Rice: The Evil of Two Lessers
Even before Barack Obama's second inauguration, the impending retirement of Hilary Clinton is providing Republicans with their first opportunity to challenge the President. It appears to be no secret that the shortlist of candidates the President is considering for his next Secretary of State includes John Kerry and Susan Rice.
Can the President really be serious in nominating Rice? Her cockeyed explanation of the Benghazi attack that cost the lives of four Americans has made her a prime target for Republicans and even moderate Democrats who do not always put their party ahead of the nation's interest. My friends and loyal readers may remember that from the beginning I mocked the story of a spontaneous uprising sparked by a poorly made film.
Rice was suspiciously cautious in stating that her conclusions were based on 'the currently available information.' Her defenders cite this as an example of prudence and sincerity, but for the most part her version has not been backed up by US intelligence sources. Although it might be rash, today, to describe her explanation as a lie, Dr. Johnson would have used the word without hesitation. What else is when someone pretends to have knowledge or speaks with assumed authority, when there is no basis for his (or her) knowledge or expertise. When Al Gore speaks as a climatologist, Hilary Clinton as a foreign affairs expert, or Newt Gingrich as a conservative guru, they are liars in this sense.
If I were writing a political novel, I would tell the story as a clever feint on the President's part: He pretends to be offering the completely unacceptable Rice, while actually preparing the way for John Kerry. There are many reasons for Senate Republicans to reject Kerry, but confronted with Rice, they are all ready to breathe a sigh of relief if the President actually taps the Vietnam veteran who accused his comrades-in-arms of war crimes.
If such speculation is entirely fanciful, then we are left having to explain why this administration would even consider Rice as a possibility. She is, it is true, a reliable leftist with all the right credentials, and she is almost as shrill as Madame Clinton in denouncing any regime or leader who does not bear the seal of approval of the Brookings Foundation and The New York Times. She was among the first to declare that Gadafi just had to go, no matter what the consequences.
But shrill rhetoric and irrational hysteria are not the only qualifications for senior positions in American diplomacy and security. If we look over some of the more distinguished Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors, we can detect a pattern of sorts.
There are the bland diplomatic types who walk softly and carry a big stick: John Foster Dulles, Brent Scowcroft, and even - though I might shock conservatives - the suave Dean Acheson. But in more recent years, we have seen scolds and bullies with special axes to grind: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeline Albright, Hilary Clinton.
Brzezinski, who advised the Carter administration to get involved in Afghanistan, declared in an interview with Der Spiegel that he did not regret any negative consequences because nothing that went on in that part of the world was comparable to the freedom of Eastern Europe. In other words, he admitted putting Polish interests ahead of those of the US.
Albright, born in Czechoslovakia, spent several years in Yugoslavia before Tito's takeover forced her family to flee. Her background and experiences may well explain the aggressive stance she took in promoting the US bombing of Serbian cities.
Hilary Clinton was, of course, born in the United States, but she is a tireless advocate of women's rights and has, at times, justified US military intervention in Iraq on the grounds that we were liberating women. It does not appear to occur to Clinton, that our invasions and our support for 'Arab Spring' have contributed to the Islamization that will have exactly the opposite effect.
Susan Rice fits the Brzezinski/Clinton model perfectly. As an African-American she has understandably taken a strong interest in African affairs. Her dissertation was titled 'Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe, 1979-1980: Implication for International Peacekeeping.' I have not read this fascinating work, but it is an interesting topic. In 1979-80, the Commonwealth (actually the UK) helped to overthrow the existing regime in Rhodesia and brokered a fragile constitutional compromise whose end result was the brutal dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, which endures to this day. Bravo, well done!
Rice has devoted much of her subsequent career to African issues and peacekeeping missions (naturally the two interests often coincide). In supporting the multi-national mission to overthrow the disgusting Mobutu, Rice allegedly said, 'Anything is better than Mobutu.' Such a remark, if she made it, displays the naive lack of imagination that is always rewarded in Washington.
Like any sane conservative, I am opposed to Rice's nomination, if only because of her unconvincing theatrical performances in the wake of the Benghazi disaster. But I also object to the nomination of one more special interests diplomat.
Yes, it is difficult and perhaps impossible to sort through one's loyalties and even to make the attempt of working objectively for the American national interest. Some US diplomats, however, have made the effort. I don't think Colin Powell was terribly effective either as National Security Advisor or as Secretary of State, but, whatever he might have felt personally, he did not take a special interest in Jamaican affairs or presume to speak out for Africans everywhere.
As the proverbial nation of immigrants, the United States has been vulnerable, from the beginning, to ethnic politics. Big cities like Chicago and New York were ruled by political machines that employed ethnic wardheelers--German, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish--to get out the vote. In return, the ethnics expected something for themselves and something for their community. By and large, the system worked better than many progressive alternatives.
Local warheeling is inevitable in a diverse country, but it also permeates US foreign policy. As Woodrow Wilson contemplated American entrance into WW I, he had to take into account the strong opposition of German (including German-Jewish) and Irish Americans and the strong support of Anglo-Americans and East European Jews. According to one academic thesis, the Poles tipped the scales in favor of intervention.
Even in George Washington's administrations, the President could see that the Jeffersonians, nursing their understandable grudge against Britain, were too inclined to support the French, just as Hamilton and many Federalists were too eager to make it up with England. He wisely warned against the baneful effects of entangling alliances. What no one could have foreseen, however, was that US foreign policy would one day be held hostage to every kind of minority interest: feminists and homosexualists, capitalists and Marxists, environmentalists, and the thousand and one ethnic and religious minorities that make it virtually impossible for Americans to have a sense of the common good.
It used to be said that politics stops at the water's edge. This did not mean that politicians in going abroad were not to air their opinions about US policies but that political leaders, in debating and implementing foreign policy, had to seek a common ground and form a united front in the nation's interest. The current Secretary of State, however, has behaved like a scolding schoolmarm on the world's stage. With Susan Rice, we can expect more of the same.
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Even before Barack Obama's second inauguration, the impending retirement of Hilary Clinton is providing Republicans with their first opportunity to challenge the President. It appears to be no secret that the shortlist of candidates the President is considering for his next Secretary of State includes John Kerry and Susan Rice.
No secret, nor any surprise, that, after the tenure of a Secretary of State who has conducted herself more as a war-machine propagandist and manipulatress than as a diplomatic apologist, we should be confronted with the choice between a most uncharismatic figure (to be more kind than accurate in describing Senator Kerry) and a puppet.
There are many reasons for Senate Republicans to reject Kerry, but confronted with Rice, they are all ready to breathe a sigh of relief if the President actually taps the Vietnam veteran who accused his comrades-in-arms of war crimes.
There is another reason for Senate Republicans to back Kerry: his accession would give them, by my offhand and non-scientific conjecture, about a 65 percent chance of putting Scott Brown back in the Senate.
But in more recent years, we have seen scolds and bullies with special axes to grind: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeline Albright, Hilary Clinton.
Certainly, Madame Clinton has plenty of axes to grind, mostly relating to female anatomy or state-sanctioned murder of children or both. And of course the inferiority complex that comes with following up on her husband's record abroad, which repugnant though it may be to conservatives, smacks of a man who, for all of his faults, at least understood what made the world turn. Madame Clinton, however, did and does not, and furthermore was awarded Secretary of State as a consolation prize. The Obama puppeteer-hand and the DNC machine ware moving her mouth her every step of the way. And on that note:
If such speculation is entirely fanciful, then we are left having to explain why this administration would even consider Rice as a possibility.
I really wonder, good Dr. Fleming, whether anything that Rice said about the Bengazi attacks was of her own making? Or was she simply saying what the DNC bankrollers and the White House wanted her to say? If the latter, then she is, for this reason and for the reasons you detail further on, the logical successor to Madame Clinton.
I'm not, of course, making a case for Rice, at least not in the absolute sense. For all the reasons you have discussed, I think she would be abysmal. And yet precisely those same reasons, I am afraid, make quite a strong case for Barack Hussein Obama to push her forward for nomination:
Clinton is tactless and geopolitically retarded but is rather creative and otherwise fairly intelligent. This limited the big guns' flexibility in wielding her. Rice's sheer lack of tact or originality, coupled with her gross misunderstanding of not just geopolitics but of anything under the sun, may well be exactly what the administration is looking for. From this practical point of view, about the only thing Rice lacks that Clinton and to a lesser extent Kerry possess is a powerful brand name abroad.
In supporting the multi-national mission to overthrow the disgusting Mobutu, Rice allegedly said, 'Anything is better than Mobutu.' Such a remark, if she made it, displays the naive lack of imagination that is always rewarded in Washington.
Indeed, and Rice seems to have forgotten the mantrum that no problem is ever so bad that it cannot get worse.
"In 1979-80, the Commonwealth (actually the UK) helped to overthrow the existing regime in Rhodesia and brokered a fragile constitutional compromise whose end result was the brutal dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, which endures to this day. Bravo, well done! "
Tom,
I always thought Mugabe's Chikurubi prison would be a nice place for Susan Rice to visit, but I doubt she would want to live there.
I know I am an old fogey, but I really dislike the style of internet commentary where the commenter pastes a series of the writer's sentences and then tacks on his own responses. It's a little like the technique used by rappers who incorporate other people's material. Worse, it distorts and trivializes the argument of the original piece while encouraging the commenter not to develop a coherent response. Yes, I know that everybody does it these days, and that there are circumstances where it is justified, as when one commenter is responding to another commenter's remarks and wants to make it clear what he is referring to. In other circumstances I find it inappropriate.
Dr. Fleming,
You are an Old Fogey, and a cuss of one at that. Who else could even remember half of what you know besides an ancient old fogey? . I posted your comment about things getting worse instead of better because it was true and because Chikurubi prison is a living example of it. For Goodness sake, Man !!
To my friend the hanging judge, a more careful reading of my note will quickly reveal it was addressed to our friend Nicholas and posted the same time as the judge was posting his.
Ah, yes. Well, I took it only as a charitable correction like others you have offered me before, as when I failed to follow simple north/south driving directions, or allowed the standard shift transmission to float on the inclines, drinking too much before important events, riding buses when walking would be faster and a half a dozen other venial sins against friendship. I actually suspected the same, but since I probably have a thicker skin than my Tory friend across the pond, I decided to play the whig and act as chief innovator.
A good artcile about Secretary of State nominees all the same. Rem tene ... etc.
Mrs. Rice, among others in the current administration and in previous administrations, represents the continuation of the Brezhnev Doctrine in the American idiom of that ideology in Africa and elsewhere. Meantime, the Chinese, using and simultaneously ridding themselves of their cheap American dollars, are entering into long-term contracts for resources and markets in Africa and elsewhere.
Frankly speaking, by design fortunately, a woman's determinate emotion can shift so markedly. Her prevailing sensibility in the moment so as to avoid [her] cognitive dissonance, expunges the prior emotion from the record as if it never existed. Given how U.S. foreign policy is conducted by both 'genders' or sexes in effeminate America, this recommends her gender in particular to the post, Secretary of State as not only suited but ideal. I'm guessing Dr. Fleming you're anticipating her appointment for the job at hand. John Kerry in having to feel something at all as he speaks, even if not cognitively disconcerted, nonetheless lacking the self-hypnotic feminine gift of erasure regarding the antecedent, will regrettably appear more bumblingly clown-like, under our present situation and its surrounding state of foreign affairs.
She is an actual WOMAN Susan is, presumably, and so perhaps from that post we (within our sad circumstance) and the rest of the world ought to forbear in continuing to hear Her ROAR. This as a practical matter, although the novelty of the performance admittedly begins, and perhaps with the rest of the world's audience as well to wear thin.
"Frankly speaking, by design fortunately, a woman's determinate emotion can shift so markedly....."
Michael,
I don't know if it is by design, but it is true. Boethius while speaking with Lady philosophy put it this way.
“Nunc fluens facit tempus,
nunc stans facit aeternitatum.
(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity) I have always thought women more inclined to the contemplative life because of this disposition and ability to focus. Looked at from their perspective they are always right. (kinda)
Yet another man put it this way in speaking about designs : "A materialist Darwinian was having dinner with me a few years ago and we laughingly alluded to how, as years go by, one forgets names. Eager, as committed Darwinians often are, to testify on any occasion, my friend asserted: "lt is because when we were simply anthropoid apes, there was no need to distinguish between one another by giving names."
This credal confession struck me as superstitious as anything my Primitive Baptist relatives may have believed about predestination or my Catholic family might believe about figurines they purchase at the monastic idol shop.
Susan Rice and John Kerry are two bees working the same hive, but make no mistake, they are not the same bees.
I figured as much. I'd use the excuse that I'm stylistically handicapped as a result of my generation, or that I like the simulation of "dialogue" too much, if that were any excuse.
About the only legitimate defense I can think of is that while the trivialization of your writing was a travesty on my part, Ms. Rice is a rather trivial figure herself, and the poor style of my response obscures that point I was trying to make. They might as well do away with the position (and expenditure) of secretary of state if they're going to promote her. It wouldn't change anything, either in perception or in fact. Given her public statements and the butchery acts she'd be following (and the drones buzzing around all over her), no one would really notice. I imagine hers would simply be a harmful but unremarkable tenure.
And thank you, Mr. Reavis, for your kindness, though if you don't mind me taking your comparison just a bit further I confess I'm a bit perturbed with myself to think I'd prompt someone to sink to the level of a Whig on my behalf. (At least it wasn't Champagne Socialism... I'd never be able to forgive myself.)
I should add that I would prefer not to presume to advise either a a stranger or someone older, but our friend young Nicholas always takes corrective suggestions with a good spirit.
Come back over to Paris, Dr. Fleming, and I'll give you a share in some of the truly awesome (in the literal sense of the word) spirits (I'd never even heard of a Champagne Cognac laced with notes of passionfruit) bestowed upon me on the occasion of my last birthday.
One other thing about Susan Rice's recommendations in "'Commonwealth Initiatives in Zimbabwe, 1979-1980 etc......" is that without President Jacob Zuma, a proud Zulu who has four wives and a fondness for dancing dressed in a leopard skin cloak and a kilt of animal tails with a cow-hide shield and spear, there would be no Robert Mugabe. The rich South Africa is supporting the broke Zimbabwe but not enough evidently.
It is so important that we spread democracy there ASAP !!
Read all about it : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/5345106/Half-of-prisoners-die-of-starvation-in-Zimbabwe-jails.html
Dr. Fleming faults Moses Nicholas for quoting parts of Fleming’s article before Nicholas presents his own commentary on Fleming’s points:
“It's a little like the technique used by rappers who incorporate other people's material. Worse, it distorts and trivializes the argument of the original piece while encouraging the commenter not to develop a coherent response.”
Fleming then concludes by saying usually the technique is “inappropriate”.
Pecksniffianism is the word that comes immediately to mind. How better to represent a writer or speaker than by using the speaker’s own words. That saves the reader from having to go back hunt through the speaker’s words for the right passage. Would it be better for Nicholas to put Fleming’s passages in Nicholas’s words at the risk of misrepresenting what was said?
At best the Fleming’s criticism is fribble.
Thank you for one of the most tightly constructed, well disciplined and flawlessly reasoned articles I have seen recently, here or elsewhere. I do not disagree with any of it. Which is remarkable since I almost always find something to complain about. Just one little, tiny, teeny, meaningless observation, if I may. I'm wondering if a battle with the Republicans in the Senate over Rice's confirmation may not be exactly what Obama wants? I get the feeling Obama wants to ramrod his agenda through Congress. I wonder if Obama will back away from any opportunity to humiliate the Republicans? Since it appears to me the Republicans in both houses of Congress are ready to crumble, Obama doesn't need to be gentle. I wonder if Obama even knows how to be gentle? He wants what he wants and that's the extent of his negotiating skills. Time will tell of course and we will observe this dance of fiddlers as it unfolds. Unscripted, partially scripted or fully scripted, whatever the case may be.
Mr. Reavis:
(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity) I have always thought women more inclined to the contemplative life because of this disposition and ability to focus. Looked at from their perspective they are always right. (kinda) -end quote
Yeah, given our distinctive good and bad points, Hers and ours, the net effect is she's slightly more spiritual. Except it doesn't preclude the fact he has to become a man; so she can remain a woman.
I think chance is included in the design, probably not the reverse.
The real, temporal paradox is that all things considered even so in the long pull she's the stronger, inferior gender.
Because I preferred to focus on one or two questions only, I did not take up the increasing arrogance of the President and his advisors--it has reached the hyperventilating stage. He may well welcome the clash, and considering the weakness of the opposition, he may have correctly assessed the situation. The one flaw in this strategy is that it is an unnecessary display of hybris. If he actually cares about his agenda, this conflict is a bit like the Gays in the Military controversy that Hilary foolishly forced on her husband. If the provocation is deliberate, it is stupid because unnecessary. Even a cornered rat may bite his tormentor, and Congressional Republicans may some day rise to the level of rats.
Susan Rice recently made a statement about how Palestinians will regret Abbas' decision to make Palestine an UN observer and that they will eventually discover that Fatah has compromised their interests and hurt peace by pushing for this status in UN.
In other words, despite not knowing Arabic or Hebrew or even living in Israel or West Bank, she knows perfectly well what are the interests of people who live there and better than they do. That kind of self-righteousness on her part was embarrassing, particularly since the vote has already been cast on the matter, and there is no point in further debate on what they should do. This kind of post-mortem shrillness is considered bad enough when it comes from sportsmen who lost a game, let alone from diplomat complaining about something once a negotiation is long over. And then, there is her third party judgment on what foreign leaders should or should not stand, such as Qadaffi. A complete busybody.
So I am not very endeared to this lady at all.
And no, I am not even an apologist for Palestinians. I don't even think they are a real ethnic group, but just a fake British invention.
Ms. Rice - I believe - represents the ultimate busybody. She is like every intrusive high school teacher who wants to know her student's personal lives and passes judgment on it. She is like every gossipy grandmother who announces who is or is not getting along. Or like every mother who spies on what her teenage daughter is doing. She is basically every uppity old woman who does not know how to mind her own business.
Actually, Mr. Bartley, I do happen to know Dr. Fleming, and he me, so whatever comments you may have about a hangup that might or might not be a matter of personal taste might best be saved for a different situation.
Prateek,
". She is like every intrusive high school teacher who wants to know her student's personal lives and passes judgment on it. She is like every gossipy grandmother who announces who is or is not getting along. Or like every mother who spies on what her teenage daughter is doing. She is basically every uppity old woman who does not know how to mind her own business."
Well,since I am somewhat conservative, I like grandmothers who take an interest in their families. I especially like Moms who supervise their teenage girls, and I like people who attempt to live their life with discretion, judgement, and charity. My problem with Ms. Rice is none of the above. I have no way of knowing those aspects of her life. My problem with Ms. Rice is that she views the world as though it desperately needs her and her country's blood and treasure to become all that it can be. I am of the opinion that one cannot give away what one does not possess and one should not ask of others what they are not willing to ask of themselves. In other words, she believes the world's public life is really America's private domain to fix, to correct, to change, to reinvent and all at great expense.
Mr. Reavis
I am in complete agreement.
Imagine if a Libyan were to declare that the time has come for an American President to step down.
Imagine if a Palestinian were to say that American voters have voted against their interests.
And imagine if Libyans and Palestinians thought it was their personal affair to see how things are reinvent America at their expense.
This is the sort of attitude we see from Ms. Rice.
Yes, and they even appear to dislike most parts of their own country. Ms. Rice for example was born and raised in Washington D.C. and is a Stanford graduate who would probably dislike the habits and beliefs of most ordinary citizens in fly over territory. Not only do most of us not like foreign entanglements, we don't like domestic entanglements either ---- Once upon a time as Clyde Wilson recalled :
"at a presidential debate in South Carolina. Mr. Ron Paul raised the question of whether Americans might be targets in part because our U.S. government involved their country ? The grandstanding New Yorker , Gulliani demanded a retraction and apology. How could anyone be allowed to doubt that everything the U.S. government has done has always been noble and good? How could anyone think that foreigners could ever have cause to hate us except for perverse resentment of our very goodness?
When the South Carolina audience applauded Giuliani's tantrum (Clyde Wilson) was not surprised at all, but felt a sting of shame. "
And it truly is a shame when normal, healthy communal ,southern pride can be so easily manipulated by a damned, yankee, apostate like Gulianni while one of their own cousins, Texan Ron Paul, gets heckled for wondering aloud...?? Oh Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.
I'm afraid, Mr. Reavis, that 'Southern Pride' is all but dead, save for the inherited memories of a scant, dwindling and increasingly elderly number, and for the well-meaning romanticism of a few of my own peers. The Calvinist Reformation that generated Puritan New England but had only nominally touched the families of the plantation colonies has despite all the resistance finished its work. "Conservative" Protestant Christianity across America increasingly resembles New England Puritanism of the 17th century and it will likely meet the same revolting fate as this latter.
It's not so much manipulation as it is the taking advantage of a people in transition from the Christian God to a rather different one.
Nick,
I quite agree. One would need to be a multi-millionaire stock jobber to live like the old southern yeomen of yesterday. It is sad but true. As for the "well-meaning romanticism of a few of my own peers.. " that would be me. I am an unapologetic lover of "my country." The people are so different and so much better than all the rest I have ever met, I simply can't help but say it. When you start burying your dead, is when you love them even more. As always, .....
Who was it that said it didn't matter who sits in the White House, because the foreign policy would always be run by the CFR?
The notion that Ms. Rice might be the sacrificial pawn opening the way to Kerry sounds entirely plausible. I thought her doomed the moment I heard B.H. Obama say she had "his full support" - that's a kiss of death in Mordor-on-the-Potomac, sure as anything.
A minor quibble with Dr. Fleming: after Ms. Albright's recent moment of sincerity in Prague, I did some digging through publicly available biographical material, to understand where her hatred came from. From what I can tell, it has nothing to do with Tito - in fact, his regime enabled her family to escape to the West following the Soviet crackdown on Benes. Instead, everything points to the fact that her patron in academia and politics alike was Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Mr. Reavis,
Two Saturdays ago, at about 11:00 a.m., a cool morning with a light breeze out of the northwest, the South, in the idiom of "well-meaning romanticism" flickered, from some dying ember deep with the cold ashes, not into a roaring inferno but into a gentle flame which might grace some niche in a sanctuary. One of our number, a compatriot, as we refer to ourselves, is in the last stages of terminal cancer, under hospice care; yet, he managed to accomplish two things: get a permit for a cemetery on his property so that he could be buried in the soil which his family has owned for generations and get a memorial stone for his ancestor who fell at Vicksburg and there lies in some unmarked mass grave. There, that morning, we held a standard ceremony with the dying descendant reading the eulogy and attended by prayer, poems and a musket salute. There gathered before the descendant were his cousins, about fourteen of them, sharing his lineage back to the memorialized soldier. Gathered around the new iron fence of the cemetery were kith and kin, neighbors and compatriots from a tri-state area. Some had on suits, some were in period dress, some were in blue jeans, and some were in camouflage. There were infants and geezers. Two of the pickups contained freshly killed field-dressed deer. Horses ranged close to the fence. On old Catahoula Leopard joined the group. I would later learn that he was the offspring of one of mine, Miss Samantha, who was my constant companion, all 120 pounds of her, for fourteen years. After the ceremony, the suited ones, the perioded ones, the camouflaged ones,the jeans ones, the infants, the geezers and the dog, with the horses trotting along, went up to the house for food, including venison stew.
Rice, Clinton and Kerry, regardless of which might become Secretary of State, can never represent our interests which quite frankly do not go much beyond the number of people we can draw to a memorial service on a cool Saturday during deer season. We are not inclined to find our interests in Libya, Egypt, Syria or Iran or in some policy against them. Our interests do not even extend to the Texas line, as much as we love Texans, some thirty miles away.
Thanks to Nebojsa Malic whose columns on Antiwar.com I used to read with great interest. I have never known why Albright had it in for the Serbs, apart from a general intolerance of the Orthodox that is common in East/Central European Jewish circles. Naturally, all the young men in Belgrade told the same story, that Mad tried to seduce a good-looking Serbian youth who repelled her disgusting advances. (In Belgrade there is almost always a dirty joke at the bottom of a political conspiracy. I do not say that they are wrong.)
Apart from the possible influence of Brzezinski on her mental outlook, one should not underestimate the hatred of all traditional European cultures by people of Albright's ilk, a word I am using in something closer to its original sense than is common today.
That is why I wrote so vaguely and indirectly of her "background and experiences." I also had to be vague in writing this for the Daily Mail, which has, through no fault or virtue of my own, suspended--perhaps temporarily--publication of its blogs (apart from regular DM columnists). For them, I also cut out a paragraph on Henry Kissinger's dual loyalties and some aspersions cast on the other wacky female surnamed Rice.
Mr. Peters,
Thank you very much for the beautiful response. It made me wonder through the weekend what post christian culture will look like in comparison. Kith and kin, neighbors and compatriots, infants and geezers gathering to bury the dead or consecrating a piece of ground to the dead is a christian practice as is admiration and respect for the differnt types attending --- "Some had on suits, some were in period dress, some were in blue jeans, and some were in camouflage " all were ancestors of the one who fell at Vicksburg. The modernists and destroyers fear our common Christian tradition leading to some type of exclusive uniformity instead of a necessary unity and order within a variety of types as you describe. It is really quite a beautiful thing they hate and admire you for loving it to the point of seeing it in all of its broken glory and describing it with such sympathetic honesty. It is a rare kind of courage in these times.
Dr. Fleming,
I can attest that even a rat will bite his tormenter if the rat is cornered. Exactly that happened to my paternal grandmother, Miss Mattie, when I was about five. She was the "oppressor." We came home, to her house, after church on a hot July evening. As we opened the French door, the street light flashed down the long hallway and there in a counter-flash shown the eyes of a big, black wood rat. She conjured up a broom and began to chase him up and down the long, high-ceilinged hall which was an old dogtrot which had been enclosed. She cornered him, well, in a corner, and according to his rattish ways, he attempted to use the angle to climb the wall. My grandmother, mawmaw, swung at him with a downward stroke of her broom, knocking herself to the floor and the rat to the floor. The rat ran up her dress but could get not further than her little belt and began to bite her. She grabbed the rat through her dress, let out a series of whoops which frightened me even more than I already was, ran onto the back porch, found her ball-peen hammer which she used to crack hickory nuts and beat the rat to death through her dress. She came back into the house exhausted, her dress torn and dripping in Mattie blood and rat blood. Miss Mattie always rubbed Winter Green on her arthritic joints. That night, her signature smell, which was that of Winter Green, mingled with that of kerosine which she had generously poured on her rat wounds. I know first hand what a cornered rat can do if he puts his mind to it.
Dr. Fleming,
Can you point me to that thesis ( or any other material) regarding Polish influence on U.S. entry into WW I? I do not question your judgement, it's just that how we got into that war has been a pet peeve of mine for ages, and, ahead of the centenary of 1914 and the flurry of axe-grinding books likely to come out, I really want to nail this one down.
Mr. Peters,
I see you and your compatriots, in refusing to forget the South, in facing oncoming death bravely, in restoring dignity to past deaths, and in right rearing of the next generation, as actualizing and proving what Thomas Mann wrote, in Disorder And Early Sorrow: "The past is immortalized; that is to say, it is dead; and death is the root of all godliness and all abiding significance."
Further on, Mann has Dr. Cornelius realize that "it is this conservative instinct of his, his sense of the eternal, that has found in his love for his little daughter a way to save himself from the wounding of the times. .... Yet Cornelius, pondering there in the dark, descries something not perfectly right and good in his love. .... There is something ulterior about it, in the nature of it; that something is hostility, hostility against the history of today, which is still in the making and thus not history at all, in behalf of the genuine history that has already happened, – that is to say, death. .... His devotion to this priceless little morsel of life and new growth has something to do with death, it clings to death as against life; and that is neither right nor beautiful – in a sense. Though only the most fanatical asceticism could be capable, on no other ground than such casual scientific perception, of tearing this purest and most precious of feelings out of his heart."
The present will not be denied, nor should it be, as the presence in your gathering of the infants, and the healthy young hunters who feed them, attests.