Bent Notes

I think the appropriate way to regard the tofu-and-sprout-munching, peace-and-social-justice, agnostic, save-the-planet types - the ones who were the first on your street to get an Obama yard sign - is with pity.  The deepest kind of pity, the pity that’s just a microinch removed from scorn and contempt, but does qualify as pity.  For these people really swallow the lie.  They’re awash in Kool-Aid.  After all the evidence that their man is not only a fake, a Marxist and a liar but a thug, they still see him as the change-and-hope prophet he appeared to be last winter.

I’m not talking about the hate-crazed vanguard doing the flooding of radio station phone banks or hacking Sarah Palin’s e-mail account or cynically taking Rush Limbaugh quotes out of context for Spanish-language ads.  I’m not talking about the economic charlatans in his camp - most notably his running mate, he of paying-higher-taxes-is-patriotic fame - or the 9/11-was-America’s-chickens-coming-home-to-roost crowd.  I mean the nice folks down the block, the ones you see at the farmers market or the wine bar or your kids’ soccer matches.  The ones who, gosh darn it, just want things to be fair and peaceful.

About all that can be done in these remaining forty-plus days is to whittle away at their numbers.  As it becomes easier to expose the ugliness behind the big grin, the confident stride, the thoughtful tone of voice, those numbers can indeed be wuittled.

But remaining numbers there will be.  The enemy in this war has been quite effective at convincing them to sip the Kool-Aid.

Yes, war.  And what it is is the domestic front in the overall world war, the one that manifests itself in Iran’s uranium enrichment program, joint Venezuelan-Russian naval exercises, Russian invasion of Georgia, new and more powerful engines for North Korean long-range missiles, bombings in India, Iraq and Yemen.  It’s a war in which we face an array of enemies who share a hatred of the goodness that lies at the heart of our greatness.  We love freedom, we know it is a gift from almighty God, and we know it is the key to our prosperity and progress.  And they hate us for it.

So let the minions of the Marxist From Chicago “get in [your] faces.”  You’re prepared.  Meanwhile, take every opportunity to compel the nice folks down the street to wake up.  Feed them ideas. Lace your conversation with noble principles.  A lot of them can be convinced to value their own freedom and prosperity, to see truth and smell falsehood.  The rabid types are too far gone, but a lot of the nice folks down the street can be reached.

In Colorado Springs this morning, The Barracuda serves notice that the mentality of “Wheee!  Let’s take some more wacky risks with a bunch of anonymous people’s money!  If it goes sour, Uncle Sam will bail us out!” will get nowhere come January.

This whole thing has at its core our age’s disconnect between choices and responsibility.  Yes, risk is an honorable thing when the possible outcomes have been considered and weighed, but when the name of the game becomes over-the-top-clever repackaging of basic loan and investment transactions in forms ever more remote from the original exchanges of hard-earned money, it gets harder for those doing the repackaging to see how it can all come tumbling down.  It reminds me of the line in the Mose Allison song “Middle Class White Boy”: “I just wanna do everything wrong and still pick up first prize.”

Once again, Madame Vice President tells the people in plain English what’s going on - and what she and President McCain won’t enable.

Fred Thompson, with the clarity you’d expect, explains the Freddie Mac - Fannie Mae bailout.

 She passed at the nursing home where she’d lived for some time.

Never met her, even though she lived her entire life in a town about 25 miles northeast of the city where I live. Within four months of my age. Saw a fair amount of media coverage of her over the years.  Admired her perspective, her crusty sense of humor, her genuine warmth, her enjoyment a bracing libation.  She made friends where she could find them.

What we can learn from the life of the giant from Shelbyville is that real life is just that - real.  It’s not the stuff of chick-mag advice columns or rock album covers or vapid politicians’ droolings about hope and change.  It’s about conditions and parameters and finding your heart and mind anyway and finding a way to refine yur humanness so that people have kind things to say - and a little tear in the eye - when you pas sfrom this realm.

A few more thoughts occur to me along the vein of last night’s post about livingthe life of a closet-rightie. 

Clearly, the majority of my friends and associates are on the other side of the ideological fence from me.  It makes me cringe and gnash my teeth, but I know how they’ll vote in November. 

Most of them get their news and opinion on the fly as they maneuver through their daily lives - a little Today show or The View while on the treadmill at the gym, a little NPR during the daily commute, Time or Newsweek during the grooming-and-hygiene interlude, the op-ed page of their local paper, stuff that friends e-mail to them.

A few of them make a point of, as far as they understand the term, being highly informed.  They regularly check out The Nation, the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Keith Olberman, Chris Matthews.

It’s this second tier that I’d like to consider here.  After all, they ostensibly have the most meat on the bones of their worldview.  They avail themselves of sources unabashedly self-identified as progressive.

As Bookworm and Neo-neocon say about such people in their lives, it’s clear from my observation of, and interaction with them that they are not dumb people.  Most have done quite well in live.   They live comfortably, travel, send their kids to fine colleges, contribute to the civic life of their communities.  This is why I am so confounded by their steadfast fealty to an ideology that has demonstrated its intrinsic failure in every area of public life: economics, culture, education, religion, and science.

Implicit in their dinner-party exchanges about how to get more Americans concerned about global warming, or how immoral US involvement in Iraq is, or how large corporations are greedy is that core assumption that America’s main identity is not that of a grand experiment in human liberty, but rather some kind of storehouse in which power and wealth exist of their own accord, andthat it’s just a matter of which classes or vested interests are going to control those commodities.

It’s an assumption that really goes back to Marx.  It’s the idea that there’s some kind of power structure that welcomes in those who demonstrate a cynical understanding of how the game works, and excludes those who insist on an egalitarian dispensing of access to the levers of success.  In this view of things, a revolution is required to put the egalitarians in charge of admission to the success network, and send the old power-brokers to the re-education camp.

The irony is that reality works in the exact opposite fashion.  When free-market economics, as laid out by Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman, is combined with a keen understanding of the Judeo-Christian scriptural narrative and all it has to say about family and character and a devotion-filled heart, as well as a keen understanding of what history shows us about human nature and the evolution of the modern nation-state, you get the freest and fairest possible society.

Especially since the civil-rights triumph of forty years ago, there is truly no substantive obstacle to a United States citizen becoming or achieving whatever he or she envisions.  What is it you want to do?  If you equip yourself with a full toolbox of the character traits needed to accomplish it - a generally educated mind, knowledge of your field, a friendly dispostition that fosters a network of contacts, mentors and associates, a willingness to find out what material resources you’ll need, and an understanding that life is fluid and you’ll need to adapt to pretty much constant change - the only hassles that can possibly pose setbacks will be random occurrences of bum luck.

A further irony is that this is how these people I know who are personally successful but still harbor the leftist worldview got where they are.  What i cannot get to the core of - and, I think, still puzzles even conservatism’s greates minds - is why they can’t see the universal applicability of their own success stories.

It has something to do with this matter of control.  I used to divide leftists into two groups - those who sincerely believed that government was needed to make life more fair for unfortunate people, and those who were in it because it was a slick way to talk themselves into power.  I look at it a little differently now.  I think some sense that human beings ought to be controlled lies at the heart of even the do-gooder impulse.  Otherwise, these people would be able to see that they came to their quite favorable junctures- the American dream - without asking anybody’s permission.

Alaska Sen Ted Stevens has been indicted for financial footsie with an oil company. 

My next Republic column is on the role of substance and character in the maintaining of a healthy, robust society in which freedom, fairness, security, comfort and convenience  - the stuff we take for granted - thrive.  It requires the cultivation of an intricate body of virtues in each of us.  Granted, there is no guarantee that a scumbag like Stevens won’t rise to a fairly high position of influence, but the thing for leaders of the party to which belongs to do is show him the door, pronto.  That is, if they’re in it for the assurance of such a society.  Now’s the time to say so, if that’s the case.

And the oil company did the principle of a properly functioning free market no favors, either.

The mixed bag that is our current juncture is very mixed indeed.  Just as Iraq is looking like a stable, unified country ready to take its place as a player in its region and in the struggle against jihadism, the danger from its neighbor to the east, Iran, looks like it’s reaching critical mass.  Domestically, productivity and employment remain high, while bank failures blemish the landscape and inflation, a negligible factor for years, has come roaring back.

America is screaming for clarity and leadership.  Or maybe the problem is that it’s not screaming for clarity and leadership,at least en masse in sufficient numbers.  There is nothing plaguing us that adherence to the time-honored principles that have paved our way out of every similar past situation wouldn’t cure.

You do see little glimpses of it here and there.  Thank God W finally said that we need to drill for oil.  If the man who hopes to succeed him as a GOP president can find a graceful way to put his previous pristine-ANWR statements behind him (I guess I am calling for McCain to flip-flop, which isn’t per se a bad thing, if your previous position was stupid) and point out the stark difference between the corporation-bashing of the Freedom-Haters and the overwhelming obvious good sense of turning loose oil companies anywhere it seems likely that there’s oil, he and the congressional candidates of his pary may have a chance.

There are hopeful signs that the public is likewise beginning to see that the core of the banking and mortgage mess is likewise fairly simple: easy credit and shaky responsibility met head-on and shareholders, depositors and taxpayers were left holding the bag.  A little of that is sufficient to make the vast majority of timely bill-payers say, “Now hold on, here.  Why am I taking a whuppin’ for someone else’s failure to live up to his obligations?”

What I do not understand is this sudden overture the W administration is making to Iran.  Sending Under-Secretary of State William Burns to meet with his theocratic counterpart?  How does that jibe with the recent stories about W giving Israel an “amber light” to take care of business regarding a nuke program?  It may be that there is some highly sensitive factor at play here, some consideration that must be kept tightly under wraps for the time being, but I feel that W owes the American people at least some kind of statement along the lines of “I know this looks like an abrupt turnabout, but if it leads to the favorable changes we anticipate, I will explain it thoroughly in due course.”

Yes, it’s a complicated world.  That’s all the more reason to have a consistent set of bedrock principles that guide us as we encounter all manner of wacky twists and turns and some real threats.  In a sense, it’s like having a chart in front of you when you’re playing music.  If you get lost in the tune, you can’t blame the piece of paper on the stand.

There is no better of example of how to live a positive model of conservatism.  From his writings to his humor to his bigness of heart toward others to the basic way he carried himself, he exemplified what we’re for.  He never ceased being that great guy even when he had to know his odds were dwindling.

That is the long and short of what it’s all about. 

Dennis Prager on Rene Marie singing “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” atthe Denver mayor’s State ofthe City address.

Finally got the high-speed Internet I’d been assuming I was on the road to.  With the exception of the NYC trip, the last two weeks have been a nightmare.  I do believe it is behind me now.

It all got started because Mrs. BN and I decided to join the 21st century and get cell phones.  I met with a Verizon rep over coffee one morning and told her that if we were givign up our land line, I’d like to go ahead and be done with the company that had been providing our phone service altogether.  That company had been providing us with DSL Internet access as well.  She said, “No problem.  We’ll fix you up with wireless access that you get with an air card that you stick into your USB port.”

Seemed simple enough.  Alas, I spent hours in tech support hell, usually winding up the interlude with the tech support person saying, “Hmmm, I can’t tell you what’s going on.  You probably should call the tech support department at the manufacturer of your computer.”  (More than once, it involved said person saying, “Mr. Quick, please stop yelling.”)  This, after I’d made it clear I had two computers, a desktop and a laptop, both of which were accessing the Net at a crawl.

This morning, I finally busted a move.  Took the air card and installation disc back to the Verizon store and said, “We dig the phones, but the Net access ain’t making it.”  Then I went to our Comcast office, with which we already deal for our cable TV, and said “Sign me up for the high-speed stuff.”  The front-counter gal was nice, but she just basically handed me an installation kit.  I explained that I had two computers and she said I’d need to go to Circuit City and buy a router.  Did that, came home and started in.  The Comcast manual said that I’d need to get a screwdriver and take the cover off my desktop and do something with something called DCI slots or something like that.

I called a buddy of mine who is an IT whiz for a big multinational company and he came by after work.  He got it all figured out and I’m doing fine now.

But the whole computer / software industry is in need of massive streamlining.  I have to believe that there are a whole herd of folks like me who feel like they’ve been dumped by the raodside in the middle of the desert with a barely readable map and no compass. 

 I know a lot of bloggers have a lot of skills in that whole area; Little Green Footballs comes to mind as one blog that routinely makes improvements in technical things and explains what has been done for readers.

Me, I’d rather have a syringe full of kerosene injected into my left testicle than deal with that stuff.

Anyway, I have my writing deadlines met for the month, I have good Net access again, I have three gigs this weekend and I’m able to see the possibility of sanity again.

Another opinion writer who is definitely in the pantheon of top practitioners of that craft (see invitation in post below to kick around who might comprise the top five) is Roger Kimball.  To scroll down his posts at Pajamas Media is to have your sense of the gorgeousness of truth sharpened.

A recent piece of his has as its thrust a reconsideration of recent conservative gloom about conservatism’s prospects.  He offers another view, but, as one would expect from a towering giant of a wordsmith, he does much more.  He offers, for example, a consideration-warranting look at where conservatives on one hand and Freedom-Haters on the other find levity and pessimistic prospects in life.

A technique marvelous writers sometimes use is the placement of a quote from another great writer in their work that is an irreplaceable gem.  Kimball has done that here with this nugget from Lord Falkland: “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”

The first part of this video documents council member Monica Conyers turning a Detroit City Council meeting into an embarrassing, pathetic grade-school playground spat.

By itself, it would reinforce the notion of Detroit as a dying metropolis, but then there’s the second portion of the video, in which we see the hope for the Motor City’s future in one Kierra Bell, an eight grader with more wisdom, composure and sense of dignity and responsibility than Conyers ever conceived of.  This exchange is just too good, too rich.  Kierra Bell for mayor (on her way to taking Conyers’ husband’s position - that’s right, he’s John Conyers of the United States Congress) and then President!

An actor of great power and versatility, and a ctizen and thinker who always stood for the principles enshrined in the BN Manifesto with dignity.

As with the passing of WFB, one is inspired anew to strive a bit harder for that combination of clarity, steadfastness and humanity that characterizes the greats in our cause.

His column today on why the boomer generation owes America’s current crop of youth an apology.  Money line: “We made you anti-war and almost completely sexualized your lives.”

So says James Bowman in an important essay in the Summer 2007 issue of The New Atlantis.

It kind of reminds me of a point Diana West makes in The Death of the Grown-Up: that we find it fairly easy to honor military figures who endure imprisonment or engage in rescue operations, but not so easy to laud the valor of the one who distinguishes himself in the act of fighting evil.

A new federal study says that kids living in situations other than with two biological parents are far more likely to experience abusive injury, and that the figures go up proportionally with the lessening of an official relationship between the child and the adults involved.

I know I’ve brought the book I’ve been reading lately, The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West, into a lot of posts lately, but that’s because it’s so important.  West talks a lot about the disintegration of respect for the principles that make for a real family: commitment, for starters, and men cultivating manhood, for another.  These let’s-play-house situations are way too frequently powderkegs waiting to go off.

Another thing West talks about is the extreme unhelpfulness of therapyspeak.  This isn’t about “healthy choices” or “appropriate behaviors.”  It’s about remembering what a sacred thing it is to create a child and what you’re taking on when you create one.

Here we have government-funded hand-holders, in schools, clinics and agencies of all sort, telling grown human beings about stuff like “anger management” and “family dynamics,” stuff you’re supposed to get a clue about when you’re twelve.  Meanwhile, the TV and the stereo are dispensing a popular culture that says, “The sex is the most important part.”

Selwyn Duke has a very incisive essay about evil and God at The American Thinker. 

The word “disconnect” looms large in my thoughts when I come upon news items about popular culture. Has the chasm ever been wider between the sewer that it’s become and the still-vital proclivity of most Americans for the decent, noble, true, delightful and sensible?

Exhibit A is the release of albums by two rock icons who are sixty-ish and don’t have the clout they did in their heyday, but still wield industry power, are able to negotiate contracts most of us musicians can only fantasize about, and garner headlines when they come out with new product.  Joni Mitchell’s Shine, an album-long rant against the Catholic church, consumerism and what she perceives as environmental harm, and Bruce Springsteen’s Magic, which paints a bleak present and future for his country, are perfect examples of the hollowness of the whole countercultural fantasy.  From its beginnings in the 50s with the New Left, beatniks and coffeehouses, through the pop explosions of the 1960s and on into the rock sensibility’s institutionalization as the lingua franca of Western culture in ensuing decades, it was sold to us as a luminous possble future we could step into if we would but cast off the oppressive mindset of the previous five thousand years.  Instead, it has come to this - vile and dark pedantry by overpaid guitar twangers without a clue as to the human nature, the nature of God, economics, science, or much of anything else.

One skirts the issue if one says, “It’s a free country.  You don’t like that stuff?  Don’t put it on your ipod.”  That’s a lame attempt to dismiss the ubiquity that these records enjoy.  Mitchell’s album is on the Starbucks label.  Anybody sidling up to the counter to pay for his or her latte will have to take note of it in the point-of-purchase display.  Springsteen is doing the Today Show and 60 Minutes, where he gets to mouth lies about “illegal wiretapping,” “voter suppression,” “no habeus corpus,” “neglect of New Orleans” and the Iraqi situation with nary a dispute from interviewers.  Yes, I know we live in an age where young people - the primary consumers of music, as study after study shows - cultivate their music tastes based on word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, and they are increasingly interested in indie acts and “non-corporate” output.  Still, they know from the media attention, and all too often from the fare listened to by their counterculture-saturated parents, that performers such as Mitchell and Springsteen are venerated icons.  To the younger music consumers, these dispensers of vitriol have joined the great American pantheon alongside Sinatra and Louis Armstrong (if they even know who they are).

Or let’s take Exhibit B, a couple of recent installments of daytime girly-girl chatfests, namely, The View and Oprah.  The episode of The View in question devolved into a blather by Whoopi Goldberg aboout being willing to engage in a three-way tryst with husband-and-wife actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.  The other panelists thought this was quite a hoot.  Then there’s Oprah’s recent focus on how to have a more fulfilling sex life, complete with guests who advocate open marriages.

Again, it’s pointless to say “Just turn it off.”  You’ll see this garbage somewhere - on the treadmills at the gym, in a waiting room of some sort, at someone else’s home.

These are but the latest examples of the enormity of the task before those of us professionally involved in trying to restore some sparkle and humanity - to say nothing of truth and good sense - to our shared public life.  Is it discouraging?  Sometimes momentarily.  That’s when one has to get back to work.  More sandbags are needed to hold back the flood.

The continuation of Michelle Malkin’s interview with Diana West, author of The Death of the Grown-Up.

At Hot Air, Michelle Malkin interviews Diana West about her new book The Death of the Grown Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bring Down Western Civilization.  I really liked the part about what Lionel Trilling had to say about the shaping of a life.

Part Two is tomorow.

My birthday is coming up.  I think I’ll plant the idea of this timely tome in Mrs. BN’s mind as a gift idea.