02.23.10
You may have to read this a couple of times to get over your incredulity
And swallow your coffee first so it doesn’t splatter all over your keyboard.
TCM wants Andy Stern to sit on this deficit reduction panel.
02.18.10
Breaking news
A small plane has crashed into a seven-story office building in Austin, Texas.
UPDATE: Pilot acted alone. A troubled guy with a scrambled worldview.
08.21.09
The best opportunity we’ve had in decades
Zogby Interactive has TCM’s approval number at 45 percent. In and of itself, this is a beautiful and glorious development. It doesn’t guarantee an ushering-in of any kind of Western rennaisance or new Golden Age of Freedom, however. It does create a vacuum that we – and I hope it’s clear to BN readers how I’m using “we” here – can view as an opportunity.
Americans are disaffected. They’ve had their sense of possibility, of their sense of truly unifying identity, even their sense of stability and basic continuity, blown apart by the very man whose publicity machine had touted him as the watershed, guardian and embodiment of all things good. The big question is whether this disillusionment will lead to nihilism or a reawakening of the uniquely American vision.
I’m not the first to say to the conservative movement, “Knock it off with the internecine squabbles,” but it’s important for it to continue to be said. To it I would also add, “Check your worldview for any kinky preoccupations.” We all know that conservatism does have schools within it that have elements that are difficult to reconcile. The paleos are isolationist. The neos don’t like truths to be stated too bluntly. The libertarians see little or no room for discussions of morality in our national conversation.
Think deeply about what made America exceptional. What accounts for our energy, our inventiveness, our generosity, the depth of our character?
We can see from recent poll numbers that recognition of the God-given freedom at the core of who we are is lying dormant, but the statists haven’t killed it off.
It’s our time again. It isn’t being handed to us, however. It’s entirely possible for another figure of the same poisonous odor as TCM to step into the vacuum, much as Germany shook off National Socialism only to allow its eastern half to have Soviet-style socialism imposed on it almost immediately.
Think deeply about freedom, common sense, decency, dignity, what history tells us about human nature. And consult God on a moment-by-moment basis. And don’t fall for anything or anyone that doesn’t pass your smell test. Ever again.
08.17.09
Something righties really need to learn: how to avoid unnecessary internecine squabbles
I agree (with NRO writer Andy McCarthy) that it was a bad move for National Review Online to call Sarah Palin’s “death panels” characterization “hysterical,” seeing as how it provided the shorthand that galvanized the public sentiment that led to the panels’ removal from the FHers’ plans. Still, to say that NR has become “as dry as a policy paper” and that its editors just want faculty-lounge respectability seems counter-productive.
I know you can read Mark Steyn, Victor Davis Hanson and Deroy Murdock elsewhere, but they obviously still stand behind the NR brand.
As I’ve said before, I find Sean Hannity’s Freedom Concerts emabrrassingly hokey, but I’m no dummy. I know he’s indispensible at this cultural juncture.
Let’s all stay focused on the task at hand – defeating the current regime – shall we?
07.04.09
“At this point, the jury is no longer out on Obama”
A lengthy and important Neoneocon post about trying to reserve judgement of a set-in-stone degree about TCM, but finding, after a few months of truly alarming initiatives, that that is called for – and seeing liberal friends come to much the same conclusion and dealing with their buyers’ remorse.
She correctly points out that we conservative bloggers don’t, with this medium, reach nearly enough of those who need to be reached. It’s important for us to know we are a community based on a love of freedom, and that there are many of us, but it’s more important right now to find a way to reach those Americans who occasionally look up from the minutiae of their daily lives, work and amusements to exclaim, “Hey, I don’t like this (or that) development at all!” We need them on board if we are to resuscitate what those gathered in Philadelphia signed into being 233 years ago.
File under: It will be interesting to see what the inside scoop is on this
Sarah Barracuda resigns as Alaska governor.
One reason it will be interesting to see what the deal is is that it sure does the opposite of bolstering GOP morale or shoring up the party’s organizational strength. Not a good time for this either, as the Freedom Haters are firing on all cylinders with their Marxist plans for energy and health care.
Why John Bolton would be my first choice for president
Because his understanding of the world is unmatched.
03.31.09
I was going to mention Hugh, too
. . . when I blogged about the Horowitz piece. Hugh Hewitt has been, while not completely in the throes of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, strangely understated in his assessment of TCM’s performance so far. It began the day after the election, when he posted a congratulation and said he “prayed for President Obama and his family.”
Today, he comments on his radio-show conversation with Newt Gingrich and takes Newt to task for the use of the word “dictatorship.” From there, he arrives at much the same point as Horowitz in the Frontpage column: an admonition to conservatives to not succumb to the right-of-center equivalent of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Again, I have much respect for this source of such caution. Hewitt is smart, principled and a man with a Christian heart. He also has a record of not shying away from starkly candid assessments of what we’re up against. A couple of years ago, he wrote a book called If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat: How to Crush The Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It.
I wonder if the likes of Hewitt and Horowitz are proceeding from a faith in the immutability of America’s bedrock identity as a beacon of freedom, an assumption that the stability of its foundational institutions is impervious to absolutely anything.
That seems the most likely explanation. This country has indeed withstood some mighty stormy challenges to its essential character.
My problem with their warnings is that they are premature. No responsible pundits or policy intellectuals are engaging in anything remotely close to the “General Betray-Us” mentality that was on display from the left for eight years.
Here at BN, a lot of thought goes into the choice of terms and the wording of viewpoints. I have no interest in gratuitous pedantry. My whole aim is to foster human freedom and promote an understanding of what makes America and Western civilization great.
Can some of my terminology be interpreted as severe? In a word, yes. Severity is called for in the service of accuracy. Since my conversion to conservatism soem twenty-plus years ago, I have taken ample opportunity to consider the changes to our culture, our economic system, our government, and our interactions with the rest of the world. What it adds up to is a steady march by a force antithetical to the kind of America I cherish into the very heart of power in this country. That force has now reached its destination and the momentum has accelerated to the point where the changes are occurring hourly.
I will continue to take the chidings of the likes of Hewitt and Horowitz under advisement, as I know such figures to be worthy of respect and consideration. As of this day, though, I come to conclusions less sanguine and hopeful than theirs.
03.28.09
The kind of star our culture is starving for
Alfonzo Rachel, whose straight-talking, endlessly entertaining videos started showing up on YouTube during the campaign last year, now has his own channel at Pajamas Media TV, ZoNation.
His future looks bright indeed.
This is how to get our message out.
03.18.09
The glass may not be half-full, but it’s got some in it
Something truly glorious is afoot in America.
The cult of worship, thrill and adulation surrounding TCM is showing fissures that probably can’t be fully repaired. To employ a diffferent metaphor, the bloom is definitely off the rose.
We all know about the recent disillusionment of Jim Cramer and David Brooks. Now, the ranks are swelling to include rabid FHer Harold Myerson, who has had it with Tim Geithner, and upper-Manhattan smarty-pants Maureen Dowd, who has come to see TCM himself as not so swift. Granted, the prescriptions for a constructive way forward these two suggest are not at all what BN prescribes, but we see the gloriousness of this development nonetheless.
In fact, that’s the importance at this juncture of a voice like BN and those to whom we regularly link. A completely – how about radically? – different approach is the subject of a societal conversation that is far more vast and rich with intellectual vigor than the spectacle of Rush Limbaugh fending off the slings and arrows of Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville would indicate.
The designs of the TCM / FHer regime and the clumsiness with which they have embarked on them are making plain to an increasing number of Americans that one basic way of living on the economic level works and one doesn’t. This is not to say that all the folks up and down the block are two minutes away from transforming into Austrian-school free-market purists, but they’re getting a sense of the broad outlines.
This winter was a prolonged funk for me. The weather was mediocre (one decent snow at the end of January), there was a rash of music-venue closings, and, most cumbersome of all, there was the installation of the monolithic FHer regime and the burial of any rightie voice in even the culture for a while.
But now that even the leftiesphere is accomodating expressions of cold feet, I’m surprised to find myself occasionally harboring tiny seeds of encouragement.
Like many a rightie, I yearn for some bold development, perhaps best conjured in an image like that of Dutch riding into town on one of his prized high-country stallions, lightly pushing the brim of his hat back on his forehead, offering that “of-course-it’s-still-morning” grin and giving us all clear instructions. Some figurehead, some hero, some movement with a catchy name, some new show or magazine or book.
But maybe this is the time for all of us who know what works to just be prolific. Blog, write columns, talk on the radio. And put clarity and courage at the forefront of the values that drive us. Freedom and strength – a strength based on reliance on the Divine Providence Mr. Jeffferson spoke of in his thunderous 1776 document – work. Socialism, appeasement and moral relativism are a lot of garbage.
The great majority of Americans can be convinced of this. I’m more sure of this every time TCM opens his freedom-hating mouth.
03.02.09
Michael Steele is starting to scare me
First there was the situation a few days ago in which all he could find to say about Pelosi and Reid and the “stimulus” package was that he was “disappointed.”
Now he’s waxing dismissive about the most potent force in the conservative movement – Rush.
I was so excited when I first heard about Steele asuming the RNC chairmanship.
Perhaps conservatives need to leave the GOP to the Reasonable Gentlemen and mush-heads and coalesce around some other institutional banner. I know in the past such a proposal has sounded goofy and unrealistic, but if the ostensible leader of the party of Lincoln and Dutch has no more radioactive glow to his guts than this, it may be plausible now.
02.18.09
That internal barometer that tells us when something just ain’t right
One subject I haven’t really weighed in on since it moved to the fore of righties’ concerns is the matter of who gets to decide how to define conservatism. After the Pub clock-cleaning in November, many a pundit didn’t wait for their reeling to subside to chime in. Purists from markedly different schools of thought dismissed the perceived apostates with the urgency of those determined to lead the charge against the newly empowered state Leviathan.
There are some quirky permutations out there, but the schism really boils down to the question of whether “cultural conservatives,” those whose primary concerns are “social issues” have a place at the table of modern conservatism. You’ve read the arguments by now. The camp that believes they aren’t welcome is itself a rather large tent, including east-coast chin-stroking types, such as Kathleen Parker and David Frum, libertarian types such as Neal Boortz, and generally-spot-on-but-occasionally-quite-oddball bloggers such as Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse. The other camp includes, obviously, politically engaged evangelicals, but also flagship journals such as National Review and talk show hosts such as Laura Ingraham and Greg Garrison.
In order to repair this schism as quickly as possible – there is, after all, a socialist takeover of our country, as well as an overall decay of the West, underway – several participants in this discussion are harkening to various bullet-point-type lists of foundational principles that can serve as guides. Russell Kirk’s list of ten conservative principles has been mentioned. Edmund Burke’s reasons for opposing the French Revolution, after having championed the American one, are getting an airing. (In this regard, may I offer the Bent Notes Manifesto as a useful benchmark?)
I think we may be helped by seeing that there are layers, or levels, if you like, to this ideology to which we all claim fealty and proper understanding.
The most accessible layer is to look at what has been going on in the West for the last seventy or eighty years – certainly in the last twenty – and declare what we’re against. You could get most self-proclaimed conservatives of any stripe on board by saying “We stand opposed to
a.) the disingenuous use of the word “diversity” as a way for such institutions as schools, arts councils and human-rights councils to erode a cohesive sense of what the West is about
b.) the whole “green” movement
c.) the notion that one should regard human sexuality in an utterly casual manner
d.) the notion that there is some magic alternative to free-market economics
e.) the notion that some kind of lasting “peace” for all humankind forevermore is achievable
f.) the notion that you can build the kind of vital and durable civilization that we have in fact built without having an ongoing public conversation about God be part of the exchange of ideas that builds it”
I could probably think of a few more items, but you get the idea.
Then there is the level on which we outline the principles that guide us in asserting what we do stand for as specific issues arise in our society.
I know it’s less easy to define and quantify, but the level on which conservatism is examined as a dispostion, a mindset, an attitude, ought to be part of the debate. If your read Kirk’s ten principles, they are really tendencies. They spell out a direction that a conservative’s response to a given societal development takes.
I think a conservative first and foremost takes his cue from history. We have some ten thousand years’ worth of clues as to what works and what doesn’t. Granted, not all institutions, customs or philosophies of governance that lasted a long time have been good, but even in these we can see what righted them with effectiveness and finality.
I also think the conservative, broadly defined, is instinctively wary of the notion of “fairness.” At first glance, a number of things look fair that, upon closer examination, must be regarded in light of nature’s parameters. A handy example of this is the feminist movement. It seems to the observer employing rationality but not referencing biology, psychology or history that men and women are equally suited for anything and everything in this world, from esoteric feats of engineering to nurturing infants to commanding armies to making a home feel like a home. Such an observer would surely conclude that questions of provision, protection, and final decision-making in family situations should not be colored by gender considerations. Alas, when what we know of the above fields of inquiry is brought to bear on our assessment, we are compelled to move toward some other kind of conclusion. Other examples abound, and as I think of them, I’ll use them for future posts on this subject.
My main point, though, is that there is some intuition involved in how a conservative thinks and operates. It’s a little like Louis Armstrong’s remark that if one has to ask what jazz is, he’ll never know.
The Freedom-Haters – yes, there’s that term, and I’ll keep on using it because it is flawlessly accurate – are taking great delight at the cacophony breaking out all over our side. I’m not denying the real points of difference that make for the din, but I think that as our hoss sense ever more clearly tells us that what is being done to a civilization we had assumed to be immutable will in fact destroy it, we’ll find our common ground fairly quickly.
02.04.09
Sam has no idea how to diagnose us
I’d been considering for a couple of days writing a post about Sam Tanenhaus’s New Republic piece on conservatism’s death, but along comes Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media, articulating my reaction with characteristic incisiveness.
Tanenhaus’s piece is long. Parts of it are erudite. He invites the reader to take a big perspective, examining conservativism’s development from clear back to Edmund Burke. Ultimately, though, it demonstrates once again the vacuum in which effete East Coast lefty chin-strokers do their observing and thinking. He just plain doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He has no grasp of conservatism’s actual essence. Kimball shows why.
11.06.08
Sorting these matters out cannot be given short shrift
Little Green Footballs, a blog I check at least daily and hold in the highest regard, links to David Frum’s statements about some choices the GOP will have to make about where its center of gravity will be. True to his east-coast chin-rubbing orientation, Frum says the Pubs would be well-advised to make the “painful choices” in favor of sticking with fiscal and foreign-policy focus and cut the social conservatives loose. LGF pretty much concurs, saying that “fundamental Christianity, creationism, hard-line anti-abortionism and [an] aggressively anti-gay rights [stance]” will be detrimental.
Let’s not be applying a broad brush where a freshly sharpened scalpel – or, if you’d like, a microscope – is needed as we unpack this observation.
Perhaps this is the opportunity for true clear-thinkers to take back a perfectly good word that cultural leftists had co-opted: nuance.
Frum’s not a complete goner. He’s somewhat infected with east-coast pointy-head-ism, but he has made some insightful contributions and he’s no Reasonable Gentleman (our term here at BN for Pubs who appease the left). He does seem here, though, to be channeling his inner David Brooks, saying that a permanently less religious and more pragmatic young adult American is a foregone conclusion.
Even if the fanciest studies in the world bore this out, it would be a devil’s bargain on our part to proceed in accordance with it. The God revealed in the world’s great scripture (you can interpret that as broadly or narrowly as you’d like; for my part I’m excluding the Quran) must be central to the shaping of any kind of conservatism we get behind.
Now, that said, let’s look at where Frum and LGF do indeed have a point. In our image-driven post-modern culture there is no denying the power of stereotypes that form in the mind of the citizenry. Simply put, cornball yee-haw-ism will get us nowhere. I was listening to Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday and he was attempting to bouy listeners’ spirits by exhorting them to come out to his Freedom Concert tour. He excitedly listed the lineup, headlined by Lee Greenwood (have I ever stated for the record that I hate that “God Bless the USA” song nearly as badly as I hate John Lennon’s “Imagine”?) and Charlie Daniels. Sorry, Sean, but that ain’t gonna cut it. These are people who, while their hearts and minds are admirably inclined, do not generally put a super-fine point on the above-mentioned matters.
And a fine point is required. Let’s give our scalpel a fresh sharpening and proceed.
We’re always correct about everything here at BN, and we say unequivocally that abortion is wrong. We also say that the phenomenon of homosexuality is some kind of – brace yourselves, this is going to take a little digesting – crippling of normal, natural human sexuality.
What is unfortunate and leads to the kinds of pronouncements Frum and LGF are making is the undeniable fact that quite legitimate conservative problems with such matters as abortion and the treatment of homosexuality as normal does get mixed up with the wacko stuff like creationism and fundamentalism in general. The radio show after mine on Saturday mornings is all about creationism. A lot of the host’s guests are very commendable pro-life activists, but they serve the show’s agenda of saying that our culture’s devaluation of life has its roots in an embrace of evolution.
We have to take our internal debate to this level of exactitude, people. For one thing, we began to see as this year unfolded indications of some demographic types that fly under the radar screen – rock and rollers, distinguished actors, a playwright or two and even the odd (I’ll be the first to admit it) jazz and blues guitarist and arts journalist like your present blogger – that want a place at the table of conservatism. They will be turned offto some degree by either snobbery or yee-haw-ism.
I’m not saying anyone I’ve mentioned in this entire post should be denied such a place at the table. All I say is, come prepared to sort this out with as much courage, clarity and comity as you can muster.
