Bent Notes

It’s early afternoon.  There’s still this resolve to see things optimistically on the part of my people, both personal friends with whom I’m in touch as well as the boggers I’m reading and the talk-radio hosts I’m listening to.

The situation in Philadelphia - Black Panthers blocking a polling place - is getting a lot of attention right now.

Part of me is emotionally exhausted and part of me is on fire.  It’s weird to be host creature to both states simultaneously.

I only knew one person in the line at my polling place, an artist buddy of mine whom I know to be a consistent FHer voter.  It was so weird to make small talk with him about what’s going on around town musically, and then watch him get behind the machine, knowing full well what he was doing, what buttons he was pushing.

At the risk of sounding like some therapist’s patient, I am wondering what I do with this thought I harbor whenever I come in contact with someone who I know full well voted the FHer ticket.  There’s a lot of someones in that category - social friends, professional associates, relatives.  The inescapable fact is that there is some level on which they are the enemy.  These are people who have taken a concrete action which jeopardizes my freedom and my future.  So, as I say, wht do I do?  I can’t jettison the lot of them and re-people my life. Plus, most of them are nice, even wonderful, if horrifyingly misguided, folks.

I know one thing.  Whether Mr. Reasonable Gentleman can squeak through, or whether the Chicago Marxist emerges victorious, there must be a from-the-ground-up reassessment of how to get conservatism to flourish again.

The first principle by which we must be guided is zero tolerance for anything less than total clarity. No McCain-esque distractions and vacuous platitudes about “fighting the status quo in Washington” or “fighting for what’s right for America” or “putting country first.”  Such crap means nothing.  An FHer could utter the same phrases.  Indeed, the Chicago Marxist does employ very similar rhetoric.  No, what we talk about are the specific principles for which we’re willing to fight to the death: the original intent of the Constitution’s framers, free-market economics, American exceptionalism, an America that does not hesitate to respond fiercely and ruthlessly to its enemies’ provocations, and America that demonstrates unwavering loyalty to nations that share these principles, the primacy of family as the basic unit of human organization, and a culture characterized by dignity, depth, decency and real inspiration.

We must expect loud arguments amongst ourselves, finger-pointing and bitterness.  Obviously, the wheels came off our movement and we must find out why.  This is why we’d all be well-advised to enter into this foundational examination with as much prayerfulness and mindfulness of our common aims as possible.  Eventually, the the useless sand of confusion will get sifted out and the nuggets of what we were seeking will be all that remains on the fine-mesh screen.

I look back at this year - my personal successes, some episodes of illness in our household and family, memorable times with friends, the spring’s tornadoes and floods, the spike in gas prices, the financial meltdown, the embrace by a frighteningly large segment of the population of socialism - and ask myself what it all has taught me.  I’d say that the biggest lesson at this point is that, in human life, the visceral and the spiritual are inextricably intertwined.  In fact, I’m sort of considering the possibility that the more one progresses on the spiritual journey, the more reality’s upside-the-head aspect becomes impossible to avoid.

This Freedom-Hater no-drilling-where-the-oil-actually-is sham coming out of the House is going to get the Big V from W.  Ace of Spades also includes the phone number of the Republican Senatorial Committee, so you can let the Gang of 20 know what you think of this outbreak of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome in that chamber.

Heck, here’s the phone number right here:  (202) 675-6000.

I’m about to make my call.  If these idiots succeed with their “compromise,” the GOP will have given away its absolutely best domestic issue in this campaign-season home stretch.

As we always say here at BN, “reaching across the aisle” is another way of saying “roll over on your back, expose your underbelly and invite the Freedom Haters to claw out your entrails.”

He does something like not show solidarity with his friend Joe Lieberman when Joe is trying to give him some tremendous help.  John McCain - the embodiment of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome.

 I was going to link to just the Kimberly Strassel WSJ piece about this, but America’s Anchorman quotes that liberally (how’s that for taking a fine word back?) and adds some further perspective demonstrating how outrageous this is.

Here’s why “reaching across the aisle” to “compromise” and “break the stalemate” and “get things done” is always, in every instance, a horrible idea:  The Freedom-Haters get their agenda completely and you get nothing but acquiescence to it.  The end result is that the American people have to experience a further diminishing of their individual well-being and their country’s greatness.

I wasn’t surprised to see Lindsey Graham on board with this.  I think he caught RGS in his mother’s uterus.  But Saxby Chambliss?  I thought he loved freedom, prosperity and common sense.

These idiots run a very big risk of undercutting the brave stand the House GOP members are taking.

UPDATE: Ted Nugent, in a column in Human Events, weighs in with characteristic clarity and ferocity.

The non-story in the New York Times about the lobbyist from a decade ago who was hanging around John McCain comes mere days after that paper had “endorsed” him as its favorite Republican candidate.  It’s quite obvious now that that “endorsement” was all about softening him up for the kill.  Pinch, Keller and the rest of the NYT’s gang of Freedom-Haters no more want to see McCain elected President than they do Duncan Hunter.

This whole episode points up a central truth we hammer home here at BN every chance we get: “reaching out” and “crossing the aisle” is an open invitation to have your entrails clawed out.

There is only one way to relate to Freedom-Haters: defeat them.  They have no interest in us other than silencing us.

It’s not encouraging to see this nation’s only hope for not becoming a socialist dictatorship respond by saying he was “disappointed.”  Senator, if that’s the best you can do, you’re in for a lot more “disappointment” on the way to your defeat and this nation’s ruin.

Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome is one of those maladies most readily identified by a behavior.  In the case of RGS, it’s what we here at BN call “Lunching with the enemy.”  If you’re afflicted with RGS, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is, you call it “reaching across the aisle to get things done.”

Michelle Malkin says that the H-word creature’s proposal to socialistically interfere in the mortgage-rate situation is to be expected, but that Republican complicity is truly an appalling thing to see.

In several previous BN posts, I have pondered how the mind of W works.  He’s been far from my ideal president.  In fact, he routinely frustrates the hell out of me.  In fact, I may be able to count on one hand the things he’s done right.  Two things redeem him in my eyes: the fact that the handful of things he did right were big things, and the fact that the alternatives, in 2000 and 2004, would have been pathetic jokes.

I guess his enthusiasm for Condi’s summit fits with the overall pattern of his sadly inconsistent ideology.  For years, he’s shown a touch of that Wilsonian by-golly-I-believe-this-world-is-brimming-with-goodwill-and-can-be-made-safe-for-democracy sentiment.  (Bill Sammon, in his new book says that’s due to W’s evangelical brand of spirituality.)  It’s a bit surprising, given that the ultimate in ugliness directed at this country happened on his watch and, at least in the first few years, he dealt with it realistically and forthrightly.  But as I say, I long ago gave up expecting consistency from the guy.

What about Condi herself, though?  Has she always been this way, and it’s a case of present circumstances bringing it out fully?

Put more succinctly, what in the hell is she thinking?

Hamas won a popular election among the Palestinians.  Then, the amount of power that gave them didn’t suit them, so they violently routed Fatah from Gaza.

Meanwhile, Olmert shows himself to be far and away the most fuzzy-minded and incompetent leader Israel has ever had, squandering the chance to fully quash Hizbollah in the summer 06 conflict.  Abbas likewise can’t control his own Fatah security forces in the West Bank.

Israel does summon the collective clarity of mind to zap the Syrian reactor, but that incident brings to light two facts that ought to shape everyone’s thinking in the West:  Syria is looking into nukes, and getting North Korean help.

Meanwhile, speaking of Syria, pro-Western members of the Lebanese government continue to get assassinated.

So what is Condi hosting tomorrow?  A confab to which Syria is invited not only to attend but to insist on return of the Golan Heights, to which Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are invited, leaving Israel in the same postion at tomorrow’s negotiating table that it is in geographically across the ocean - tiny and alone amidst a huge number of countries that will not state unequivocally that they are okay with its existence.

And Condi and W are going to push said tiny, alone country to give up various things that comprise the essence of its identity.  In other words, the United States is not participating in this get-together as the beacon of Western principles, but rather a party driven by some vague and dangerous notion of “peace.”

Freedom-Haters love to talk about American arrogance, how the United States rides roughshod over the “international community,” calling the shots and dictating the terms of world affairs.  I disagree with the situations  in which the FHers claim that to be happening, but it sure looks like that’s what we’re doing in regard to one of the best friends we’ve ever had in the middle east or the world at large.

This thing Condi’s putting on tomorrow is going to be most unpleasant and distressing to witness.

Debbie Schlussel has the scoop on how a Hizbollah operative was taking CIA & FBI intel to her terror masters.

At Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball takes on the question “Isn’t it better to be open to other people’s points of view?”

I remember well the day O.J. got acquitted of double murder.  It was one of the weirdest days of my life.  I was on assignement for Arts Indiana magazine, running around Indianapolis on a phot shoot with a photographer.  We were working on a behind-the-scenes-type piece in which we’d go to rehearsals of musical groups, or artists’ studios, or architects’ offices.

I was trying to put out of my mind the fact that my beloved pet Doberman, my constant companion for eleven years, was back at home in her final hours in a losing bout with bone cancer.

It was late morning.  We’d just watched a rehearsal of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra at the Circle Theater and were coming downstairs when we noticed a crowd in the lobby, gathered around a specially-set-up television.  Once it became clear what everyone was watching, we waited along with everyone else for the verdict.  All kinds of gasps in response.

The camera guy - and, at this point it’s important to my story to mention that he was black - and I made our way out into the noontime bustle.  He made a remark that I now see speaks volumes about what has happened to American society over the past few decades.  He said, “I really don’t know if O.J is guilty or not, but I have to say I’m glad the verdict came down the way it did.”

“Whatever do you mean?” I asked.

“If he’d been found guilty, there would be a firestorm across this country, maybe like we’ve never seen.”

I hated the position I was in at that point.  For one thing, I was starving; we’d been to about four places that morning.  Plus, we had an afternoon of appointments to deal with, and the last thing I needed was a vibe of racial tension ratcheted up to the max for that stretch of time.  But to sit in silence was to acquiesce to some kind of notion that “historical” or “systemic” “injustice” was a justifiable factor in the murder trial of an out-of-control former football star.

At some point in our society’s life, we tipped a balance and came to feel guilty for a bunch of generalizations, and abandoned all shame for some actual antics that no longer were subject to general sanction.

This sad latest development in the life of this guy just points out how readily we now accomodate not only absurdity but grisly horror.  And we do it in the name of being enlightened.

We’re not in the best of shape to muster the mora lclarity to preserve what we at least historically have been about as it sits in mortal danger.

I just watched Bill O’Reilly on his Fox show, asking Ann Coulter to address the recent dust-up with John and Elizabeth Edwards.  Coulter became exasperated and said she felt like she was back in kindergarten, having to explain what a syllogism was, and what didn’t qualify as one.  She cracked one of her characteristically acerbic one-liners, saying “I’ve become the illegal alien of commentary, doing the jokes no one else will do.”

I got to thinking about how my view of her has evolved (or maybe devolved?) over the past few years.  She’s clearly a stunningly exquisite babe and a first-class brain.  She came into the limelight in that post-P.J. O’Rourke environment in which a number of irreverent and razor-witted young righties established themselves.  (Another was Jonah Goldberg, with whom she had a notable row over a National Review column shortly after 9/11.)  The idea back in the formative years of the rowdy rightie persona was that someone could be a culturally astute libation enthusiast and maybe even have a past that encompassed some other forms of behavioral abandon and still be an incisive spokesperson for, say, free-market economics, gender differences, and a vigilant U.S. foreign policy. 

It’s changed now.  To continue my musings on Ms. Coulter, it was interesting to hear how her name registered with me as O’Reilly enunciated it going into the break.  It hit me like hearing the name of some heavy-metal act.  “Ann Coulter” . . . “Ozzy Osbourne” . . . “Pantera” . . .

Actually, there’s a nexus of these worlds.  One might think of her as a blonde Ted Nugent with  boobs and shapely legs.  Ted gets off some great one-liners that I ideologically resonate with.

I don’t go in for Harry Reid’s characterization of talk-radio hosts as “dispensers of simplicity.”  Rush, Boortz, Ingraham, Gallagher, Hannity are well-read, well-travelled thinkers who have solid viewpoints solidly based in rigorous thinking.  That said, they are usually just a touch below those conservative standard-bearers who mainly work in print.  Maybe it’s the matter of having to think on one’s feet in front of a microphone and bank of call-in phone lines vis-a-vis having the luxury of sitting at one’s computer screen until a given thought process is fully fleshed out.

I think the  matter of schtick factors in here as well.  As someone who does some radio (I do a dining-and-cooking show on our local talk station on Saturday mornings), I know that it’s a thrill to be able to inject your personality into something that’s going out to thousands of people.  Clearly that’s what motivated Rush early on when he would do his “updates” on homelessness, feminism and environmentalism.

As was the case in the early years of rock and roll, however, it became obvious that envelope-pushing wouldn’t just arbitrarily find some stopping point.  It was inevitable that over-the-top, sweaty, heavy breathers like Savage would come along.

The blogosphere, too, has moved beyond keen discourse spiced with some edginess into in-your-face buzzsaw vibe.  It mainly shows up on the left side, but you can find stupid expression on full display on the right side as well.

All this gets to the question of what I’m doing here at BN.  I coin some terms here and I use them without apology.  I say forthrightly that there’s an outright hatred of freedom not only among our foreign enemies but entrenched in one of our major political parites, and that widespread clueslessness in the other party - what I call Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome - may well spell the end of this noble experiment we call the United States of America.  On the other hand, I set great store by decorum.  Crudeness has few applications in this world.  You can scroll this blog’s archives and probably find no more than five instances of the use of an impolite word referring to a bodily part or function.

I’m not talking here about that “return to civility” shit - how’s that for a deliberate use of a crude term? - you hear wolf-in-sheeps’-clothing Freedom-Haters and their Reasonable-Gentleman accomplices blathering about.  In fact, I think we need more forthrightness in our national debate (argument? near-civil war?).

I just want to see my side, those aligned with the worldview I hold dear and would defend with everything I have, bring to bear the full weight of their intellects.  I want to see them have their rhetorical chops in such shape that their instincts will prevent them from lapsing into the juvenile.  It is, after all, our identity as a refined species vis-a-vis those lower than us on the great chain of biology that we’re really talking about here.

Appropos of the previous post, particularly my harping on the cluelessness of Western leaders, I’m at another one of those junctures at which I wonder just what makes W tick.

I understand that he comes from the Bush family, known for its foreign-policy “realist” friends like Scowcroft and Baker, and that his father was prone to bouts of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, one of which proved politically fatal (when he sent Richard Darman to Capitol Hill to work out a budget deal with the Freedom Haters, who ate him for lunch and picked the meat off the bones and made Bush 41 wind up negating his “read my lips; no new taxes” vow).

I also understand that he was a fairly aimless dude until the age of 40, at which time he became a resolute Christian and started thinking about the role of taxation in economic vitality (which bostered his supporters’ confidence that he wouldn’t make the same mistake his dad had made).

But, jeez, how does a guy who lowered our taxes and offed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Baathist regime in Iraq drink the Kool-Aid with such regularity?  I won’t recite the litany here.  (It includes steel tariffs, the prescription drug expansion of Medicare - oops, there I go; said I wouldn’t rehash the old stuff.)  The latest two examples suffice aplenty: his enthusiasm for the amnesty bill, and this teaming up with Olmert to shore up Abbas.

Theories abound.  His mind is fixed on the daily threat matrix.  His faith gives him a big idealistic streak.  He’s Jeffersonian.  He’s Wilsonian.  (Never mind the moonbat theories.  Go read HufPo and Daily Kos if that alternative universe is where you live.)

As I say, he was kind of all over the place and not very good at the stuff he dabbled in until he was solidly into middle age.  He does seem to have been pretty much drawn to the business world, though. 

There are a lot of business people out there whose hearts are in the right place on the broad questions - free-market economics, strong defense, traditional values - but show themselves to be a bit underbaked when it comes to policy specifics.  Maybe W is sort of like that. 

It’s clear he’s principled and a man of integrity.  Maybe he has a well-fleshed-out world view and he’s just lousy at articulating it.

It’s a shame.  He had such a great first two years as prez.  I guess he’s a case study, by way of negative example, in the need for a leader who’s a total package, like Dutch was.

I didn’t have a good feeling about the whole idea of direct talks with Iran about Iraqi security.  Iran has some kind of proposal for a three-way someting or other and our people are going to bring it back to Washington for study.  Obviously, the glaring reasons why we ought to have misgivings about it are Iran’s full-speed ahead nuke program, as well as the official government line that the time has come to envision a world without America or Israel.  But more specific to the situation at hand is the remark from Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki that this happy-happy three-way, everybody-on-the-same-page-regarding-Iraqi-security stuff can only move forward if “Washington confess[es] its failed policy and show[s] a determination to changing the policy.”

This bunch emits the same foul odor as the party in the six-party talks over North Korea’s nukes that insists we drop our “hostile attitude.”  (That would be North Korea, for those of you who get your news from Entertainment Tonight.)

But our State Department  - and I guess W and the people up at that level - think there’s some kind of merit to doing these little dances.

The immigration bill that passed the House and is about to do likewise in the Senate is a kiss of death for -

- the Republicans in 2008, as a critical mass of its base stays away from the polls in disgust

- the notion of law and order

- our national sovereigny

- the survival of the West, ultimately.

We can now see what happens to those afflicted with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome in its late stages:  Their ravaged souls emit a foul odor that is strangely attractive to Freedom Haters, who then swarm around them and devour them.