“That’s a Lie”
I was mighty proud of my Congressman Joe Wilson—until he apologised for telling the truth to our sacred Chief Magistrate. I have thought well of Mr. Wilson ever since he was one of the Magnificent Seven of South Carolina state senators who refused to be bribed or browbeaten by the big money men into supporting the removal of our Southern flag from the capitol. Though my esteem has declined some in the last few years when I thought he was a bit too ready to support the schemes of the previous Executive Mansion resident.
Our two most acute foreign observers, Tocqueville and Solzhenitsyn, as well as numerous native men of perception like Mencken, have observed that the most fundamental, pervasive, and powerful motive of Americans is to be a respectable member of the herd. This defect of national character in itself severely limits the process of debate and deliberation that is necessary for genuine democratic government. And it explains the course of the Wilson/Obama controversy.
The partisan interests of the Democrats were aroused, of course, by an opportunity to bash the opposition. This can only work because of the national character defect described above. Mr. Wilson did something that frightens the vast herd of pseudo-intellectual respectables that make up a large portion of the American population. It does not matter that the Democrats and the press routinely behave in the most brutally uncivil manner to everyone in public life to the right of William Kristol. That rather qualifies as respectable, while similar behaviour by the unrespectable is a scary thing that all good men deplore.
There is a substantial though outnumbered Republican expression of the national defect, as indicated by all the bleating one hears about "My President" when a Republican is in power. Southerners, because of our memory of conquest and "Reconstruction" and our relative poverty, have a higher quotient of skepticism about politicians, perhaps. But we are by no means immune, as witnessed by the many people who called me to task for criticising that "good Christian man George Bush."
What all this reveals is that there is no democratic debate and deliberation—i.e., no democracy—in the United States. Our public discourse is dominated by public relations, advertising, pop culture, slogans, media-created celebrities posing as journalists, and vague emotions about what thoughts are acceptable and unacceptable. It has been that way for a long time—since at least the 1960s or perhaps earlier. Rudely disagreeing with a Democratic President, and a President who is a minority member at that, is just not done.
British Prime Ministers must defend themselves in the Commons with intelligence and expertise. They must answer questions and accept catcalls and raspberries as part of the give and take of debate. That should be normal for any head of a democratic government. U.S. Presidents, especially Democrats, are never really questioned about anything. The valiant representatives of the media never raise any really important challenge. Presidential candidates enjoy an orchestrated joint press conference that is called “a debate,” a deception that only works with a population that has no concept of what “debate” means. Obama is treated more like the Queen than the head of government. Obama is not the Queen. He is not even George Washington. Not by a long shot.
Nearly submerged in all the uproar was a basic point. Joe Wilson told the plain and simple truth. Obama lied about a matter of great importance. The people need to know that and there is no better way that they could have found out.
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Dr. Wilson,
As always, right on the money! Let me say how much I enjoy and cherish your comments and reflections from a southern perspective. Speaking truth to power is so foreign today that most can't recognize it whenever it happens. And it happens far too infrequently. Please continue to go boldly into that dark night; many of us need to hear the plain and simple truth.
Redman
I'm reminded of a story I think was reported by Solzhenitsyn. Stalin gave an hours-long, soporific speech before a Party Congress. The applause rose to a crescendo and stayed there for 10, 20, 30 minutes. Finally, one local party chief figured he had given sufficient obeisance to the Great Coryphaeus and stopped clapping, followed by everyone else. The chief was immediately arrested and sent to the Gulag.
(P.S. Thanks to YouTube, it's easy to see how deadly dull Stalin's speeches actually were. Search for "Stalin speech" and click on a couple.)
The British enjoy one benefit from their (sham) monarchy: their Prime Minister is just a highfalutin' politician and can be treated as one. Our president is head of state as well as a politician and thus has some of the attributes of a king. This tends to inhibit the sort of vigorous criticism British PMs receive routinely. It's a pity.
The extent of the stupidity of the response of the left to Congressman Wilson's act is incredible, but I suppose not surprising. Although "You lie" has nothing whatsoever to do with race, the racial police are already in feverish action. One congressman from Georgia feared that now people would be donning white sheets and hoods and riding through the night, I suppose terrorizing blacks. And, of course, just when I thought that Jimmy Carter couldn't say anything more ignorant than he already has, he does. Is there something in the water in Georgia these days?
Let's face it...when a president speaks be before a joint session of congress composed, by an overwhelming majority, of the same party, it comes off as little more then a puerile pep rally disguised as serious statesmanship. The audience's (what else can they be called) obsequious clapping after every uttered syllable combined with all the preening body gestures lends an air of farce to the entire sordid spectacle.
To insist that Wilson's brief outburst somehow tarnishes this sordid affair is simply ludicrous; to assign racial overtones to Wilson's comment is nothing short of decadent.
I am dissapointed Congressman Wilson did not stand up and say "yes I said it, I meant it,it is the truth and I'm not apologizing. I was not surprised by feigned shock and outrage toward Mr.Wilson, but I must admit I was not prepared for the left to take after an entire region and culture, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans,a historical/ancestoral organization of descendants of the Confederacy. Given the attack on an entire region and its generations I have been trying to encourage my piers not run away from the racist tag when hurled at them for not supporting a radical socialist President who happens to be part Black.
I don't find anything about the you-lie controversy that’s any more stupid and absurd than everything else that’s happening in our enlightened age.
I often wonder: Are these people really this stupid? Or do they think we are? Either is cause for real worry. Talk about the dumbing down of society? Forget it, we’re already there.
The art of being a successful politician is to convince the people that you are telling the truth even when they know that you are lying. Extraordinary politicians on the other hand convince themselves that the lies are the truth! It happens on the Left and the Right and after a decade or two the historians declare the lies as the truth.
It's ironic that the two big media purges in the last ten years have been to get men by the name of, Joe Wilson. One called Bush and Cheney liars in an op-ed about uranium shipments from Niger,(he told the truth) and the other for whether or not health care coverage would be available for illegals.(He too told the truth) The debate about hate crimes seems a little silly at this point when two citizens telling the truth can already be punished for the poor manners of speaking it. Evidently everybody just needs to shut up and join the Party!!!!
Clyde:
Could you let me know your personal email address by emailing me at:
LeePefley@aol.com
Tito
Re: #7 - MAP -
"Are people really this stupid?"
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: As opposed to cognitive processing speed, or other types of metrics, genuine intelligence is more closely associated with self-awareness. So yes, unabashed Obama supporters are as stupid as they seem.
I will long remember a co-worker's line: "I have faith in Barack Obama." That statement is colossally stupid on many levels, but the most offensive is the unquestioned abdication of all free thought to allow one man to decide public (and by extension, private) affairs completely.
And why should people like this care? About the only way Obama could possibly lose his following would be to somehow threaten the shopping malls.
"The British enjoy one benefit from their (sham) monarchy"
I would say they enjoy many. I envy them for having their monarchy, which is itself a living testament to Anglo Conservatism. Would that we had any institution so constant, ancient and noble to embody the virtues of those things sanctified by time, or a people who could appreciate such notions.
Chris Matthews recently said it was a "religious experience when the president speaks in that chamber." He also thought Ted Kennedy was a great Catholic. I guess serving the state is priority number one in being a true believer.
Not to rain on the Wilson parade, but why didn't any Republican, Joe Wilson included, have the guts to publicly call George W. Bush a liar during a presidential speech? Bush really needed to be called out on his pack of lies yet no Republican had the courage of doing so.
Jeremiah,
Any man who would think listening to a President speak "in Chambers" was a religious experience, would also think Ted Kennedy was a great Christian. Action is all these days and during such times, ignorance and ugliness become twins just like pain and pleasure. God Bless.
#15 Perhaps he or others did and could be heard from borish behaviour of the left during the Bush speeches. Lets not get in the Republican he said-Democrat she said cunondrum. One cannot miss the hyprocisy of the left and their celebrity media, but their attack is designed and ordered. Yes Bush lied, but he is gone and we have a new liar in chief who makes Bush look bush.
"why didn’t any Republican, Joe Wilson included, have the guts to publicly call George W. Bush."
Derek,
One reason is the same reason Mr. Nightlinger gave to those loose women on the frontier in the John Wayne movie, The Cowboys: "that there were so many that even if one found the courage and opportunity, there was simply never enough time."
Re: "British Prime Ministers must defend themselves in the Commons with intelligence and expertise. They must answer questions and accept catcalls and raspberries as part of the give and take of debate. That should be normal for any head of a democratic government. U.S. Presidents, especially Democrats, are never really questioned about anything."
Exactly! The British PM must defend his position during every session, and with wit and intelligence to boot. There is nothing I enjoy more than sitting down with a nice Scotch and watching a session of British parliament on CSPAN. I once tried to watch a session of congress! There just wasn't enough Scotch!
"I once tried to watch a session of congress! There just wasn’t enough Scotch!"
Not since General Grant!
Do Burkeans care about institutional protocol? I would think so. And it is my understanding--although I am open to correction--that Joe Wilson's "outburst" was a breach of long-accepted congressional norms. When does opposition to those in power justify the violation of hallowed institutional practices? I'm not saying Wilson was wrong to do what he did. But I'm uneasy about it. If there aren't better ways to oppose the New Statism, we really are doomed.
Good work Dr.Wilson ! Your friend woodcutter.
I thank a merciful heaven that I do not know much about congressional protocol. It seems to me that Congressman Wilson does owe the House an apology for violating its rules by speaking truth--that's two violations, by the way, one for saying "lie" and one for telling the truth--though he might also have owed the President one of those feminine apologies, "I'm sorry if the truth hurt your feelings." While I do not especially envy the catcalling in the House of Commons, I cannot say that the rule of hypocrisy in our own house is any better. It is typical of American politics, as Prof. Wilson points out, that the issue was immediately made one of a) lèse majesté and b) race, while the actual facts of the case, that the President almost never tells the truth about anything, are quickly buried.
PS I only know one Burkean, and that is my old friend and neighbor Peter Stanlis. Personally, I would interpret such a term as an insult, since it implies adherence to some political-philosophical sect, "whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas," It is better to leave such intellectual pigeon-holing to the professional butterfly collectors who call themselves intellectual historians. I have in mind a certain academic greybeard Dr. Wilson and I used to know.
"When does opposition to those in power justify the violation of hallowed institutional practices?"
Ken,
The main point of this thread is that nothing about Rep. Joe Wilson, the Congress in which he serves, Republican, Democrat, Yankee or Southerner like the former President and Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the past President, George Bush, or current President, Barak Obama, can be taken seriously these days. As Clyde Wilson is fond of saying, "the law was made for the people, not the people for the law." Pax.
Maybe I should say "Traditionalists" instead of "Burkeans." The ethos of tradition is one of respect for longstanding norms and practices, including those of an institutional variety. If it is true--I don't say it is becasue I'm ignorant of the facts of congressional protocol--that Rep. Wilson's "outburst" was a flagrant violation of those norms, I don't see how it can be a good thing that he caterwauled at the President in prime time during an official gathering of the national legislature. But that's not in any way to defend the hysterics of Joe Wilson's disingenuous and mendacious critics.
Traditionalist--another insult. Let us throw in conservative, true conservative, authentic conservative, paleoconservative, right-winger, right-wing deviationist, Romanist. In addition, I don't at all see how the action of handing down (tradere) something from one generation to another, whether it is a manuscript of Vergil or a parliamentary custom, can have a character or moral quality (ethos). I introduce these philological irrelevancies because it is only by speaking carefully and considerately and reading carefully and considerately that we may mental distractions. I don't think anyone is saying or has said that it is good to shout out "lie" in a formal setting or that House rules should not, on balance, be preserved. Prof. Wilson has, instead, pointed out the hypocrisy that has permeated the discussion. Yesterday, as I was driving back from lunch, I listened briefly to a call-in show on NPR. A disgruntled northerner, who had lived 20 years in Myrtle Beach, was sputtering and expostulating in the inarticulate manner that characterizes all current discussion, denouncing Joe Wilson for brandishing "the flag of treason." The host politely declined to refight the war. But, and here is my point, words don't mean anything anymore, and if, as Mr. Eliot insists, "I gotta use words" in any discussion, then all discussion is pointless unless we pay some attention to the meaning of words. Confederates did not commit treason, Joe Wilson is not a racist by virtue of disagreeing with the President, and people are not Burkeans because they read Burke nor traditionalists because they do not wish to discard wholesome traditions.
excuse me, "that we may avoid mental distractions."
Quite suddenly the capitol have become a cathedral of sorts.
This is because it has been sanctified by the presence of the left's new Messiah.
All this caterwauling has nothing whatsoever to do with manners or decorum (clownish behavior has been running rampant for decades). It is now about sacrilege and one does not question a deity in his temple lest the money-changers grow uncomfortable.
"Our two most acute foreign observers, Tocqueville and Solzhenitsyn, as well as numerous native men of perception like Mencken, have observed that the most fundamental, pervasive, and powerful motive of Americans is to be a respectable member of the herd. This defect of national character in itself severely limits the process of debate and deliberation that is necessary for genuine democratic government.
What all this reveals is that there is no democratic debate and deliberation—i.e., no democracy—in the United States. Our public discourse is dominated by public relations, advertising, pop culture, slogans, media-created celebrities posing as journalists, and vague emotions about what thoughts are acceptable and unacceptable. It has been that way for a long time—since at least the 1960s or perhaps earlier."
Thank you, Dr. Wilson. I can't blame the youngsters for desiring something more than this reality, but it simply doesn't exist in the current political climate and we are a good two or three generations away from it ever returning. As the great English historian who we all know, love and admire once said, "It takes three generations to form a free peasantry,or yeoman class but only one generation to make a banker or a politician."
Joe Wilson had every right to say what he said He just shuold not have said it in that particular context. It was rude and embarrassing and calculated. If the South is going to be any kind of example to the rest of the nation, it must always insist on a mannerly expression of ideas and opinions.
The craven apology is always much worse than the initial offense. Witness Trent Lott. IMO, Wilson was probably right to apologize for a breach of decorum, but should stick to his guns re. the content of what he said. (Would he have been forced to apologize had he blurted out “That’s not true” vs. “You lie?” I don’t know.) He was also right to refuse to apologize again on the House floor since the attempt to force him to was a brazenly partisan move.
The Democrats are increasingly tone deaf and really overplayed their hand on this. They are clueless (or else frightened and whistling past the grave yard) about the uprising that is brewing. Joe Wilson has become a virtual rock star. Check out all the Joe Wilson sites on Facebook, for example. And the admonishment simply increased his stature.
Dr. Fleming, I think I am a bit of a categorical thinker, but I don't share your aversion for labels. They just have to be used accurately. After years of exposure to all things conservative I have noticed that a sense of pattern recognition, for lack of a better term, is useful. (I think it is the doc in me. Most diagnosis is really just pattern recognition.) Patterns of thought run together and I can often predict where someone stands on an unrelated issue once I have mentally categorized them. So I can read a seemingly unrelated comment and figure out "Oh this person is probably a White Nat" or something like that. Of course this isn’t foolproof, but it is helpful.
There will always be lumpers and splitters, but I think part of the problem with our political discourse today is that people fail to make necessary distinctions, not that they make unnecessary or irrelevant ones. (Ok maybe irrelevant.) Thus all war supporters become neocons. All conservatives support war. Everyone who isn’t slavishly PC on race is a Nazi. Etc. This inability to make right distinctions where they really exist dumbs down our debate.
The problem with the term Burkean is that it has come to mean different things. If it is used by a conservative in a positive sense it means a respecter of tradition, slow change, etc. but probably distinguished from reactionary. When it is used by moderates or liberals to praise some conservative it means a pragmatic moderate who represents no real threat to the onward march of liberalism.
It is true that parliamentary courtesy is worthy of observance. However, Obama's address had nothing to do with deliberative government. It was an orchestrated media event that the Founding Fathers and all the great parliamentarians of the past would find despicable.
We don't have a king. The President, as head of state, is entitled to a bit of protocolar deference. However hokey the speech and the occasion, Wilson should have found another forum for his blunt but accurate dissent.
That said, his was but an infraction, or a minor misdemeanor. Their opponents have treated most of our Presidents with derision. If the Republic is tottering, it is not the derision that's to blame, but Empire, our worship of the idol Progress, and our profligacy, just for starters.
With thanks to the Bard, here's a bit derision worthy of the name: "You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat's-tongue, you bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish--O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!"
The abuse does not abolish the use. People may misuse words, but the word traditionalism is not indeterminate; it connotes, roughly speaking, someone of an anti-meliorist bent of mind. Beyond that, we can argue about what it means. And if the real quarrel is with Edmund Burke's lack of intellectual rigor, I don't disagree; for me, as for my former teacher Donald Livingston, David Hume is far superior to Burke as a thinker about tradition. But Burke's rhetoric brilliantly captures the essence of conservatism. True, when someone like Cass Sunstein talks about Burkeanism, I have to conclude that he doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's using words as propaganda. But I am unwilling to say that traditionalism is a hopelessly imprecise label, or that it is practically useless.
Never mind what everyone's talking about, namely civility. The real issue regarding the Joe Wilson "outburst" (how I love that word) is decorum. Good men may breach civility when the occasion calls for it. But there is almost never a good excuse (in the absence of an emergency)for running roughshod over decorum. The longstanding OBJECTIVE institutional rules of the House of Representatives will tell us whether or not Joe Wilson violated the good of decorum. I don't have a clue about what those rules really are. I'm still waiting--like, no doubt, a few million other Americans--for someone to fill in that blank.
I completely agree with the last sentence of Dr. Fleming's post at #27, although I would insist that the dishonesty of so many of Rep. Wilson's critics does not erase the fact that he may have done a bad thing. How could it?
Dr. Wilson may well be right about what he says in #33. All I can say is that, if he is right, he has more political discernment than I do, which would not be surprising if it's the case (as I suspect)that Southerners pay more attention to politics and its nuances and deceptions than do most other Americans, including "naive" Pacific Northwesterners like myself. Given our history, that is what one would expect. Southerners should not take umbrage if someone like myself does not see eye to eye with them on matters that, far from being self-evident, are plainly influenced by cultural experiences and memories.
re #33:
"It is true that parliamentary courtesy is worthy of observance. However, Obama’s address had nothing to do with deliberative government. It was an orchestrated media event that the Founding Fathers and all the great parliamentarians of the past would find despicable."
This is true. As an amateur parlamentarian serving as the member of a private deliberative body, I can recognize that the very idea of allowing a non-member to address a deliberative body on the subject of an active motion is out of order.
The president is not a member of either house of Congress and has no privilege entitling him to speak to the deliberative body, either pro or con any motion being considered. The very act of granting the floor to a non-member should only be allowed during an open forum. The president, gaining the floor in open forum may then be interrupted at any time by any member rising to a point of order or a point of privilege.
The president's "bully pulpit" doesn't exist in any session of Congress which has been called to order, even in a session the president has authority to call into convention. The Representative from South Carolina was also out of order when he interrupted without rising and without stating his point.
Of course, Congress isn't actually a deliberative body anymore. It's merely a sideshow conducted so as to lend a false appearance of legitimacy to the ongoing criminal enterprise that government has become.
The president can address the nation on TV if he likes, but he has no authority to speak to a captive audience of legislators, telling them what to do or how to vote on a bill which he will have the authority to approve or veto.
Dr. Wilson correctly points out that the address was simply a media event. I would also say thet the whole affair was illegitimate, presented for the purpose of propaganda.
I can't believe the media hasn't jumped on Joe Wilson's Confederate flag stance,if they do before this thing runs it's course,all hell will break loose.Keep at it Joe! Tell the truth about bho.
Ilana Mercer has pointed out in her column, "They All Lie For Someone," that Ole Joe Wilson knows a liar when he hears one. Turns out he has experience in these legislative matters concerning entitlements and can be trusted under the reliable and ancient rubric of 'Takes One To Know One.' And this seems to me what the thoughtful author on this article was trying to point out all along.
Re "it takes one to know one" one should remember E.E. Cummings' succinct: "A politician is an arse upon which everything has sat except a man."
Re traditionalism, lawyer Zaretzke is missing the point, which I shall make as plain as I can. Isms and movements are for knaves, fools, and children. A traditionalist, ex definitione, is dedicated to tradition per se. Some, indeed many traditions are bad or in great need of reform or improvement. As Stephen R.L. Clark once pointed out in a brilliant response to MacIntyre, the response of the traditionalist to Socrates and Jesus Christ was to kill them. MacIntyre himself never seems to have crawled out of the hole he dug for himself. To say that tradition is the necessary milieu for creative thought is true, but it is a milieu that has to be improved from time to time. A lover of truth, much less a Christian, cannot be a traditionalist--or any other "-ist".
Burke was no Burkean. He was not even a philosopher or systematic thinker. He was a man of letters and a practical politician. He had a great deal of brilliance, learning, and insight, as did his contemporaries Johnson, Hume, Gibbon, Reynolds, and even Smith. Thank heaven there is no school or Reynolds or Johnson, as there is, alas, a school of Smith.
The outrage over Joe Wilson's outburst is absurd. Of course, a grown man should know better than to blurt out whatever is on his mind, especially when the social context forbids such a demonstration, but Wilson is an American under 70, and it is unreasonable to expect anyone my age or younger to behave with decorum and restraint. Neither the President of the US nor the Senate Majority Leader nor the Vice President nor the Speaker of the House nor anyone in the national media knows how to behave. Then why take out after this poor devil? If anyone in America has been deluded into thinking you could make a democracy or a republic out of such materials, he will probably not be "wised up" by this little episode.
Dr. Fleming,
Thanks for the clarification on isms and ists. It is what I have understood from your lectures for several years, so much so that some of my acquaintances who like to name, categorize and study their neighbors like insects and bugs, have referred to me as a disciple of Tom Fleming and the "Flemingo School of Tradition!"
Evidently there is just no end to categories --- until the end!!
I have no real disagreement with Dr. Fleming when traditionalism is regarded strictly as another "ism"--and obviously I acknowledge that many traditions need change. But Burke and Hume already maintained in the "beginning" (of anti-revolutionary conservative consciousness)that change is internal to tradition, which takes some of the sting out of that objection to traditionalism. I contrast tradition in a generic way with modernism. Tradition properly understood is a narrative relation, socially if not morally normative, between the past and the present. My long-ago essay "The Idea of Tradition" makes this point. (Interested persons can find it online by Googling my name AND the title of the essay.)
By the way, I would be interested in seeing Clark's critique of MacIntyre, whose writings (as Dr. Fleming seems to have guessed) have make a big impression on me over the years--not so much for his understanding of tradition as for his remarkable analysis of moral dissensus in contemporary society.
As for the "poor devil" Joe Wilson: The contretemps has indeed been silly. We live in a society guided by an addlepated individualism. The hoo-ha was to be expected. If only Jonathan Swift were around to see it; he'd know what to do. I don't disagree with the idea that the reaction to the outburt has been ridiculous and a little sordid, and I'm as eager to move on and forget the whole thing as Dr. Fleming seems to be.
Dr. Wilson,
Judging by all of the commentary on your brilliantly simple, straight forward, truthful article, I think a book could be in the making. Something like "A Politically Incorrect Guide to the Truth". How about it?
Ed
"Our two most acute foreign observers, Tocqueville and Solzhenitsyn, as well as numerous native men of perception like Mencken, have observed that the most fundamental, pervasive, and powerful motive of Americans is to be a respectable member of the herd."
Let's not forget Edgar Lee Masters in this pantheon of courageous truth tellers.
This national defect is not made up--it is quite real and continually gains strength. While its true source(s) is an interesting issue in and of its self, the fact is, the proclivity to prefer national (or racial) fantasy to truth is amplified in such a racially charged atmosphere as the present.
This is a local as well as a national problem. Here in Dallas Terrel Bolton was made chief of police. A good friend was a detective there. A few years ago Bolton was fired, accompanied by cries of racism by the black community. His firing caused a furor, but the mayor stood firm (probably because she wasn't planning to run again).
Prior to that my friend told me that Bolton had presided over four separate events that tremendously embarrassed the DPD and underlined his bias and incompetence. Any one of these would have gotten a white (or perhaps even an Hispanic) police chief fired. It took four such events and a lame duck mayor to get this incompetent, narcissist out of office. (I understand he went to Georgia as police chief in DeKalb co. and got promptly fired. I guess political correctness is not so strictly adhered to there as here.)
Bolton's first act as Dallas police chief was to pass over several experienced officers with impeccable records and promote others with dubious records and considerably less experience. Race was clearly the deciding factor. Just let a white police chief try an analogous stunt and see what happens.
When I think of (the mostly white) Obama, taking advantage of his black appearance, I wonder if it will take four (or more) national disasters to finally get him exposed and "fired". Many people hated the Bush administration and that memory has not faded, and that works to O's perpetual advantage. This is a classic "rock and a hard place", choosing between neocons and the neocoms.
How can the Empire long survive?!?
Of course the bringing up the race issue is not something accidental and serendipitous. Only someone born yesterday could think otherwise. It is a calculated strategy, coordinated by the White House and carried out by a former president turned DNC apparatchic; someone who has nothing to lose politically. (After all, Carter has long ago hit political bottom and started digging.) This event clearly makes Carter the heir to Teddy Kennedy's position of the go-to-apparatchik---dare I say the Apparatchik in Chief?!?
All the while Obama appears abstracted, above the fray and perpetually transcendent--while his surrogates continue to wallow in charnal for him. How convenient! His presidency may give "teflon" a whole new dimension of meaning. To quote a recent beer commercial, "Brilliant!"
Any British prime minister would give his eyeteeth for such circumstances. This is not to be. Even the British are not so given over the national myth as the Yankee government and their Mitgliedern. The wholesale lack of taste for and rejection of truth continues to be distinctly American as the Yankee Myth blindly careens down the dimly lit corridors of history to its well-deserved fate.
I get the problem with ists and isms, but I don't think a traditionalist has to embrace every tradition any more than a progressive embraces all progress. If traditionalist means someone who inclines toward and gives due deference to tradition and recognizes the importance of interpreting the present in light of the past then fine. Us prols need some way to designate ourselves. Isn't a balance needed? Either too much imprecision or too much precision of language makes communication difficult.
I have always felt that Burke has a disproportionate status among conservatives almost entirely (I think) due to Kirk. Most of the people the Founders looked to were not conservatives (outside the religious realm and Catholics won't even grant that), and Kirk needed a conservative influence. The problem is that Burke was a contemporary of the Founders, and it isn't clear that many of them looked to him for inspiration.
@43: I tend to agree. If choosing to call onesself a "traditionalist" one must only be careful not to allow the observer-expectancy effect to exert its pigeonholing poison.
Burke, let us not forget, was a Whig--an astute one, but a Whig nonetheless. In terms of ideological purity, Kirk might have done better to use Maistre, but this latter never had and never would have resonated with our compatriots. It is necessary to search deeper into the history of English sociology--much deeper--to find true conservatives and one finds only bits and pieces from the 1540's on. Unfortunately, that is exactly the moment in history to which our deranged post-puritan plutocrats owe all that they are.
Tradition is a big topic,probably the whole concern of the wise man in his later years which is why I believe Socrates was more concerned with putting Aesops' Fables to verse or retiring his just depts rather than listening to the weaping and wailing of friends and family during his last days. Josef Piepers book on the subject is an excellent introduction as is a little book by Frederick Wilhelmsenon, Hilaire Belloc:No Alienated Man. But for the classical outlines on the subject, Aristotle's Metaphysics, the complete Dialogues of Plato, Rene Guenon's The Reign Of Quantity, Ananda Coomeraswamy's, On the Traditional Doctrine of Art, are the works outside our Tradition which I have enjoyed the most, unless of course one is enlightened by the kind of knowledge that comes with the Christian Faith. The Word made Flesh is the Tradition of the West but that is no longer recognized or understood today for the simple fact that the very meaning of Tradition is no longer available.