Not With a Bang, But With a Whimper

This is How The World Ends - Part IV

If, as I have contented in the first three parts of this series of post, the following is true -

1. We Americans are woefully ignorant of our rights, our Constitution and political philosophy in general
2. Our Constitutional Republic from those nice stories in history books is long dead
3. Our election process is completely incapable of fixing any of this (or our other massive problems of wars, failed economies etc. etc.)

Then what does the future hold and what are the solutions (or coping mechanisms if no solution is apparent)?

Some talk of a revolution in our future - but revolutions are a complicated business. Middle classes do not start revolutions or even participate or support them until they are well under way and almost over. Sure the middle class often provide the intelligentsia of a revolution but that is a small part of the bigger requirement. The rich do not start violent revolutions - they buy what they want in influence and power. The true foot soldiers of any revolution are the dispossessed, the poor and down-trodden.

Therein lies the fix, the poor and downtrodden in the US are riding pretty fat and happy (by relative standards of poor and downtrodden) on a US government gravy train. There are enough people within government that are capable of reading that understand the key ingredients in civil discontent. So long as a willing and compliant middle-class exists to consume and pay taxes the government will be able to buy the happiness and contentment of the poor. It is as simple as that.

In any event, no sane man looks to revolution with glee. Anyone that believes the War of American Independence was a revolution simply does not understand what the term really means. It was a separatist, nah a secession movement, not a revolution.

The foot soldiers (those poor and down trodden) are apt to follow the banner of any fool with a plan and a promise once the shooting starts. Change for the sake of change is something rationale people fear, particularly considering the history of revolutions.

No, the government will keep the poor placated, and in the event they occasionally rise up in violent riots the government will put them down and the middle class will rejoice that their welfare was protected.

There are probably many in the middle class that would like the idea of change, even if it involved violence. They probably also have a solid idea of what they would do to put everything back the way it was meant to be. But, when the rubber hit the road as they say the mad middle class guy has a house, a mini van and he really does not have time to start a revolution because he has to be at work by 9am in the morning. Middle-classes almost always trade safety and security for rights and freedoms.

Secession then you say. Well as an strong advocate of the legality of secession and a proponent of states' rights you might think I would say this is the solution...I doubt it.

First, if we are honest about it there is but one government now. Our states have lost all of their rights and all of their will to attempt to assert any rights. Government down to the local level is intertwined via federal grants and regulations. In cases where the federal government has not overtly asserted some control or influence many of our state and local government officials deffer to the question of "what is the national standard".

Second, our states no longer have any semblance of a heterogeneous culture or common polity. A woman from Arkansas can be a Senator from New York for goodness sakes. People move, leave familial and cultural bonds in pursuit of paper money and trinkets. A secession movement would have a very hard time in any state with such a mix of people.

Third, the middle class is bought and paid for just as the poor - it is called social security. Until it fails people expect to get what is coming to them - secede and lose that...never. A soul sold for 30 pieces of silver.


Pretty grim stuff and I am simply not wise enough to see a way out of this. Early on in this series of post I used comparisons of the German people from 1933 on to relate to some of our traits. We talked about the coup attempts on Hitler's life and the fact that a real revolution was never a possibility in Germany. Hitler may have died in one of the coups but nothing essential would have changed. The undoing of the Germans had already occurred, they were powerless (I did not say blameless) to alter their fate. I fear we are in the same boat. We cannot vote our way out of this mess now (too may accommodations in the past), revolution is not a realistic possibility and neither is secession.

I like optimist, they inspire people. Doomsayers just scare the heck out of folks. Yet, I find it difficult to muster optimism about our future.

I will now do something I have never done in my life, quote Martin Luther King Jr.

I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God

This was from a speech called "It's A Dark Day In Our Nation" explaining why he opposed the Vietnam War but the words are applicable for any number of events in our recent and not so recent history.

We have done wrong. We have allowed greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy and pride to rule us. We have even turned those vices into virtues of sorts. We have abandoned the wise teachings, learned through history, of our forefathers in preference for our perceived enlightened wisdom of modernity. We have traded liberty and freedom for safety and security.

Commenting on the American experiment Alex de Tocqueville said, "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." and "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

Pretty astute for a Frenchman in the mid 19th century but correct nonetheless.

And thus the world we thought we always knew, in the final analysis, ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

Stumble It!

Truth

This blog is called "Sell Civilization Short" for a reason. Civilizations do not fade out peacefully, as a rule. When they crumble, they expose the ugliness of rot.

...and I agree, a simple survey of just a sampling of headlines on a daily basis supports this claim

Stumble It!

Russell Means Speaks the Truth

Joshua points us to Russell Means' latest video offering and update about the Lakotah Republic. The thing that has impressed me all along with Means is that he presents a picture of a man that is not unhinged, rather a man unencumbered by wrong-thinking.

The strategy employed by the Republic thus far seems workable if rather unremarkable. I say unremarkable only in the sense that by the measure of what we have come to expect in political movements the Lakotah strategy appears calculated, paced and prudent - thus it is really not unremarkable at all but perhaps incredibly wise.

It is true the "victories" they have won over the last year in efforts to reassert sovereignty were victories in which the Federal and State governments essentially decided not to take the field on. Some might dismiss this as no progress at all.

I am not an insider into the thinking behind this paced strategy but I presume that these victories are not so much geared toward establishing boundaries of sovereignty - I think the leadership up there realizes that each victory cold be easily stripped away quickly if the Federals wanted. I think these are designed to show the Lakotah themselves that victories are possible, thus garnering support for the notion that this nation could indeed be free and sovereign again. In that I think it is a wonderfully wise approach.

Some may question the Lakotah Republics willingness to seek outsiders into the Republic. After all one may question might this not pollute the culture. To a paleoconservative such as myself this is a valid question.

To those with such questions I would ask this. What of the real Lakotah culture still exists after confinement to government run reservations? When Means talks about recruiting folks to help establish sustainable living solutions it seems to me this is a paleoconservative approach - it appears the only way to return the culture to some of its previous core values. Values lost in the imprisonment on reservations.

It saddens me that the majority of the Lakotah people do not yet embrace what appears their best option to live as a free and sovereign people that has come round in a long time. Perhaps with more small victories and perseverance this will change.

Stumble It!

Human Nature and The Meaning of Christmas

Some say, mistakenly, that Christmas is a time that brings out the very best in us. After all we have the chance to drop change in a bucket outside of all the mega-stores. We send cards of joy and love to people we care about and to some that we really do not care about at all. We eat, spend time with family and friends and give gifts.

It sounds wonderful, as children we actually believed it was wonderful - perhaps ultimately that is part of the root of the problem. I will not go into a long rant about the meaning of Christmas and all that because truth be told - in our day and time Christmas is about the economy stupid. To corporate America it is all about retail sales during the ever increasing period of time from Halloween to New Years. (and I will not talk about the annoying fact that each year that retail season seems to expand just a little bit more).

My wife wants a new laptop, so being a thrifty sort of guy I pointed out that one could be had at an after Thanksgiving sell for $250. I was perfectly willing to venture out at 12 midnight on friday after thanksgiving to procure this inexpensive device. I have never done anything like that and I thought the idea seemed appealing - a little exciting. It was something atypical for me, a chance to experience something new, see something new and in the end get a cheap laptop.

We stood in line for three hours, shivering and hugging for warmth. It seemed that for two hours and fifty minutes of my wait everyone remembered the simple lessons we all learned in kindergarten about forming a line and staying in line. Ten minutes prior to the store opening almost everyone forgot those lessons. I witnessed people exiting their warm cars and rushing to the door, erasing any remnant of the orderly line that had previously formed.

At this point, my blood pressure rose a bit. After all, I had arrived early, stood in the cold and was willing to take my chances on actually getting a laptop with those that had arrived before me. I did not at all like the idea of people arriving late, or worse, sitting in warm cars and then breaking in line.

I cooled myself with the thought that this was a wonderful opportunity to observe human nature and use it as opportunity to discuss with my wife my theory about the future of our land.

Once the store employees opened the door things were just as you probably imagine that they were going to be at this point in this little story - bedlam. Grown people running through a store, pushing, shoving, etc. etc. I arrived at the counter that was distributing the laptops sometime after the initial rush. I was distracted along the way watching parts and pieces of the mob peel off to converge on various "bargains" along the way. I suppose people had an idea of what they came for and they were not going to allow something as silly as civility to get in the way at that point. I also refused to run, in a store, for any reason other than life or limb. To my surprise I found that when I asked the girl behind the counter for one of the laptops she said "yes sir, we have one left" smiling and handing me the box.

I was further surprised when a woman behind me reached over me and grabbed it out of my hand. That is right, she literally came over my back and grabbed it.

I have a lot of PTSD issues I have worked on in various ways over the years. I am not ashamed to admit that I have had nightmares, that I have on occasion stopped dead in my steps at a sight, sound or smell. I have worked though most things and am left simply with what I think any normal man should be left with after seeing the worst of the human condition too many times. One thing I have never been able to get rid of is a powerful fight or flight response when I am startled or my personal space is invaded too quickly. My wife never startles me anymore, we have just adjusted to that.

This woman, coming over my back like that startled me. It was God in heaven that prevented me from laying her out on the floor. All of the physiological reactions took place, but thank goodness when I spun around I was able to quell the impulse.

There is of course, a much larger issue here. That woman doing that to me was just one of probably thousands of such instances across the country. I know I witnessed several other such events that very morning in that very store. I could not help but think to myself "what if these people were hungry". After all, if people are so willing to abandon civility over a silly electronic device what would they do if they were hungry.

Christmas is all about retail sales and materialism it seems and my little foray into the shopping world only served to remind me of just how far we have fallen. It is a sad state of affairs.

Stumble It!

AOL on Lincoln and Paul

Not that this is scientific at all but the results of this "poll" have been interesting to watch. Nationally, 57% disagree with the following "Ron Paul says Lincoln was wrong to fight the Civil War."

What is encouraging is that in the South (ten states), Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Alaska the numbers run in the majority in agreement with Dr. Paul. These are the states where the League of The South, the Second Vermont Republic, the Alaska Independence Party, and the Lakota Nation live and operate.

Perhaps, despite an egregious education system that does not teach the truth there is indeed hope for devolution and independence. If one can see how wrong that Lincoln was then it is not a great step forward toward seeing what is wrong with all that resulted from his actions.

My question - what is wrong with Texas, Missouri and Hawaii? (Places where people ought to vote differently) Do y'all like living under the yoke of an illegitimate empire?

Stumble It!

Half-Naked Vixens

Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree.

He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point. Eventually, she asked to see Garrison's penis; he unzipped his pants and complied. Seconds later,undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor....[Read More]

Wow, I am not advocating that people ought to get naked in public parks (unless of course the community thinks that is an ok thing to do). I do not at all believe that the scenario above is "good" police work. A half-naked woman, touching and flirting with a guy is a powerful incentive - many a man has fallen for such a thing. This is clearly entrapment. Bad cops! Bad cops!

Stumble It!

But that we could only live such

Solid advice from a lady:

~ Don't always make yourself the hero of your own stories.

~Don't show a disposition to find fault or depreciate. Indiscriminate praise is nauseating; but, on the other hand, indiscriminate condemnation is irritating....

~Don't be sulky if you imagine yourself neglected. Think only of pleasing; and try to please. You will end by being pleased.

~Don't show repugnance even to a bore. A supreme test of politeness is submission to various social inflictions without a wince.

~Don't fail in proper attention to elderly people. Young persons are often scandalously neglectful of the aged, especially if they are deaf or otherwise afflicted. Nothing shows a better heart, or a nicer sense of true politeness, than kindly attention to those advanced in years.

~Don't wear out your welcome by too long a stay; on the other hand, don't break up the company by a premature departure. A little observation and good sense will enable you to detect the right time to say "Good-night."

Stumble It!

Irony

Earlier today my family and I began our journey from my home in South Carolina to the foreign Republic of California to report for my next assignment. I mentioned in an earlier post my frustration with the changes that have occurred over the last two years in my home and my disappointment with the pace at which ordinary, otherwise good people have accepted - lock, stock and barrel - the lifestyle of the empire. By that I mean of course the live for now consumerism that so defines "American" culture. The sort of thing that allows a person to be happy selling their soul for a mortgage in a subdivision, commuting a hour or more to a job that keeps them away from the important things in life, i.e. home and family. I am talking about the sort of attitude that sees nothing wrong with blind loyalty to an institution that no longer follows its own rules or serves the people that it was created to serve. Yes I am talking about a people forsaking wholesale the legacy their ancestors bequeathed them in in turn accepting the lifestyle and values of their conquerors.

Look, I am a realist. I know that the South no longer exists anywhere but in small, scattered pockets and even in those enclaves the influence of a foreign value system in obvious. I hold out no real hope or dream of a free or independent South in my life time. At the same time I am not a defeatist. I do believe it is possible for a people to reclaim their heritage and live true to their historical heritage.

I mentioned previously how disheartened I was during my visit when I tried to discuss issues of culture, values and priorities with otherwise good people in my home. I moved my departure date up by a few days in part because of my disillusionment. Therein lies the irony - and here is the story.

I was supposed to finally meet, face to face, my compatriot on this blog - IKANTSPEL. My early departure and scheduling difficulties made this impossible. Thus, my family and I packed up the truck and headed north for a quick visit with relatives in North Carolina and then on toward California.

As we traveled through a town called Traveler's Rest I noticed a store named "Dixie Republic" and simply had to perform a u-turn and investigate. There was a tremendous amount of activity - they flew several flags out front. I thought it would be a grand opportunity to pick up a couple of items with my beloved Palmetto tree and crescent moon. I also hoped they would have a book or two I have not read that I could add to my collection.

I found the Palmetto trinkets I sought, I enjoyed a bowl of brunswick stew while listening to a live bluegrass band and I found a couple of books I have not read. I also had the the distinct pleasure of meeting and talking with Dr. Clyde N. Wilson who was there signing books and enjoying himself. The thing about this gentlemen is that I agreed with him before I knew of him or had read anything he has written. I defer to his age, his experience, his "letters" and his intellect but my agreement with him is not a mere acolyte arrangement. I consider him one of my living heroes his voice and ideas but my admiration is not hero worship.

I must admit, however, I was a bit nervous when I first met him. My nine year old daughter remarked on that fact later. I am not certain as to why - but I was.

I found him to be as interesting in person as on paper. Our conversation was easy and natural. I honestly felt as if I knew him and had known him for some time. It was as if were had been singing from the same hymn book for years previous.

Other folks of note were there as well. I was privileged to meet again Robert Hayes, chairman of the SC LOS. I also had a lively discussion with Walter Brian Cisco, author of War Crime Against Civilians. This is of course not to mention all the good folks perusing the store, eating stew and listening to the band.

The North Carolina border is just a few miles north of the store. As I pulled away and out of my home state I was struck with the irony of it all. I began my journey disillusioned. I left when I did because of the disillusionment and because of that I happened up this store at that hour. Life is strange.

Stumble It!

What Happened to My Home?

My visit to my native South Carolina has been disheartening to me, to phrase it mildly. The advance of suburbia that I mentioned in an earlier post is more profound than I first surmised in my initial survey. It seems that everywhere I go I see massive changes in the landscape. Everyone seems to be in the business of selling the family farm to make way for some new profane subdivision.

When I look at a field or patch of woods that I hunted as a child/young man and see now houses for 100 or more families I am bewildered. Something like that occurring here or there is significant but when it occurs over and over it is bound to fundamentally change the very nature of the culture. Country roads that were once quiet and peaceful are now torrents of traffic as silly commuters make their way to silly jobs each day. This is simply an unsustainable way of life - folks will realize this someday when they no longer have the option of paying $70 to fill up their glorified mini-vans (I guess they call them SUV's but I just see boxes on wheels with very little sport or utility involved).

I have been most disturbed with conversations I have had with otherwise good people about Pat Robertson. Around here most folks are evangelicals and they are the sort that generally believe a man if he simply says he is a good Christian. It is because if this that I know of several good people that over the years sent money to the likes of Oral Roberts, Jim Baker and now Pat Robertson. A lot of these same folks believe that Bob Jones is square in his biblical teachings. I have found it impossible to point out that Robertson is obviously a fake, a man deluded by the power he has come to wield. How on Earth could any moral man, much less a Christian support a man that endorses someone like Giuliani? I just don't know.

More disturbing is that most of the people that should be squarely behind Ron Paul have never heard of him. I have to blame this on the generational differences in how folks acquire information.

I visited a Wal-Mart today - because I found that the two hardware stores I patronized in the past are now out of business. It is not an exaggeration to state that 30% of the customer base in the store when I was there was Mexican. This is in a small (historically rural) town in South Carolina. I cannot get over the change two years has wrought.

I am seriously considering cutting my vacation short and leaving within the next two days for my next duty assignment. I know at least that weird things are to be expected where I am going. I do not have the heart to see the changes in my own home firsthand.

Stumble It!

Rifleman's Prayer

Oh Lord, I would live my life in freedom, peace and happiness, enjoying the simple pleasures of hearth and home. I would die an old, old man in my own bed,
preferably of sexual overexertion.

But if that is not to be, Lord, if monsters such as this should find their way to my little corner of the world on my watch, then help me to sweep those bastards from the ramparts, because doing that is good, and right, and just.

And if in this I should fall, let me be found atop a pile of brass,
behind the wall I made of their corpses. (ht Freeholder)

Ok either you get it or you are running away in the belief that I am a murderous, bloodthirsty sociopath. I get it. I see both the truth and the humor of this. - On other unrelated notes-

Today I returned to my native land after an absence of over two years. Much has changed. Apparently I need to brush up on my Spanish - the small Mexican enclave in the small town near my home has grown tremendously while I was away. Amazing that!

I was encouraged to hear Ron Paul advertisements on the radio - on my way to the gun shop. As I said I have not been able to purchase a new "toy" in two years. I treated myself to a Bulldog Pug .44 revolver and Winchester lever action 30-30. The wife was not please but after paying for her to bask in Hawaii for 6 days her protestations were semi-muted. It is all good!

An absence of two years is just enough time to measure and gauge the spread of "sprawl". I did not count but I noticed numerous instances of long time businesses that are now gone - replaced by cookie cutter shops, restaurants etc. A place loses its character when this happens.

When I was in a little town on the North Shore of Oahu last week I noticed little signs and bumper stickers stating "Keep the Country Country". Perhaps Mr. Wendell Berry's influence is greater than I imagined or maybe people everywhere realize the importance of maintaining their little piece of the world.

I plan to spend the next several days before heading out on the second phase of our move ( a cross country drive), hunting, sleeping (vacations are tiring) and trying to talk my fellow South Carolinians into supporting Ron Paul.

Stumble It!

So Long Joe

There is, of course, nothing romantic or enviable about war. It is something that brings out the very worst and the very best in people - a man's true character is exposed for all to see. I know that war has always been and always will be part of the human condition. In a world without war, considering all human frailty, we would be left with benevolent (or malevelent) tyranny. History has proven, over and over again, that somethimes war is neccesary, sometime it is just and occasionally it is the only option.

There is nothing wrong with children playing at war, so long as someone within the family explains that war is not simply a game. Playing with heroes and villians is an important part of a child developing into a man - so long, as I said they eventually come to see that the world is not so simple as all that.

So we have the venerable GI Joe, a man that I came to know and love as a child. He was a Marine but more than that. In his career after the Corps he performed every sort of exciting, adventurous job imaginable. I recall that he was a smoke jumper, an "Indiana Jones" sort of adventurer and a dozen other things (in the 1970's Hasbrio downplayed his Marine past and released several personifications of Joe performing these other adventurous but non-military functions).

To me these "politics" did not matter, Joe was always a Marine, no matter what other function he might perform. Perhaps I did not understand the technicalities but it was simple to me, Joe could always put on the uniform, no matter what image Hasbrio tried to sell. I owned the original (I guess) version of Joe from the early 1960's - he was a heck of a hero to me in my young childhood.

Now it seems that Joe is just not international enough, he is too American. Paramount would fashion Joe as not a man, but rather some international group of co-ed commando's fighting for world peace and harmony. Stripping Joe of his true historical connection and his identity.

Consider the story of the real Joe, the man GI Joe was fashioned to look like, the man that inspired the true action hero. (from Review Journal)

On Nov. 15, 2003, an 85-year-old retired Marine Corps colonel died of congestive heart failure at his home in La Quinta, Calif., southeast of Palm Springs. He was a combat veteran of World War II. His name was Mitchell Paige.

It's hard today to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember -- what the world looked like on Oct. 25, 1942 -- 65 years ago.

The U.S. Navy was not the most powerful fighting force in the Pacific. Not by a long shot. So the Navy basically dumped a few thousand lonely American Marines on the beach at Guadalcanal and high-tailed it out of there.

On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield that could threaten the Japanese route to Australia. Admiral Yamamoto knew how dangerous that was. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven the supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings on that hillside, 65 years ago this week -- manning their section of the thin khaki line that was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault of the night of Oct. 25, 1942 -- it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 armed and motivated attackers?

But by the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handled 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."

You've already figured out where the Japanese focused their attack, haven't you? Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night of endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige's Medal of Honor picks up the tale: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machine gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the belt-fed gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley was the first to discover how many able-bodied United States Marines it takes to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat.

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

The hill had held, because on the hill remained the minimum number of able-bodied United States Marines necessary to hold the position.

And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one ever heard of, called Guadalcanal.

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.

But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "G.I. Joe." At least, it has been up till now.

Mitchell Paige's only condition? That G.I. Joe must always remain a United States Marine.

It took just one tough 'sumbeach' on that hill to hold, that was the minimal number of able-bodied Marines required. I am not a warmonger, but wars happen and a free people - if they are to remain free, occasionally need heroes. Mitchell Paige was just such a hero, among thousands but because of his own character and the cruel combination of fate that placed him on that hill he showed that he was just such a hero- he through the image of GI Joe has represented the sort of hero free people require at times.

Now it seems that is just not good enough....

Stumble It!

Where it all began

Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. (emphasis mine)

This is an except from The Declaration of Arbroath (1320), the first example in the western world of the sovereignty of the people and a clear articulation of the value of freedom. My family left Scotland in 1705, two years before the sad day of Union. The Scottish people have influenced the world vastly out of proportion to their meager population. The entire culture and heritage of the Southron people owes more to the Scots than any other influence.

May it please you to admonish and exhort the King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can, to win peace for ourselves.

These pleadings to the pope went unheard but the truth that this document speaks still rings true today with only the names of the perpetrators changed to identify the guilty. England build an empire upon the bones of the Scots much as the Federal Government has always been able to rely on the service of young southerners to fight its wars.

It has been 142 years since my homeland was occupied and I and many of my brothers are still angry - I wonder how long it will take the Iraqis to love the neocons for liberating and occupying them?

Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence

Stumble It!

The Way Things Should Be - Home

Joshua's post regarding peak oil spurred my thoughts in a dozen directions. The simple fact is we face problems so enormous as to demand solutions which our politicians in our current system simply cannot conceptualize, much less implement.

As you may well know, I am a paleoconservative. As such every thing of importance to me revolves around just a few things, my religion, my family, my culture and my home. Essentially everything else I think or believe is driven by those priorities. I see the solution to all problems relating directly to the lessons that traditions that respect those four priorities teach us. There really is nothing new under the sun, just new ways of applying old lessons and new ways of thinking tempered with what came before.

I look at the world and I see the same problems as everyone else; with the economy, with a bloated and distant government, politicians that serve only themselves or those that fund them, corporations that are greedy and corrupt, lazy people that will not do for themselves, a culture that consumes too much. The solutions that I see for these ills are where I, and all paleoconservatives, diverge on a separate path in the woods. It is that separate path, I believe, that can make all the difference.

I hold out no hope that man can build a perfect society or cure all societal ills. I am no utopian. However, I believe it is clear that the path we now travel will lead us to a bad end. I see a dystopic future filled with shortages, overpopulation, an angry crowded and dissatisfied population and a heavily centralized government that is essentially forced to act tyrannically simply because it is the only way to maintain control of an untenable situation. Our greed, selfishness, aloofness and lack of foresight will ensure that this is the future our children or their children inherit.

All of the signs are there, over the last 140 years our own government has transformed itself into an entity that no longer serves the people but rules them. Over the last 50 years our landscape has transformed from vast areas of rolling countryside into urban sprawl and the blight of suburbia. We have degenerated from a self-reliant people that could so for themselves into nothing more than the tail-end of a long supply-train of consumer goods. We no longer read important works, think important thoughts or appreciate important things. We have all become consumers, commuters, victims, whiners and gluttons for mindless pop culture.

Why? We have lost our love for permanent things.

I am no lover of government, it is nothing more than a necessary evil at best and a brutal tyrant at worst. However, when things have gone so astray, when the people themselves are clueless as to what is actually wrong what other option but government do we have to turn to for a solution?

No, I did not fall off my rocker, I do not believe that the Federal Government is qualified to create a solution. Our state governments are no better. All of our elected officials, with very rare exceptions, are bought and paid for by the very entities that want to see the status quo remain. So please, don't take me wrong - when I say that government could help restore us to the right path I am not actually giving any credit to the government that currently rules over this impending train wreck. In a later installment of this line of thought I will discuss good government - the sort we need to implement real solutions.

Having lived in Korea for the last two years I have come to appreciate a few things about this place. Koreans do not have subdivisions. City folks live in high rises, people that grow things live outside the city. If you wear a tie to work you live in the city - it is just that simple. What an amazing concept, one we have royally screwed up in the states. Why on Earth should a stock broker, insurance salesman or any other business person, factory worker, etc. live in the "country" and drive to work in an urban area?

Just consider the waste. These people occupy anywhere from .5 to 2 acres of land each and grow nothing more than grass and a few flowers. They get in their automobiles everyday and drive, using gasoline, polluting the air and wasting time that they could spend on more productive pursuits (like spending time with their kids). Along their drive businesses thrive to serve them, restaurants, gas stations etc., taking up more space and employing people to do nothing more than serve people that are destroying the environment and wasting time. What a stupid way to live and what an idiotic way for a society to function.

I love land, I believe land is tied directly to home, hearth, kirk and kin. Land should mean something, it is the sort of thing a family should identify with, love and cherish. The hundreds of thousands of acres occupied by suburbs and the ancillary strip malls and wal-marts that service them mean nothing. These places will be sold when the current owners die - these are not family treasures they are "investments".

People should be free to choose their own destiny and become whatever they want. I do not dislike people that want to work in jobs that are urban in nature. I do not believe a society and culture can long sustain our current lifestyle. These people are not free to destroy in their pusuit of happiness.

My solution to this particular point of our current trouble is simple in concept (obviously hard but not impossible in implementation - with a good and noble government)

1. Land is for those that produce and those that support those that produce. Thus subdivisions, strip mall, interstate mega-fueling stations on every exit all must go.
   
2. If you really want to own land and have another job - you must at the least produce enough for your family and forget about daily commutes - leverage technology. This means you have to own more than half an acre obviously.
   
3. Urban planning is almost nonexistent in the US, it happens after the fact and is corrupted by greed and commercial interest. To do this right urban areas need to consolidate (i.e. absorb the influx from the former suburbs) and plan to expand over time in a logical and controlled manner. Some cities I have visited in the Persian Gulf region have successfully planned this sort of current and future growth.
   
4. Small towns, in the country are acceptable and required but an overall plan would prevent these areas from becoming urban areas - if you want to build a high rise move to the metro.
   
5. Urban areas just do not need a lot of cars running around - why on Earth do you need that? There are simply too many other economical and environmentally friendly options for the city dwellers.
   

Gosh you say, sounds grand but to implement this would cause a great upheaval. Yes it would, but sometimes lazy, greedy scoundrels need to be kicked in the pants. I cannot describe suburbanites with any nicer words. Pay them for their "homes" offer incentives for folks to build them new homes in high rises near where they work, invest in some real urban planning, develop robust mass transit systems within the cities and between the cities and make it financially impossible (too expensive) for anyone to buck the system.

Would life be wonderful and rosy in the cities? No, but what is the alternative? Someday change will come whether we plan for it or not. Someday the option of commuting to work will be cost prohibitive simply because the resources are too scarce. The urban areas will continue to expand into the country, not in a planned and logical way but willy-nilly as we see now. Some people enjoy city life, they are naturally disposed to it. There is a way to fashion a city in a palatable and sustainable way that would be for more appealing than the bleak post peak-oil cities I envision.

What we are doing now just will not work and to continue to do it would be foolish.

Stumble It!

Lazy-Ass Nation

"This decade in particular has been rife with idiotic goods and services meant to keep us in a contented, almost zombie-like state." Dumb-downed, zombified Americans? Perish the thought!

read more | digg story

Perish the thought indeed, most suburbanites are so busy shuffling off to jobs they hate to pay debts for "things they must have" that they do not have the first clue how to do anything thing for themselves. I saw a movie, Idiocracy, a few months ago that paints a pretty funny picture of where all of this laziness will take us.

When I grew up men were men, they could do man stuff. Now men are metrosexuals and seem to be able to do some of what women do - get their nails done, have facials etc. Sure they may spend some time at the gym building a few muscles but they do not build real strength - not the sort of strength my daddy had. Folks may play at extreme sports but this does not define manhood or individuality - it is a false cover-up for something vital that is missing.

In our consumer mindset we seem to always seek a new tool or gadget to make life easier - this is not bad to a degree but it defines us.

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Walmart's Total Retail Space Is Larger Than Manhattan

Walmart leads with a total square footage larger than Manhattan. The next closest is McDonald's, with a net footrprint of about 1 and 3/4 Central Parks. The image also shows 7-11, Blockbuster, Subway, KFC, GAP, Burger King, Starbucks, and Wendy's. It's awesome sometimes to ponder the amount physical Earth taken up by cookie-cutter concrete.

read more | digg story

"Awesome" indeed - this is nothing more than raw, unadulterated consumerism and sprawl. Imagine a world in which every town, every city and every community is just the same - wait corporate America is providing that wonderful service to us already. I like the idea of buying goods, services and food from unique places, businesses that are locally owned. I guess that is just looking back at the past - I should get over it.

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US Foreclosures Nearly Double

Foreclosure filings across the U.S. nearly doubled last month compared with September 2006, as financially strapped homeowners already behind on mortgage payments defaulted on their loans or came closer to losing their homes to foreclosure

read more | digg story

Is this any surprise in our consuming culture. Everyone wants more and bigger things - and are apparently willing to make stupid decisions to get those things. I wonder what most of these folks were thinking when they signed up for their adjustable rate mortgages, with payments that they could barely make when the rates were lower?

Don't worry, the Federal Government will step in and take money from those of us that were not so shallow and selfish and help out those that were (see the need below to audit more taxpayers to find that missing $300 million).

Stumble It!

If Only

Ms. Elena Maria Vidal reminded me of my favorite Kipling prose --

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

by Rudyard Kipling

(Artwork "The Accolade" by Edmund B. Leighton)

Stumble It!

It is not Hero Worship When the Man is Right

I realize my admiration for Dr. Clyde Wilson must seem to some to border on hero worship. Not so, the man is simply right most of the time. I am a rational, thinking man that came to this conclusion by direct observation. He has recently written a piece about my state and my people that sums up so much of my frustration.

When the South Carolina audience applauded Giuliani’s tantrum I was not surprised at all, but felt a sting of shame. How far Calhoun’s "gallant little State" has fallen. There is no excuse for my State, but I can perhaps offer some explanation in expiation.

He goes on to offer explanations for our demise. It is no secret that our invasion and occupation did not end in the 1860's 70's or 80's. We have recently been swarmed with folks from parts elsewhere with foreign ideas and alien values. It is no real shock when you consider the demographic shift that we should now act so poorly. We are truly just regular Americans with all the flaws and bad habits incumbent with that group.

A lesson that anyone anywhere might learn from this is that culture is indeed important. Diversity is indeed a good think on the global scale. In our mobile world of bigger is better people everywhere are faced with being assimilated into a faceless, rootless collective. Dr. Clyde I do indeed weep for Carolina! All people with a distinct cultural heritage should weep, and become aware and vigilant to what is really occurring in the world.

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It's About Morality and Culture, Stupid

Daniel Larison sucessfully rips into one of the main pillars of neoconic ideology related to - the notion that Muslim Islamist disdain our freedom.

The “they hate us for our freedoms” line is pure garbage. I don’t know how else to put it. Sayyid Qutb didn’t like how Coloradoans danced in 1949, but he didn’t make it his life’s goal to attack Americans or to urge others to attack Americans and drive us out of the Near East…because we weren’t in the Near East and Muslims around the world had no reason to feel any particular animus towards America.

I discussed Sayyid Qutb in a recent post. It is clear from reading his perspective of the world that his first impression with western freedom was not revulsion at freedom but disgust at the moral state of the west. One must remember his impression was that of 1949-50 America.

Larison states...it was the export of American pop culture to the world in the decades that followed that lit the fuse. In many respects, the export of that culture has triumphed over local resistance (I have strong doubts that this is a desirable thing), but it has generated hostility to the general experience of globalisation and rapid cultural change and those processes are unavoidably associated with the United States because so many of the largest multinationals are associated in the minds of people around the world with this country.

In fact if one really looks at the motivation and goals of Osama Bin Laden (an heir to the thoughts of Sayyid) three things become clear. One, ultimately pan-Islamist wish to reestablish the caliphate. Second, to accomplish the first goal secular and amoral regimes within historic Islamic territory must be replaced. Third, to accomplish this western armies as well as overt and covert Weatern support of secular regimes in the Islamic world must be removed.

It is important to understand motivation. Failure to understand leads to the the acceptance of stupid notions such as the idea that there are people in other parts of the world that want to actually take away our freedom. Perhaps there is a degree of truth to this - they do wish to undermine our freedom to shape the world in our own image, to support regimes of our own choosing in their lands and to deploy our troops to Islamic lands as we please. Perhaps that much is true - but the idea they they actually wish to abridge our own freedom in our own homelands is just false. For right or wrong, these people have a pretty good and solid argument against the stationing of non-Muslim troops in the land of their two holiest sites.

Don't take me wrong, I am not saying that the ideology, based upon a perversion of Islam, held by Bin Laden and crew is correct. I have read the Koran, I do not purport to be an expert on Islamic theology, but none of the Muslims I know support the interpretation of verses and passages toward evil actions used by these people. In that sense they are just as morally degraded as their enemies.

So long as men remain immoral and separated from the rule of natural law these sorts of conflicts will continue. Immorality, faith in human reason above historic understanding are the at the root of evil- I suppose the neocons, communist, socialist, Islamist and secularist of the world will just never really understand that.

Stumble It!

Where Has Truth Gone

I have read with great interest two developments as of late related to certain friends of liberty.

First in Vermont, it seems that certain elements of the radical left have attacked the Second Vermont Republic group for associating with racist. The North American Secessionist Convention in 2006 drew groups from all over the United States and from across the political spectrum. The sole intent of the convention was to discuss ways to place secession on the table as a legitimate option for states and regions.

Obviously if everyone agreed all the time on just how the world ought to work, what role government ought to play and what laws should and should not be enacted there would never bee a need to talk about secession or devolution. The simple fact is, however, the larger a government becomes and the more people that it holds sway over the less influence individuals and small groups have over their government. Disagreements are natural, the desire to have more influence on one’s government is natural – secession and devolution are natural answers to this dilemma.

The problem is not that most people would not agree with the notion that racism is bad; the problem is a common definition of racism. Are there any racist in the League of The South? YES. Are there any racist in the NAACP, SPLC, ADL, Democratic Party, Republican Party, Catholic Church, Church of Scientology, PETA, Habitat for Humanity and Nation of Islam? YES. Racist come in all sizes, shapes and colors.

The LoS is not a racist organization. Many people paint any group that talks about the benefits of preserving culture as racist. This is false and dishonest.

Many use the term racist to stop all dialogue. Label a person such and nothing else they have to say matters, and it does not matter that the claim is baseless and unproven. Racism exists in many areas of our society, often celebrated in the media and courted by politicians. This is never challenged. However, if groups like the LoS believe that they also have a culture worthy of protection and preservation they are labeled racist. There is something terribly wrong with that. There is also something terribly wrong with dismissing the ideas of any group that has any dealings with the LoS based upon the false claim that the LoS is racist. I hope the SVR remains true to the principle of standing by truth.

In my home state of SC Christian Exodus has made several waves in the last two weeks. Two of the local papers published articles about the group filled with half-truths, perversions of the truth and outright lies. I will not address the articles specifically (I have done so here) but rather the bigger issue. I have known and corresponded with the leadership of this group since its inception. I have had long and detailed discussions with local politicians, pastors and regular people – by email and in person when I am available to actually be back home. I full well know the intent and purpose of CE and I know that none of the theocratic intentions that the media has recently painted the group with are true. In fact, what the group stands for is exactly what most South Carolinians that I know stand for. The disconnect between achieving massive support and the lies spewed elsewhere has been solely a function of the group’s inability to get their message out.

It is too easy, it seems, for misinformed or undereducated, editors to print something as truth and then be accepted as authority. This is just the world in which we live I suppose, people do not educate themselves, and they latch onto buzz-words and accusations and make that reality in their minds.

Unless we, as a collective, demand that more truth exists in our world we deserve to become victims of the lies we accept.

Stumble It!

Death (or at least unemployment) to all Bureaucrats

What really ever happened to men talking and acting like men? My wife had the displeasure of encountering a bureaucrat up close and personal last week. You would think that after so many years with me in a "profession" filled with so many bureaucrats that her experience would be much more common. For many reasons, not the least of which involving her listening to my advice to avoid such people, she has remained relatively unscathed and unaffected by these sorts.

In the aftermath of her encounter and our subsequent conversations I merely smiled at her and said - ' welcome to my world'.

Encountering double-dealing weasels that hide behind a misconstrued interpretation of some regulation or non-existent policy is par for the course for me in my daily world. To be certain some assignments are worse than others but also to be certain I am more likely to find and deal with people that think and act based, not upon principle, but upon expediency and self-advancement is just too common.

I still, to this day, scratch my head and wonder - often aloud - what is wrong with not being a "team player" if the team is just plain wrong. There is a very strong tendency toward group-think in the military. The phrase "pick your battles" is too common.

In my mind picking your battles is akin to compromise and if the battle involves a principle it is certainly worth fighting, no matter how small. There is no small compromise when it comes to principles - there is only surrender.

This is just not the mind-set in the our bureaucratic military. My understanding of this bureaucracy helps me understand the larger bureaucracy at work behind the scenes in the Federal Government and explains, to me at least, one very real reason why the Federal Government is so far off course.

Death (or at least unemployment) to all bureaucrats!

Stumble It!

Robert E. Lee's Birthday - Jan. 19

I will be otherwise engaged on the 19th so I have posted this a bit early.

January 19 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of a great man and a great American. We certainly could use a few men like Robert E. Lee around today - folks that understand faith, humility, loyality to what matters, duty and honor.

Chuck Baldwin recently posted a wonderful piece regarding two great men of honor and integrity with birthdays in January.
___________________

by Calvin E. Johnson Jr.

Robert E. Lee, a man whose military tactics have been studied worldwide, was an American soldier, educator, Christian gentlemen, husband and father.

Robert E. Lee said, "All the South has ever desired was that the Union as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth."

Tell your children that Robert E. Lee was born at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia, on January 19, 1807. The winter was cold and the fire places were little help for his mother, Ann Hill (Carter) Lee, who was also suffering from a severe cold.

Ann Lee named her son "Robert Edward" after her two brothers.

Robert E. Lee's love for his country undoubtedly came from his close association with those who had lived during the American Revolution. His father, "Light Horse" Harry Lee, was a Revolutionary War hero, Governor of Virginia and a member of the House of Representatives.

Lee was educated in the schools of Alexandria, Virginia. In 1825, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He graduated in 1829, second in his class and without a single demerit.

Lee was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant of the United States Engineer Corps. His first assignment was at Cockspur Island, Georgia to supervise the construction of Fort Pulaski.

Robert E. Lee wed Mary Anna Randolph Custis on June 30, 1831. Robert and Mary grew up together. Mary was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. George and Martha Washington raised him as their own son.

Mary was the only child; therefore, she inherited Arlington House, located across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. where she and Robert E. Lee raised seven children.

In 1836, Lee was appointed 1st Lieutenant. In 1838, with the rank of Captain, Robert E. Lee fought in the War with Mexico. His service in the war began under Gen. Wool but he was later reassigned to the staff of Gen. Winfield Scott. Gen. Scott wrote that Lee was "the best soldier I ever saw in the field."

Robert E. Lee was appointed Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1852.

Lee had served in the United States Army for nearly 32 years when he was offered command of the Federal Army at the outset of the War Between the States.

In a letter to his sister on April 20, 1861, Robert E. Lee said: "With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty as an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I therefore, have resigned my commission in the army and save in the defense of my native state, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed".

Gen. Lee and his family left "Arlington House" at the beginning of the War Between the States. Lee served as advisor to President Jefferson Davis, and then commanded the legendary Army of Northern Virginia beginning on June 1, 1862.

After four years of death and destruction, Gen. Robert E. Lee met Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865, that ended their battles.

Robert E. Lee was called Marse Robert, Uncle Robert and Marble Man.

Lee was a man of honor, proud of his name and heritage, After the War Between the States, he was offered $50,000 for the use of his name. His reply was: "Sirs, my name is the heritage of my parents. It is all I have and it is not for sale."

In the fall of 1865, Robert E. Lee was offered and accepted the position of president of troubled Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. The school was later renamed Washington and Lee College in his honor.

Gen. Robert E. Lee died of a heart attack at his Washington College home at 9:30 on the morning of October 12, 1870.

Lee is buried at the school's Chapel near his family and favorite horse "Traveller."

A prolific writer, Lee wrote his most famous quote to his son Custis in 1852: "Duty is the sublimest word in our language."

Sir Winston Churchill once remarked, "Lee was the noblest American who had ever lived and one of the greatest commanders known to the annals of war."

Lest We Forget A Great American Hero!

____________________

But forget him we do - Not only did Lee never own slaves (he freed those he inherited from his father-in-law) He also never attended a communist rally and as far as historians can tell never cheated on his wife or in his school work.

We have other folks with national holidays that we cannot say the same for. Even in the South the tradition of celebrating this man and his life is falling out of fashion.

A society is judged by its heroes!

Stumble It!

Victory in Small Measures

My little county - Anderson, SC - and our new county council righted a wrong and reinstated our Blue-laws that the former council dumped a month ago. No more shopping at the Wal-Mart on Sundays. I wrote previously of my anger at the former council concerning their decision to eliminate our Blue Laws.

This is a significant step-forward in the preservation of our culture and traditions. Kudos to Ron Wilson and crew.

Why should I share this with you - folks that do not live in my county? Because I believe you ought to put my home in your radar and watch us over the next couple years. We have big things in mind to thwart the destruction of our culture. I only wish I were there and not here!

Stumble It!

Stupid is as Stupid Does

Technology really does not make us "better" people. The Internet is filled with knowledge. As a child I completely enjoyed trips to the library where I was able to sit and simply read books that expanded my knowledge. My mother would take me at least once a week and let me sit for a few hours just reading whatever struck my fancy.

Imagine our circumstance now - much of what is available in a small town library is freely available online. A person can search, seek and come to an understanding of almost any issue or subject matter. You can learn philosophy, history, mathematics and science to a degree an undergraduate in, say, 1970 would have struggled to grasp. It only takes diligence, care and determination.

So what do we do with this wonderful tool?

in 2006 the top Google searches were as follows:

1. Bebo

2. MySpace

3. World Cup

4. Metacafe

5. Radioblog

6. Wikipedia

7. Video

8. Rebelde

9. Mininova

10. Wiki

The top news searches of 2006 were dominated by celebrity, illness, tragedy and the bizarre.

Orlando Bloom was the second most searched for item on Google News, followed by cancer, podcasting, hurricane Katrina and bankruptcy.

Google was asked a lot of questions in 2006 and the most popular "Who is....?" question was about Borat, the TV and film character created by Sacha Baron Cohen. (BBC)

Imagine that, we are as stupid online as we are in real life.

Stumble It!

Happy New Year - 2007

Dr. Clyde Wilson is certainly not out to win friends or even influence many people. With words as hurtful (but true) as the ones below, few will hear and fewer still will act:

People who are ignorant of and indifferent to their background (and those who misrepresent it for present-time advantage) are barbarians—that is, people without a civilized culture. Our leaders view American society as a commercial enterprise in which profit and consumption are the only values. After all, a customer is a customer and yesterday is just a past opportunity for sales. Who worries about where the customer comes from? As a society we have lost sight of the truth that economic abundance is not a self-perpetuating technical trick but rests ultimately on mental and moral qualities. Mental and moral virtues are declining in power and the evidence is already there of the loss of prosperity that necessarily follows.

But a society without ancestors (bastards?) is not the worst of the American decline. The worst is a lost future. Our forebears felled forests, planted trees, built houses, fought wars in the consciousness that the benefits would accrue to their descendants more than to themselves.

A people who took any thought to the welfare of their grandchildren, much less future generations of their own blood, could not possibly tolerate the ongoing destruction of our human environment by politicians and plutocrats. Burke defined civilization as the awareness of the interconnection of past, present, and future. Conservatism was the preservation of the essence of civilization amidst the inevitable flux and chaos of existence.

In 2007 I expect that we will see much more of the same - bureaucrats and politicians catering to the here and now without care or concern for the here-after. Corporations run amuck and a population bedazzled by temporary things.

There are of course other possibilities for 2007 - hyperinflation spurred on by foreign governments dumping the dollar - perhaps that combined with years of runaway corporate and private debt could crack the entire system. More than likely the goons in the Federal district would simply find a way to declare yet another "emergency" to save us all if such circumstances actually played out.

Somebody will do something about Iran in 2007 - their economic policy is a direct threat to our hegemony, their nuclear ambitions make Israel nervous - that is enough to unleash the dogs of war.

Bush will ignore all advice and seek to follow his misguided surge strategy in Iraq. This will come to naught except additional casualties. Depending upon what happens with Iran I expect that Bush will announce a phased withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2007 (after his "surge" fails). I cannot imagine that his party would stand to allow him to go into a presidential election season with Iraq hanging in limbo.

The two major parties will sort out their field for the presidential election - I suspect that McCain will end the year as the GOP front-runner. In the end it does not matter who comes survives the year for a 2008 run.

I dread the goings-on in Congress. I foresee old bad ideas like national health-care coming back to the table. With fascist in the White House and Socialist in the Congress this cannot be a good year.

Nothing but talk will occur with North Korea. In fact if all really goes badly in the Middle East the US troop reductions on the peninsula may speed ahead by years.

China will continue to play it cool, snipping at the edges of the hegemon, building strength and artificially keeping her exchange rate favorable to cheap labor. The dragon still needs a few years before she rises.

We are due for another "terrorist plot" to be uncovered. The State of The Union speech is drawing near and GW does not have much good to talk about.

At the end of 2007 we will be just what we are now, as Dr. Wilson says - bastards without a real future. Most of us still won't know it though.

Stumble It!

We Lost the Cultural War

One theme runs pretty constant through many of the blogs, sites and magazines I read. That being centered essentially around the cultural war. Major campaigns in this war include items such as the illegal immigration invasion from the south and the Muslim foothold in our Congress. Of course another major campaign that many folks I read or converse with deals with moral degradation and yet another topic of discussion and concern is of course governmental and corporate encroachment into our everyday lives. Many folks realize that all of these events are directly related to each other, some go so far as to claim that there is a conspiracy afoot responsible for all of this.

Well, there may or may not be such a conspiracy. After all a conspiracy is really nothing more than a group with a plan. I am relatively certain that some group, some where, that desires more centralized government, has realized that breaking down the family, destroying the church, and eliminating cultural ties is pretty necessary to the ultimate achievement of their goals. In that sense, I am certain discussions on these matters have and do take place. It is not such a mysterious thing, it is pragmatic and reasonable. Men like Robert Pastor are reasonable and pragmatic as were all the men of his ilk that came before. Conspiracy theorist probably go to far in filling in the blanks but they are right on in their presumption that something is afoot.

I read with great interest the cries and wails of many good intentioned individuals clamoring against this and that as it specifically relates to the various ongoing battles in the cultural war. Here though I give you all the plain and unvarnished truth - THE WAR IS LOST. Call me a defeatist if you will, but I speak only the truth.

We cannot rightly fear a Muslim in Congress and also be outraged because he wishes to swear in using the Koran - how can we possibly claim such an event in anyway violates our traditions. What traditions? Do we still presume to claim that the United States is a Christian nation?

Well, historically the United States never was a Christian nation - to be certain all of the original states were Christian nations, as clearly evidenced by their constitutions, but each abandoned that righteous position long ago. That aside, if we are merely talking about The People constituting a Christian nation we cannot make that claim either. We may have been in the past but we lost that, we are no more a Christian nation than Hollywood is a Christian town. Even among the millions that claim to be Christians I see little fruit to bear witness to the claim. We are a nation that claims religion but are far from being Christian.

Many claim that illegal immigration is destroying our culture. I say that is just so much bunk. Tell me what culture is being destroyed that we ourselves have not already killed and buried. Do a few hundred Spanish-speaking day-laborors in a town do more harm to culture than say - greedy parents that abandon their children just so they can afford more stuff? Our own greed, avarice and callousness destroyed our culture long ago. A few million Mexicans cannot do more than we have already done.

The first time a school board gave into political correctness and multiculturalism we began to lose the cultural war. This did not occur under GW's watch or during Clinton's time in office. This began in my childhood and maybe before. Why were these malcontents not run out of small towns on pikes? We were too weak to defend our culture when it counted.

As soon as we began latching onto flawed notions spewed by the likes of B.F. Skinner, we began to lose the cultural war.

In actuality it began long before the 1960's/70's. When men began to look to the government to fix their problems, no matter how great those problems might have been, the die was cast for us to lose our culture. Roosevelt's New Deal was more than an economic program, it was a social revolution - a revolution that fundamentally changed the nature of things.

Many of us talk about the foul perversion generated by Hollywood; but we still have televisions. We bemoan the loss of small town America as we shop at Wal-Mart. We are hypocrites.

The things that good Americans love about America are remnants of what was good, it is not the sum and total of what America has become. Looking across our land we see bright spots and hope that these are sign-posts to salvation. These are mere artifacts. If you really want to know what America is take a look at the culture we export. That is America, that is what we have become - the small glimmer of decent folk notwithstanding.

Don't be discouraged, the fight is still a noble cause - it is however lost in this generation. We should at least admit that so that our efforts might be geared toward what is winnable in the long-term. History and legacy do not conform to election cycles nor to the ebbing and waning of empires. Principles do not die like ideologies and dogma - they live on in the hearts of good men. Fight the good fight now and raise good men for the next generation to follow. The monsters our adversaries have built and are building cannot last long - in the historical sense.

Stumble It!

Backtrack

I have missed a few items of note and thought I would backtrack and comment now.

Most folks that know and are willing to state it have said for many months that the US is already at war with Iran, well-

BAGHDAD, Dec. 24 — The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.

It is not historically uncommon for open shooting wars to actually begin via "advisors". Whether Iran and the US enter an open shooting war remains to be seen, but covertly we are already engaged in hostilities.

I have mentioned before some of my experiences with the Iraqi police and how difficult it often was to separate the good from the bad. Here is yet another example of this difficulty -

The Independent - More than 1,000 British troops carried out a dawn raid on a police station in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after receiving intelligence that dozens of prisoners were being tortured and faced imminent execution.

Then of course there is the news of Bush's "New Deal" that Johnnie commented on last week. A lot of folks have already beat this lame horse into the ground. All I can add is this. How ironic that Bush and his gang would even consider a program called a "New Deal" based on the "success" of FDR's flawed revolution. This shows just how close the Republicans and Democrats really are on fundamental issues.

Then of course there is a recent medical study that proves that there might be a reason for us to follow the natural order.

TimesOnline - Doing housework can cut substantially a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer, according to researchers.

Last there is this, first commented on by Johnnie - recruiting of mercenaries to serve in the US military.

I viewed a "Citizenship ceremony" in Baghdad when I was last there - approximately 300 or so foreigners in US uniforms swearing in as citizens. On AFN (Armed Forces Network) they continually run a commercial showing various non-citizens how easy it is for them to apply for citizenship - fees and time requirements waived.

It is not a question of if the US uses mercenaries - the question is how many and how openly. I recall meeting a bunch of newly arrived South Africans in a contracting office I was visiting in Baghdad. One of these fellows was real chummy and very interested in where I had been and what I had done. He asked obscene and stupid questions like "how many Iraqis have I killed?" "where did I get my AK - from a dead Iraqi?" and other telling questions. We hire goons like that all the time and turn them loose with weapons on the Iraqi people.

The idea of hiring foreigners is not completely alien to the US military. We did not recruit the Irish overseas but we certainly gang-pressed them into service in the 19th century despite the fact that they were not yet citizens.

At one point early in my life I seriously considered joining the French Foreign Legion - I mailed them and phoned them and had all the contact information to make it a reality. I backed off essentially because I came to my senses - why would I want to serve France?

Much later I seriously considered transferring to the Australian Army. They had a program by which they were recruiting officers from certain Common Wealth nations and the US to fill critical needs. I dreamed at the time of buying a ranch in the Outback and retiring. I changed my mind based solely on Australia's restrictive gun laws. After all there is no need in owning a ranch if you cannot defend it - much of the Australian countryside now lives in fear of home invasion based upon their stupid gun laws. I said no thanks at the last minute.

Obviously the FFL is imperialist and my participation in that organization would have conflicted with my core principles. Australia lacks the capacity for real imperialism - I could have served in her army with no qualms.

The idea of recruiting foreigners for the US military however is simply wrong. The US is imperialist, despite whatever nice words we use to describe our forays. First we send girls to do a man's job and now we are considering recruiting foreigners in greater numbers. This is surely a sign of a society and a civilization in decline.

Stumble It!

Inshallah

1st Muslim congressman thrills crowd in Dearborn

"You can't back down. You can't chicken out. You can't be afraid. You got to have faith in Allah, and you've got to stand up and be a real Muslim," Detroit native Keith Ellison said to loud applause.

Many in the crowd replied "Allahu akbar" -- God is great.

I'm still not too sure what to make of this. I have no other reason to concern myself with the type of person that the people of Minnesota choose to represent themselves, other than the fact that federalism is broken in the US and now this guy will join the choir of bureaucrats who don't know me but feel like they need to tell me what's best for me. There have been some knee-jerk reactions to his election, not unlike the reaction to John F. Kennedy's election. The Vatican still hasn't completed its conquest of the US.

At one point I bought into the hype like most everyone else in the US who knows next to nothing about Muslims - convinced that they're all orcs who won't stop until the rest of us are dead. After I spent a year living amongst them in their own land, however, I've let that bit of hysteria go. But they are different than run-of-the-mill citizens of the US, so what happens if our government is eventually packed full of them?

I don't suspect it will be any worse than it is now. Our current crop of "leaders" tend to be post-modern socialists devoid of any coherent philosophy. They don't have the slightest bit of respect for the principles that our Revolution was fought for, and I don't like any of them. At least Ellison has religion, though. Something tangible to guide him through life, other than an unbridled lust for power like all the other politicians. Sure he had his crazy college days, like a drunken frat boy or a Girl Gone Wild, in which he dabbled with the Nation of Islam, espousing outrageously racist views that -- if reversed -- would murder the career of a White guy. But he seems to have settled down.

All in all, Keith Ellison is just your average Minnesota Marxist, and he'll try to steal all your hard-earned money as soon as he gets a chance. I reckon it could be worse, though. At least he's not a Republican -- who'll rob you blind while masquerading as a "conservative" -- and knows just what he's about.

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Middle-Aged Reflections

On this, the occasion of my 39th birthday, I have a few things on my mind. Mind you, 39 does not have the significance of 18, 21, 30 or 40. As best as I can figure it (optimistically) I am at the exact half-way point of my life. I work out regularly, I generally eat right and I do not smoke and I seldom drink. I believe if my profession does not kill me I can make it to 78.

Without sounding like some cliche movie, my life has been well-lived up to this point. I made mistakes, many of them. There have been disappointments and missed opportunities but ultimately I would not change anything of significance.

I have traveled the world, I have met people and experienced cultures that most of the world only read about. I have seen all the great wonders and stood where it all began. I have known great men, lived with them and moved in their shadows. Not the great men of industry but men of character and integrity.

I have faced death and found that in those times my faith sustained me. I have experienced hardships that, looking back, I can hardly now imagine, and through it all I remained the man my parents raised me to be.

I was young and wild once and knew women on several continents, but Providence called me back to my upbringing and provided me with a lady to love and cherish.

I am not special, in reality I am just blessed and truly I am nothing more than a miserable sinner forgiven by grace.

I was fortunate to have been born in and spend significant portions of my youth in South Carolina - during a time that the state and her people still retained a sense of culture and identity. To me, it makes perfect sense for beer joints to close at midnight on Saturday and for stores to be closed on Sunday. I fail to see why any self-respecting decent Southerner would see that any different.

I recall the utter joy of hearing the regimental band play "Dixie" Friday afternoons as we cadets marched off the parade field. That meant the weekend was about to officially begin and we acknowledged that fact with a hearty rebel yell. I fail to see why anyone should have a problem with such a practice.

I remember a time when real men spoke their mind and said the truth as they saw it. There was no thought of labeling a person for ideas and words - only deeds mark the tenor of a man. I fail to see how our current gender-neutral, politically-correct speech is an improvement on what was.

I remember my childhood home in which my mother spent 18 years of my life being my mother full-time. The material things we had my father went out into the world and earned. The intangibles my mother provided every day and every night. I fail to see how mothers dropping their children off for someone else to raise is an improvement on what I enjoyed.

I fail to see the sense in many things that go on in our world today. Frankly I am mad as blazes. Our federal government is run by a bunch of greedy, paternalistic, lying, socialist bastards. Our state governments are run by simpletons and lackeys - not a single statesman resides within their midst. Our population is no better - mindless drones, concerned only with acquiring the latest gadget or trinket. Most of the fools living around us would (and do) mortgage their entire future to debt just to have "things". We are a society of slaves - and we became so because of our own greed.

Politically we have bought into the charade of a two party system that ultimately offers no real choice. There is no real difference in either of the two major parties. Many fools dedicate their lives and efforts to dogmatically defending their side of that common coin but it all springs from a shared ideology - a flawed ideology.

We live in a society that condones and protects the murder of unborn children while at the same time promoting illicit sex and sexuality. Something within the natural order is out of balance.

We will send fellows like me to the Iraq/Syrian border to protect the sovereignty of Iraq but we fail to do anything to really protect our own borders.

We have absolutely no respect for our elders, we treat them as a bother and shuffle them off to a "long term care facility" for someone else to change their diapers. I remember as a very young child folks sitting up with the dead - they were loyal even up to the point the person was buried, they would never consider sending them away when they were still alive. I suppose such loyalties get in the way of "careers".

We preach equality and follow that up with silly quotas and affirmative action plans. Federal judges still to this day rule over local issues and dictate which child goes to what school. We are 40 years past the civil rights movement - it is time for every man to stand on his own merit.

We have taken the "woman's equality" issue entirely too far. Women are not equal to men in all categories - women are better at some things and men are better at others. We let our daughters dress and act like whores and then send them off to college to do who knows what. How is that just? Have fathers completely lost touch with their role in raising and protecting their young ladies?

Men are no longer men - we are much more effeminate. We have homosexuals, metrosexuals and your run of the mill pencil-necked geeks. We have few men that talk straight, act decent and know how to work all day if they had to (real work). We neither protect or respect our women nor do we lead our families through hard-work and good example.

We shuttle our children off to public schools that are little more than statist factories churning out good drones. Little real education occurs within those places - a lot of indoctrination takes place however.

We are a grotesquely fat society, the converse is the plastic narcissistic part of our culture. Each shows the worst sides of human nature, selfishness and greed.

I know most people do not have a clue what I am talking about, I am however informed by my principles and convictions. The world is turned upside down. It all makes me mad - but more so sad. My children deserve much better.

Stumble It!

Important Questions

We rant and praise our Constitution, but do we really know what we're saying? We crave a return to gold as Constitutional money, but is it only because we happen to own some coins squirreled away? For the most part I don't believe Americans are prepared for a return to constitutional government. We would have to reclaim our once cherished individual responsibilities. That means less government, my dear reader. Be intellectually honest with yourself now....Are we as parents able to take responsibility for the education of our own children? Now, I said education, and that doesn't mean just putting them on a yellow bus! I mean learning. Can we live without the government certifying every trade and work skill? How are you at replacing a toilet? What do we know about crop rotation, fertilizers, local marketing, etc? How many of us can run a wood splitter? Even more important where to get the wood. If you think a temporary power outage now to be an annoyance, wait until your local utility is unable to buy its natural gas or oil for any amount of dollars. Who do you blame? You blame the government, of course. But, then what do you do - - you turn around and ask the government for help! (a recent email from The Charleston Voice)

The questions he asks above are not merely rhetorical - they are practical in nature. I suppose the sad reality behind most modern conservatives supporting unprincipled and pragmatic positions is precisely because they know the answers to these questions. They are personally unprepared for the increased responsibility that must accompany increased liberty.

We have bought lock, stock and barrel into the notion that government must be involved in every aspect of life - from cradle to grave. Most of this has come about when good intentioned people said "there ought to be a law" - a statement generally following some irresponsible behavior by some individual or individuals.

I am conflicted as to the answer. That is the primary argument that most folks hold out against paleoconservatives. I know in our time, in the circumstances that are reality, every man cannot have his "40 acres and a mule". A true distributivist economic system is impossible, agrarianism on a mass scale is now impossible. It is even impossible to thwart the nature of modern man and his desire for bigger and cheaper. The mass of the population is not, and never will be ready to accept a world in which they, as individuals, are help accountable for their own well-being, where they are forced to conform to community standards in order to survive, where individual freedom comes with enormous responsibility and is tempered by the small community in which a person lives.

Even the very notion of community is confused in our modern mind. Many assume that their "homeowners associations" are akin to the sort of community that we paleoconservatives speak of - nothing could be further from the truth. Most of those associations take on the likeness of a communist party - demanding that all surrender something for the common good. Real community is of course different - it does not demand, it compels; there is a tremendous difference.

In some real sense paleoconservatives do not offer a real solution to the problems of the world around us - at least not a solution that the citizen-drones around us would accept. Perhaps we remain as simple a voice for some distant future generation, rising out of a cataclysmic future. Maybe that is too cynical of a view. I remain hopeful that all is not lost and that some small remnant remains that is capable seeing reality.

Stumble It!

Culture Shock

While we're on the topic of gender and its role in society (see below), Steven LaTulippe has written a timely article on the subject that is well worth taking a look at.

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Throw Away The Key!?!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts.

A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year.

What does this mean? China - a much more populous nation - has only 1.5 million total prisoners. The old saying is that if you make a law you create a criminal is certainly true but that does not explain all of this. Many of these folks are real criminals - the kind that violate natural law as opposed to artificial manmade law.

Many of our prisoners are there because of drug offenses, as the article states - we jail more drug offenders than all of Europe incarcerates for all crimes.

Once a person goes to prison it is safe to assume that they become essentially hardened criminals. Most affiliate with a gang, they live with other criminals and invariably become like them. Few and far between are the exceptions that do their time and return to society as good citizens ( I am certain there are cases but they must be the minority).

It seems we are left with three options -

1. Change the culture so that drugs do not present a draw
2. Legalize drugs and let losers waste their own lives
3. Leave the laws in place and lock all criminals up for life - with perhaps a sliding scale work-farm system for folks that behave

Obviously the first option is the best. The second option of simply legalizing drugs - at the federal level has merit (just let communities keep out the drugs if they want). If all else fails then I suppose that sending people off that go to prison for life is all that is left - a harsh option for certain.

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Wisdom of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say.
And if you do this, It will help you some sunny day.

Take your time... don't live too fast,
Troubles will come and they will pass.
Go find a woman and you'll find love,
And don't forget son, There is someone up above.

And be a simple kind of man.
Be something you love and understand.
Be a simple kind of man.
Won't you do this for me son, if you can?

Forget your lust for the rich mans gold
All that you need is in your soul,
And you can do this if you try.
All that I want for you my son, Is to be satisfied.

Boy, don't you worry... you'll find yourself.
Follow your heart and nothing else.
And you can do this if you try.
All I want for you my son, is to be satisfied.

Seems pretty much to fit with what any decent person ought to teach their children....

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Re: The Way We Are Now X

Dr. Clyde N. Wilson recently posted the tenth in his "The Way We are Now" series. Below are some points related to "I may not be a good American" that I particularly agree with.

"I do not think equality in education and excellence in education are the same thing"

[...]

"I think Rush Limbaugh and all of his imitators are ignorant, vulgar demagogues and a danger to their country." With this I agree completely and discussed as much in a recent post on the evils of "conservative" talk radio.

[...]

"I have never thought that any occupant of the executive mansion in the federal district was “my” president." With the exception of Ronald Reagan - I was a mere teenager then and was beguiled.

[...]

"I am not glad that the U.S. government under the Republican party succeeded in its brutal, fascistic war of conquest of the Southern people." Surely the greatest tragedy in our history; this event was the end of the Republic born in 1792 and the death of the ideal held high by men like Thomas Jefferson - America died in this war.

[...]

"I do feel sorrow and tribulation, however, that fifty-four American women have been killed in Iraq. And for hundreds of young men whose lives ended before they had hardly begun. Not for nothing but for less than nothing. I am certain that a regime in which rich men living in safety send poor women to war is unworthy of allegiance. And nourishes the seeds of its own destruction."

This is a topic that few fully understand. The fact is, men protect women; societies ought to be constructed to protect women, children, the elderly and the infirmed. The notion that millions of American young "men" live free and clear while women, most from the lower economic sectors of society, serve in combat zones is barbaric. Just societies simply do not place women in harms way, short of extremely desperate circumstances.

This sort of behavior is uncivilized, it is contrary to all of human history, it is contrary to nature. Call me a chauvinist if you will but men and women have different roles in life, noble societies recognize and respect this. We have accepted the feminist garbage to the point where men no longer act like men and society is willing to accept young girl (18 and 19 year old girls) marching off to war. How can that be right on any level of morality, rationality or reasonableness?

[...]

"I don’t think that Boston is the fount of all good things in American history." Faulkner, Lee, Washington, Calhoun, Williams, Poe, Clemens and thousands of others speak of the greatness that is the rest of the story.

[...]

"I am certain beyond any doubt that the domestic slavery of antebellum America was far from being one of the worst crimes in mankind’s long, sad history or even the worst crime in American history."

Man-stealing, slavery, is a sin and a moral abomination. However, compared to other sins in human history and specifically in American history slavery was certainly not the greatest of evils. The treatment of the American Indian was infinitely worse - bondage is certainly a lesser sin than murder. Entire peoples and cultures were destroyed; there is no comparison with slavery and the systematic massacre of entire cultures.

[...]

"I do not think Americans are uniquely virtuous and enjoy the special favour of God."

[...]

"I fear I am a bad American. But I note that commentators on the present war keep remarking that America has never had a war on its own soil. Oh, really? Maybe I am not a bad American but no American at all."

How foolish it is when folks conveniently forget that the South was America too, more America than the Unionist under the Republicans. It was the South that represented the principles of a federal republic. To "forget" that war has visited our shores is to deny what America was and what has been lost.

Johnnie, has talked for almost two years of writing an essay on what an American really is. I have argued that it is currently impossible to define an American in the historical sense - such a creature no longer exists. What current popular culture defines as "American" is devoid of principles and without a true heritage. (If there is a true heritage it is that of the Puritans who have lost their religion. No that is incorrect, the religion of a God not of this world has been replaced by a religion of statism, corporatism and capitalism). Here is another essay from Dr. Wilson on the subject as it applies to Southerners, any small group that still retains any cultural identity could take points from that piece and apply it to the demise of their own heritage into the bland, immoral and principleless Americanism.

I for one am not an American - not as defined by popular culture.

Joshua comments on Dr. Wilson's piece

I think I'm a pretty darn good American. I send in my IRS forms every year and will vote third party in 2008. I do my best to serve as an ambassador here in Korea, if at least to show Koreans that there is more to America than George W. Bush and Sex in the City

Yes I pay my taxes too - not because I agree, believe it is legal or support what they do with the money they steal but simply to stay out of their jails. I also completely understand your point about what the rest of the world thinks inhabitants of the United States are all about; having been around the world and seen "ugly Americans" in action is a sad experience. I am not, however, an ambassador for America - I am a representative of what my mother and father taught me and how I was raised. And Joshua is right, there is much more to see and know than the garbage the entertainment industry produces - but the world and most "Americans" do not realize it.

I too vote third party but not dogmatically. I will only actually voted for one person on my write-in ballot (John Corbin) during this election, everything else is blank. I am like Johnnie and think for the most part voting is stupid but I still vote in very rare circumstances just to make a point and then only for very specific folks.

What's left of our landscapes and farmlands is beautiful, as are the old cities and towns.

I agree - I hate corporate America for exactly this reason. I am a die-hard capitalist but the notion of giving an artificial entity "person rights" and allowing hegemons to crowd out businesses operated by real people is foolish. Good heritage is tied directly to mom and pop stores, locally owed radio and television stations and family farms.

Perhaps in my young 39 years I have become jaded a bit faster than Joshua on this subject.

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Re: Dismay and Possibility

Daniel Larison strikes a chord that rings true in our current circumstance. By current circumstance I mean the paradigm where conservative and liberal, perverted and moral, old and new are all interwoven into a patch quilt pattern; the end result being an amalgamation that ultimately tramples the old and the moral.

Pat Buchanan proclaimed in 1992 that a cultural war was being waged. Few understood that war was for home, hearth, kirk and kin. The slogan has been revived to describe all sorts of superficial conservative issues but no political leader with the ability to wage this war has identified truly what we are fighting for or what we are fighting against.

It is easy enough to identify and label many anti-conservatives. I use that term in the most negative of possible connotations. A person that refuses to cling to that which tradition, family and history have provided is a fool. How else can we describe such a person? How can a person truly believe in anything that is so new that it dispatches with all that came before? On a very fundamental level this one principle bespeaks of all that is wrong with the notion of humanism that sprang from the Enlightenment. The notion that man today can know more and see the world clearer in all cases that all of our forbears is just as silly as a teenager believing they always know better than their parents.

Anti-conservatives that are easy to spot and can be identified by their dedication to the Democratic Party, their disregard of traditional values and their fascination with "personal" freedom on moral issues -guaranteed and protected by a centralized government. (These are not the only anti-conservatives - the GOP has plenty too, they are just a little harder to spot unless you know what to look for.)

Of course real conservatives are all for personal freedom on moral issues as well - most of us believe if you want to be a pervert you are free to do so but the government has no business or right protecting you. In a truly conservative world most social malcontents would have a hard time finding a place to live in most towns. Malcontents should be free to do their thing, and regular folks should be free to refuse them rent, jobs etc. Real conservatives do not need government to protect their traditions and values; we just need government to stay out of the way.

Evangelicals lost sight of this a long time ago in the United States. They pinned their hopes and dreams on national leadership, combined resources and active participation in the political process. If their efforts were founded in a political philosophy they may have succeeded. Instead they put themselves into the bed of an existing ideology; without the anchor and foundation of a political philosophy they lost their way and have been continually confused with the definition of conservative.

James Wilson recently posted a simple quiz that provides two possible "conservative" solutions to various issues. Of course real conservatism is not issue-based, rather it is principle based, but this post highlights how "do-gooder conservatives" so easily get it wrong. You see on that quiz many "Christian" hot button issues - it is on these issues and the reliance on the Federal Government that the evangelicals went astray.

One might get the impression that I am against what evangelicals believe at the core; after all, I show them no love in my treatment of their foolishness over the last 30 years. This would be an incorrect assumption. Real conservatism must be true to the people and the place it exists. In the United States, particularly where I come from, this means Christian values.

Real conservatives have religion - the primary and traditional religion of their home. Real conservatives are also environmentalist, preservationist and conservationist. In some sense conservatives are an eclectic lot - not the sort of eclectic, pragmatic compromise that exists in our two main political parties. As Larison says:

there is really nothing all that surprising about including a latter-day hero of the Country party in a conservatism that can proudly embrace the Antifederalists, Agrarians and Bradford in its tradition. But, then, you would never know that these people form an important (some might even say central) part of that tradition if your acquaintance with conservatism was limited to the main magazines and talking heads of the last ten years.

Somewhere along the way real conservatives became fractured, divided and married to more liberal groups - folks who proclaimed to champion the causes most dear to certain groups. Conservationist and environmentalist were usurped by the left in the 1960's - to most uninitiated conservatives today environmentalism is a bad word, but a real conservative must be an environmentalist and a conservationist. Evangelicals have been seduced by the liberal minded neoconservatives. Agrarians, states' rightist, constitutionalist (more or less antifederalist) are left out entirely with no viable voice. Thus we conservatives have compromised away our most treasured principles, colluded with the enemy to enable the advance of liberalism and abandoned several of our political brothers to be left without a political voice at all.

There is a cultural war going on; not west versus east or Spanish versus English per se. (These are but side shows).

The real cultural war is occurring where you live. You see signs of it-

• at the school your children attend
• on the street in your town
• in the air you breath and food you eat
• in the closed "mom and pop" stores down the street from the corporate giant Wal-Mart
• in the filth played over corporate owned radio and television stations

Until conservatives realize what conservatism (paleoconservatism) is, and who conservatives are, we will continue to flounder around in the mess we now swim. We don't need big government to fix these issues; we need them to stop protecting corporations, legislating morality, educating our children and generally running our lives. We can fix the rest at the local level - if only we conservatives could speak with one voice on what we really want from government.

Technorati tags: paleoconservative

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Fathers and Sons

In my profession it is hard to raise a boy to be a good man. I suppose my situation is no more difficult, only different, than other fathers. My father was a career infantry officer, as was his father and his father before him. Despite all of that I believe my family has done a fine job of retaining our roots - we have remained very Southern. We have a family farm in the Upstate of SC, my grandparents still live in the home in Charleston that my grandfathers' father lived in.

When I was growing up my father had two priorities when it came to family. First if we could be together we were - so we moved often. Second, if we could not be together then my mother and sister and I would go home to live, sometimes for a year sometimes just for a few months.

My grandfather had already retired so he spent his time living during the summer at the farm and in the winter in Charleston - thus depending upon the time of year that is where we lived also when we went home to live.

We spent a lot of our time with my father at Camp Lejeune, NC. (not really so different than my life in Charleston -salt marshes, shrimping, and still in the South). Of course we also lived for a time in Japan, Hawaii and Beaufort, SC (just a few miles south of home)

Someone said it and I am not sure who that to be a man you have to know how to ride, shoot straight and tell the truth (I am certain the quote proceeds the book by the same name). There is a lot of wisdom in that simple mantra. In fact you could elaborate on each of those points and categorize dozens of separate items under each of those three points. For instance "telling the truth" encompasses a wide swath of character traits a real man ought to have. Knowing how to ride really deals with being able to do "stuff" that a man ought to know. Being able to shoot straight encompasses all the skills, abilities and attributes a man ought to have to be able to take care of himself and those he loves.

Now as I recall growing up I had ample opportunity to be exposed to numerous things that instilled in me the skills required to master "riding, shooting and telling the truth" - both in the literal and figurative sense. Moving around a lot and being forced to adapt to new environments was indeed helpful - if at times painful. When I was in school it was not a cardinal sin to get in a fight - it was an offense that was punished but boys were boys. If you were always going to be the new guy you had to know how to adapt and if that failed how to fight. (not that grown men ought to go around fighting with fist but we learn as boys that there are some things worth fighting for - we carry this over into manhood in the form of moral courage)

I spent many summers on the farm doing hard labor for the express purpose of bringing perverse pleasure to my task-master (my father or grandfather). We spent vacations hiking and camping the closest mountains, we went home every hunting season at least once just to be with the fellows from home. When we could not go home we hunted whatever was legal and in season in our locality. I played every sport available - even the ones I was not really good at - without any other option.

I am often concerned that I may not be doing as good a job as my father. We took both of our children out of public school a long time ago. Depending upon where we are we either homeschool or send them to private school (if and when we find one we like).

My son (and I) participate in Boy Scouts - Scouting is not really what I remember, he takes taekwondo (really not a fighting art in my mind but good for coordination), I drag him into the woods almost every weekend (which in Korea means hiking a mountain). Over the course of his young life I have taught him every outdoor skill I know - he can navigate pretty well, hunt, fish, build/find shelter, clean and cook game, track (still working on that), ride, shoot and patch up minor wounds.

I encourage (and when that fails I force) him to read extensively books that teach a point, set an example or lay the foundation of knowledge needed later.

All the same, I often wonder if I am failing him in some way. We walk and talk a lot (during our hikes mostly when we are alone) but at times it seems as if he just does not understand me. My wife tells me all the time that a 10 year old is a boy, not a small man. I know she is correct but still I wonder if I have done all I should do.

In most every way I pin a lot of hopes and dreams on my son, my daughter too but I am traditional I suppose and I believe my role with her is a little different. I believe the world (America specifically) will become a pretty nasty place to live within the lifetime of my son. If America is really to have a "greatest generation" I think it will be comprised of today's ten year-olds (the future is up to them). For my son's sake at least I hope I have not failed him.

Stumble It!