Liberty and Justice–For Jerks
Thanksgiving is the time of year when Americans are supposed to take stock and give thanks. The mere fact that we can take stock should make us grateful to be alive and conscious. This Thanksgiving, I am particularly thankful that I don't have to go anywhere by plane.
Over the past three or four decades, air travel has become increasingly unpleasant. Travelers have to put up with stupid, callous, and rude airline employees, dictatorial and self-important security officers, and, worst of all, other travelers. America is now, for the most part, a third world country. I am not referring to the Mexicans, Africans, and Subcontinentals, who have so enriched a culture that had been starving on Shakespeare and Bach, but to our right-down regular white Americans, who have forgotten how to bathe, wash their clothes, eat without dropping hunks of food from their mouths, or talk on a cellphone without shouting obscenities. I am talking about the fastfood fatties who think they have a right to half your seat as well as their own and insist on pulling up the armrest to let their blubber expand over you like the SciFi monster the Blob. It is not their fatitude by itself that makes them intolerable but their insistence upon sharing the burden with others. I have known jolly fat people who do not expect special treatment, but most fatties these days act like members of an "underprivileged" minority.
Air travel was intolerable 20 years ago, but our government, whose officials lie awake at night thinking up new schemes to annoy us for our own good, has instituted the most time-wasting and degrading security measures, short of a strip search, that can be imagined. They say it is for our safety, but they are lying as they always lie. As everyone knows, the Israelis, who face the gravest terrorist threats, have devised a system of profiling that is remarkably successful. I've been through it twice and marveled at the cold courtesy and intelligence of the questioners. But, says Ms Napolitano and her crew, such procedures would have to include ethnic profiling. Indeed, Pakistani and Saudi young men would be treated more rigorously than Swedish-American grandmothers and their Girl Scout granddaughters. But, say the terrorizing anti-terrorists, we have to be afraid of "homegrown terrorists." How many terrorist attempts have been made by American born white women and children? How many American-born citizens of any race, unless they have adopted Muslim names or married a Muslim, have been involved in terrorist episodes?
A small dash of common sense would eliminate most of the pointless and humiliating security procedures that give TSA flunkeys their daily thrills. (One of them told a reporter: I don't enjoy this, I'm a professional. Right, a professional who has to work for TSA, groping other people's genitals.) But, if common sense, especially common sense about race, ethnicity, and religion were an option, we might be living in a free country, which we most definitely do not. Diversity and liberty are as incompatible as liberty and equality.
You may be thinking that your government has made air travel as unbearable as it can be, but you would not have taken into account the Jerk factor. Science has proved that wherever three Americans are gathered together, one will turn out to be a complete Jerk, and, if you give them the almost infinite opportunities to congregate provided by the Internet, the percentage goes up. More than one group of Internet morons have been advising travelers to opt out of the body scans, which produce to a blobby black and white negative photo. It is these self-appointed guardians of liberty who have tricked some people into choosing the alternative, which is, of course, the sexual assaults that are being perpetrated by TSA screeners.
This disastrously bad advice was bad enough, but today some travelers are determined to disrupt the system by opting out and playing various games with the screeners. Yes, that will fix them. Those TSA employees might have to be paid overtime, as thousands of passengers--soldiers and students going home, families going to see grandparents--have their lives interrupted by would be comic-book avengers who have spent their lives watching TV and grazing the Internet--browsing, which suggests some measure of selectivity, is too positive a term. The technical word for all these people is: Jerk.
A Jerk is not simply a fool. A Jerk is someone so absorbed in his own sense of self-importance that he does not care what happens to anyone else. He is in a hurry, so he has to cut you off in traffic or pass in a no-passing zone. He gets bored easily so he has to push past other passengers to be the first off the plane. Since rules are made for other people, he travels with lots of luggage and shopping bags and fills up the overhead bins. Unable to endure a moment of quiet, he immediately turns on his iPod or video game and blasts the headphones so loud they can be heard 10 feet away. Now he wants to ruin your Thanksgiving in the name of freedom.
There is no more dangerous delusion than the persistent American delusion that we live in a free country. "If we only can rouse the good hearts and common sense of our people, we can take this country back again." Such people do exist, but most of them have "opted out" of politics. They are too busy leading their own lives to have much time or energy for busybodying into yours. They accept the fact that our government is tyrannical because they know it is simply a reflection of the servile populace. They fully understand that a nation of sports fans, mall shoppers, and petition signers will never possess the moral freedom required of a people that can achieve political liberty. Above all, they want to be protected from the Jerks, whether on the right or left, who try to use the rest of us as cannon fodder for their pointless campaigns. They understand all too well that the average middle class Americans they meet in airports and restaurants--the goodhearted people we are going to save America for--are, if not complete Jerks, well on their way to perfection.
Liberty is not a natural human condition. It is a precious art form that must be cultivated by people with moral discipline. A nation of Jerks cannot be free, and every attempt they make to recover their freedom will not only provoke more oppression, but it will also subject them to a more degrading form of slavery, the moral and spiritual slavery of the slave who thinks himself free.
When Julius Caesar was establishing his dictatorship in Rome, he seized the national treasures housed in the Temple of Saturn. When a tribune tried to stop him, Caesar rebuked the delusional republican. The poet Lucan, two generations later, thought it odd that in the ruin of their liberties the senators should still care so much about money. As he tells the story, the tribune's friend and colleague warned him against his folly with the memorable lines:
"Libertas" inquit "populi, quem regna coercerent/ Libertate perit; cuius servaveris umbram Si, quidquid iubeare, velis.
When a people is oppressed by tyranny, it perishes by its own liberty. You would preserve the ghost of liberty, if you are willing to do whatever you are ordered.
If I am correctly reading the sense, the Stoic Lucan--who was condemned to death for conspiring against Nero--is pointing out that compliance with a dictator's commands is not wrong so long as the action is not inherently immoral and there is no alternative. "Loss of money [or in our case, convenience and privacy] touches nations that are protected by their own laws; but the poverty of slaves is felt by the master (who has to take care of them) and not by the slaves themselves.
This is a hard saying for self-deluded Americans to accept. They want to raise Hell about 911 or wave their teabags or ogle Sarah Palin on TV. Persisting in their delusion of freedom, they destroy any real freedom they might still enjoy and in behaving like the Jerks they have become--whether by blocking traffic or shouting down a speaker--they degrade what little is left of our civilization.
"Then what's your alternative, wise guy?" Tomorrow, eat well, drink deep, and enjoy the company of the family and friends who gather in your house, and if your nephew or brother-in-law wants to turn on the game, encourage him with good grace to watch it in the other room.
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I have heard the "too Catholic" canard many times. Interestingly, I have frequently been denounced for anti-Catholic views. There would be a number of ways to measure objectively the magazine's Catholicity. One would be to tabulate the religion of its editors. I count roughly 5 practicing Catholics and another two or three ex or non-practicing, three Orthodox (in varying degrees of commitment), and 10 Protestants. Or we could look at the writers who have written the most articles on religious topics: the late Harold O.J. Brown, Aaron Wolf, Mark Tooley, and Fr. Barbour-again three to one.
I think that what really disturbs people is not any imagined attachment to the Vatican and the Magisterium today as our interest in and commitment to the long-standing traditions of the Church, our fidelity to the ancient classics, our rejection of modernity. This offends more Catholics than it attracts. Indeed, I sometimes think that we are most attractive to the Orthodox, from whom I rarely hear complaints. To be frank, I have never been a very churchy person and I find certain forms of popular piety, whether Protestant or Catholic, repellant. I am as put off by EWTN programming as by Pat Robertson and regard celebrity priests and their little movements to save humanity with as much disdain as I feel for Protestant TV preachers.
While on the subject of what is distasteful, I shall never be reconciled to the habits of people my age and younger, who divert a conversation from something objective to something personal or subjective. A discussion of music turns, within a second, from the formalities to "what I like," just as a conversation about who subscribes to a magazine turns into a question of the editors' religion or temperament. The Internet, as I have remarked many times, with its proliferation of websites and under the shelter of pseudonymity, encourages this impertinence. I am no longer particularly annoyed by it, but a rational man will seek to avoid such interchanges.
Finally, I wonder if anyone is disturbed by the basic argument I made in the original article, that certain forms of political resistance are likely to increase servility, first by inviting an inevitable crackdown and, more importantly, by keeping the resister so attached to the system that he forfeits much of his moral liberty. A decent counter-argument might be made that even subjects of a tyranny have a moral and civic obligation to work for amelioration. It is a question of degree and our sphere of life. One might, by sitting on a local arts council, defeat some of the more dreadful proposals to deface public places with so-called art. Of course, if one belongs to the ruling class, one might feel even more compelled to behave like a Paetus Thrasea or Helvidius Priscus, bearing in mind that both were forced to commit suicide. Even Tacitus, while praising the former, appears to condemn the needless self-sacrifice of the latter.
PS I would invite Don to read the response given above regarding multiple explanations. Chronicles has published many articles by combat veterans and we are proud to have had Admiral Stockdale as a writer and board member. It is simply not true that we are anti-military simply because we oppose the unjustifiable military actions of the Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Don should be content to say, "I make my living off the military-industrial complex, and I am not going to subscribe to any publication that does not promote war," and let it go at that. Self-interest is among the more honorable motives of postmodern man.
Tacitus says Paetus Thrasea was discussing the immortality of the soul with friends on the day he was notified of his death sentence, and before retiring to slice his own wrists in defiance of the injustice. Perhaps I am too inclined to a Herodotus style of history, but I always find these details surrounding such circumstances full of wonder and a-musement. So, Tom, you must forgive me at times for mistaking the bad habit of waundering off topic, from that contentment I find in wonder.
Robert, you have not at all distracted the conversation but in fact helped it off the detour. The double "suicide" of Paetus and his wife Arria are also comemorated in a famous poem of Martial:
Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto,
quem de visceribus strinxerat ipsa suis,
"Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet," inquit,
"sed tu quod facies, hoc mihi, Paete, dolet.
"Finally, I wonder if anyone is disturbed by the basic argument I made in the original article, that certain forms of political resistance are likely to increase servility, first by inviting an inevitable crackdown and, more importantly, by keeping the resister so attached to the system that he forfeits much of his moral liberty."
I am not disturbed. I hate to fly these days but I suppose others hate it as well. The economist would find a silver lining in the fact the TSA has driven down demand which lowers rates. My advice is to not protest, lose some weight, check your baggage, carry nothing aboard and travel in a swimsuit or Hooters costume. We are all Globalist these days anyway.
Dear Don and the next four,
I am sending a check today for five subscriptions to Chronicles. Please mail your address to Mr. Christopher Check at
The Rockford Institute
928 North Main Street
Rockford, IL 61103.
Anybody as forthright and honest as you non-subscribing lurkers, deserves a subscription to Chronicles. Merry Christmas or as we said in the Marines, Semper Fi!!
Dr Fleming, much to ire of some potential readers, I wish we'd see more coverage of Catholic topics. So many of our co-religionists are being led astray by the ham-handed Catholicism of many traditionalists, many of whom are still in reality liberal, and I fear the future consequences.
I think it was in 2004 that I first subscribed to Chronicles. I remember that at the time I had wished that I had known of the magazine's existence a decade earlier so that I could have read it during my college years. That sentiment was only strengthened when I purchased every available back issue that I did not already have in last year's sale and began reading what I had missed. The way in which Chronicles manages to bring together talented writers from perspectives as different as anti-war libertarianism and Christian traditionalism and out of these parts fashion a whole that is unified and full of wisdom and common sense is a marvelous accomplishment and one for which Dr. Fleming and his staff deserve much praise.
Proof that advertising works: I stumbled on this web site through a link several years ago. I subscribed a month later. I wish it was a weekly!
#57
"Dr Fleming, much to ire of some potential readers, I wish we’d see more coverage of Catholic topics."
I share that desire, My Maxwell. Indeed, I found (and subsequently subscribed to) Chronicles through my search for thought-provoking Catholic content on the web.
@4 KDZ,
I thought TJF had used "fatitude" as a pun on beatitude. As I conceived it, this would serve, beyond noting their deplorable affect, to link the condition of certain fat people to the moral realm; and be in keeping with the good doctor's unfailing regard for the moral dimension. I hear in "beatitude" also a trace of "blissful", which well describes the ignorance of many fatties as to their true appearance. In any case, yes, a wonderful coinage.
You're right, Mr. Jacobi--"beatitude" fits. And what about just "dude"--I hear a slight and perhaps unconscious mockery of that word in "fatitude."
I had thought about the issue Dr Fleming brings up @51. I had decided not to travel by air. Total avoidance seemed the sensible thing to do. That wont matter much, since I dont travel anyway. Even so, it would now be auto or bus for me, or perhaps some cheap passage on a cargo ship.
Why would anyone want to confront these groping perverts and contemptible little Hitlers anyway? Why even go around them?
My wife and I are departing this week on a mission to "rescue" her uncle who lives in Waukegan, Illinois. He is ill and my wife and her mother and brother are his only living relatives. He is in the hospital, having fallen two days in a row. I think he may have suffered a mild stroke, not his first. He is independent and stubborn, but we are going to try to convince him to move in with us. (His sister, my wife’s mother who suffers from dementia, already lives with us.) I refuse to fly because of airport security, so we are going to drive the 800 miles from Annapolis. (We’ll also be able to visit with my brother, sister, cousins and their families, who live in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about 30 minutes from Waukegan.) Your prayers for a safe and successful trip will be much appreciated.
I've been a CHRONICLES subscriber for a number of years, but only very occasionally submit anything online. I very much enjoy actually holding copies of the magazine in my hand, carrying it around with me to various parts of the house. I have given at least one gift subscription (but cannot afford to do that very often). CHRONICLES is, by far, my favorite magazine--it is the most intelligent, most thought-provoking, best written journal published in these (Dis-)United States today. I hope to do more for it in the future....
As to its Catholicism, well, I think the balance is just fine; indeed, I would have no problem with a bit more. Over the years I have introduced four or five new subscribers to CHRONICLES. None of them are Catholic, but they would not miss a single issue for anything. In a certain sense, CHRONICLES reminds me of the "old," pre-Neo-con NATIONAL REVIEW when Chilton Williamson, Joe Sobran, et al, actually wrote quality pieces for that fallen rag--except that CHORNICLES is better. I read it from cover to cover. Along with THE REMNANT, CULTURE WARS, THE ANGELUS, THE GRAMOPHONE, FANFARE, and a number of foreign journals of opinion (VERBO, etc.), CHRONICLES has repeatedly inspired me, provoked me into thinking anew about certain issues, and always given me intelligent and well-thought-out essays on significant topics.
For this I remain extremely grateful. My fondest hope is that one day a president of the US of A (or at the very least, perhaps a president of a reconfigured Confederate States of America!!) will be a faithful CHRONICLES subscriber. Wouldn't that be nice!?
Boyd D. Cathey
Mr. Van Sant: You will be only an hour from beautiful Rockford. Please let us know if you can stop by and we would give you lunch and a tour of our majestic offices. I know you are on a mission of mercy, but it is not much longer--and probably an easier drive--to go or return to Maryland via Rockford/Bloomington IL/Indianapolis. Avoiding Chicago is a good idea for many reasons.
Chronicles, magazine and website, is attractive to this Orthodox Christian subscriber for it's intelligence, civility and good humour. Hang in there.
I've been a subscriber for 15 years and have ordered as many back issues as I could, along with several books. Chronicles magazine is a monthly morale-booster.
Thank you very much for your kind invitation, Dr. Fleming. (I totally agree with your advice about avoiding Chicago. It is the worst part of the trip.) I would very much like to stop by Rockford to visit with you. I’ll try my best to do that, but won’t promise anything because our time is going to be short. We have to arrange around the clock care for my wife’s mother while we are gone because she is not able to care for herself. A lot also depends on the health of my wife’s uncle, who is now in the hospital. In addition to his physical problems, he may be very confused after being hospitalized, which is common for people his age.
Last spring I made a trip via auto ( I avoid air travel until such time as they allow me to be shipped via FEDEX) from my home in Eastern Ohio to Minnesota. Since my route took me right by Rockford I thought of stopping by the offices but wasn't sure if such visits were possible or whether they would be a disruption. I would love to visit in a future trip.
As for avoiding Chicago, I can certainly second that motion! On the way out, traffic and construction slowed the interstate to a crawl so I thought I would get off the highway and make my way through the immediate southern suburbs. I would absolutely not advise repeating my foolish mistake! That experience made me want to move immediately to Greenland or some distant place! It was awful, depressing and not a little terrifying. The return trip through Chicago via interstate was hardly much of an improvement.
You all have definitely convinced me. I have ridden free over a year now, and I confess that I had no idea how affordable the print version is. I must subscribe.
Over the last year, I have learned more truth and received more intellectual enjoyment from this website (both the columns and the comments) than in all the previous 30 years of my life. I have been detoxing from state education by devouring your archives, as well as the books which come up in your pages and which you recommend. Buying and reading Dr. Wilson's "Dixie" has been an education unto itself, and I've gotten a separate one in reading The Morality of Everyday Life. One friend is now borrowing my copy of "Dixie", and another has bought his own. Both have completely come around to the correct view of 1861-1865. So, seeds of truth are being sown. For Dr. Fleming and the Chronicles staff, be encouraged! My small group of friends and I represent newcomers to Chronicles, and we hope to pitch in financially for you all one day, even as we are already supportive (but unremunerative) admirers, being aged 28-31. If I had my 'druthers, I would gift a subscription to several friends and relatives, and one of these days I will do so. You all are doing great work, and I am deeply grateful for it.
We welcome visits from subscribers, particularly those who have made themselves known to us by way of letters or posts on the website. Naturally, it is more convenient if we have some advance notice, especially since we have to be out of town fairly frequently, and, if you let us know in advance, we can email a map to the Institute. We are about 10-15 minutes off I-90. Traffic here is like the business scene: minimal.
When I came to Rockford--some time after the Spanish American War--we had an aging readership. More recently, I find it is often younger readers, at least readers younger than I am, who most appreciate what we are trying to do. Messages such as this one from Mr. Jinkerson, give us all a good deal of inspiration. If his experience is like that of many younger readers, it begins with surprise, even with irritation at our apparently paradoxical positions, but after a few issues and after reading a few of the books we recommend, a pattern begins to be discerned, a pattern that makes sense of what we already dimly know to be true, despite all we are told in school. Gene Genovese once said (I think in the New Republic) that Chronicles was dangerous--he meant this as a compliment--because we could give a coherent and articulate interpretation that resonated with what normal people already believe in their hearts. Anyway, thanks.
My family, my church, my parish, good food, good drinking, good fishing, good reading and Chronicles magazine make life worth living. I'll cut Chronicles another check before Christmas.
Chronicles, and Dr Fleming in particular, helped me finally see through my libertarian errors. Count me as another young reader in the same age group as Mr Jinkerson who has been enriched by your wonderful work.
When I found Chronicles at around the age of 20 (now 28), I was relieved to have found a magazine (and institute) that seemed to confirm all of my good instincts that a life of state indoctrination (save 4 years in a Catholic high school) had done its best to purge me of. I was well on my way to becoming a neocon (what else was there?) and even wrote a senior political science thesis, the subject of which would make any professional neocon proud. By the time I was finished writing and defending it, I was disgusted with it.
That's a long-winded way of saying I'm grateful to Chronicles for providing me an intellectual (and to some extent cultural) home and implore all those lurking on the website, particularly the under 30 crowd, to subscribe!
I am a Missouri Synod Lutheran in the process of applying for application at seminary. I am a Chronicles subscriber and greatly appreciate the pieces written by Dr. Flemming, Scott Richert, and Father Barbour. These gentlemen do not make me as a Lutheran feel like an enemy of Western Civilization, unlike many RC bloggers out there. Although some of their statements may at times shake me to the core, this forces me to examine what I believe and why.
I can echo Mr. Jinkerson in that I also was initially revolted by some of the statements of the Chronicles editors, but was eventually won over. I will go so far as to say that thanks to the Chronicles editors I am now able to think about the world we live in, rather than base my opinions on my subjective emotions.
@41: Last Patriot: In case you might still be reading here. My life is difficult, but far from impossible. If necessary I will go on disability--I just despise the thought of dependence on the state. I was a quadriplegic before I was unemployeed; I worked as a computer programmer, and was let go so the company could do more outsourcing to India and the Philippines (though of course, that is not what they said). I have a good family who will rescue me financially if necessary, though I wish to avoid that. In the mean time I plug away trying to find some means of income, especially since I am physically unable to put in the 50 plus weekly hours required by the few still employed in my profession in America. There are better places to put your money right now. Donate the $100 to Chronicles!
Chronicles is one of the best publications out there. If you only read the online content, you only see the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of Chronicles content is in print, not online, so subscribe today!
As an aside, regarding the digital vs. print debate, here's an interesting take:
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/avoiding-a-digital-dark-age/1
I enjoy online publications -- in fact, most publications I read are only online -- but, for the sake of posterity, there are advantages to print publications. The data on CDs now last about a decade; data on papyrus have lasted 2,000 years.
Harry Colin said:
" ... so I thought I would get off the highway and make my way through the immediate southern suburbs. I would absolutely not advise repeating my foolish mistake! ..."
I resemble that remark! I live in the "immediate southern suburbs."
You probably got off 80 and went north and ended up in Dolton or Harvey. Not good places. Harvey, for example, with its history of corrupt mayors and gangbangers moonlighting as cops. However, just SW of Harvey you have Homewood and Flossmoor, which are well-managed, are historic railroad towns (not sprawlburbs), and still relatively good places to live. Like the city itself, the suburbs are a patchwork -- good, bad, and in-between areas. Parts are permanently depressed due to the shutdown of manufacturing, and other economic policy reasons.
However, I have to say that you can't leave your door unlocked around here any more, like you could 30 years ago.
I just discovered this website. I'd like to subscribe, as soon as I secure an income.
Feel free to remove this if it isn't wanted, but I thought it would add to the original topic. And yea, I could have quoted from Western sources, but I recently read Bushido... Book stores don't carry much outside Enlightenment and Eastern in the philosophy section now.
Frank,
Thank you. "prohibiting the wearing of swords, rang out the old, “the unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise,” it rang in the new age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators” This is something good, beautiful and true.
I could not pick a similar time in the West but probably that time between Knights riding dressed in Red with a White cross on their back and the invention of the automobile, is when we drew our last breath. God Bless you for posting it.
Daniel Maxwell,
a major subscriber group used to be Southern protestants. I admit we're nuts, but the Catholics are in the padded cell next door.
The only reason I'm not currently a subscriber, and I'm a Southerner, is there was some problem delivering to my former address. I could have straightened it out with a call, but I was short on time then. Also, I think I was angry about an article that was published then - I'd label it "Rainbow Confederate". Regardless, this is the first place I learned actual political content, and there's no where better.
Francis in reply to Dr. Gottfried writes:
Perhaps we ought to rebuild on these traditions. I just attend and accept that PC USA is nuts.
"Frank" has made my day. That Chronicles can be accused of being anti-Southern and pro multi-cultural for publishing an article suggesting the South is a patchwork of several cultural traditions? What's next? We are anti-Latin because we emphasize Greek?
I know no harm is meant here, but I remember well how, back when I was on the board of the League of the South, how the monomaniacal obsession with Celts and Calvinism were driving good Southerners out--English Anglicans, German Lutherans, Huguenots, Canary Islanders and Cajuns from Louisiana, Irish Catholics whose ancestors fought in the War. When I pushed for a bit of inclusiveness to keep us from going down the drain like every single other southern group, some--by no means all or even a majority--Celto-Calvinists started talking about multi-culturalism. The same people told me they didn't need to study history or classics, because the Southern rural tradition was a high civilization. And, just to show how Anti-Southern we are, we have just published two volumes of Chronicles' writing on the South by the outstanding Southern writers of our time: ME Bradford, Clyde Wilson, Andrew Lytle, Tom Landess, George Garrett...
Robert,
after entering those by hand, I googled and found this. Haha, it's online, of course.
When I read it, I think of the Olde South which had feudal characteristics. I see too much through the lends of that war - for me chivalry died in 1865...
The book is short and beautiful; it can be read in a day. I was praising Naruto in here for awhile, a Japanese childrens' cartoon haha, and it was really Bushido that drew me in, for the most part. Ah, I've found no other comics as worth reading - I've wasted my time searching (since it has mass appeal).
Frank,
One problem that is prevalent today with popular interest in Eastern culture is the failure to understand our own culture. I have heard, I do not know, that there are still contemplative houses in China and elsewhere in that region, where the integity of their traditions are still maintained. For instance,the only American to ever win a martial arts championship in China married a Chinese wife and spent years studying under the Chinese masters. The folks who peddle this stuff in America are usually a eastern version of Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code fame --frauds (“sophisters, economists, and calculators)simply trying to sell books and services for a living. \
So while I do respect their ancient culture it is only in its similarity to our own ancient culture that I can admire it. In other words, their warriors are only known to me thorugh my understanding of the Spartans, The Athenians, The Romans and Christian Knights like Oliver, Jackson, Lee, and Patton who also prayed on their knees.
Dr. Fleming,
one bona fide redneck has resubscribed.
Thank God, Frank. I was beginning to feel marginalized. Welcome aboard.
Dr. Fleming,
My Rainbow comment had to do with amalgamation (I prefer the term miscegenation and recall you writing on this), the term Rainbow Confederate taken from Sam G. Dickson's "Race and the South" found within Francis's Race and the American Prospect, which I first saw advertised here at Chronicles. I accept that I'm outside the mainstream among paleos on this one issue (only), and I don't wish to impose my views here.
Truly, I owe you a lot for my education, especially the encouragement to read the Greeks and Romans and to see the flaws in capitalism. You're a true expert in your field.
My full name is in my e-mail address and in the subscription.
Robert,
Bushido by Nitobe Inazō was written for a Western audience originally in English; however many of the Eastern classics are available to us in English, so we can reach some understanding through them. Bushido was eventually translated into Japanese; it then supposedly had a significant impact on Japanese society (WWII? I'll have to check the book.) You bring to mind the Dalai Lama, haha.
Been a Chronicles subscriber for 10 years now. The magazine has been the adult education I did not get at the Naval Academy. While living in Sicily in the early 2000s, the articles in Chronicles enriched the experience - my first foray into the Old Continent. (After three years, I returned home embarrassed and ashamed of my countrymen and the way they behave, especially abroad.) Fleming's and Trifkovik's criticisms of the Iraq war - before and after it began - informed my decision to resign my commission as a naval officer. I have the highest regard for Chronicles and the contributing authors; and would pay double the current subscription rate.
Ah, the pleasure of schadenfreude.
I've been having lots of fun cackling at the expense of my fellow Chroniclers who have run afoul of big bad Chicago. I especially loved the story of the little lamb who got separated from the fold and found himself on - the horror! - the South Side! Yes Yes, even Greenland is preferable to the South Side! Allow me to suggest to travelers that if some emergency so dire should arise that stepping foot on a Chicago street absolutely cannot be avoided, at least do so on the North Side, where some glimmer of civilization still exists.
#83, I concur completely with Dr. Fleming's observation of the derailing of the Southern movement by Celticists and Calvinists
with completely ignorant as well as divisive views of the genuine Southern tradition.
I remember listening to a tape of an address given by a leader in the Southern movement in which he said that the South was (paraphrasing here) 'predominately Anglo-Celtic, protestant, and Presbyterian' and that if it ever ceased to be so, it would cease to be the South.
That cant be true if the Baptists were the largest denomination (at least post-war), and Davis and Lee were Episcopalian, and Beauregard was a Francophone Catholic, and the South the seat of Catholicism in Anglo North America, and Reformed Judaism came from Charleston. Why in the world would these latter day Confederates, who seem to have been good people, wish to turn a movement devoted to independence into an inter-denominational quarrel? There's something wrong with that mentality.
Mr. Allen Wilson,
I'm Low Country South, but the US overall was 80% English around its independence.
-
Searching for a different book, I found this from Harvard University Press:
The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States.