and his blog — reliably conservative on military matters and the role of government, aggressively liberal when it comes to gay marriage and the legalization of soft drugs — is daily proof of his stance. In a blogosphere choking on its own partisan entrees, The Daily Dish is a welcome meal that's good for you.

That's right, no partisanship here. And Time is objective, too.