Abe Lincoln: The Smuggest Elitist

It should be noted that long, long before Theodore Roosevelt implemented Marxist ideology by introducing laws to "preserve" the environment in which we allegedly live (John Galton, I'm sure, would have quite a bit to say about that--and if you can't rely on a fictional character, whom can you trust?), there was the most snobbish elitist of them all: Abraham Lincoln.

First of all, he wanted to violate the rights of states that were clearly enshrined in the Constitution--the right to give black people permanent job security.

(Though now that I think about it, that smacks of socialism...)

Lincoln, like many elitists, could read and write.  Also, he wrote speeches which suggested that he might be more talented than many (Another sign of common sign elitism.)  And like many of our present-day liberal elitists, he thought he knew better than many of the citizens of his nation.  Especially the ones who wanted to end it.

Unlike Ayn Rand, whose love for the common man was well-known (especially the ones who made skirts from the skin of fat women), Lincoln was the apotheosis of the all-around high hat smartie-pants know-it-all.  And he literally wore a high hat.  Is it any wonder he gave America--or parts thereof--the high hat? Not really.

And rather than allow the South to go on in the mode of the rural paradise it no doubt was at the time, instead Lincoln went on about 'saving the Union' and 'ending slavery', wagging his finger at the Southerners as though they were naughty schoolchildren, not adults perfectly capable of thinking for themselves.  To their undying honor, however, the Confederacy showed the extent of their disagreement by allowing themselves to be butchered in vast numbers.  I hear John Galt silently nodding in approval, however.  Because no one gives John Galt the high hat (or he'll burn your house down) (rather like I did with this very noisy neighbor I had a few years back...but I digress).

On the other hand, the Civil War led directly to the creation of country-western music, so I suppose that is something we should all be thankful for.

George F. Will { background-color:blue; }

The David Brooks Guide To Loving David Brooks

by DAVID BROOKS

Rule One of Me Loving Me: When times get tough, it’s really important to believe in yourself. This is vital, because even if the public doesn’t love you, it is vital that you love you. 

And boy, do I ever approve of (love) myself.  Because no matter how little sense I make, it's okay.  Because it's an "opinion".  And as we all know, all opinions are valid.  It doesn't matter if they're correct.  And mine are here to make me feel better about myself.

So I think happy thoughts and avoid bad ones.  For example, I never read what I write--too confusing.  
Or: Think about the marvelous character of George Bush.  You didn't see him crying over a few dead bodies.  Well neither would I.  You won't see my worrying about the dead or wounded, the brain-traumatized for life, the emotional cripples, the suicidal and the suicided.  No, I really plain don't give a shit.  But the thrill of righteous American Fire Power does give me a bit of a boner.

Over the past year, many Democrats have resolutely paid attention to those things that make them feel good, and they have carefully filtered out those negative things that make them feel sad.  (I should write a childrens' books, shouldn't I? I guess a patronizing attitude comes naturally when you're as smug as myself.  You know what didn't come naturally? Admission to Harvard.  But then where would I find the bile to spew endlessly about the evils of Ivy Leaguers if I didn't hate them for keeping me out of their club? I'm happy about it, though, I really am.)

(That's why you won't see me on MSNBC where someone might actually challenge me.  Nope, stick to NPR and PBS and right here, where I can offer my highly-valid opinions without having to have supporting facts.  Why are they valid? Because I'm on PBS and NPR.)

For example, I could mention that right here in the columns of the New York Times, people like Maureen Down and Bob Herbert have regularly criticized the president. But that would be an obvious fact, and I'm really much more about opinions. 

Rule Two:  Always remember that many great geniuses were unappreciated in their lifetimes.  This is what Dubya and I regularly text each other.  It's good to know you've got a friend riding in the same life raft with you.

(Here's a fun party game--knock back a shot every time I try to breathe life into the Elitist/Meritocracy bogeyman.  You'll be fucking dead of alcohol poisoning by the time you finish the introduction to my book. (Don't blame me if you actually die, you've been warned.))

Rule Three: I will paint everything in black-and-white.  Because I'm not writing for the readers of the NY Times--I write for the people who will assure my soft-as-a-feather landing at a right-wing welfare institution for corporate shills like me who will say pretty much anything for money.

You see, loving yourself implies taking care of yourself.  No sacrifices for this Real American. Thanks for playing. 

David Brooks
Smugosity
Dickishness-Miscellaneous { background-color:blue; }

This Halloween: Boogeyman X - The Elitist

Regular (Real (White)) American  being observed by
one of The New Elite. (artist's rendering)

by CHARLES MURRAY
The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.  The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite.

"On one side, we have the elites," Fox News host Glenn Beck explained last month, "and the other side, we have the regular people."  How do you know if you're a regular person?  You're watching Glenn Beck. (Obviously.)

Regular people such as myself, Charles Murray (whoever the fuck I am--I mean, not even me has heard of me), who works for the right-wing libertarian Cato Institute, I'm just a regular person with regular values who works for a regular right-wing think-tank funded by a regular billionaire (Koch) and based on the philosophy of a regular atheist Russian ex-patriate/chain-smoking/philosopher/author/narcissist who believed that 'greed is the greatest good'.  Just like all the regular Americans out there.  I mean, go to any small town in the U.S. with more churches than bookstores and you freakin' know that this is atheist-libertarian territory.

The elites are "no longer in touch with what the country is really thinking," Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle complained this summer.  Simply because her opponent, Senator Harry Reid, grew up sand-poor but rich in parental beatings, went to non-elite, non-Ivy League colleges in Utah, this doesn't mean that he isn't one of them.

This is what makes Elitism so insidious--it can happen to anyone, at anytime.  Like Islam.  One day, you're receiving the Eucharist, and suddenly it's Monday and you're praying towards Mecca.

After all, did he stand up and proudly say, like Christine O'Donnell has, "Not only did I not go to Yale, I didn't even go to college."  This is the thing that regular Americans love: Ignorance.

But the Elite have fought back, sometimes even arguing that ignorance is a flaw, not a virtue.  But of course darlings you'll say that. You, The Elite, have struggled against ignorance all of your lives, and yet it rises up again and again like Hercules' hydra--one head is lopped and a dozen more sprout in its place.

What sets the tea party apart from other observers of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans.  And by observe I mean watch Glenn Beck et al and re-vomit his opinions.

Let me propose that those allegations have merit.

One of the easiest ways to make the point is to start with the principal gateway to membership in the New Elite, the nation's most prestigious colleges and universities. In the idealized view of the meritocrats, those schools were once the bastion of the Northeastern Establishment, favoring bluebloods and the wealthy, but now they are peopled by youth from all backgrounds who have gained admittance through talent, pluck and hard work.

That idealized view is only half-right. Over the past several decades, elite schools have indeed sought out academically talented students from all backgrounds. But the skyrocketing test scores of the freshman classes at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and other elite schools in the 1950s and 1960s were not accompanied by socioeconomic democratization.




On the surface, it looks as if things have changed. Compared with 50 years ago, the proportion of students coming from old-money families and exclusive prep schools has dropped. The representation of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans has increased. Yet the student bodies of the elite colleges are still drawn overwhelmingly from the upper middle class. According to sociologist Joseph Soares's book "The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges," about four out of five students in the top tier of colleges have parents whose income, education and occupations put them in the top quarter of American families, according to Soares's measure of socioeconomic status. Only about one out of 20 such students come from the bottom half of families.

The discomfiting explanation is that despite need-blind admissions policies, the stellar applicants still hail overwhelmingly from the upper middle class and above. Students who have a parent with a college degree accounted for only 55 percent of SAT-takers this year but got 87 percent of all the verbal and math scores above 700, according to unpublished data provided to me by the College Board. This is not a function of SAT prep courses available to the affluent -- such coaching buys only a few dozen points -- but of the ability of these students to do well in a challenging academic setting.

Surely this is insanity.  To allow students into college based on their ability to perform in college is...DISCRMINATION.  Against Regular (Real (White)) Americans.  The WASP aristocracy has been supplanted the WASP-Asian-Jewish-Catholic-And-God-Forbid-Even-Black meritocracy.

Far from spending their college years in a meritocratic melting pot, the New Elite spend school with people who are mostly just like them -- which might not be so bad, except that so many of them have been ensconced in affluent suburbs from birth and have never been outside the bubble of privilege. Few of them grew up in the small cities, towns or rural areas where more than a third of all Americans still live.

When they leave college, the New Elite remain in the bubble. Harvard seniors surveyed in 2007 were headed toward a small number of elite graduate schools (Harvard and Cambridge in the lead) and a small number of elite professional fields (finance and consulting were tied for top choice). Jobs in businesses that provide bread-and-butter goods and services to individual Americans, which make up the overwhelming majority of entry-level openings for aspiring managers, attracted just 1.7 percent of the Harvard students who went to work right after graduation.


After leaving their elite schools with their elite degrees, they then go to elite graduate schools, get elite jobs, live in exclusive elite neighborhoods, marry elite spouses, eat elite sandwhiches, wipe their asses with elite toilet paper, read elite books and magazines, watch elitist television, attend elitist sporting events, use elite bathrooms, go to elite hospitals, die in elite hospices, and are buried in elite cemeteries.

In brief, the system hates Real America. The America that loves to read and especially loves to read Ayn Rand (ask any pork farmer), is forced to work at the Cato Institute instead of Harvard (dicks).

The New Elite marry each other, combining their large incomes and genius genes, and then produce offspring who get the benefit of both.  With increasing cortical size comes increasing socialism and decreasing ignorance.  The ability tolerate the utter crap that the media shovels out by electronic bucketfuls such as game shows and Oprah are perceived as "not so interesting".  When I write a book that's essentially a racist diatribe about genetic differences between races, The Elite ignore it, using nasty phrases such as 'unsubstantiated', 'no evidence', or 'total crap'.

Unlike Regular Americans, The Elite will ply you with excuses when you try to talk them, claiming they are "on their way to perform surgery" or "have to litigate an appeal", even when you say you have beer and pretzels.

Regular Americans do not conform to others (go to any church); The Elite do.  And that is why you always seem them acting like elitists.

Therefore, The New New Elites are not really Americans.

The Elite { background-color:blue; }

No Progress Please

by GEORGE F. WILL

Obama wants us to believe that energy comes form the sun.  However, Americans are too intelligent to fall victim to this insane fabrication.
As John Galton (superhero from the graphic novel, Fountainhead Rocks You, about a man who is capable of breathing only his own ego) would say, "Energy comes from burning stuff."  Just not where I live, I can afford to live well away from a power plant.

But with Barack Obama restoring solar panels to the White House roof--environmentalism as a didactic gesture--are we not witnessing evidence of a '70s revival? Even worse, Obama pledged he would do one thing during his campaign, but then--did a different thing.  What kind of topsy-turvy world is this where people don't always do precisely what they said they would do?

Witness my disgust at a politician failing to do exactly what he said he would do--surely this was the first in the history of the world.  Has anyone before Obama ever done such a thing?  And what am I complaining about? That he neglected energy policy? No. That he wanted to pass a health care bill before an energy bill.  The point is not that I hate everything he does.

It's just that I hate everything he does. And he shifted "priorities", changing #1 to #2, and #2 to #1.  Never mind that I hate, despise, and loath #1, #2 regardless of their numerical value.  The point is that I can insinuate that Obama is a duplicitous hypocrite.  Unlike every other politician I've ever opined about, apparently.

But never mind that, I have infinite amounts of disgust (after all, what else will make the world a better place?).

What further disgusts me is that not only did the Democrats fail to do anything to prevent Global Warming--which delights me--but still disgusts me that they would do anything for to try to make the world a better place--but now I'll do what I love to do.  Point out something Congress did  that was rather trivial (and disgusting) in order to contrast that with their failure to accomplish anything grander.  So not only the are the Democrats disgusting and repulsive to me as policy-makers, they're weak and spineless as well.  Not real men like the professional baseball players I love to watch for hours on end, observing their catlike grace and masculine agility in a totally non-homoerotic way.

For sheer annoyingness, the feminine weakness of the Democratics matches Congress's 1973 imposition of a 55 mph speed limit..  Is there anything more repulsive or disgusting than thinking that lives might have been saved by government?  If I had children now I would never employ a baby carrier or seat belt.  Better dead (or brain-dead) than Red.

And now the liberals decry the free use of free speech. (By which I mean speech that must be bought on TV/radio/websites.)  And everyone knows that the greatest form of communication is the 60-second commerical--who wants to read King Lear if you can get the same information in a 30-second spot sandwhiched between House MD  and a Family Guy rerun.

Furthermore, did you know that billionaires spend less on political advertising than they do on yachts and exotic foreign mistresses?

And Americans don't want help. They just want Medicare, Social Security, good roads, bridges, electricity, clean water, clean air, economic security, 24/7 access to cable TV and the Internet, and crime-free neighborhoods. And the government out of their lives.  (As long as it provides Medicare, Social Security, clean water, clean air....well you get the point.)

I hope you are as disgusted as I am.  For then we are both Americans.

george-f-will { background-color:blue; }

Tuesdays With Tulrooney

Book Review - Daniel Patrick Moynihan - by DAVID BROOKS

Sometime in the late 1980's, I lunched (or had lunch, if you prefer) with Senator Daniel Patrick Sean O'Sean O'Shanuessey Moynihooney Tulrooney Toolrahlee.  Although most everyone seemed to call him 'Dave'.


Although outwardly liberal and eductated, he was also a Real (white) American, an elitist Ivy League intellectual liberal who was suspicious of upper-middle-class liberals (the worst kind).  Which really is the only reason why anyone cares about him today, because THANK GOD he was a Democrat.  Thus we can use quotes from his letters to bash Democrats over the head and then accuse them of supplying the blunt object.  Which is really a wonderful feeling.


For example, he argued that African-Americans had a weak family structure.  The fact that there are still poor people today--some of whom are African-American--proves his point.  The history of slavery, oppression, Jim Crow, and subtle racism such as denying loans to black-owned businesses, excluding them from better-paying union jobs, buying homes in white neighborhoods, or attending an Ivy League school with an Irish man...none of that matters.  Because money doesn't matter.  Only culture and philosophy matter.  


Sadly, the liberal elite failed to understand that racism born of ignorance is a valid opinion.  One of his few supporters was Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian whom I admire for some reason so I mention his name as often as I can.  (Although I also admire George Bush, so I would take my admiration with a rather large dose of sodium if you know what I mean.)


He became alarmed by the Democrats' abandonment of the working-class (black people don't work so they don't count, obviously).  By supporting unions and trying to stop people from being choked to death by lead, toxic waste, and air pollution, the liberal elites were hurting the working class. Somehow. 


Then came the most dreaded beasts of all--the hounds of hell unleashed: Hippies.  "The hippies have turned against mindless war and jingoism. What's next?"  


Unlike almost all other elderly people who look favorably upon the younger generation, he saw intellectual decay everywhere.  "Star Trek has been canceled. I shall never watch television again.  Not till they bring back 'Name of the Game'."


What went wrong? Partisan warfare--invented by the liberal elites.  As I recall, everyone pretty much agreed with everyone else prior to 1965.  And liberals failed to test their assumptions.  Do African-American children really need food? Who knows? We can't know for sure until this is tested in a double-blind controlled experiment with true random assignment of subjects.  


So, if you're like me, the neutral observer who just happened to have worked for a guy who wants to bomb every Middle East nation except the ones with casinos, you'll love Senator Daniel Whom-The-Fuck-Ever.

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Money Matters NOT

by YODA BROOKS

People want you to believe in many, many, many foolish things, young apprentice.  "Important is money."  "Important is food to us nourish." "Important is some action even from yonder walking syphilis vehicle, for drunk is she and therefore easy is she too."  Fools! Fools they are! Maketh a difference naught but THE FORCE.

Partisans political they are, and fools too they are.  For Americans Real (White), am I and are you.  Know thus that Swiftboating-believing am I not.

Money care for not, I do.  Yet hack am I, and so repeat same endlessly will I.  For hypocrite too am I, unless most sanguine you are.  And overpaid hypocrite likely I am, and yet gainful employment still I have though wit nor talent lack utterly do I.  Does not mine own doofishness the way of THE FORCE prove?

And yet, my young apprentice,  The Scientists Political, contend with them still I must.  For some say this, some say that, some say this and that--well I say neither (says I).

For Americans Real, money mattereth not, but mattereth only THE FORCE...and yet taxation resist they must, lest taxation upon us all THE DARK SIDE bring (it might).

For Partisan I am not, but humble Yoda I be, though media whore too am I. A FORCE WHORE.

May The Force Be With You,
Eternally Yours,
Yoda Brooks { background-color:blue; }

I'm Right Again, Even When I'm Wrong

by DAVID BROOKS

Sometimes people come up to me and say, "David, why are you such a smug, mealy-mouthed bastard who cannot admit to ever being wrong?"

And I say, "Good question.  Probably because I've never been wrong."

Mistakes (and admitting mistakes) are not for people in my position.  They only happen to other people.  And that's why I like to simplify issues to two sides:  Because one day I might need a soft landing at some conservative think-tank.  But not because of anything I write here.  I'm far too much of duplicitous weasel to say something that can't be camouflaged as 'right-wing opinion'.  No, but someday I could have too much sherry and be caught on tape ranting about elitist Asian-Jewish lesbians have taken over America.  

You see, this is how you survive at the NY Times: Take two opposing viewpoints, imagine these are the only variables in the equation, and then feign that you (me) are (is) just an average joe caught in the middle, hoping that everyone will come to a reasonable compromise.  If this just happens to mean burning Rome to the ground, so bet it.

Speaking of averages, do I know the difference between a mean and a median? Probably not. But you probably don't either.  Some government employees might have better pay and/or benefits than some non-government employees.  The average pay and benefits of Obama runs literally into the millions--if this doesn't show that our system is broken, what does?  Since we're not talking about employers, we don't have to include them in this calculation.  The ruthless greed of our corporate leaders does not excuse the ruthless greed of our school janitors.  

And this flawless argument leads me, irrevocably, to the next step: Public employees are not entitled to any kind of job security or benefits of any kind.  In other words, they need to suffer just as much private employees do.  Sometimes I like to promise my maid a raise next week, and then the next day I fire her.  Mainly for my own sadistic enjoyment, but also to make an important point: Capitalism thrives on fear.  Therefore, fear is good.  And the more insecure and fearful all of America's employees are--the more they quiver in their boots with every outsourcing--the more they dread another medical bill--the more they worry that they won't be able to afford a pill to keep their child alive--then, America, the better off we all shall be.

And if that just happens to lower my tax rate, so be it.

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Rahm Emmanuel Is A Lovely, Lovely Wonderful Man Who Wants To Destroy America

by DAVID BROOKS

Enough of the Rahm-bashing! He is a wonderful man who just happens to hate and loathe America and wants to wipe it off the face of the planet. Other than that, he's a swell guy!

And of course, like all Obama staffers, he's worships the Obama and believes he is the Son of God and is therefore not only a hell-bound-blasphemer but also utterly delusional and an out-of-touch-with-reality elitist who hates Real Americans and Freedom.  And, I suspect, he once raped a freshly baked apple pie. (In fact, they say that to join Obama's inner circle, you must into the West Wing and rape an apple pie that has been decorated with an American flag while singing 'God Bless America'.  Also I have been told that you have to kiss Obama's ring while kneeling and there is a secret inner shrine with Obama on a crucifix before which every Obama staffer must genuflect.  I can't verify any of this but it all strikes me as plausible.)

So, in sum, Emmanuel and the rest of Obama's evil minions are warm, wonderful people who just happen to be hell-bent on destroying America and Christianity and everything that is good on this Earth.  We'll miss you, Rahm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05brooks.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130452306
David Brooks { background-color:blue; }

FaceFucked (Or: I Saw It In A Movie So It Must Be True)

by DAVID BROOKS

Remember that capitalist system that I can't stop writing hopeless loveletters to, like some delirious school girl who's seen Twilight way too many times? Well it turns out that there is a downside to capitalism: ambition.

And the center of this new nightmare is Harvard: Once upon a time, it was a classy place where upper class WASPy children could drink, fornicate and knock up the girl they were then obliged to marry or at least pay for the abortion before going off to work for one of daddy's friends.

But nowadays Harvard is no longer a breeding ground for upper class inbred twits but a horribly serious place for extremely ambitious very NON-REAL Americans (cf. Elena Kagan).  In other words, not my beloved REAL AMERICANS, people who want to live sober lives industrious lives of chip-counting, union-busting, and church-going conformity.  Instead of being an elitist institution for the non-elite children of the elite (cf. Dubya), it is now an elitist institution for children fighting to their way into the elite.  Which is to say, people who rise on 'merit'.  (Many of whom come from NON-REAL-AMERICAN, ahem, "cultures".)

And as anyone who has read my columns knows, I've pretty much risen without any discernible merit or talent of any kind.  In fact my only noticeable skill is this: Turning everything in American culture into yet another dull treatise on how the world was so much better in 1959 and how much happier we would be if we would just accept that a certain amount of tuberculosis, lead paint, radioactive waste, and overt racism is good for you.

But that's not our world today--fortunately for me. I mean, what the hell else would I write about?  And as irrefutable evidence in this week's "What's wrong with modern America?", I submit a movie with a character named Zuckerberg.  Based on a real person, this movie is doubtless real, because as we all know Hollywood is the best place to learn about reality.  (Exactly why I crossed the Mines of Moria off of my places-to-visit checklist.)

So. Is  Zuckerberg, the FaceBook billionaire really an emotional cripple who cannot connect to other human beings and therefore is a living indictment of what's wrong with our Elitist Meritocracy?  Well, of course, it's everything I've been saying for years.  Because everyone was so happy in 1959.



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Arguing About The Deficit Is A Lot Like Sumo Wrestling

 

by GEORGE F. WILL
As usual, the stench of Democrats is filling my sinus cavities—yes, again.  The pig stink of their fecal hypocrisy rises from the waste pen of filth in which they live, brawling like mud-covered rikishi.  Like greedy hogs grasping for ever larger troughs, they love to spend money—our money, your money, my money—on trivialities such as keeping useless old people alive.

This is reprehensible, for this is the election where these useless old people have been more terrified of the Federal deficit than ever.  Which should be good for a good year for people who think like me (let’s call them the pure).  Why are they terrified? Because we keep telling them they should be.  Why? Because their Social Security and Medicare could disappear.  And why do we tell them that? So they will vote us into office in order that we can get rid of Social Security and Medicare.  How else will we be able to take care of useless old people?  Not with Social Security or Medicare.

Technorati Tags: georgewill,george-f-will,georgefwill,washington-post

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I’ve Got Nothing New To Say And Now Is The Time To Say It!

by GEORGE F. WILL

 Or: If You Have A Deadline, Cherry-Pick Some Quotes From Someone Else.

(It Will Save You A Lot Of Time, And No One Really Seems To Be Paying Attention Anyway.)

On Jan. 9, 1969 (look, I just took up 15 characters of space by including an irrelevant date), (plus the comma that’s 16) Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Hmm, better have that middle name there, might have been a lot of famous Daniel Moynihans running loose at the time) wrote a memo (see, that date was important) to President-elect (he wasn’t the prez yet, but “-elect”, that’s five letters closer to me meeting a deadline) Richard Nixon (if I just said ‘Nixon’, people might be confused as to which president I had just referred), on whose White House staff Moynihan was to serve.  (See, he’s going to work for Nixon, that’s an important detail.) Moynihan wondered whether the disintegration of "private sub-systems of authority" presaged "the ultimate, destructive working out of the telos of liberal thought," in which case "we are moving from Locke to Hobbes." Imagine, if you can, Nixon's furrowed brow.  (I’m going to have this column knocked out by lunchtime!)

"Everyone," Moynihan liked to say, "is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."  This is a crucial: We don’t get to choose our own facts.  Then he added, “We are, however,  entitled to twist them into strange and bizarre logic-defying shapes that would explode MC Escher’s brain 
For example, one could make the preposterous argument that reality precedes morality.  My investigations into philosophy have found the opposite: Morality precedes reality.  Therefore, science is only real when it follows morality, and by morality I mean lowering my tax rate.  Because when my tax rate goes up, everyone suffers.

Today, seven years after Moynihan's death, conservatism's contention is that liberal politics produces a culture of dependency and a government riddled with rent-seeking -- the manipulation of government power for private advantage.  No, I’m not talking about Wall Street, or the defense industry, or the money we pay to oppressive warlords.  No, this is much, much worse: Poor people. 

Take, for example, the polio vaccine.  You may think that there is no downside to, say, public funding of nationwide or even worldwide vaccinations.  However, morality says nothing about  polio being right or wrong—it’s merely a disease.  But it does say quite clearly that stealing is wrong.  So when you steal from me, to give a vaccine to a child to prevent it from being crippled, what have you taught that child? That Government, that Science, that Reason will cure your ills.  By stealing. (From me—the most wonderful man in the world, perhaps.) 

And then what?  Why, the child will want to steal again—say to build prisons for people who will break into my home and rob me.  But how will that child know how wonderful it is to not have polio if no one has polio?   Now we have subverted God’s Will—and when it comes to stealing, He is deadset against it. Besides, if God wanted that child to not have polio, well then that child just wouldn’t.  I think that’s pretty clear.
By 1966, the civil rights movement's task was to become "a protest movement against situations rather than statutes" -- to change from upholding legal rights in the South to addressing problems of class in the North.  I mean, forget the South. That place is fucked. 


To some Indians, while Moynihan was ambassador to India: "Food growing is the first thing you do when you come down out of the trees. The question is, how come the United States can grow food and you can't?"  (I have to mildly chuckle about this, because outright laughter makes me uncomfortable and I’m suddenly possessed by a fear that someone has slipped some ether into my air supply.)  Apparently you cannot choose your own facts but you can choose which facts you ignore, since Moynihan didn’t seem to know anything about the history of either India, agriculture, or industrialization. Maybe if had looked out of the window of the embassy he would have noticed that India is overcrowded as fuck-all.  Or perhaps he would simply have chosen to ignore it.  After all, as noted above, morality precedes reality.  Reality is simply a post facto piece of detritus on morality, a superfluous growth on the body of the Divine Will.  Reality has a lot in common with cancer, when you get right down to it.  But I digress.

Okay, time to pad out the rest of my column here…On his 1974 decision to return to Harvard: "My only pleasure is that there is now a great deal of street crime [in Cambridge]. Privately the undergraduates are learning what we pigs have tried to tell them about the uses of order, as against their beloved disorder.  I heard a student was mugged and then raped in an alley. Most amusing.  Clearly she was asking for it, being a young person.”

Moynihan knew the error of the liberal expectancy -- the belief that modernity would drain the power of ethnicity and religion.  The truth of course (which I of course happen to be in on) is that people are foolish, brutish, nasty, and hateful beings for which there is absolutely no hope of improvement whatsoever.  That is why we need an elite of truth-knowers (me and everyone who thinks like me and is in the same social and ethnic group) who are able to dispense swift punishment in order to keep the truth-unknowers in line.  Though I’m really more of a middle-management functionary, passing on memos rather than signing orders for execution. That's Limbaugh's job.

Moynihan enriched America's political lexicon with "defining deviancy down" (defining as normal kinds of conduct previously stigmatized); for example, we used to know that being African-American was deviant.  Now the currents of political correctness have forced us to recognize them as fully-fledged people. 
"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of society.”  What looks like a “lynching” to some, is actually culture.  This is where the liberals steered so wrong it ain’t even funny, like an overturned turnip truck.
Okay, well I’ve put enough words in “sentences”, time send it to the editor and watch a ball game.
I love these days, it's almost like someone else wrote my column (well actually someone did).

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Charles Deathhammer - Liberals, The REAL Bigots

Chuckie Deathhammer back and ready to get to the point: I was shuddering at the ugliness of the liberal-left-elite in their liberal-retreat as I ran my wheelchair over a field mouse the other day. Then I shot it through the head with a 9mm pistol twice just to make sure it was dead. One can't be too careful these days.

(I had good reason to believe the mouse was an adherent of Islam with possible Al-Qaeda contacts; rumor had it that he had his satellite dish was tuned to Aljazeera, or possibly Al Jarreau. Either way, we can't take chances. Afterwards a CIA drone was dispatched to wipe out the mouse's family in a manner that I'm sure was in accord with the Geneva Convention. Actually, I called the CIA and they just hung up on me so I called Fred's Pest Control. Not Al's Pest Control--sounds suspiciously Arabic. Please, I'm not crazy.)

The point is, our enemies are everywhere, surrounding us at all times, ready to strike us down or perhaps just gnaw their way into our pantries and taint our flour with their blasphemous Islamist incisors. However, the morally corrupt liberals cry "racism" to hide from the truth that they cannot face: White people do not hate liberals--just their policies.

Liberal policies might benefit someone other than yourselves--and that is not freedom.  In fact they have led to a vigorous counter-reaction: The Tea Party. They hate the government as much as they love their Medicare and SS benefits and tax-exempt retirement contributions, government-regulated roadways, power, and water services. And so they are right to hate, fear, and despise Obama for reasons that are not particularly clear to anyone, other than race but that's okay, because there must be a good reason for it. For if life teaches us one thing, we must never question the motives of our allies. (Until they turn on us.)

So today's situation is completely different from times past when there was a fear of people who were different. It's not, after all, like the prejudice that once prevailed against Judaism, Catholicism, Irishism, or Japanism. This time, it's a fear of government. Which just happens to be run by a black man. Who has tried to modify health insurance. Now, I've never been without health insurance, but if I had a choice between medical care and freedom, I would choose freedom every time. And so would any decent American.  Would you rather have a child be treated for cancer, or freedom? Yes, real Americans such as you and me would choose our precious, precious freedom--but liberals would prefer to treat a disease.  Nasty buggers.

So in conclusion, White America, liberals are brown and scary and want to take your freedom and breed with your daughters and that is why you should vote Republican.  Because you like freedom.  And unlike that facist-Islamist-terrorist field mouse.







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Hippies Did It (Again)

"And then Mr. Bush
grabbed me right here
and chuckled."

Prior to 1959, everything was going swell.  Then came the hippies.  Where did they come from? We can't be sure.  (Although documentary evidence indicates that alien seed pods from outer space was the most likely culprit.)

What we can be sure of is this: Hippies did it.

For when they came they brought with them all sorts of rules, laws, and regulations that made life complicated.  No one wanted these so-called "rules", but somehow we were fooled into thinking we needed them.

For example: In 1959, a doctor could show up for surgery after a night of whiskey sodas and cavorting with whores, sever an artery, kill his patient, and the family would still thank him for it.

However, in our present moral decline and general abdication of personal responsibility, the family could file a lawsuit.  In fact, the doctor could go to prison--even if the patient was a black man  Surely something has gone wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

Maybe when we have the courage to pay teachers to beat students, return doctors to their former demi-god status, allow municipalities be run like fiefdoms, and let toxic waste be dumped whereever--maybe then, we'll see some responsibility.


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It's Times Like These I Wish I Could Still Feel My Testicles

Charles Krauthammer - Visigoths at the gate?

Hi, Chuck Deathhammer rappin' at ya. If I could just feel my nads again my joy would be complete.  Just loving what I consider to be the maple-syrupy-breakfast-poptart-irony of the Democratic Party being afraid of a Tea Party Takeover of my beloved GOP. Nothing could be more silly.





The fact is, we've been advocating, for ages, the same kind of ignorant hate of which the Tea Party feeds.  We've built the trough and filled it for ages, and now that they're hungrier than ever, why wouldn't they come to us? We've fought against every variety of social progress, civil rights, tolerance, and economic equality for so many years we can't even remember if there was a time we would have been for any such thing. 

After all: There's never been an innocent babe I wouldn't mind seeing blown to into faceless bits of blood and gore, or a village burned, or a city leveled to rubble--as long as it's done with bombs purchased from American manufacturers.  I'm not stupid.

So don't be surprised if I'm enjoying this poisonous atmosphere of hatred, and ignorance. It's what I've always stood for. (Metaphorically speaking.)

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Will Obama Surrender Our American Moon Colonies To Kenya?

by NEWT GINGRICH


Greetings, America.  Before us is the greatest threat to America since the Chairman Mao tried to put radiator fluid in our apple pie: Obama wants to give our moon colonies to the Kenyans. 




Thousands of Americans have died on our Moon, mining in the Moon Mines, farming the Moon Farms, filming the Moon Porn, and…so on.  Now the so-called “President”, as he likes to refer to himself, wishes to give these away to free to the U.N., Kenya, the African Union, whomever wants them—as long as they’re—um, you know, African or something.
 

Ladies and Gentleman, I kid you not; this is a crisis of French-Algerian proportions.  And you all remember what that was like, right? Remember? Algeria was a colony of France? Remember? And then it wasn’t? Okay, well moving on then…the point is, the moon is American.  We have a flag there and all.

Furthermore, we now have positive evidence of the infiltration of the our government by illegal aliens: “Mayor Sukhee Kang was first elected to the Irvine City Council in 2004 and was successfully re-elected in 2006.”  I did some research on “Mayor” Kang and found a photo of him at what appears to be a fund-raising event:


 

I don’t want to sound racist but he definitely appears to be more than a tad Kenyan. 

So that’s where it stands, America: We either fight for our imaginary colonies or lose them.  Along with our self-respect.

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Horrible, Horrible Freedom

By DAVID BROOKS

Interesting thing happened.  I read a book.  Usually I'm too busy dissecting the world to bother with how it actually works, but I happened to have some free time while having my smugness polished.

In Johnathan Franzen's Freedom, we find that American culture is overobsessed with personal freedom.

(Sure, I could have just said ‘overly obsessed’, but somehow I’m just feeling  a bit overfree today--oh dear I am a caution of late.  Toot toot! Watch out, here comes the crazy train!.)

However there's a downside to personal freedom--people are unhappy and spiritually stunted.  (Most likely from failing to read my books or take my advice.)

But I digress.  This is about America and it’s failings—not about me and my failings—which after all are insignificant compared to yours, America.   For you see, I know that I’m nasty, vicious, fallen animal filth, repugnant to the eyes of God.  But you, America, have forgotten. 

Yes, you still have your precious pioneering DNA and your beautiful free-enterprising DNA (at least white people who think like me still have them).  But that doesn’t change the very, very, very significant fact that you have fallen from the grace of knowing you have fallen and are without grace.  And that is precisely why you need me, America. 

(If I weren’t, would I be writing this column?  Hell no! I’d be fornicating in the mud and shooting smack and perhaps even listening to the rock and the roll or whatever the heathens listen to these days.) 


This is significantly different from the postwar era in American history, wherein everyone was basically on a quest for spiritual truth, as documented in Death of a Salesman, Man With The Grey Flannel Suit, and Dial M for Murder.

It awakened me to the likelihood that some people, these days, are shallow and preoccupied with trivial concerns.  Unlike, say in Tolstoy’s time, when people could grapple in meaningful ways with profound questions.  Admittedly these questions were typically punctuated with or even ended by polio, malaria, tooth decay, and beriberi.  But these are gifts from God.  Noow people just want to own an iPad.  That is a gift from Jobs—totally different.

Thus we have gone from when capitalism was about important things (building aeroplanes to bomb Tokyo and Moscow) to trivial things (putting vast collections of art, music, and literature on an portable computer--what a waste).

Tolstoy’s characters are spiritually ambitious seeking some universal truth that can withstand the tough scrutiny of their own intelligence.  Do they find it? Hell no! But that’s the point of spiritual enlightenment, isn’t it?  It’s cheap and it’s something to do.  This is how I know how people lived and thought in times I did not live—choosing a single literary classic I’ve already read,  and compare it to a single book from our modern era.  Yes, I could choose random books and compare them, and even choose a large sample of such books, but since I’ve already proved my point, why do I need evidence? That’s science, and quite frankly I make way too much money to lower myself.

And this is why we live in a morally degenerate, spiritually bankrupt era: We refuse to live like the characters in War and Peace.  My advice? A war with Germany.  Hard to go wrong with that one.  And I’m definitely not projecting the sense of the triviality of my own petty existence on everyone else who refuses to live as I do.  After all, I write opinions.  And what could be more lofty, ennobling, and spiritually ambitious than shouting on about what’s wrong with everyone else for a living?  And that, America, is my spiritual truth.  You'll have to buy your own.

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I Win – Again!

Geoge F. Will

George F. Will - Cuba's Castro learns what most of us already knew


An earthshaking, history-altering announcement was made by Cuba’s Castro recently, in which he inasmuch admitted the failure of his economic plan.

Who would have thought that a politically isolated island shithole which has only two exports—sugar cane and refugees—would end up as an economic failure?

Today the average Cuban earns only $20 per day, whereas in capitalist nations such as India, one can earn on average $1.3 dollars per day, or Kenya (88 cents) or Mexico ($7) or Haiti ($2).  Clearly free enterprise works—as I should know, I’ve been writing books about how great it is for years.

Yes, at one time many indulged in the belief that history would invariably lead us to some Eden wherein we could all live lives without extreme want, poverty or disease.  Thank god this has been proven wrong, and I am delighted to say that life is just as miserable now as it has been throughout history. 

Now that He has provided me with yet another victory that virtually no one outside of Cuba and some aging bitter men who still grind axes over old grudges could give a pile of dead weevils about, I feel entitled to indulge in a bit of gloating about the future: I foresee the total economic collapse of the U.S. as a result of Obama’s policies.  Ah, I look forward to that day—to see American citizens once again returned to complete and utter economic inequality, the likes which we will not have seen since the founding of this great nation.  My heart glows with the thought that this will indeed come to pass, and I can watch millions parade in front of the cameras in extreme want, poverty, and disease.  What joy!

Salutations and keep the faith alive.
-George F. Will

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Pardon Me Whilst I Gloat

by DAVID BROOKS
Hi.  How ya doin?  Me, just trying to pretend I’m not on a gloating spree.  Suck my fat one, liberals!

But seriously—has the Tea Party hurt the GOP’s standing with indie voters?  Of course not.  If you don’t care how many bombs are dropped on innocent bystanders in a pointless war that’s cost us a trillion dollars and the goodwill of lord knows how many people, are you really even paying attention? Can you believe it? A trillion dollars to depose Saddam and still the mess is not cleaned up? Ah, good times…)  Or maybe, as I recently wrote, “Nothing, it seems, is more scary than one-party Democratic control.”

Wow, not even I can say that one with a straight face.  Hell, we could put a dog up for election right now and as long as it promised a tax cut it would win the election. 

You know what, let’s do that—let’s put an aggressive, angry, D.C.-outsider, tax-cutting, wasteful-government-slashing, welfare-and-food-stamp-hating, unemployment-loathing, stimulus-hating and war-loving Rottweiler on the ticket. 

Because that’s what Americans hate the most—other Americans.  And that is why they’re going vote GOP in November. 

Technorati Tags: Midterm-Election,David-Brooks,New York Times,Tea-Party

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Trifle With The Government? Just Ask Prudence Goodwyfe.

By George F. Will 

Thursday, September 16, 2010; A25
JERSEY CITY
The scene of the crime: New Jersey, 1971.  Prudence Goodwyfe (AKA “Venus De Hotbuns”) increases the price of 15 minutes of healthy, normal sexual intercourse from $20.00 to $19.75. Not only does this frustrate her business competitors—who fear that an inflation will reduce customers--but furthermore she stands in violation of President Nixon’s Phase One price controls.
Prudence was merely a working mom trying to provide for her family, but the Nixon Brain Trust had decided in all of its wisdom that the price of 900 seconds of oral pleasure was exactly 20 Yankee dollars.Hence the Nixon Administration had now decided that the Prudence was a ‘criminal,’ and actually jailed her after one such act.
Amity Shlaes, in "The Forgotten Man," her history of the New Deal, reports that the NRA "generated more paper than the entire legislative output of the federal government since 1789."  (Although to be fair, so have my books about baseball.)
Her book documents a shocking case, in which the Stalinist Roosevelt regime, in attempting to deal with the worst economic crisis in modern history, attempted to control prices.
Prudence was an immigrant from Poland, which in the Cold War would become familiar with the concept of "economic crimes" and the use of criminal law for the "re-education" of deviationists.  (Obviously the future Stalinist occupation of Poland worked backwards in time somehow in a way.  And let’s not forget that 1945-Roosevelt had his picture taken with Stalin, no doubt further influencing in a backwards-time-causal manner the actions of 1934-Roosevelt.  Moreover, 1941-Roosevelt sided with Stalin in a war against the free-enterprise loving folk of Germany. The specter of the backwards-causal-collective was no doubt at work.)
Maged not only spent three days in jail, but was also judged by a judge.  As anyone who has ever been in a courtroom knows, this is incredibly unusual.  Forced to conform, dragged through the mud, his soul doubtless dead and buried, Maged did the only thing a man in his position could do: Go back to work.  Oppressed, unfree, work in which he was no doubt part of The Collective, he continued to iron slacks until his untimely death from cancer.  His spirit, however, once soaring free as an eagle as he wielded steam press with a pride that only the poor and desperate can know (Oh! How I envy them!), had now become like a soggy damp shirt which refused to be neatly pressed and was now sadly limp, wrinkled and unstarched.  Just to add a sad note to this story, he died a broken man at the young age of 54 from cancer. (Possibly also due to the increasing use of tetrachloroethylene in dry cleaning, which just happens to cause a bit of cancer now and then, but let’s not confuse a good story with facts, ifs, ands or buts.)
The point is is that my outrage is stems from the fact that this hard-working, impoverished immigrant was just like me: A college-deferment-Vietnam-draft-avoiding opinionated trombenik who’s spent his life in front of a typewriter.  And there’s never a bad time to stir the fear of Bolshevism, even if I’m the only one left who remembers what it means.

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Effete Nation

Or: How To Succeed In Punditing Without Really Trying                

by David Brooks

I long ago discovered a very simple truth: The way to succeed is to barely lift a finger.  A carefully reasoned argument is about as useful to your typical bipedal primate with trigger fingers as a pillow-case full of canned Diet Coke is to a Siberian Tiger: Useless.  Neither one would know what to do with it, and frankly neither would I. 

What I learned to do is pretty straightforward—toss out a theory that makes a mild amount of sense as long as you know nothing about history or science.  In other words, most of the country.

So here’s this week’s idea Which Explains It All: Nothing of historical merit happened till 1800.

So…10,000 BC...nothing happens…invention of agriculture…nothing happens…ancient Greece…still nothing…Roman Empire…still nothing…Islamic Caliphate, Mayan Empire, The Incas…still nothing…Renaissance…still nothing…nothing happening…printing press…still nothing…then boom! Eighteen-fucking-hundred!

Some of you are probably going to say, “better nutrition”,  “fossil fuels”, or “the steam engine,” or perhaps even “copper tubing” or “academic journals”.  Wrong wrong wrong!

No, it was--wait for it--culture.  (You did not see that coming, did you?)  Because culture is not just in the out there, in museums and prancing ballerinas in tights, but also in the mind--in your mind, and even more terrifying, in your mind.  Quick! Look! There it runs into a corner!  And as any normal person would know (well, any normal person who lived in, say, ancient Babylonia), it is thererfore logical to assume that it is not only in the mind  but in the head as well (because when we sleep at night, that is where the mind hides out until we wake up).

Otherwise, the culture demons might get it.  As if that weren't obvious enough.

(Some say that the mind is in the brain but I do not feel that at this time the preponderance of evidence is, is that it's too early to tell.)

But I digress.  It was around this time of the year 1800 that technicians applied technical knowledge—now known as ‘technicalities’—and before you can say, “Yes, Minister,” England is ruling the world.  (Yes there were some wars that were fought on and off for a few centuries but let's not complicate a good hypothesis with "facts".)

Technicians could now make stuff.  This is very important to remember.  Then they made more stuff,  and then in turn more more stuff.  And that’s how we got the transistor, the sword cane, the self-unfolding umbrella, thalidomide and radioactive waste and the foreboding possibility of Mutually Assured Destruction that could wipe out all life on the planet.

However, this story has a downside: As the scholar Correllis Mandolin chronicled, the great-great-grandchildren of the empire builders withdrew from commerce.  Like Icarus, they  tried to rise above practical knowledge and became effete bastards gadding about like a load of silly fops.

Hence, the British race died out and is now utterly extinct (although a small remnant is believed to be living on in a remote isle known as Hobbiton).  The rest are gone now, leaving us with the agonizing question, “What is ‘Marmite’?”  I suppose we shall never know.  However, it now seems evident that the change was again inside of the head.  Not outside the head.  This is crucial.
 

Sadly, Americans these days too have given in to an unholy impulse to exchange hammers for computers, power quills for ink quills, mining fossilized carbon for creativity—in short, to become soft, lazy, undisciplined, independent and disobedient.  Like the British.

Like Icarus these heretics are poking God in the eyeball and just asking for to have their wings melted or worse.  Is it any wonder my sinuses are acting up this year? Surely His wrath is the cause of our unusually noxious allergy season.

Do as our founders like Madison and Franklin did: Don’t read a book—burn one. Don’t buy a dog—buy a slave. (Or become one!)  Don’t listen to the rock or the roll—Yankee Doodle Dandy is in the public domain!  

These things are sadly, poorly understood by most people, but as noted before, America is fortunate to have me to inform you.  Certainly, things may seem bad, the clouds may have darkened the sky…but I am here to write this and let you know that by not imitating me, you can make things better.

And please remember that no one ever helped anyone by trying to help people—only by trying to make more stuff.  And the way to make more stuff is to spend money on educating more of them to make more stuff.  Just because American companies need skilled laborers does not mean that they should have to spend a single pfennig of their profits in training—not their job.  Nor is their job to raise taxes.  Their job is lower their expenses by asking for more specialized credentials that private colleges can offer at inflated rates such that desperate people will go incur massive debts in the vain hope that they can keep their family afloat and perhaps get ahead until their job is shipped overseas anyway and they have a student loan that they will never be able to pay off ever.

Finally, there’s the lower class (and I definitely do not mean black people) (but mostly they're black people).
The problem here is social breakdown. Something like a quarter to a third of American children are living with one or no parents.  Sometimes the children are their own parents.  Other times the parents are being raised by their own children.  It's getting confusing out there!

And as these people are no longer willing to work as slaves, we have to import them from other nations. And do they leave when they’re no longer wanted? No!  Not realizing that the party is over and it’s time to leave is just rude. Come on, people.

Up and down society, forwards and backwards, people are moving away from commercial, productive activities and toward pleasant, enlightened but less productive ones—sometimes even sinking so low as to cobble together opinion pieces for the New York Times.

The real issue, therefore, is not the stimulus (no matter how pleasant it may be).  The real issue is this: Will American society wake up, slap itself in the face, pour a bucket of ice-cold water over it’s head, have 2 slices of toast and some black coffee and go back to work, hammer and tongs? Or will it sink into some deep, dark, dank hole of effete-elitism (the worst kind), sipping on over-priced foreign beverages, and tapping unpleasant comments at the nytimes.com?  Or worse, take my job—and then who would listen to me?

Technorati Tags: David-Brooks,New York Times

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