In Darkest Pennsylvania
It was said behind closed doors to the chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.
Like Dr. Schweitzer, home from Africa to address the Royal Society on the customs of the upper Zambezi, Barack described Pennsylvanians in their native habitats of Atloona, Alquippa, Johnstown and McKeesport.
"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."
This is the pitch-perfect Hollywood-Harvard stereotype of the white working class, the caricature of the urban ethnic—as seen from the San Francisco point of view.
As Linus clung to his security blanket, Barack is saying, out-state Pennsylvanians, bitter at the world that has passed them by, cling to their Bibles and guns and naturally revert to ancestral bigotries against "people who aren't like them"—blacks, gays and immigrants.
Though he sees himself as a progressive who has risen above prejudice, Barack was reflecting and pandering to the prejudice of the class to which he himself belongs, and which he was then addressing.
A few months back, Michelle Obama revealed her mindset about America with the remark that, "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country." Barack has now revealed how he, too, sees the country. The Great Unifier divides the nation into us and them.
The "us" are the privileged cosmopolitan elite of San Francisco and his Ivy League upbringing. The "them" are the folks in the small towns and rural areas of that other America. Toward these folks, Obama's attitude is not one of hostility, but of paternalism. Because time has passed them by, Barack believes, they cannot, in their frustration and bitterness, be held fully accountable for their atavistic beliefs and behavior.
Though neither mocking nor malicious, Barack's remarks are, nonetheless, steeped in condescension. Inherent in his words is that these folks in Middle Pennsylvania are in need of empathy, education, assistance and perhaps therapy.
His remarks are of a piece with his address on civil rights that liberals have compared favorably to Lincoln's Second Inaugural.
Note, from that Philadelphia address, the highlighted words.
"Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race ... as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything. ... They ... feel their dreams slipping away ... opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.
"Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."
In Barack's mind, black anger and resentment at "racial injustice and inequality" are "legitimate." But the anger and resentment of white folks, about affirmative action, crime and forced busing are born of misperceptions—and of "bogus claims of racism" manipulated and exploited by conservative columnists and commentators to keep the racial pot boiling and retain power, so the right can continue to do the bidding of the corporations that are the real enemy.
Barack has stumbled into the eternal failing of the left-wing populist. He cannot concede that the anger of white America—that its right to equal justice has been sacrificed to salve the consciences of guilt-besotted liberals—is a legitimate anger. The truth that Barack dare not speak is that reverse discrimination is pandemic and that the folks in Middle Pennsylvania have a valid grievance that ought to be addressed.
So, Barack sought in Philadelphia to redirect their anger.
"(T)hese white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze—a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many."
Barack is not wrong here. Corporations, out of naked greed, have deserted America. And the Clinton and Bush administrations have been unresponsive to the social impact of deindustrialization. But Barack cannot concede that white Americans are today's victims of state-sanctioned racism.
A gifted candidate, Barack, after stumbling for 48 hours, has regained his footing with his witty ripostes about Hillary being "Annie Oakley" with her "six-shooter," spending her Sunday mornings "out on the duck blind."
Obama's remarks about small-town America told us little about small-town America, but a lot about Barack. He is yet another cookie-cutter liberal who has absorbed and internalized the prejudices of that blinkered breed. He is an African-American John Lindsay, the great liberal hope of the Nixon-Agnew era, of whom Frank Manckiewicz once said: He was the only populist he knew who played squash every day at the Yale Club.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
“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?
"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
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 ...
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?
"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.
Maybe Sean can give us the clift notes version.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
@ 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?
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.
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.
@ 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 ...
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.
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.
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?
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?
@ 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 ...
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
"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.