Thursday, November 13, 2008
Intellectual Curiosity
Don’t ask why I’m up this late, but I was doing a rare jaunt through the usually bleak and shallow blogosphere, when I came across this discussion about the Congo. A real discussion, with facts and counterpoints. Agree or disagree, but that was a breath of fresh air.
Then I followed the link by one of the commenters to this site. A blog that made me brush up on a few definitions, making certain I was correctly remembering what Jacobites were.
For my visitors who have been starving for intellectual content, I cannot recommend Unqualified Reservations more highly. As I said above, agree or disagree, but the discourse is delightful (this piece on Obama had me howling):
For our last words on the controversy of Obama’s background, I would like to direct your attention to this article in our local progressive rectangle of joy, the Bay Guardian. In case you are unfamiliar with the Bay Guardian, it was founded in the ‘60s, its politics are somewhere to the left of Mao and the right of Kim Jong Il, and it is the sponsor of San Francisco’s progressive supervisor coalition. Its longstanding hobbyhorse, its perma-Grail, its New Jerusalem, is its campaign to seize the San Francisco electrical system, which unhappily for the local candle industry never seems to quite make it past 40% on the ballot.
The entire piece is hilarious and well worth a read, although it may be too choked with local minutia for UR’s international cosmopolitan audience. However, I was particularly struck by the following passage:
But make no mistake about it: electing Barack Obama was a progressive victory. Although he never followed the entire progressive line in his policy positions, he was, and is, the creature of a strong progressive movement that can rightly claim him as its standard-bearer.I love that word. Creature. American communism and its black pets, in one word. Creature.
UR is not a “political” blog and will hopefully have few occasions to mention President Obama, but he is the President of the United States. He is not a member of the kitchen staff. And UR is at least respectful enough to know the difference.
And this one, from another post caused me to stifle an burst of loud laughter (it is 2:00 am, after all):
There are - or at least, were - lots of plausible candidates for chief executive who don’t have any kind of murky ties to murderous political fanatics. I mean, duh, you know, if history teaches us any lessons, I think one of them is: “don’t elect leaders with murky ties to murderous political fanatics.”
And:
As for conservatives and mainstream libertarians: forget it. You’ve lost. You’re in roughly the same position as a Southern segregationist in 1968. History may or may not vindicate your cause, but it has determined your chance of victory, which is zero. If you have a life, go live it. If not, now is probably a good time to get one.
In the era of Barack Obama, Washington is one thing. It is progressive from top to bottom, east to west, and ass to elbow. Everyone with a real role in governing America, whether in the White House or the civil service, in the press or on the Hill, at Harvard or at State, in the Wilderness Society or on the Supreme Court, is a communist. I exaggerate, of course - slightly. But if you have fantasies of reforming this thing, of making it conservative or libertarian or whatever, you’re either a fool or a fraud. Now and for the foreseeable future, you are for Washington or you’re against it. And if we have Barry Obama to thank for that, God bless Barry Obama.
The entire proposition of post-1945 American democratic conservatism, including its runt cousin libertarianism, was predicated on the lingering cultural memory of a pre-New Deal America. Americans actually did vote to do away with the New Deal, once, sort of, in 1980. But somehow it didn’t quite happen. And that was a generation ago.
You don’t like that plan? Okay, here’s another plan. Form militant evangelical Christian sects on college campuses. Disrupt classes, hold violent masked rallies, invade the dean’s office, crap on the desk. Maybe you can recruit a biker or prison gang or two, like the Mongols or the Aryan Brotherhood, for muscle. Make people fear you. Don’t be afraid of a punch-up or two. And make demands: a Christian studies department for every college or university, abolition of ethnic studies and affirmative action, daily prayer and hymn-singing, the sky’s the limit. Create some change. Be an activist. Read Alinsky. Kick some ass.
Because you know what, dear conservatives? This - or rather, of course, its equivalent - is exactly what your enemies, the communists, did to take over the American educational system. It was pure, naked, rampant thuggery, using as much violence as necessary and with the promise of more. If guns were needed, they used guns. If fists sufficed, they sufficed. And it worked. And as a result, 40 years and two voter generations later, everyone is as blissed out as a stoned lab rat, because America has finally elected a communist President, and we have “changed.” La educación es la revolución. You know the only problem with my Christian-biker plan, dear conservatives? It can’t possibly succeed, because your enemies aren’t as stupid as you.
The traditions of Mencken and the humor of a great cynic are not dead.
- Preaching to the Choir (11/30/2008)
- Happy Thanksgiving (11/27/2008)
- Cooking (11/26/2008)
- Ammo Day (11/19/2008)
- Satire (11/17/2008)
Posted 11/13/2008 3:05 AM CDT • Print Vers.
Comments
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Woah, good stuff. Thanks for the link.
American Farmer | 11/13/2008 08:49 AM CDT -
you should read his
“An open letter to open-minded progressives”
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives.htmlA.Simon | 11/13/2008 03:26 PM CDT -
I hardly have time to digest your thoughtful posts and you point me to one that has you going to the dictionary?
Hmmm....
Weetabix | 11/13/2008 04:45 PM CDT
