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1. 1 Comment by D Simmons on 15 April 2008:

   What holds the cults of the left together? Snotty white atheists who hold “Evolution” up as the high mark of intellect are in coalition with large numbers of voters who just might object to the monkey theory as dogma. Add to the pile the chauvinistic demands of hispanics, the newly minted demands of the 80-20 Asian coalition, and the dreamy white kids out saving polar bears, and you have to ask what holds them together or brings them together. Ironically it turns out to be some of the poorest in the land have been turned into the monsters who threaten the liberal village of tolerance.

2. 2 Comment by Appalachian American on 15 April 2008:

   In reality, the “masses” of rural and small town Americans don’t particularly care for small government.

   They want communism, and they want it big and strong. That’s why they continue to vote for such communists as Ronald Reagan and GW Bush.

   The problem, however, is they don’t want to pay for that communism, which means the banks have to finance it through other means than taxes; i.e. inflation. The “masses” are ignorant, so they don’t know of, nor do they have any interests in monetary policy. The communist for whom they vote take care of those details.

   Do not believe America can be saved by “Joe Sixpack” in small-town Pennsylvania, or anywhere else. The only thing “Joe Sixpack” can do is lead everyone down the path of communism, more or less at the same speed as the homo- and metrosexuals in San Francisco.

3. 3 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 15 April 2008:

   Obama’s statements may be patronizing but even Pat Buchanan is compelled to admit that he is not entirely wrong. The same may be said of some of the Reverend Wright’s statements. In some areas, his comments echoed those of Ron Paul. While I do not support Obama, he at least recognizes some of the country’s problems. McCain and the Republicans are simply running on a program of all war all the time. If McCain wins on this program, it will speak far worse of the American people than anything Obama or Wright have said.

4. 4 Comment by Skinny Leonard on 15 April 2008:

   Well, I heard Barack talk about her,
   Well, I heard Obama put ‘er down,
   Well, I hope BO will remember,
   Small-town P-A don’t need him around, anyhow!

   Refrain:

   “In-between” Penn-sylvania,
   Where the steel is so blued,
   “In-between” Penn-sylvania,
   Thank God that it’s true

5. 5 Comment by Bill Wilder on 15 April 2008:

   Mr. Higdon is correct. Had Obama used “frustrated and angry” and presented the issues of “God, guns and gays” as the legitimate issues they are (in which working class and middle class Americans are upholding real values in the face of politicians who care neither for their values nor their economic condition), then Buchanan would have said “right on”, as would PA citizens (at least, if they’re honest.)

   The spectacle of Hillary Clinton (she of the $110 million earned since 2000 despite no gainful employment by her husband or her) and John McCain (he of the rich (second) wife on the multimillion dollar ranch) criticizing Obama for elitism and condescension is like one vulture criticizing another for belching after eating the carrion.

   This is what we have come to. Establishment candidate who care nothing for Middle America, but pretending to. And an insurgent black candidate who gets to express Middle America’s frustrations by default, even as wife indicates they are typical race hucksters.

   The first thing to do when you’re in a hole is to stop digging.

6. 6 Comment by Edward on 15 April 2008:

   This is simultaneously the most tragic and fearful aspect of liberalism in general. Liberals begin by assuming that any counter opinion is founded upon either fear or mental anguish or some other irrational origin. Any truly clear thinking individual, they say, would certainly agree with us, so therefore any disagreement cannot possibly stem from reasonableness. They do not believe in any sincere disagreement. This trick has worked for them well. Do you oppose universal health care? You must hate children. Do you oppose massive floods of illegal immigrants into your home? You must be secretly (or overtly) racist. I have had people my age (college students) specifically ask me if I do not care about children (for opposing universal health care) or if I hate women (for opposing abortion). A good solution maybe would be to sever the coasts of America from the mainland, and I say this as a New Yorker.

   And by the way, guns and Bibles are probably the very things that will save our civilization in the end.

7. 7 Comment by robert m. peters on 15 April 2008:

   The Republican Party is and has always been a disingenuous party. It has in recent years, particularly in the South and among some Christians, peddle its fringe elements, namely the sentiments which we have attached and continue to attach to Taft, Goldwater and most recently Paul. However, at its heart, it has been and remains the old Lincolnesque, Rockefeller oligarchy.

   The Republican Party has indeed played on concerns reflected in matters of faith, on the right to bear arms and on the cultural war, right down to immigration, abortion and marriage. This are things, among others, that real Americans – those living outside San Francisco and New York as well as the various enclaves of the “enlightened” – are truly concerned about. However, the Repuiblican Party has not delivered on and does not intend to deliver on any of these things, although it has time and again bought votes with the promises to deliver. The GOP has not delivered (1) because many of these issues cannot be addressed by polity or party; (2) because on some of the issues, despite promises and public face, the GOP elites are actually on the other side thereof; (3) if the issues are actually addressed, the GOP will lose its constituency; (4) the GOP, like all political parties, cares only for power and pilf. Southerners, Christians and Americans in the “heartland” have been played for and have acted like fools, not unlike the country boy who falls for the flirtacious city girl in town on a summer’s visit .

   Of course, Obama is no alternative. Beyond ingratiating himself with the S.F. elites to whom he was speaking, he was perhaps hoping to woo a few of the angry disaffected into the oppose extreme: into the collective!

   Ah, the choices which the “democratic process” gives us.

8. 8 Comment by Bob on 15 April 2008:

   Pat has spoken accurately on this issue concerning Obama. Now in simple fairness to the duopoly he should pull out some of the old John McCain quotes and comments about Pat and his followers from the 2000 campaign. “We don’t need those people in our party,” Let them leave, and on a greyhound bus” etc. and what about McCain’s post primary remarks after South Carolina. Has he retracted any of those those recently ? Sure, Obama is what he is and so is McCain — so why bother ?

9. 9 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 15 April 2008:

   John McCain and the Bush clan are as condescending as Barack Obama and yet less honest because they pretend to be friends to conservative Middle Americans. The Republican party standard-bearer has as much contempt for the Republican base as any Democrat and Senator McCain should be rewarded with a turn of the collective back of abandoned Middle Americans. If Middle Americans and other conservatives are to prevail some day in the country that used to be theirs, the Republican Party, guided by neo-conservative thinking, must be defeated this year so that the Bushes, John McCain and the neo-conservative intelligensia are discredited. Some may say that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are too horrible to contemplate as president but sometimes defeat and regrouping is to be preferred to a Pyrhric victory. Always remember that the early Christians faced worse odds than we do today but eventually replaced the civilization that persecuted them so.

10. 10 Comment by Michael on 15 April 2008:

    It might be worth while to take this opportunity to look at how and why ‘gun control’ became such a cynosure of left-wing policy. If Obama is surprised and dismayed by opposition to it amongst rural Pennsylvanians, and can only explain this by blaming it on their economic frustrations, he is willfully blind.

    First we must recognize that as a tool for reining in violent crime, gun regulation is utterly useless. There is no correlation between the presence or absence of gun restrictions and the rate of violent crime. North Dakota, which has almost no gun laws, has a far lower rate of criminal violence than does Washington, D.C., which has the most restrictive gun laws in the United States. So why is gun control so aggressively pushed by the left?

    To understand this we must further recognize that criminal violence is intimately connected with issues of race. Violent crime is predominantly a problem of the inner cities and is committed by blacks at a rate vastly disproportionate to their numbers. Cosby and Poussaint in their book “Come on, People” make the shocking point that about 50% of murders in the United States are committed by young black males, even though blacks make up only about 12% of the population. Six out of seven victims are black.

    The obvious answer – increased law-enforcement effort targeted at this population, coupled with greater severity by the courts – is unacceptable to the left. It has cried ‘racism’ so often that it cannot now acknowledge that steps that might put more black men in prison (and on death row) are justified. Moreover, the black subculture has been encouraged for years to blame racism for all their troubles, both by its own race-baiters like Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright, and by white liberals in search of black votes. There is now a well-organized effort in the black community to discourage cooperation with law enforcement (the “don’t snitch” campaign) and to practice jury nullification (“don’t put another ‘bro’ in jail”).

    Hence, ‘gun control’ is the left’s panacea for violent crime, because it deflects (entirely warranted) charges that the left is ’soft on crime,’ while doing nothing to offend the important and very loyal following that liberals have in the black community.

    However dumb and retrograde Obama or his left-coast audience might believe rural and small-town folk to be, they are smart enough to see through this cynical political exercise. It is a perfect example of what the late Sam Francis identified as “anarcho-tyranny,” under which real and dangerous disorder goes unchecked, while harmless and innocent people are bullyragged and criminalized. Insult is added to injury in this particular case because the left proposes to deal with crimes which are overwhelmingly committed by inner-city blacks by spoiling the sport of rural and small-town whites. It is no wonder that they might be ‘bitter’ to hear this from the lips of an affirmative-action golden boy like Barack Obama.

11. 11 Comment by Sean Scallon on 15 April 2008:

    I’ll play devils’ advocate and defend Obama on this point:

    What Obama is saying basically describes American politics from 1964 to today: White, middle-class resentment. This is where the whole term MAR (Middle American Radicals) springs from. And it’s a resentment born of then sense that people who live in small towns, mid-sized factory towns (like the one I grew up in, Beloit, Wisconsin) and urban ethnic neighborhoods have no control over their lives and are at the mercy of trends both economic, cultural and political.

    I hate to break the news to everyone, but politics in the U.S. in this day and age is about stoking fears and resentments. Both sides do it. Anyone who believes (as many neocons apparently do) that politics is this grand clash of ideas is foolish and stupid because as we have seen both parties believe in a grand consensus of free trade, foreign interventionism and big governments. Anyone who questions this consensus (like Ron Paul and Mike Gravel for example) is regarded as a loony not to be taken seriously. So politics is not about ideas, it’s about using fear and resentment to motivate different blocs of voters to vote for the candidates that only winds up hurting their interests in the end. Dr. Fleming said as much in his Chronicles column a few months back. Fear and resentment are very powerful motivators. Obama basically said what political consultants already know. We just don’t like to hear it.

    Could he have worded it better? Perhaps. But I’m sure we know of or are folk who “cling” to their Bibles as hard as they can because we have faith and when Charlton Heston (RIP) says “you can take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” you can bet he’s clinging to it pretty hard. To “cling” means to hold on tight and I’m sure we either are or know people who hold fast to their guns and Bibles.

    And why do they? Because in many cases, it’s all they’ve got. And such persons have every right to be bitter. Bitter about seeing their jobs go to Mexico. Bitter about seeing their kids bused from their neighborhood schools to ones across town. Bitter about seeing their values mocked in the wider culture. Bitter about being lied to about the benefits of NAFTA or the Iraq war and the supposed $1.00 a gallon gas we told we would be paying. Bitter about seeing THEIR kids go to war and die while the elites stay in the club box cheering them on. Bitter about seeing their towns socially engineered with the influx of immigrants without any kind of discussion as to whether this a good idea or not. Bitter about being let down by both the Democrats and Republicans, who supposedly talk good games on the issues they care about but in the end do nothing to help despite such empty promises.

    Why else would Hilary Clinton repudiate the one concrete accomplishment of her husband’s Administration, the passage of NAFTA through Congress, unless she knew that bitterness existed? Shouldn’t she be celebrtating NAFTA’s benefits? She knows full damn well if she did that in Pennsylvania and Ohio they’d run her out of town on a rail. So she’ll down a boilermaker and pretend she’s one of the guys, this gal born of the upscale Chicago suburbs, a former Goldwater Girl and Wellsley and Yale Law School graduate. Yes, she truly is the salt of the earth. And of course there’s man-of-the people John McCain, the son and grandson of Admirals who was born on a tropical estate in the Canal Zone, the gold-digger who’s wife is a beer baroness and who once told a South Carolina textile worker concerned about keeping his job and I quote “I didn’t know you’re biggest ambition in life is to work in the mill.” How is this any less condescending that what Obama said?

    I said the same thing on a recent post at the CHT website about MARs: MARs fear. And they have good reason to fear, because they don’t know what blow is coming next. What they want more than anything is some sort of stability, so they don’t have to worry if they’re going to be out of work, or if their gun will be confiscated or they can’t pray even in their own churches. Maybe such fears seem irrational, but given the amount of cultural, economic and political changes over the past 45 years that has buffeted such communities, such fears can’t be discounted. The political consultants and politicians and exploit those fears every election cycle, because they know they exists and they know they can exploit them.

    So Obama clumsly said what everyone knows to be true but doesn’t want to admit because that would spoil some sort of twisted image of Heartland America being a happy place of pure American values and virtues instead of pockets of seething bitterness. Yes the former can be true but the latter as just as true and if it wasn’t then the populist movement, the KKK, the religious right, the Prohibition movement, the veterans movement after World War II, Harlan County, Kentucky, labor strife, Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus, Tim McVeigh, Oklahoma City and militia movement, the George Wallace, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan and David Duke camapaigns, none of these things would have happened.

    It’s good in a way that the primaries in Pennsylvania and Ohio and focused on the problems of America’s industrial heartland but those persons covering it have done so in their usual ham-handed and clumsly way, like they were commenting on the antics of an animal exhibit at the zoo. It’s hard for elites in the MSM to truly understand American’s small towns and rural areas because they don’t live there. They don’t know people there. Perhaps a few of them grew up in such places but they decided that working in the mill or on the farm or at the convience store or the auto garage wasn’t for them so they moved out and upwards to Ivy League educations and posh East Side apartments or Georgetown town homes. Maybe its true that Obama, like Daniel Larison said in his blog Eunomia, sees himself as sort of amabassador for MARs to the elites to try an explain why they vote the way they do. But I’ll at least give Obama credit for being more perceptive about American politics than a thousand brain dead political reporters have been.

12. 12 Comment by D Simmons on 15 April 2008:

    No doubt the left breathes a sigh of relief that there are people on the right who take them seriously. Perhaps Mr. Scallon could explain to us in perhaps less than a thousand words how such a group of psycho babblers with their obsessions with phobias garner any respect whatsoever.

13. 13 Comment by John Smith on 15 April 2008:

    The “them” aren’t “the folks in the small towns and rural areas of that other America”, they’re any white who isn’t self-loathing and desirous of their own destruction, regardless of their income. Obama’s remarks were racist, that is the primary thing wrong with them, and “conservatism’s” co-operation in helping the media deflect the controversy away from the racist hatred of whites that defines the modern left to “bitterness” is a classic case of quisling behavior, and a good example of why conservatism is in disarray. Because they are afraid to deal with the real nature of these remarks they have allowed themselves to be channeled into the ineffective tactic of accusing Obama of being an elitist. He’s a racist, from a genocidally racist political movement, his elitism is irrelevant.

14. 14 Comment by Fred Breisch on 15 April 2008:

    Pat is definitely on target with this bit of work.

    #13, John Smith, is making a very strong point that Obama is a racist pure and simple…or better an elitist racist. It has nothing to do with “white bitterness” and everything to do with making excuses for black failures.

    None of the current crop of presidential candidates is offering any hope for solving the problems affecting America today.

    Cheers!

15. 15 Comment by Peter RV on 15 April 2008:

    Mr.Scallon has just convinced me that Obama knows what he is talking about when he brings up this ‘bitterness’ business.
    Actually, I am almost sure O used that word on purpose.
    His intention was precisely to churn up a controversy in order to get some credentials with the part of voters where he isn’t particularly strong -with the small town America. He forced Clinton and McCain to discuss the issue over which he can only proffit. He also made a clever sidesweep at Clintons mentioning that it is also their administration that contributed to the neglect
    of the rural America.
    Elitist? Oh, come on Pat. Compared to whom? as Mark Twain would have said. Is there anybody more condescending than the American multimilionaires as John McCain and Clintons when flattering the electorate? Obama dares to tell ‘like it is’ c’est tout.

16. 16 Comment by Jack Gates on 15 April 2008:

    “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and … the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.

    “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Barak Obama

    I hate to say it I suspected he (B.O.) didn’t know anything about trade (he doesn’t.) And although the Clintons are savvy opportunists and pathological liars – so much so they don’t even know it when they are doing it…And then will actually defend it ‘as if’ it didn’t happen – … Nonetheless probably Hillary will ‘represent’ those destroyed by trade policies that not only favor the few. But unbelievably enough make this entire nation *impossible. As it would ANY nation when there’s no *good jobs any longer. Funny. But B.O. allegedly intelligent doesn’t even ‘get’ that. Wow. Wow.

    See – being SPOILED knows NO color. I’m gonna have to put that boy over my knee. Funnier yet – McCain knows LESS, another boy. Oh, golly. Oh, golly we in deep doo-doo. I would say on purpose or by ‘design’ we in trouble – just like our hands were held to the fire vis a vis the ‘great’ depression so we’d do WWII – Now same thing is happening.

    REMEMBER the ‘great’ (for a few people) depression was right after the Federal Reserve Act – which was supposed to PREVENT any such calamity. RATHER, instead of the little ripples the ups and downs of an actually free economy, AFTER the Fed – they were able to organize it into ONE BIG ONE they had control over and thus their complete control over the rest of us…forever. UNTIL we get rid of those sorry bastards and the likes of their political puppets.

    That’s right B.O. i’m hanging onto my GUNS, fool. How’s the brie?

17. 17 Comment by robert reavis on 15 April 2008:

    “When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. … Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions.” — Alisdair MacIntyre

18. 18 Comment by alessio1947 on 15 April 2008:

    For cryin’ out loud … I’ve visited numerous small towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio in the past 20 years … what Obama had to say is, quite simply, the truth … now we conservatives are playing political correctness “gotcha” when it furthers our agenda? Sorry, Mr. Buchanan, you’re wrong about this …

19. 19 Comment by Sean Scallon on 15 April 2008:

    No more respect than than the so-called conservatives who like the world to believe they ware bib overalls to work when they leave tawny apartments, or, in the case of Rush Limbaugh, his Palm Beach mansion. Spare me the psuedo-populism Mr. Simmons.

    Is that short enough for you?

20. 20 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 15 April 2008:

    “I’ve visited numerous small towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio in the past 20 years”

    So what? I’ve visited New York and that doesnt make me an expert on it.

    Unlike you, I have done more than just pass through small Ohio towns and claim to be an expert. I’ve lived in a small Ohio town for most of my life. Obama’s Mayberry-esque view of small Ohio and Pennsylvania towns is false, based on an elitist big city liberal stereotype. The only time Obama (and for that matter, the other candidates) can drag themselves into these loathsome places is when they want the votes they contain.

21. 21 Comment by pablo H on 15 April 2008:

    Maybe Sean can give us the clift notes version.

22. 22 Comment by Jack on 15 April 2008:

    We’re all adults here and we can be honest. People don’t join the Altoona Fundamental Bible Church because they’ve just made a killing in the stock market or made partner at a major firm. Faith is not dependent on economic and cultural factors, but the expression of faith certainly can be related to them.

23. 23 Comment by NGPM on 16 April 2008:

    “But I’ll at least give Obama credit for being more perceptive about American politics than a thousand brain dead political reporters have been.”

    The only difference between Obama and those “brain dead political reporters” is that he denies the legitimacy of their resentment, while the latter prefers to pretend no problem exists.

    They are all of the same strain of idiocy and dishonesty. I’ll waste no credit on any of them.

24. 24 Comment by Skinny Leonard on 16 April 2008:

    The inability to understand the dismissal of a traditional American culture that is inherent in Obama’s remarks seems to be as much a part of the marrow of some of the poster’s here as it is in any lefty elitist. “Jack”, “Sean”, “alessio1947″ – you just don’t get it.

25. 25 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 16 April 2008:

    Appalachian American (#2) — you are so painfully right it hurts. The recent primaries in the South and the Heartland bitterly bore that out. Our ancestors would be horrified by Scalawag Nation.

26. 26 Comment by D Simmons on 16 April 2008:

    Sean you might simply want to ask Obama how he knows what he says he knows. Yet to seem respectable to the left you like so many other conservatives rush out there to finish the sentences of Ivy League idiots. Sean learn to question the left not finish their sentences.

27. 27 Comment by G.S. on 16 April 2008:

    OK, OK, let’s try to be somewhat friendly here. Good Lord, the white nationalist crowd hasn’t even showed up yet, & we’re already going at it.

    For the record, I loathe Obama and the trendy pop-progressive fashionability he represents.

    In the words of Salinger, the Obamarama gush-fests “make me want to barf all over myself.”

    And while it is difficult to overstate my admiration for Col. Bacevich, I think he is way, way off-base in suggesting anyone seriously consider casting a ballot for BO.

    However, I second Mr. Dog’s second, of post #2. We sometimes get carried away sometimes in our staunch populism vs. nefarious elites vision of things.

    If all these small-town Christians & gun-owners were truly as committed to liberty & self-government and their faith as they — and we — would like to think they — and we — are, then, to paraphrase Dr. Fleming, “Hollywood would be broke and both political parties would have long since been swept into the dustbin of history.”

    I have respect for Joe Sixpack and the common working stiff, but it’s important not to substitute pleasant illusions about the salt-of-the-earth for reality.

    Most people have (and will continue to) sold out their faith & traditions, by degrees — they’re willing to do it so long as it can be gradual and they don’t have to lose too much face in the process.

    The frog is happy to be boiled, so long as you take it slow (so he doesn’t have to feel to bad about it) and provide him with the cheap conveniences of consumerism in the meantime.

28. 28 Comment by Peter RV on 16 April 2008:

    Obama has a clear advantage over Clinton and McCain- he might just be a good president- the other two, we alredy know-they can’t possibly be.
    McCain is ,by all accounts, an unbalanced mind ready to explode at minor provocation, confused about anything associated with foreign religion or culture and of a manifestly inferior education.
    His ideas of bombing first and discovering Al Queda (including in Iran) afterwards , should be frankly hallucinating even to the most diehard Republican with a minimal common sense. He has promised us (with a smile) a hundred year war, perhaps attacking nuclear armed Russia or China. At the very least ,he would be obliged to introduce Draft to keep our sorry empire going.
    Hillary, besides being a liar, claims she can run on the record of her husband, whose ‘accomplishments’are well known. Indeed, five hundred thousand dead Iraqi children and smashing Serbs by bombs (to please Muslims),creating a cancer in the Balkans called ‘Kosova’, are the exemples of an experience she claims as her own. She would be bringing back to her administration old warlike hacks such as Holbrook or even that infamous Albright. Besides, we would be having back in the White House that sexual predator of her husband Bill.( Only God knows what scandals woud that man produce). Do we really want those two back in the WH?
    So, it would be Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton, have we really become a banana republic to be run by mafia families?
    Finally, neither Hillary nor McCain have displayed a minimal compassion for the sufferings of the Palestinian People. They are both AIPAC candidates. And that bodes badly for the U.S. prestige and interests.
    We can not possibly lose anything with ‘inexperienced’ Obama.

29. 29 Comment by NGPM on 16 April 2008:

    @25: Spot on.

    The problem is that, even granting there was a kernel of truth in Obama’s speech (there was), he a) was obviously deriding religiousity (which is what leftist churches call “fundamentalism”), gun ownership and provincialism (“racism,” “bigotry,” “xenophobia,” “anti-immigration”); and b) has not proposed anything that will actually ameloirate the very real problems that trigger said bitterness.

    Messieurs Higdon and Scallon are well-intentioned, but I have to agree with those who believe Obama does not deserve our defence. He speaks of hope and will deliver none. He’s as phony as Slick Willie.

30. 30 Comment by D Simmons on 16 April 2008:

    Truly a shame that a pampered man with emotional problems from a messed up childhood who is married to an Ivy Leaguer from an upper middle class politically connected family with her own baggage can spew some fifth rate sociology, and yet have conservatives falling about themselves to sanctify the “holy” word of political correctness as so said. You chop the head off the snake not take your own leg off so that same said snake cannot bite it. Yes it is true the mob needs to be handled and given a better choice in life, but not by Obama reading from the holy books of PC as written by mommy professor.

31. 31 Comment by Sempronius on 16 April 2008:

    Where to begin?Buchanan the phoney Catholic and phoney “right wing extremist” has encountered some easy prey and hes not about to forego the opportunity to make shooting a squirrel seem like wrestling a lion.The modern Hercules will surely secure his place, if not on Olympus at least in suburban D.C..

    There is nothing wrong with “elites”.In fact any sane person, much less a conservative, aknowledges as much and whats more welcomes it.Populist opposition to elitism is yesterdays Leftism,and yesterdays Leftism is todays Conservatism.

    Therein lies a problem.

    Degenerate Conservatism cant effectively oppose Leftism because its intellectual underpinnings are derived from the very tradition it makes a show of opposing.With the predictable result that it doesnt succeed in accomplishing much of anything,except providing careers for useless and worthless personages not unlike P.B..

    The yokels out in the wilds of Pennsylvania are hardly an edifying sight.Understanding and sympathizing with their plight is assuredly correct and noble,but it is not primarily on their behalf nor for their benefit that we oppose THE GOOD TIDINGS of Leftism and its newest Kenyan-Indonesian Messiah.There is no little irony in the fact that The Kenyans mother came from regions no less despised and no less humiliated than the Province of Pennsylvania.

    As I said, there is nothing wrong with elites.What passes for an elite today however is not a true elite but rather a degenerate epicene plutocracy.A greedy, stupid, ugly assortment of sorry specimens whos combined value isnt equal to a pile of refuse.

    It is indicative of how low we have fallen that an African is putting on contemptuous airs, openly and without consequence towards white serfs.The proper rejoinder to the Kenyans provocation is to point out that however mean and ignoble Heartland peasants may be, they are still far and away preferable to the simians that infest our urban wastelands not to mention the savages of his beloved Africa.

    But Conservatism cant do that you see.That would be racist and therefore unchristian and unamerican.

    Unbiblical you might say.

32. 32 Comment by Skinny Leonard on 16 April 2008:

    “Yes it is true that the mob needs to be handled and given a better choice in life….”? Et. tu, D Simmons?

    No matter how it gets sliced, here, what I’m hearing is that the average God fearing, well-armed rural American that believes in maintaining a little cultural integrity is, on some level, just a reactionary. Pardon me, I thought this was the “blood and soil” forum?

33. 33 Comment by Sean Scallon on 16 April 2008:

    For all your contempt of Ivy Leaguers Mr. Simmons I’m curious to know if you think Bill Buckley ever burned his Yale diploma? What about Chilton Williamson Jr. ? Do you think he hides his Columbia University diploma from his friends so no one will know he attended a (gasp!) Ivy League institution?

    As I said, spare me the psuedo-populism. I sure hope you’re not posting this from a computer in a condominium.

    I agree with the statements of G.S. and NGPM. Maybe Obama is as slick as Bill Clinton and in the end offers nothing more than just empty rhetoric. But I am very tired and very weary of the phonies out there who live just as the “liberal elites” do, live in the same places and the same neighborhoods and try to procliam some sort of twisted class loyalty with those to whom those they do not associate with unless they were mowing their lawns or cleaning off their tables and then somehow proclaim America is a “classless society.” George Will would not be caught dead at that famous gun show in Kentucky (the exact name escapes me at the moment) where people get a chance to shoot machine guns. But at the same same time he wants you to be outraged at Obama’s snobbery even though he is snob himself as his attacks on Pat Buchanan over the years have shown.

    Anyone who studies the trade issue understands how shallow the blue collar chic of these elites is. With the exception of Lou Dobbs or Jack Cafferty, all them do not mind seeing steel mills close due to foreign dumping and scream loudly of the evils of “protectionism” because they work in an industry that is not affected by foreign competiton (and least not yet).

    Maybe Obama is being patronizing or naive in thinking he can reach out from his ivy tower in Hyde Park to connect the MARs with the elites as any Great Society social worker in Kentucky was in “trying to teach poor people how not to be poor.” But it’s hypocritcally sickening to see his fellow elites, including senators Clinton and McCain, try wrap themselves in “heartland values”when they have demonstrated time and again they have none. As someone who lives in a small town (Arkansaw, Wisconsin; population: 300) and works in a small-town (Ellsworth, Wisconsin, population:3,000) I think can safely say such values are self-evident. But one can find kindness, chairty and love of family, neighborhood and kin in the big city as well. And small town people aren’t exempt from the sins of society either just because the places they choose to live in have fewer people.

    Unfortunatly some of our elites have created this Potemkin Village of small or medium-sized town America they want to identify (or better yet “cling”) with because they believe it shields their elitism and allows them to speak to the masses with more credibility than they otherwise would have had. That’s why so few of the elite supporters of the current war in Iraq have not gone out of their way to join the military (either now or in the past and certainly not in the future) who do the acutally fighting of the war they support because they feel they don’t need to. Supporting the troops is all that counts. Let the poor kids do the fighting, we’ll just stay behind a be a cheering section against those traitorous Leftist elites. That’s why College Republicans aren’t signing up en masse to join the Army. They think they’re fighting the war at home.

    If one were to say that heartland is the “real America” then I would say yes it is. And it has all the problems, all the shortcomings, and all the things one would find wrong in the “real America” as one would read in the pages of Chronicles. Elites you will always have with you but, better they appreciate Tolkien or Chesterton and be able to saddle a horse rather than throwing fundraising parties for the Black Panthers.

34. 34 Comment by G.S. on 16 April 2008:

    @ 29:

    “the average God fearing, well-armed rural American that believes in maintaining a little cultural integrity…”

    Mr. Leonard,

    My point is not to sneer at such Americans, but that I wish they actually feared God and believed in integrity enough to take a stand.

    The elites have power because — and only because — the people have accepted a servile status in exchange for security & benefits.

    But given that all of us here voluntarily subsidize abortion and other horrors via our own tax payments, I don’t think any of us is in a position to condemn Joe Sixpack too harshly.

    @NGPM #25:

    Good points, which got me to thinking a little further.

    Another way of looking at Obama’s statements is that he feels religiousity, resistance to mass-immigration, and gun-ownership are *excusable* attitudes, IF we can attribute them to something else: Economic woes.

    But then is raised a question for the theology of Liberalism: We enlightened elites can forgive those who cling to traditional values because of lack of education, social confusion, loss of jobs…. but can we forgive those rare bugbears who have no such excuses and cling to such values *willfully* and *knowingly*?

    And what would being one of the unforgiven translate into, under an Obama presidency?

35. 35 Comment by G.S. on 16 April 2008:

    Not to belabor my own point or toot my own horn, but as I chew on it, I think that very last statement casts some new light on Obama’s statements.

    Think about it: In my experience, the average Blue-State liberal may be willing to forgive his “racist” grandma for her ignorance, but regards someone possessed of some modest education, like myself (when he is forced to acknowledge my existence and that I seriously believe what I believe) as a monster.

    Much as white nationalists regard us as race-traitors, the liberal elite would regard us as class-traitors.

    If you’ve actually read some philosophy and literature, yet still insist on rejecting the great Enlightenment, then you’re not forgiveably ignorant, but a freak — the Other, who must be silenced.

36. 36 Comment by Brock H. on 16 April 2008:

    robert m. peters @7:

    “The Republican Party is and has always been a disingenuous party. It has in recent years, particularly in the South and among some Christians, peddle its fringe elements, namely the sentiments which we have attached and continue to attach to Taft, Goldwater and most recently Paul. However, at its heart, it has been and remains the old Lincolnesque, Rockefeller oligarchy.”

    Don’t include Barry Goldwater on that list, Mr. Peters. A fellow who bedded down with the Trotskyites and Straussians at National Review in order to make conservatism “respectable” and who backed Ford over Reagan in ‘76 is, by every definition, a member of that elitist Rockefeller establishment. I don’t mean to quibble, but it’s good to know who everybody out there is, and what they stand/stood for.

37. 37 Comment by alessio1947 on 16 April 2008:

    @ Skinny Leonard:

    “The inability to understand the dismissal of a traditional American culture that is inherent in Obama’s remarks seems to be as much a part of the marrow of some of the poster’s here as it is in any lefty elitist. “Jack”, “Sean”, “alessio1947″ – you just don’t get it.”

    Horse puckey, Skinny. I certainly “get it” when insecure people take offense where none was intended. Obama meant no offense — nor do I. But I have to say that reading the comments here has been a real eye-opener …

38. 38 Comment by robert m. peters on 16 April 2008:

    Among the things I do is to teach at a very small, private rural school in the uplands of Louisiana.

    Today, after having read Exodus 20 and the 24th Psalm, we read in the 22nd Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel of the encounter which Jesus had with the Pharisees over paying tribute to Caesar, with the Herodians in the background, of course. While discussing the coin with the graven image of the demi-god Caesar on it, one of the young ladies posed a question about the coins which we have with the faces of Lincoln ensconced on them or those with the fascio(fascis). She first wanted to know if we were not worshiping idols unawares and how we could know if the “God” in whom we allegedly trust is the God revealed in the person of the Christ.

    Here and there in the nooks and crannies of backwoods America something might just be stirring.

39. 39 Comment by Skinny Leonard on 16 April 2008:

    alessio1947,

    Obama was very delicate in what he said, but his implication was clear, nonetheless: There is no intrinsic merit in a God-fearing, gun-owning, nativist culture. Only as a reaction to economic circumstances beyond one’s control can such a culture be understood. Offense? None taken. But that’s what he said.

40. 40 Comment by Brock H. on 16 April 2008:

    alessio1947 @34:

    “I certainly “get it” when insecure people take offense where none was intended. Obama meant no offense — nor do I. But I have to say that reading the comments here has been a real eye-opener …”

    Obama’s comments certainly sounded to me just like what Pat Buchanan and company are interpreting them to be. If Obama’s comments were not snide and elitist Ivy-League remarks about the ignorance of heartlanders and small-town Americans, then what were they, alessio1947? What was Obama’s intent if not offense?

41. 41 Comment by D Simmons on 16 April 2008:

    As for Ivy Leaguers they should have to prove they are not idiots. As for WFB as his detractors noted he was basically another trustfunder, but what they forget is that at the time he mocked in public the mommy professors of the day and lived to tell about it. Its all we ask sir when a lib spouts his theology you go back to the basics. When Obama spouts mommy prof PC to a bunch of narcissists you need not pile on to establish some sort of credentials you need to develop those incisive questions that cut to the bone. And Obama’s “Heart of Darkness” voyage is high comedic material, I mean where did he learn this garbage, at Princeton with his darling wife?

42. 42 Comment by alessio1947 on 16 April 2008:

    @ Brock

    “Obama’s comments certainly sounded to me just like what Pat Buchanan and company are interpreting them to be. If Obama’s comments were not snide and elitist Ivy-League remarks about the ignorance of heartlanders and small-town Americans, then what were they, alessio1947? What was Obama’s intent if not offense?”

    Yup, that’s the way they sounded — to you.

    As I wrote, a real eye-opener …

43. 43 Comment by Michael on 16 April 2008:

    Mr. Scallon, the “famous gun show in Kentucky” is at Knob Creek. If you knew anything about firearms, you’d realize that owners of licensed class 3 (fullly automatic) weapons, a.k.a. machine guns, have an average net worth in seven figures and typically make incomes significantly above the average. They have to – it’s expensive to own such toys. Maybe George Will would not be caught dead there, but he would likely not be invited.

    The gun issue is an interesting study in social perception. I have little interest in full-auto weapons, but collect and shoot British shotguns and double rifles, and have done for the past thirty years. This hobby – not an inexpensive one! – has led me to become acquainted with the shooting sports in Britain. There the popular perception of the typical gun-owner is quite the opposite of what it is here. In Britain, shooting – particularly of driven game – is a sport of the landed gentry. My mother owns a small property in Scotland adjacent to the marquis of Linlithgow’s extensive grouse moor. Hunting with hounds has drawn more adverse political attention, but shooting and guns are also demonized by the British left, not as pastimes of ‘yobs’ but of ‘nobs.’ Bans and restrictions are perceived as a way for the masses to put a thumb in the eye of milord.

    Neither the British stereotype of the shooting enthusiast as a relic of aristocratic privilege nor the American one of him as a slobbering rube is completely true, but what is interesting is that in both cases these distorted pictures are fostered, for entirely self-serving purposes, by an urban élite drawn from journalism, academia, and politics.

44. 44 Comment by Sean Scallon on 16 April 2008:

    Michael,

    Thanks for your information on the Knob Creek festival. You’re right, my knowledge on firearms is lacking.

    You bring up an interesting point about how hunting is different in the UK, and Europe for that matter, compared to the U.S. In Europe, hunting was considered a rich man’s sport whereas in the U.S. hunting is perceived to be a middle to lower middle class pastime. Because of the frontier, the necessity of a well armed militia and the republican form of government the U.S. adopted, guns ownership has always been broad based in the U.S whereas in Europe emperors, kings and princes made sure guns were not readily available to just anybody (they tend to be class levellers). Thus the U.S. has had not just a broad class of gun and land owners, but also conservationists dedicated to preserving wilderness land upon which to hunt and fish. Often times it’s the poorest nations, not the most industrialized ones, that have the worst environmental problems.

    However, alarmingly, the number of hunters in the U.S. is declining for three reasons: 1). fewer suburbanites hunt and whole generation has been raised never really knowing the outdoors; 2). Hunting has become too expensive for many who can’t afford the licenses, tags, guns, supplies etc. and access to private lands and 3). It’s hard to find land to hunt on period. Set aside acreage for public hunting has either remained stagnant or is shrinking depending upon where you live or has become so hunted over that game no longer venture onto such lands and stay on private land that land owners have put no tresspassing signs on. It’s becoming a big issue in my home state of Wisconsin which prides itself on both its outdoor recreation and its conservation ethic. Yet where I live, landowners are either closing off land, selling hunting rights to rich folk in the Twin Cities or only allowing family members and acquaintences to hunt on such land. In my neck of the woods, you have to know people in order to hunt.

    If Barak Obama was really serious about reaching out to MARs, he could do so by proposing new policies that could help set aside more land for hunting and recreation. Indeed, The Washington Monthy talked about the potential of new alliances between environmentalists and hunters to preserve more open space and wilderness. Or he could just ignore the issue and let the anti-hunting/PETA fanatics become the voice of the left and continue the chasam that seperates left from the working class.

    Funny isn’t it? We’re at war and one gets the feeling that most Americans hate their fellow Americans more than they do Al Qaeda

45. 45 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 16 April 2008:

    Mr. Peters (#35) — there is always a remnant. What is astounding (and has been so since biblical times) is how young some of its members turn out to be. God bless that student of yours.

46. 46 Comment by Brock H. on 16 April 2008:

    alessio1947 @39:

    “Yup, that’s the way they sounded — to you.
    As I wrote, a real eye-opener …”

    You didn’t answer my question, one which I ask only out of curiosity. What was meant by Obama’s comments to that crowd in San Francisco if not offense?

47. 47 Comment by Brock H. on 16 April 2008:

    Rublev’s Dog @42:

    Obviously, that gradeschool-age young lady in Mr. Peters’s class outdoes me in the age category, but nevertheless I am only 23, a member of the nihilistic, cynical, and self-obsessed Generation-Y. Yet I also withstood 12 years of John Dewey public education and I am today surrounded by the multi-culty and diversity lobby at my community college. Plus, I’m a Yankee. Fear not, Rublev’s Dog, there are more of us out there than you might think, and you would be surprised at the capacity of young people to question what our government masters dictate to us.

48. 48 Comment by Michael on 16 April 2008:

    Sean, I agree with your last point about Americans hating each other more than they do the external enemy. It should be borne in mind that they do so mostly because they are encouraged to by manipulative journalists and politicians.

    You’re partly right about hunting/shooting and guns, though in Europe the restriction of access to firearms varied from country to country. England had virtually no gun regulations until the 1920s and when they were enacted the reasons had mainly to do with fear of political violence – it was the era of the general strike. Later British gun restrictions came about because of IRA violence.

    The claim that the comparatively low British murder rate is attributable to strict gun control is absolutely baseless, since Britain had an even lower murder rate when Queen Victoria was on the throne, Birmingham dominated the world’s firearms industry, and anyone could buy a cheap shotgun at an ironmonger’s for ten shillings. By the late nineteenth century, violent crime had been ‘hanged out’ in Britain, or else exported to Australia. France has equally stringent gun laws to those in England today, but a far higher rate of criminal violence. No one ever mentions this. Switzerland issues every able-bodied male citizen a fully-automatic weapon and a quantity of ammunition, which he is expected to keep at readiness in his house for periods of active military duty (the Swiss follow a system of military service not unlike the citizen militias of the ante-bellum U.S.). Every Swissman of military age must qualify annually at the target range. Violent crime has historically been low in Switzerland. There is absolutely no correlation between gun restrictions and crime rates in Europe, any more than there is here.

    The big culprit in the decline of hunting as a popular pastime is urbanization. I’m a country landowner, and have lived all my 55 years on land that my family owned before I was born. I shoot over my own land and generally don’t let others do so. This is not because I am selfish of the game, but because most people no longer know how to behave themselves around fences or gates. Ignorance and bad manners have closed more land to would-be hunters than has the desire to profit from the sale of hunting privileges. It’s true that the situation in the western U.S. is different, because there the sale of rights to hunt big game can be a more reliable source of income than ranching. A friend of mine owns several thousand acres in eastern Oregon and makes his main income by guiding elk hunters on it. It is not easy work physically, but more to his taste, and I suspect more reliably profitable, than is raising cattle as his ancestors did.

49. 49 Comment by Leo on 16 April 2008:

    First,to Sean Scallon who grew up in Beloit , I’m a graduate of Beloit College.Your posts are thoughtful. Could it be the Rock River,a passage frrom the South? Anyway,gentlemen this blessed country was born in armed secession,supported by France. Who is our France today?Is it Russia?

50. 50 Comment by NGPM on 17 April 2008:

    “If you’ve actually read some philosophy and literature, yet still insist on rejecting the great Enlightenment, then you’re not forgiveably ignorant, but a freak — the Other, who must be silenced.”

    All beautifully said. But conservatives, and American conservatives in particular, do need to work harder to break the stereotype of the cultural ignoramus, so that lefties will actually have to confront this “freak” phenomenon. At the very least it makes them desperate and uncomfortable and their senseless sputterings gradually expose them for the sham they are.

    But of course we must be careful not to get mixed in with the decadent mainstream cosmopolite–because doing so was part of what ultimately neutered Buckleyan conservatism.

51. 51 Comment by NGPM on 17 April 2008:

    @45: “The claim that the comparatively low British murder rate is attributable to strict gun control is absolutely baseless, since Britain had an even lower murder rate when Queen Victoria was on the throne, Birmingham dominated the world’s firearms industry, and anyone could buy a cheap shotgun at an ironmonger’s for ten shillings. By the late nineteenth century, violent crime had been ‘hanged out’ in Britain, or else exported to Australia. France has equally stringent gun laws to those in England today, but a far higher rate of criminal violence. No one ever mentions this.”

    Just a minor point of correction: here in France, firearms which have “no legitimate recreational or sporting use” (so THEY say) are illegal, but from what I understand gun laws are still more stringent in Lib-Lab-Con land, where violent crime has been on the rise for at least a decade AND where, now that lack of gun control can no longer be blamed for violent crimes, neo-temperance Labour politicians are now seeking to tax beer as the new culprit! Also, France’s official homicide rate (if one trusts official statistics) is only marginally higher than England’s, but taken as a whole Britain definitely has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe (mainly because since Scotland has, last time I checked the second-highest murder rate in Europe).

    Still, your analysis is correct, although it is also worth mentioning that these days, Britian (like France) has begun importing crime from former colonies (though generally not Australia).

    “I’m a country landowner, and have lived all my 55 years on land that my family owned before I was born. I shoot over my own land and generally don’t let others do so. This is not because I am selfish of the game, but because most people no longer know how to behave themselves around fences or gates. Ignorance and bad manners have closed more land to would-be hunters than has the desire to profit from the sale of hunting privileges.”

    I envy you for holding on to that tradition; I’ve dreamt for some time of making a killing, buying some land and row-houses and building thus a dynasty. Luckily my father has agreed to teach me how to hunt when I visit the States this summer.

52. 52 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 17 April 2008:

    Brock (#44): I’ll take a Yankee of classical liberal principles over a Southern scalawag any day of the week. Keep fighting the good fight.

53. 53 Comment by Jim Fellows on 17 April 2008:

    Game Show: ‘Name That Saying’

    Show in progress … “For $50,000 name the saying upon which the essence of language depends. Name the saying upon which the essence of language depends. Now remember essence means the thing itself in toto. You have 30 seconds.”

    Tick-tock … sorry out of time.

    “The saying upon which the essence of language depends is: ‘It doesn’t hold water.’ … Err no, I’m kidding. That would be the Devil’s answer. The saying upon which the essence of language depends IS: ‘Closer than the air we breathe.’ … I’m sorry but you still leave with $25,000. If you’ll look into the camera and say: ‘I’m not smarter than a 250 year old.’”

    “But what about ‘Silence.’ I didn’t reply because silence itself is really the saying of the thing. Because, as a wise man once wrote: ‘what unfolds essentially in language is saying as pointing and such showing does not culminate in a system of signs. Rather all signs arise from a showing in whose realm and for whose purpose they can be signs, dog.”

    “Ok let’s ask the JUDGES.” Tick-tock … “Their answer is in. They advise that perhaps when we search for the grounds themselves we pass on the essence of the thing itself. Silence may be its ground but the essence of language is language itself. Thus you did not come up with a saying of language.”

    “Ahh, ok.” Looking into the camera: “I’m leaving here with $25,000 more than I came but I’m not smarter than a 250 year old.”

    As seen in America in the year A.D. 5000 (optimistically speaking)

54. 54 Comment by Allen Wilson on 17 April 2008:

    I had ancestors among the original settlers of Pennsylvania, so I tend to take BO’s remarks about rural and small town Pennsylvanians a little personally. Obama was trying to explain to petty, haughty leftists the feelings of the ‘rubes’ of this state – and by extension, all of us ‘rubes’ all over the country – while at the same time denying their very real grievances of all legitimacy, by attributing a false economic cause to them and then presenting the ‘rubes’ as ignorant people turning to benighted ways in reaction to this supposed cause. It was nothing but dishonest, ridiculous pandering and condescension, and is similar in formula to the liberal line about high crime rates among certain ethnicities being the result of poverty, except in this case he wasn’t trying to make excuses for the ‘rubes’ the way that liberals use the poverty-causes-crime fraud to excuse criminals.

    His message, not intended but implicit: he really does have some understanding of why these ‘rubes’ feel the way they do, but he doesn’t care because he couldn’t care less about these ‘rubes’ any more than do the petty pseudo-elitist liberals to whom he was speaking.

55. 55 Comment by alessio1947 on 17 April 2008:

    @ Brock #43:

    “You didn’t answer my question, one which I ask only out of curiosity. What was meant by Obama’s comments to that crowd in San Francisco if not offense?”

    It was Obama’s dunderheaded attempt to articulate what I also perceive to be a reality — Small Town America’s abject failure to take on the economic royalists in both parties, you know, the folks who blather on about globalisation while factories fall idle and minimum wage jobs proliferate. The very fact that we’re having this exchange, Brock, proves my point, as far as I’m concerned. You and others appear to be more concerned by a perceived slight on the cultural level than about addressing the real issue — what can be done about economic development in Small Town America?

    Sheesh …

56. 56 Comment by Jacob Atken on 17 April 2008:

    Dr Peters @ 35:

    Amen! Some New Testament scholars interpret that Jesus’s words implied that one ought to get rid of that idolatrous garbage, referring to the coin.

    This would make sense given that the Caesars were later worshipped as divine.

    I guess one could draw parallels to America, given the Lincoln Cult.

57. 57 Comment by Sean Scallon on 17 April 2008:

    Mike,

    I agree with you that bad behavior has ruined things for a lot of good hunters. Better to trust the people you know. And as you point out, it can be pretty lucrative, especially for a struggling farmer or rancher, to sell hunting rights for their land.

    Thanks for the kind words Leo. I’m not sure what the Rock’s impact is on me suffice to say when i was growing up the perception of it was that it was polluted and dirty. I tried fishing in it once and caught nothing, but then again I’m not much of a fisherman. I lived closer to Turtle Creek than the Rock River.

    I’ve had a sort of love/hate relationship with Beloit College. When I was growing up, my brother and I saw the college as a redoubt of eastern, Ivy League rejects who looked down their noses at the townies. Indeed, Beloit, advertising itself as the “Yale of the Midwest”, attracted a lot of its student body from places like Vermont and Massaschucetts. One time, acting like a total yahoo, I was made my opinions about the college known to a girl in a class I was in as a freshman in high school and as it turned out (unbeknowst to me at the time) she was the daughter of the vice-president of the school. Needless to say it took a while for her and I to become friends.

    As I have grown up, I’ve come to realize what a blessing it is to have such a school in a city like Beloit which often is looked down upon by the rest of the state and nearby Rockford. Maybe the students might be snotty, but so what? The fact to have such a world-renowned place of higher learning and that fact the students will attend the college even if it’s a hop, skip and a jump away from some of the worst neighborhoods in town, gives a city like Beloit viability in an age of deindustrialization. It gives the the place some class and I wished I had realized this way back when.

    Back when I was growing up Beloit was a power in college basketball and I remember the tales of the legendary Dolph Stanley and the 1951 Buccanneers team he took to the NIT. It’s too bad the college’s administrators never realized the potential gold mine college basketball would become. Instead, they forced Stanley out because his teams would clobber their Midwest Conference competition by scores of 115-55 and the other league schools demanded he resign or they would kick Beloit out of the league. It would have sweet to have a Division 1 team to follow and watching games in old Fieldhouse against DePaul or Notre Dame or Marquette. My old music teacher, Joseph Simmons, was the college’s band director back then.

58. 58 Comment by P. Stwart on 17 April 2008:

    Sean Scallion – Since you are from Wisconsin, as am I, you are aware that it has always been a matter of getting permission from landowners to hunt on their land, unless you were hunting on public lands. Nothing about that has changed. You must also be aware that in Wisconsin, as in Pennsylvania, a significant portion of the rural person’s food comes from hunting and fishing. Are you not also aware that hunting in Wisconsin has been deeply affected by the deer variant of mad cow disease, and hunters who come into the woods drunk to shoot up everything in sight are the reason for private landowners becoming more choosey about who hunts on their land?

59. 59 Comment by Caper on 17 April 2008:

    Reading Pat Buchanan’s articles, you’d never know he has a masters degree from Columbia (an Ivy League school) and that he was born inside the Beltway. Rhetoric and identity sometimes do not go together. And yet Buchanan is a good man and a true lover of America. So cheers to Columbia and the Beltway for giving us Mr. Buchanan, quixotic leader of the be-pitch-forked populists!

60. 60 Comment by Sean Scallon on 17 April 2008:

    Mr. Stewart, yes I am aware of everything you mention. It should be pointed out that in the past rural land were largely owned by different farmers. Now a good deal of rural land is own by persons with country homes on them and the idea of the very drunks you mention putting a bullet through their windows has made them reluctant to allow hunters on their lots to say the least. As for CWD, thankfully the disease has large confided itself to an area of south-central Wisconsin and has not spread or hunting in the state would take a major as would the rural economy and livelihoods.

61. 61 Comment by TJF on 17 April 2008:

    Speaking of the coins, I don’t think the passage suggests anything about idolatry. The question put to Our Lord was whether it is right to pay taxes to the Empire. If he said yes, then the zealous anti-Romans could repudiate him, if no, then he could be executed as a rebel. His answer was both brilliant and honest: If you accept Caesar’s system and his protection, then you should be a loyal citizen or subject. This must have been His private teaching, since it appears again in Peter and Paul. It was not Augustus and Tiberius, by the way, who wanted to be revered as gods: Both rulers opposed such cults and refused to permit them in Italy except for dead emperors who were treated much as Greeks treated the great men they called heroes. If the degenerate Easterners insisted on worshipping the men who gave them peace and prosperity, then let the fools go ahead and do it. It was only with Caligula and Nero that the cult of living emperors was encouraged in Italy and it was soon repudiated by Vespasian and Titus.

62. 62 Comment by Bob on 17 April 2008:

    Caper,
    “Reading Pat Buchanan’s articles, you’d never know he has a masters degree from Columbia (an Ivy League school) and that he was born inside the Beltway.”

    No, Caper there was no Beltway when Pat
    was born. D.C. was a sleepy little neighborhood back then. When Pat attended Columbia The Grey Lady was still the standard and full of talented writers. Don’t read history backwards by assuming it was always just like it is today–degenerate, dishonest, disgraced and with
    the sound of death rattles beneath the fear. Once upon a time America really was a great nation.

63. 63 Comment by uwi on 17 April 2008:

    Time for the reflections of somebody who actually lives in a small Pennsylvania town:

    No, small town Pennsylvanians are not communists! Drive through one these days and you will likely see Ron Paul for President signs adorning front lawns all over town.

    Most small town Pennsylvanians (at least in my part of the state, Central PA, James Carville’s redneck Alabama of the North), don’t appear to be too upset about Obama’s words. Probably because small town Pennsylvanians tend to be extremely provincial and don’t give a damn what outsiders think or even pay much attention to them.

    And small towns in PA tend to be populated overwhelmingly by old folks. By attacking small town Pennsylvanians, Obama was in effect running down the elderly. The AARP should be calling on him to drop out of the race, for showing insensitivity to the aged and for practicing “ageism”.

64. 64 Comment by NGPM on 18 April 2008:

    @61: Dr. Fleming, thank you for clearing this up. I had never heard of that particular reading of that passage, but not being a Roman scholar, did not think myself even remotely up to the task of rehabilitating Caesar.

    It is good to read any modern practice or institution with scepticism, but I would caution that undoubtedly pious and deep-thinking girl not to cross over the line into obsession and scrupulousity, wondering if there is sin where you do not even know it. I know a young man in this town who struggles with scrupulousity and quite probably O.C.D. It is a nightmare for him, it wrecks havoc on his life and it has become considerably worse the last few months. At times I am even tempted to feel sorry for his confessor.

    “Don’t read history backwards by assuming it was always just like it is today–degenerate, dishonest, disgraced and with
    the sound of death rattles beneath the fear. Once upon a time America really was a great nation.”

    You have to understand where he’s coming from. I was born in 1984. I’ve seen and lived in older northeastern/midwestern and southern neighbourhoods that hint at better days gone by and monuments that could only have been constructed by a true civilisation–but I have yet to find a true living relic of that civilisation. To read of the U.S.A. as a great nation is like reading of ancient Rome as a great empire: we have to take the word of dead and aging people for it, because we never knew any of it. Only the difference is, 1. Rome was far grander than the U.S. ever was, and 2. when we are told, from our childhood, that we are still living in this “great” civilisation in spite of the pit we see around us, it is hard to believe that anyone ever knew anything greater.

    By the way, I think Ivy Leagues have been fishy for some time. I know they still turn out decent folk, butI have never personally met an Ivy League alum whom I did not want to plant.

65. 65 Comment by robert m. peters on 18 April 2008:

    NGPM @ 63,

    I can assure you that the young lady in my little school was not “crossing over the line into obsession and scrupulosity, wondering if there is sin where you do not even know it.” She was doing something which far too many students do not do: she was daring to think. Her understanding of the text in Matthew from Church and Sunday school is essentially that which Dr. Fleming outlined; yet, the Old Testament texts which had also been read that day made her think about the text in a different light.

    It is my intention to print off this excellent discussion on the matter and give it to her and to the class to read.

    Given the context of previous discussions in class – the cult of Lincoln, the cult of JFK and the cult of MLK, I believe that the young lady’s thoughts on the matter are closer to the thoughts of Pope Benidict XVI as given in the link infra:

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html

66. 66 Comment by NGPM on 18 April 2008:

    @64: No doubt she was daring to think, and she is to be especially applauded for questioning whether the “God” America trusts in is in fact God. The point was (and Dr. Fleming can clear me up about this if I’m wrong) that I’m not entirely sure an image on a coin constitutes in itself a “graven image.” (I keep statues and pictures of Saints and of people who have played an important role in forming me; a tribe could reasonably be expected to do the same.) I have known people who spend far too much time worrying about the semantics of handling a particular article which is in and of itself a neutral object, but since you know this young lady, I will take it on your word that she is not troubled by the trivial.

    Now, certainly the coin WOULD be idolatrous if our intent is to attribute it divine powers or place hope for eternal salvation or some sort of spiritual “enlightenment” in the ruler it represented. Arguably that is the case if we speak of Abraham Lincoln, MLK or even the antebellum “fathers.” (Note also: we speak of American “founding fathers,” whereas at one time we spoke of Church fathers!) Does this prohibit a decent person from handling pocket change? I wouldn’t say so, but it is certainly food for thought.

    On that note, now that the price of copper is spiking and the dollar is becoming increasingly worthless, I’m hearing rumours about new blood in the Abolish-the-Penny movement…

67. 67 Comment by robert m. peters on 18 April 2008:

    NGPM @ 65

    Your points are well taken. Given that I have worked with middle school, high school and college and university students in Europe and in five U.S. states, I am utterly surprised and quite refreshed to find a sixteen-year-old who is (1) concerned about what God might think and (2) will to pose a question of the nature that she did. She is certainly not worried about “handling” coins with pictures of Lincoln on them and “in God we trust” on them. I will ask her Monday, but I believe the ultimate import of her question was as follows: Is it not the tendency of the allegedly secular to lay claim to the sacred and to ultimately usurp the place of God?

    She is aware of the dangers of idolatry, as we all should be, and how subtle it is. Even the great virtues, when they replace the Living God, can and do become idols. There are, I would assert, very few teenagers who are even aware of idolatry, of idols and the consequences thereof.

68. 68 Comment by Jim Fellows on 20 April 2008:

    Although I favor Ron Paul or conversely if necessary Ralph Nader – without THEM – I’d vote (which I don’t vote anyway – so hypothetcially) for Obama over Hillary or McUndead. But having fun now – regarding Obama: “Changes hews with the chameleon.” In San Francisco Obama was merely ‘channeling’ what he knew his audience wished to hear. It wasn’t so much a heart-felt slight against small town AMERICA. (Thus he’s OF COURSE par for the course a politician.) … I get a kick out of Obama (I like him probably.) “whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes.” Born “to make black fair,” and whose “favour turns the fashion of the days.” All of that I perceive as being pretty good and not so bad.

    Funny. Thank/s God for humor. Thank you.

69. 69 Comment by G.S. on 21 April 2008:

    What is new & strange about our currency is not that it is an idol which displaces our desire for God (so what else is new?), but that it is an idol which displaces our desire for wealth.

    Ours is the first age in which a man could be called “rich” without owning a single thing, aside from “owning” some digits in a computer’s memory.

70. 70 Comment by Jim Fellows on 21 April 2008:

    Thanks G.S. – I assume you were talking about me? … Though I carry my riches within, sweetness and light. Study St. Paul, come back down to Earth. Oh yee of the steel mills (and good ol’self-hypnosis?) Are you who I suspect you are. Well, then you are admirable, in my opinion…Don’t let that hold you a’back. (Humor.) No I wanted money – money didn’t want me.

71. 71 Comment by Jim Fellows on 21 April 2008:

    G.S. regarding mine of the above #71 feel free to converse? Can you do that – or only come out of the pristine sanctuary of your head? Then retrench? … what now-?-protecting the money-?-or god? And blaming of course ’something’ – let’s see – what’s latest oh, yeah – cyber space is to ‘blame’? No? … Then chat. What’Up bithch? Chat’Ho? Oh wait… if only it were ALL gnostic? if we only did away with St. Paul? … speak, freak?!? put up your martial dukes, as it were? … oh, i know it’s only ‘cyber.’ true. lucky you.?

72. 72 Comment by Jim Fellows on 21 April 2008:

    sorry about #71 I’m getting pissthed. good. what a bunch of ho’s…up ‘there’ in the stratosphere. funny. floating ho’s. i’m a kite and-anchor…try BOTH… g.s. – on the old sf site [he'd?] always rebuke [me] it’s one. sure one coin of course… two sides. TIME is a factor and tells which side to face Up – so that God appreciates it. Under YOU God Almighty, thanks. a heart for any fate within the destiny You’ve ordained. … not G.S. has ordained. … G.S., right?

    sorry i’m a chatty Kathy tonight…probably G.S. is like me doesn’t visit boards here all the time. sorry G.S.

    funny, conversely – have I told you lately that I love you? maybe I’m unsophisticated-?-it’s occured to me. No. Just say no, when it’s appropriate. And at the end of the day give thanks to the One.

    Don’t worry G.S. there’s always the economic discipline to those of us with a little. Somtimes if you have a little, it’s a lot to lose. Peace. Remember that Obama. … in the misty morning fog – with our hearts a’thumping… funny & not

    I went on a G.S. tangent, tonight! I’d hide if I were him too.

73. 73 Comment by G.S. on 22 April 2008:

    Mr. Fellows,

    No worries. Compared to the spiteful and idiotically arrogant Wotan-groupies who occasionally intrude upon this website, even the most meandering of your musings are rational breaths of fresh air, along with courtesy and civility.

    Admittedly that is setting the bar pretty low, but if you’re like me you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

    I was not in fact referring to you in my earlier post. But if the shoe fits, then I’d recommending translating some of those digits into real property, which could –if you are fortunate– in turn translate into a home, something worth holding on to.

    My two cyber-cents, for what they’re worth.

    Vaya con Dios.

74. 74 Pingback by Eunomia » My Problem With Obamacons on 22 April 2008:

    [...] much he objected and still objects to the Clintons, he objects to the Obamas even more and for the same reasons.  There is no mystery here, but some Obamacons seem to have an interest in ignoring the actual [...]

75. 75 Comment by Jim Fellows on 23 April 2008:

    G.S. thanks – you’re a gentleman… so am I usually. Regards, (should I blame the tequila?) no… under it all it’s still moi – like you (who is sincere to the best of ‘our’ ability) a Vork in progess. Hope you had a laugh. Maybe one day we’ll scuba dive or toss a beer and laugh or get in a fight. Whatever. (you’d probably win.) poor me, licking – even more wounds.

    or am I just already claiming the victim Role. There’s enormous power in the victim Role; no power in being the Actual victim. … there’s a thought worth sticking like a star in the heavens above. No? Got any? See I beat you there! … i win ?

76. 76 Comment by Jim Fellows on 25 April 2008:

    Here’s another to STICK up there in the heavens…

    ‘A thought is something complete in itself and something we can Do.’

    I guess I’ll explain it in MY Book – (everyone writes a book these days – not ME yet) – but I guess I should. Funny.

    Why a definition of ‘a thought’ is *simply important is even the Greeks didn’t, as a practical matter make a clearing or a place, for it [thinking per se.] And NO ONE since. … It’s not ‘holy’ it’s wholly important. Will jews publish me? Or will it go down the rabbit hole?

    Greek philosophy, yet with us today made room for technology – into which technology without realizing it mistakenly ‘believes’ philosophy will dissolve… Yet, technology is dominated by philosophy since philosophy ain’t at its end yet… not yet complete much less perfected. HA-HA-HA. here’s the rub – that’s why we have apparent problems with how we handle technology… idiots. (Blame the Greeks AND compliment them – both… you ARE them fools, thank God.) Philosophy INCOMPLETE yet dominates how we ALL behave toward and about technology… fools. No the Judaic is WORSE nothing by comparison… schmucks. Keep dreaming… and stealing. Funny. I doubt they’ll publish me now. Funny… like I care. see me and i’m gone.

    Stand Upright and be strong… and stay forever young… why not? I treat them badly… they’re so stupid. Funny. Now they have the BOMB – duck and cover. assholes. what a bunch or retroverts into anachronism which was so 2K years ago. funny. bend like the muslims. suck. swine.

    standing on the water ——– HA-HA-HA. I hear you – go to the opposite extreme instead of joing the human race warts and all. swine. sorry… i must be in a bad mood – swine.

    Questions? I guess it’s been building – better blow it off in cyber than elsewhere. ? ok, i’ve chilled. i’m cool. bithches. I can’t believe the gentiles put up with it? wow. talk about bithches. and whores. maybe you’re right – except for their peaks they’re worse? hard to believe. Maybe they’re just TOO good. swine. that’s the reality. they’ve become too good. lucky you all. what a world.

    i wonder if the great G.S. will chime in now? … he’s probably too busy getting rich. right G.S.? Funny, too. Yawn.

77. 77 Comment by Jim Fellows on 26 April 2008:

    My apology for post #76. I can’t believe we’ve been together for so long and are still (apparently) so far apart. It’s the Pharisitical (Pharisees – the judaic today) like it always WAS vs. the Essene. … I.e. the ‘law’ and religion merely for useage in terms of what it can ‘get’ one vs. the *possible sincere – at least in that venue or arena. (The former yet disgusts me, it’s so completely hypocritical so imbalanced toward accretion.) … In deference to those Jews i.e. the ‘Christists’ who had a hand in the creation of Christianity, they at least wanted something workable at the level of the sincere & as a practical matter – both, and to their enormous credit (still today the benefits.) They, along with the Greek scribes & some Romans who were of that ilk – did it at that time, utilizing the Essene writings. (The Essenes as a sect where otherwise chucked down the rabbit hole by the Pharisees their rival sect.) They know that or their leaders do. … Christianity is the one thing, since the Romans and the GREEKS, whom everyone understandably copied, that “we’ve” contributed to the existing civilization that was Actually good. It’s why we should never abandon our Christianity. That would be like chucking out the baby AND the bathwater. I.e. it would be sheer nihilism (civilizationally) at this point. Nothing is just a feeling if you have it to be faced. (It also makes subsequently a better person.) Nothing doesn’t exist otherwise except as a concept like the concept of zero which also has its meaning in mathematics.

    It’s also why when a former Jew like Marx goes reverse-Platonism it’s really an attempt to get in touch with his formerly *sincere Essene roots – but it’s a nightmare since he hasn’t YET been through the Christian process and so he’s really attempting to be a new and improved judaic or Pharisee, only. We all have to go thru the Christian process, in my opinion before we deign to imagine we can improve the world. History indicates this in spades. So for Jews the very next authentic thing that isn’t yet just another essentially superficial novelty is to convert like Israel Shamir to either Greek Orthodox Christianity or to Roman Catholicism. The metaphysical construct of Christ appended onto the Essene holy man Jesus’s teachings/writings HELPS toward those results. Myth Works (especially with sincerity and substance at its core), and some better than others in making better souls or men & women. It’s not just a matter of ‘identity’. Rutting and head-butting Rams are fantastically secure in their ‘identities.’ Mankind can be more.

    ALSO although Greek thought and their essentially dialectical philosophical processes paved the way for today’s science and technology, it did *not [yet] carve out a space or clearing for thought per se. That’s WHY even in the grandeur of Western Civilization, we’re all still wandering around like little Cains, metaphorically speaking – highly opinionated though largely uninformed and not rooted in fundamental thought itself; ‘as if’ perception is all that really mattered – as if perception and ‘belief’ can be the whole ball of wax.

    A thought is something complete in itself and something we can Do. While equally important – ideas, wishes, dreams (all a function of the incredible human capacity for imagination) are open-ended and not doable per se. They compliment one another thought/belief and allow thought to continue to be refined without losing its doability. All the animals ‘think’ except it is excusively at the *unconscious level. In this regard we ALL are thought as well. … When we, the human animal took the next step in evolution we slowly thanks to IMAGINATION as the way-station started to become conscious of what we were thinking (anyway) as well. We landed for the first time in history at what I call the conceptual pause or level. Over time we could notice if we liked what we were thinking based on our experience [in TIME], or – perhaps we might refine it and subsequently the refinement might result in better activity with more salutary results for any number of ‘reasons’. So we started to ALSO think *consciously rather than exclusively like the other animals unconsciously.

    Here’s a refined thought – ‘don’t confuse motion with action.’ Something complete (even at the level of refinement) and something we can do. Still though today, we jumble conscious thought up in a mix of ideas wishes dreams (all exclusively open-ended and thus not doable) = perceptions only; & we don’t notice where thought is actually distinctive from our human-imaginations. IF we can also consciously differentiate finally between the two as *par for the course (because a clearing for thought has been carved out consciously, without losing sight of the reality & VALUE of both) we can potentially arrive at clarity along the way in each given moment of TIME. The ‘idea’ that we can do either always alone (without the clearing for thought) is the sterile, thought-Less, and mistaken notion and definition of the ‘rational’ we yet entertain (i.e. imagine) today. It is human to prefer belief or imagination because it’s both easier and it is PRIOR or more original than thought since our huge capacity as human animals for imagination is what made conscious thought also possible in the first place. Imagination was and is and will always be a’priori in humans to thought. So ENJOY it. You see it in your kids most clearly. Or you see it in an impressionistic painting (which is essentially a window into our species’ *hominid past.) ENJOY it.

    It’s why I point out that when we use a word in some falaciously exclusive sense like ‘rational’ we should know as *thinkers it automatically means we must use the other side of the same coin as well or the irrational…Which is what we are actually doing anyway albeit yet UNCONSCIOUSLY. So for something to be rational & conscious it MUST also include the *appropriate amount of the irrational as well or it’s not rational & conscious per se. Then as thinkers we can decide do we want it/something to be more toward the rational or irrational depending on the occasion. It is always about the *occasion [for indebtedness and responsiblity] our lot and not purely for what we would call ‘purpose’ that we make the ‘judgement’. Thus you see or notice that as thinkers the morality which is also the-reality of the juncture or occasion is built into it *already, otherwise it as an abberation or an evil. (I.e. thus the idea that we are all sinners from the git go.) We in other words could conversely ‘purpose’ the abberation or evil i.e. on purpose – which is what we ALWAYS currently do by *default, since unattentive of the clearing or space for Actual thought unmixed-up with belief or idea, wish, dream, etc. It means the CLEARING has not yet been carved out for thought per se. We’re still essentially children.

    OF COURSE in having to deal with other groups if we notice that is the current (*purposeful only) level of their ability to Actually think consciously – we must also, haven’t a choice – but to take that predicament into consideration. But we *don’t even realize this [consciously] yet because due to their own *few mistakes in the imperfect world, the Greeks themselves never got around to carving out that space or clearing for thought, itself. And no one else has Either. So we’re ALL yet barbarians. It’s all yet knee-jerk and stupid on EVERYONE’S part. {Think tanks…with no one yet at the level of conscious thought in that regard.} Anyone reading this KNOWS that current limitation to be the case and the bane of our present condition, once it’s underscored herein.

    Of course once people see it they tend to ‘believe’ they thought of it themselves. So why if I’m not naive about that either am I putting this out here in the public domain? Well I enjoy living by the poetic admonition: Teach us to care and not to care. … I don’t care in that ‘good’ regard. Why not?! It floats my boat as it were, gets my endorphins going (the brain and body’s natural pain-killlers) so I get that immediate benefit. I’m damaged goods due to an abusive childhood (significantly so) so I always need to get those endorphins going since they don’t fire usually on their own and I’m in too much immediate pain or awareness of pain. Maybe like in literature a Heathcliff? (Was Heathcliff in the same boat, I forget.)

    It’s also why people who have suffered together as one poet said also have stronger connections than those who are most content. It’s a part of the larger reality in the imperfect world that everything comes at the expense of something else. In the human domain it’s a realm of [apparent] opposites that are all a part of the same one coin. So it’s both Actually in one, not either/or.

    Robert Zimmerman: “Since every pleasure has its edge of pain, pay for your ticket and don’t complain,” … to put it poetically.

    Does anyone yet recognize this post as luminous in its import and manifestation? Maybe I’ll take it farther and write a book about it. But I also do it because every juncture [in time and causality] again is an occasion for indebtedness and responsibility. If we really all, as we do, feed each other – then isn’t it also my responsibility to share?! (I once had a hemorrhoid as big as a tail – Oh sorry, I didn’t me to go THERE…but I like to share.)

    Yes. I owe you and conversely the same. Ouch.

    My admonition: ‘perfect balance in our world is Not possible; Approximate balance however is requisite.’ … Don’t ‘kid’ yourselves.
    _______________________________________

78. 78 Comment by Oengus Moonbones on 26 April 2008:

    Quote: “…squash every day at the Yale Club”

    Our political elites—these supposedly smart “Yale and Harvard and Princeton educated” people—they never cease to amaze me. Their mendacity, greed, ambition, recklessness, and stupidity have now brought a once-great nation to the brink of utter ruin. And Americans are now so desperate that just might be willing to fall for another faux savior, another cozening fake. So BHO might still make it into the White House.

79. 79 Comment by Jim Fellows on 28 April 2008:

    Moonbones, I agree with you in #78. They don’t know the facts in post #77 because the Greeks never got around to creating a clearing for actual thought – and no one since ME ever defined what is a thought vs. an open-ended idea, dream, wish etc. I.e. so of course we all now KNOW (thanks to me) ‘a thought is something complete in itself and something we can Do.’ Then OF COURSE the open-ended can complement and help further refine thought, rather than confuse. … They’re confused, prepsters forever prepping for nada – and worse privileged and thus spoiled. Look at el’Presidente – of yale & harvard … did you ever see anyone who more resembled in public office bozo the clown? & not even be embarrassed or apparently aware of it?!? You’re right though, they’re painting the passports brown… well, the circus is in town… and here comes the blind commissioner… his memory in a trunk… trailed obsequiously by his friend a jealous monk. (i’m sorry I can’t get bob dylan out of my head… But no one had defined thought prior to me (they don’t even know THAT) – and now that we have it, we CAN chop a clearing for it… and start getting some folks educated, no?

    What-?- first, postcards of the hangings?

    “bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long date” W.S.

    But they’ll be getting rich off of it all, right?!

    First they use their mouths to distract (i.e. tv)
    then of course rely on the fact that because of undeniable limb which stands we stand…

    and chop us all down. They rely on the masses not ‘wishing’ to know that, and preferring to remain in dream-land… and if it’s a decadent dream – it’s weaker and thus better – for the elite without even any straightening Values remaining, or in tow… That’s why they always also wanted to get rid of Christianity…or at least St. Paul so that it was a leaf tossed that the prevailing wind can play with.

    Are they that smart? Or so stupid that’s just what happens because they’re stupid and decadent themselves?

    I ask you – MOONBONES!?!

80. 80 Comment by Jim Fellows on 28 April 2008:

    Does Moonbones know – or is he still playing squash at the Yale Club? What does ’squash’ stand for at the Yale Club – squash the truth? Or – ‘watch my line, so I stay svelt and attractive in ‘prepdom’?’

    Then Sartre came along and really confused them (a while back – remember?) He gave them Christian humanism backasswards. More subjectivity, but at least with Christianity there’s St. Paul – rather than Sartre. Sartre was allegedly a great fornicator; and so his it’s ‘all absurd & subjective as well nonetheless so as to save our dignity’ according to him – might have been prompted nonetheless subconsciously – by some pretty objective ‘prompts’. I.e. ‘No Exit’ (for the babes – he knew what attracted them/ power etc.) & his famous ‘Hell is Other people’ (i.e. other *fellows.) Just another schmuck…albeit without even the claim to higher authority or holiness… who knows which is worse? Alleged divine light or alleged human light into which we are all supposed to collapse and abandon ourselves and our Being. IF enough people do it, and give you credit – the chicks will dig’ya – like Sartre.

    Jesus would probably have been standoff’ish … “stand aback’ you broads – do not touch me for I have not yet ascended.”

    ‘Where ya’ going? Can I go too?’

    No – bithches… got to MERIT it. You’ll learn that later with women’s lib.
    ______

    Yawn – that’s where we’all still at today, dog. And governed inevitably by the null-set yale & hahrvarhd prepsters be they xian or whoish. … It’s why I always say – “thanks God – there’s humor too.”

    I don’t think I’ll ever be able to post on the Apostolic board now…barring a Pauline-like Re-conversion (since I’m already a Christian. I just like spanking Church Lady, what can I tell you?) She don’t mind either apparently – I kid, I kid – I’ll just speak for myself, not her.

    Probably just as well, they don’t need me on the Apolstolic board. That’s fine. Who wants a mutual admiration society. zzzzzzz… i’ve wokedened myself – i don’t want to go back to sleep, do I?

    What’s the point? The point is Sartre didn’t even know when he wasn’t thinking… because up until then no one had defined what is a thought as opposed to an open-ended idea, wish, dream = thus a belief. He was no thinker… just another secular monk with a hard-On.

81. 81 Comment by Jim Fellows on 29 April 2008:

    *A thought (conscious or unconcscious) is something complete in itself and something we can do.

    *Only humans beings via our capacity for imagination arrived at the conceptual pause or level, wherein we can notice what we are thinking anyway, and so Begin to refine thought consciously in search of more salutary results via our actions or activity.

    *Beliefs i.e. open-ended ideas, wishes, dreams are best when we notice consciously they are a’priori to thought, and in tandem with thought allow us further refinement of thought and thus activity.

    *A clearing or meadow for thought per se should be carved-out as distinctive from the surrounding forest, even though inevitably in tandem with – the open-ended (and so not doable themselves) ideas, wishes, dreams etc. Only when such a clearing has been made and identified as such can thoughts i.e. the doable be appropriately complemented by the undoable open-ended (a function of imagination), and thus thought CAN be appropriately refined further. Without such a clearing we are fated (not destined) to continue to wander aimlessly hit and miss not knowing forest for trees. E.g. oh golly, where Was my campsite, again? … (Humor lowers blood pressure.)

    *Religion is viatal to all cultures, since based on the passage of time (experience) it at least indicates what has been more rather than less propitious to the vital group, based on our wanderings in this current state of affairs.

    *Both thought (misnamed the rational) and belief or perception i.e. open-ended ideas, wishes, dreams (misnamed the irrational) are inextricably bound together in human beings. Since it is how conscious thought evolved in us in the first place and is how conscious thought in our species continues and will always be further refined.

    *To us humans it is experientially (and thus the case) a world of opposites when we notice degrees of difference between one thing and another to make them seem opposed. They are really both and the same thing like two sides to one coin. It is a world of inches (as well as miles) and thus of degrees of difference.

    *Such experienced opposites when noticed sometimes can be synthesized in a dialactic of thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis…while at other *occasions in time it is a binary choice of one OR the other, in other words which side of the coin ought to be facing Up.

    *Causality for human beings in Fact does *not result and thus also conversely does not stem from purpose. But rather is always at a given juncture in time an *occasion for indebtedness and responsibility. This is our lot when we are honest and do not lapse into evil, which does not change our reailty but often makes it worse. (E.g. in the news, Iraq.) Thus morality is built into not apart from causality. Neither is the lack of morality apart from causality whether purposed (evil) or by default.

    *Once there is a clearing for thought per se – that which is patently doable, it can be newly considered that for something to be ‘rational’ it must also contain the *appropriate amount of the irrational since that exists too and is an inextricable part of the human factor, if it is in Fact to be considered ‘rational.’ Otherwise what we want to call rational is again only imagination or instead highly irrational.

    *Inevitably we are always both consciously and unconsciously bound up with our own balance and that of the group. Perfect or absolute blance though is Not possible in our world, albeit Approximate balance is requisite. That is obviously because we and the world are alive (dynamic) and not something dead or static upon a pedestal. (E.g. in the news plastic in the seas could kill the planet.)

    *Until philosophy is completed (via a clearing for thought per se) we are subconsciously always acting philosophically without being aware of it and irrationally calling it reason.

    *On account of how we evoloved and thus ARE and will always be for as long as we are Human, we are conceptual creatures [i.e. both], in our world & NEVER either.

    *A penny saved is a penny earned … wait no, non-sequitur, how did that get in here? Well, it’s an imperfect world and we’re all an imperfect part of it.

    *As for imperfection it is also a part of the world since it and we are dynamic and thus alive and the most we can say in this very broad regard is that imperfect’s perfect.

    *If we want to call something ‘perfect’ thus inevibably it must be within a given context. Usually that would mean complete.

    * ‘Complete’ is what we ought to now realize is what we mean by essence i.e. the thing in question’s – totality. Thus essence or totality is very difficult, if not impossible, to KNOW we have ascertained, especially when in a very broad regard.

    *As Aristotle pointed out it is possibly the defining meaning of being educated when to ask for proof or evidence of anything as opposed to when not to. That is the difference between apprehending when something is knowable and when something is unknowable. (E.g. in the news the Twin Towers because proof might have been something knowable if the evidence wasn’t promply carted away.) That few asked is evidence of a highly uneducated society, sadly; and of a particularly uneducated journalistic class (or frightened/corrupted.)

    *Education (even prior to the definition of thought per se as above; and subsequently a clearing made for it) is yet the greatest thing since the wheel, and will always be thus.

    *The perfection of philosophy is its inevitable completion, since although that is currently not yet our fate as a group, it is our destiny.

    *Matters of faith are always valuable and never disprovable otherwise there would be no *need of the word faith-regardless of evolution and of the how we came about-if all things were in Fact knowable. They are not. We can only know the difference between when we are thinking and when we are choosing to believe and what is the mix involved on any given Occasion (for indebtedness & responsibility.)

    *When we think consciously it is more akin to work and less endorphins are released (the brain and body’s natural painkillers), than when we believe because the open-ended is more promising always and it is also what we did consciously and almost exclusively prior to being ready for conscious thought.

    *The truth is sometimes difficult to find but not impossible if in a knowable context.

    *Wisdom is an ability to make fine distinctions that are actual.

    *Questions are important (of course) in our process (possibly the most important aspect.) However just because we can ask a question does not automatically mean it is real or actual. We can always move our mouths even when *exclusively motivated by our imagination, and that is good too. Can God make a rock so big he cannot lift it? TIME is a factor. More appropriately pain defines us whether felt or unfelt, since it informs accurately and inaccurately in our imperfect world.

    *All things are also vibrations with their own signature frequencies including our thoughts. Thus in our world of degrees of difference, thoughts too only in that regard are things. Don’t kick a rock, its vibe and signature frequency may be stronger than your toe. However if at an opera and sneaking in beers in your pockets, make sure they’re in cans. The signature frequency of glass is weaker than some very High notes, but not stronger than aluminum, apparently.

    *”Peace, out – dog.”

    P.S. mother Nature is both cruel & kind AND saw fit to make us conscious of what we’re thinking (like the rest of her kingdom does unconsciously). What shall we make of her blessing and her curse, under God? Did she want it so, or only God? Sorry, unknowable, here. Faith. But think consciously now – KNOWING the difference. Where was that campsite? Oh, we haven’t carved it out yet, ok! I’m down with it.

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