sisu

These are a few of my favorite things

To cleanse our readers' and our own aesthetic and philosophical palates of the unpleasant taste left over from our previous post on the "slavering maw of socialism," a couple of things we love:

Our Sweet Tiny girl (above) setting herself up in a hunting blind of hostas, keeping an eye on her beloved, Earl Grey, who was having a nip on the terrace nearby.

And what NJ Gov Chris Christie told a whining reporter yesterday:

I came here to govern, not to worry about re-election.

And Amba's concise, terse, pithy assessment* of what Gov Christie said:

Refreshing Honesty. More of this, please!

And Dan Riehl's prediction back on March 28:

The irony, Obama's day in the sun could be over if the fat man in NJ sings! heh!

With states often serving as laboratories for the types of solutions that can catch on nationally, eventually rising to have their day in DC, NJ's Christie looks to be stepping up as something of an anti-Obama in one of the country's bluest states. How several of his current battles play out is worth watching. No doubt GOP political strategists are.

The anti-Obama. What's not to love?

*Amba on Twitter points out it was Randy who posted:

But I second the emotion!

He is not here: for he is risen

While England and the Free World shlepped, we've been cooking up a storm for Sunday's Easter Dinner Extravaganza Down East at Goomp's, even as Tiny keeps her end up washing her face atop the dining room table. Second Easter without our precious Babe. Here's essentially the menu, from Easters past. Handy to have it all here on the blog for quick reference when the holiday rolls around.

Across the room from us here at the computer our Scott Brown lawn sign and a selection of recent and not-so-recent reads caught the early-morning light fantastic.

The pepper mill is on its last legs, confined to a plastic bag to contain its innards, Snowden's-Secret like, till Tuck can feel its pulse and let us know if there is any hope. But oh, what the late afternoon sun can do to transform the cards and bowls and random objets of the kitchen counter into a lyrical play of light and shadow.

We put the Sausage and Apple Stuffing into containers and then into the freezer, out of harm's way. We've been known to raid the fridge in earlier days, leaving barely enough to stuff the center of the Crown Roast on Easter morn.

Also on ice, a fresh batch of Sweet Potatoes Puree, ready to receive the purple peeps (they don't appear to have the white ones any more) for five minutes of reheating before serving.

And for this evening, Friday Night WSJ Crossword Puzzle Date Night in Chelsea-by-the-Sea, our totally awesome Fanny Farmer's Beef Stew. No wonder we have barely had any time for blogging or tweeting of late.

*Blog title is from Matthew 28:6 (King James Version).

We're smart enough to think for ourselves, Mr. President

"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet … And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered … And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron … And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon." Revelations 12. Above, William Blake's "The Great Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun" (c. 1806-1809, watercolor, Brooklyn Museum).

"Lacking connections with the local political machine, he connected directly with Illinois voters," a cluelessly smitten "nudgey" Cass Sunstein wrote in a puffy paean to then Senator Barack Obama back in July of 2004, guest-blogging for Glenn Reynolds. When the "well-thought-of liberal academic" was appointed last spring as head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (AKA regulatory czar), libertarian Professor Reynolds supported President Obama's selection with a caveat:

While he and I disagree on plenty, I think he’s an honest, decent and very smart guy who wants to help the country. Since I’m not going to get someone who agrees with me about everything from the Obama Administration (heck, I didn’t get that from the Bush Administration) that ought to be enough, and I think that efforts to block his appointment are both unfair and not very smart.

Sunstein's appointment was confirmed in September, and now there's talk of a Supreme Court nomination. Reynolds is skeptical, wondering "if he doesn't have too much baggage," but that's not where we're going with this post. Instead, let's focus on the idiot savant factor. How can such a razor-sharp intellect be so doornail-dumb when it comes to human nature and the way of the world? From that 2004 blogpost, "The Democrats' New Star":

Obama is a genuinely independent thinker; you can't pigeonhole him.  Like many Republican leaders, he's centrally concerned about economic growth. He knows the importance of free enterprise, and he has the courage to speak bluntly to union members about the benefits of free trade. Like the most sophisticated Democrats, he seeks ways of providing jobs and opportunities without busting the federal budget. Far from demonizing his political opponents, he compromises with them and is willing to learn from them. He's also someone of unquestioned integrity and good will.

Arggghhh! Every line cries out for a fisking, but let's focus on the one about not "demonizing his political opponents." This very day, even as dirt-digging and -manufacturing minions worked under the radar 24/7 to discredit the motives of the good people of this army of Davids, the President himself, after dropping a gratuitous reference to fringy "birthers" questioning his legitimacy as a US citizen, told NBC that "he recognizes the [Tea Party] movement involves 'folks who have legitimate concerns' about the national debt and whether the government is taking on too many difficult issues simultaneously." Too many difficult issues? It's not the number nor the difficulty of the issues that troubles us, Mr. President. It's your transparent lunge for the jugular of the nation, taking advantage of every "serious crisis," manufactured or real, to subsume our God-given liberties in a soul-deadening statist power grab.

One final note for context, from our July 2008 post "The facts are irrelevant":

Then there's "libertarian paternalism," a subliminal approach to political persuasion that has "caught the imagination of top politicians" including Barack Obama, according to a breathless London Times interview of behavioral scientist Richard Thaler, co-author with Cass Sunstein of Nudge:

So why the political interest? Because you can influence people's choices without being accused of "nannying" and it is cheap. Or, as the authors put it: "If incentives and nudges replace requirements and bans, government will be both smaller and more modest … In short, libertarian paternalism is neither left nor right, neither Democratic nor Republican. In many areas, the most thoughtful Democrats are going beyond their enthusiasm for choice-eliminating programs. In many areas, the most thoughtful Republicans are abandoning their knee-jerk opposition to constructive governmental initiatives."

Considering ourselves among "the most thoughtful Republicans," we are skeptical. So is David Gordon of the Ludwig von Mises Intitute, who notes that "Tocqueville long ago warned against the policies of which libertarian paternalismm is an example."

As we said in the punchline to that post, "We're smart enough, Barack Obama. Oh, and we're not a racist."

Cutting through the nuanced underbrush of leftist logorrhea

"Like the Impressionist painters, the Pictorialists reveled in the effect of atmosphere, or conveyed the wistful emotion of an ethereal young beauty caught in a delicate reverie," wrote a reviewer of the exhibition "Truth Beauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art." Above, "Three Women."

"When I think of the suppression of free thought in areas like global warming or children who are suspended for their political beliefs, I wonder how future generations will ever learn how to figure out truth from fiction," writes Dr. Helen, reinforcing what she already knows about nature and human nature in rereading Hayek's timeless The Road to Serfdom:

One of my favorite chapters in the book is one entitled, "The End of Truth," where Hayek discusses propaganda and its role in a totalitarian society. He argues that intellectual freedom is important because it leads to intellectual progress:

… So long as dissent in not suppressed, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propaganda …

The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends.

Enter stage right Thomas Sowell, whose concise, terse, pithy prose — as ever informed by equal parts profound scholarship and old-fashioned common sense — cuts through the nuanced underbrush of leftist logorrhea:

Even if every conclusion with which students are indoctrinated were true, unless those students develop their own ability to weigh opposing arguments, these conclusions will become obsolete as new issues arise in the years ahead.

These "educated" people will have developed no ability to analyze opposing sides of issues. Students are getting half an education at inflated prices and learning only how to label, dismiss and demonize ideas that differ from what they have been led to believe. Their "educated" ignorance is a danger to the future of this country.

As we wrote quite awhile back — half a decade, fergosake! — in one of our all-time fave posts, "Bloggers are 'cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open'":

The leftist utopian dream was doomed from the start because it denied the economic logic of nature and human nature. The long-repressed voices of opposition in a free society, now ringing loud and clear through talk radio, cable TV and — of course — the blogosphere, will force the left to rethink its arguments or go extinct.

Looks like our heart was too soon made glad. A lot of smoke and mirrors dazzled a lot of our fellow Americans between then and now, but in the fullness of time, things are trending there. Witness the cosmic convergence of two of the top 50 political bloggers this very day. "Is he an outlier, or a leading indicator?" Glenn Reynolds asked rhetorically last week, "in his own three levels of blogging way":

I’ve never seen Dan Riehl this angry … The Dems had better hope it's the former.

Well it ain't the former. It's the latter, a leading indicator, as the Instapundit himself affirms it in a brilliant Washington Examiner analysis today of the overloaded circuits at the central breaker box of the once Shining City Upon a Hill:

Unsurprisingly, the political class — which talks mostly to itself — thinks that it is far more popular, and legitimate, in the eyes of the country than is in fact the case. In this, as in so many things, America's political class is out of touch with reality …

The political class sold its legitimacy off in drips and drabs. As "smart politics" has come over the past decades to mean not persuasion but the practice of legerdemain, the use of political deals, cover from a friendly press apparat and taking advantage of voters' rational ignorance, the governing classes have managed to achieve things that would surely have failed had the people known what was going on.

Rahm Emanuel, call your office. As Dan Riehl says in a follow-up:

Why of potentially even more concern? Because if I often represent passion in political discourse, Reynolds just as often represents prudence. And if he's seeing the writing on the wall as glaringly as I am and thinks it worthy of giving voice to, then we are indeed in a precarious state in this sense.

But not to worry. The social networkers are on the case, disintermediating the powers that be via the internet, and "It's morning in the American blogosphere, my friends," writes Dan:

Based on Wikio's rankings, if Andrew Sullivan and Leftist blogs are doing anything today, they are going down as regards their influence, while the Right is on the rise.

We were astonished to see our own blog ranked 455 in Wikio's general category. Golly gee. It apparently has to do with the ranking of those who link you. It must be the company we keep.

Update: Dan Riehl links with a twist:

Cooking the Left's goose with Sissy, Sowell and Dr. Helen. Or is it goosing the Left with an onion? Inquiring minds …

Update: Retriever links (Thanks, dear friend):

Sissy Willis on the PC brainwashing of our children and young people. I'd like to say that the homeschooling many friends around here and in the blogosphere recommend is the answer, but the real pressure is applied in college (don't ask how I know, don't want to get mad all over again)

Lots of good stuff. Check 'em out. This one caught our eye:

Women who drink gain less weight.

Thad McCotter: We fit our mind to the world, not the world to our mind.

"Congressman, does this make marriage more or less appealing? More marriages where you toss the 'I'll be faithful' vow?" Greg Gutfeld teased an impassive, pink-tied Thaddeus McCotter on Red Eye a couple of weeks back. The MIchigan Congressman's answer nonplussed the assembled guests of Fox News's fast-moving NSFW wee-hour gabfest.

"Love is a very ephemeral, it is a very delicate flower, and you never know when it's going to bloom, not," deadpan comic/philosopher king Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter shocked Greg Gutfeld's bleeding-edge irregulars on Red Eye the other night with an unexpectedly thoughtful and drawn-out answer to the host's toss-away question about celebrity marriage vows in Fox News's wee-hour theater of the absurd. The topic was what possible effects dropping the fidelity vow might have on marriage. McCotter expostulated:

And so I would think when you go into this, you go into it with your eyes open, and you take the person as they are, and you try to go from there …

In many ways we've become a generation or a nation that has traded romance for relationships, and this goes down the way where this is some scientific equilibrium you can keep between two people, and that's not how human beings work. And I think that the removal of that type of vow is an indication that somehow you have less than realistic expectations about [whether] human beings, sentient beings with hearts and with dreams and aspirations, can bond together or not."

McCotter's like that. Stands out in a crowd. He has a quiet, almost introspective way of public speaking that makes listeners lean in to hear what he has to say, the total opposite of the hand-pumping, in-your-face Mayor-Shinn-like bombast of old-fashioned rhetoricians like President Obama. Take McCotter's CPAC speech yesterday, where he expressed the same idea about our effanineffable human nature — those "sentient beings with hearts and with dreams and aspirations" — in a larger context:

Now the question is, what is the state of the movement, even post the election of Senator Brown?

I would argue it is strong, it is healthy. I would argue that we remain philosophical, not ideological because as those who've read Russell Kirk understand, conservatism is the negation of ideology. We fit our mind to the world, not the world to our mind.

It's the tragic view of human nature vs the utopian, the very foundation of this Shining City Upon a Hill, flogged here early and often.

Update: Maggie's links:

Our favorite Congressman, Thad McCotter, on love and sex.

See also the Congressman's interview at Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, with thanks to Yehudit in the comments.

"Too Late to Apologize": Music video as history lesson

Music video as history lesson: Tim Alden Grant's "Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration" with lead singer Thomas Jefferson.

"Perhaps Western society is not *totally* doomed, after all, writes Moe Lane in gratitude for soomopublishing's "bloody effing brilliant" (Caleb Howe's twitter take) history-lesson video on YouTube, "Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration," featuring the Founding Fathers in an "80’s Hair Band moment":

We still produce stuff like this. Although I'm not sure which one was John Adams. AND JOHN ADAMS HAD BETTER HAVE BEEN IN THE VIDEO.

Adams was there [Update: Both John and Sam. See Neal in the comments for details] along with bespectacled Benjamin Franklin and a candlelit tableround of Declaration signers.

"When people who love politics, pop culture and filmmaking are asked to humanize the sentiment of the founders in writing the declaration, we sometimes get carried away," write the creators:

This parody is a bit of a departure from our regular gig: creating ready-to-use collections of rich web assignments that work as e-textbooks, online courses or textbook supplements. For more please visit soomopublishing.com …

We convert the best stuff on the web into crisp, effective assignments, including context, guidance and critical thinking questions.

A must view. Rousing music, sublime production values and compelling performances blend 18th- and 21st-century perspectives into the perfect historically-aware antidote to the "ideas" of clueless North Carolina education "leaders" who are proposing to revamp the state's 11th-grade curriculum by skipping the Revolution and Civil War and covering U.S. history "only from 1877 onward":

"We are certainly not trying to go away from American history," Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told Fox News. "What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day."

You want connections? Listen to someone who's actually studied history, Ms chief academic officer:

"The answer isn't to throw out fundamental portions of U.S. history," said Mike Belter, a U.S. history teacher and social studies director. "This is not preparing our kids to have a deep historical perspective that can be used to analyze modern events for themselves."

As the late Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin put it:

Trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.

Update: "One would expect it to almost come across as campy," writes Dan Riehl with a link (Thanks!):

Yet, it doesn't, somehow - except for the truly cynical, perhaps. And I'm pretty damned cynical, just not where some things are concerned, perhaps.

Damned but not truly cynical. It works for us.

Update II: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor.

Update III: "I can imagine a few of the middle school teachers I know using this with their kids as they teach the 8th grade US History course," writes Texas social studies teacher Greg of Rhymes with Right, with a link (Thanks!):

And let me be among the voices encouraging my fellow educators to check out Soomo Publishing for more resources -- some ready to use, some still in development.

Social networking is the business of America?

Update IV: Fellow Tea Partier and blogger Amy Kane sees Scott Brown's victory as a "tipping point." Thank you for the link, good friend!

Update V: "I think the early history is the most fun," writes Joanne Jacobs with a link:

Of course, we had less history when I was in school.

The good old days.

Update VI: "Too bad the rest of history hasn't been covered the same way," writes Maetenloch at Ace of Spades HQ, with a link. First time. Lotsa visitors. Thanks!

Fixing the mind on the sound of the mantra*

Cleansing our palate between blogtastings …

*Blogpost title refers to "Om yoga meditation. It is, simply put, fixing the mind on the sound of the mantra “Aum” – the sacred syllable that both symbolizes and embodies Brahman, the Absolute Reality – as the mantra is constantly repeated in unison with the breath. The purpose of pranava yoga is to become free from suffering and limitation."

Happy Birthday, Wolfie: "Filled with such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling"

"Amadeus was inspired by Mozart and Salieri, a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin and later adapted into an opera of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Shaffer then adapted the play for a film released in 1984," according to Wikipedia. Above Murray Abraham in the role of a lifetime as Mozart's tormented rival Antonio Salieri.

Our old friend Sippy reminds us that this date, January 27, is the 254th anniversary of the birth of the "beloved of God," Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with a clip from that most totally awesome of movies (We're Republican so watch movies, not films), Amadeus. This quotation by the beloved of God's tormented rival Salieri, as spoken in old age within the asylum, is heart stopping:

On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse - bassoons and basset horns - like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly - high above it - an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the very voice of God.

Don't know whether that was the sheer genius and poetry of screenwriter Peter Shaffer or adapted from Salieri's journals, but it's music to our ears. Click here to hear "the very voice of God" at Vladimir Horowitz's fingertips.

Sending some cash up north to send Mr. Brown to Washington

Sarah loves Rick loves Sarah. "I love Sarah Palin," Texas Gov Rick Perry told the Wall Street Journal last summer." I love her positions, I think she was a good governor … I want her to be engaged in this rebuilding of the Republican Party … She is substantially more the face of this country than some other people who might want to be the face of the Republican Party. To me she's the face of America." When old-girl-network Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison challenged Perry for the governorship, Gov Palin endorsed her Texas counterpart. Above shaking hands at the Republican Governors Association Conference last year.

"Cookin' breakfast here in Alabama, but sending some cash up North … If I can help, you can too!! Let's send Mr. Brown to Washington!" writes second-grade teacher Mrs. Hall in the comments of Legal Insurrection's "GOP Abandons Scott Brown, But We're Not":

As reported by Jules Crittenden, the national GOP has all but abandoned Scott Brown in his bid for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in the January 19 special election … Coakley, on the other hand, is getting solid Democratic fundraising backing.

In addition to me, other bloggers, including SISU and Jumping in Pools, and Twitterers, such as NorsU, have been sounding the alarm that Brown needs some help. He is a solid fiscal conservative, and electing him may be all it takes to stop Obamacare since the final votes in the Senate likely will take place after January 19.

Brown is going to have to do it on his own, with the help of social media advocates [Tea Party types like us and that Alabama schoolteacher!] …

Ed Morrissey at HotAir is onto the issue: "Where is the national GOP in the Massachusetts special election?"

It appears the national GOP is out to lunch. What's a lover of the Shining City Upon a Hill to do? Hope is not a strategy, but we hope The Hill's Bernie Quigley is right when he headlines "2010 rising karma: Palin, Perry, Romney, William Daley. Palin will be nominee." A few tasty tidbits from this delicious essay:

Sarah Palin: She was seen from the very beginning as a rising star — a cultural awakener similar to Andrew Jackson — bringing a whole new cultural paradigm to the political process; a new heartland spirit of individualism and self reliance as per Emerson and Barry Goldwater. The widespread, deep and immediate hysteria in the MSM was a sure indication that she was a threat to the old temple and would be a vital new force in the rising century …

Rick Perry: “I love Sarah Palin,” Perry said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. The Tea Party movement has found wide support this past year. Recently 41 percent chose it over Democrat or Republican. Texas governor Perry was the first to stand publicly with it and he has not backed down. The influential conservative marketer Richard Viguerie of the Reagan-era Christian Coalition supports this movement but has lamented that this “Constitutional moment” has no leader. Perry is the leader, and his status will rise with this movement. The Conservative Party initiatives at NY 23 and the huge Republican victory in Virginia’s governor’s race reflect this new paradigm …

The main question going into 2012 is who will Palin pick for running mate, Perry or Romney?

"A whole new cultural paradigm to the political process." That must be what's gotten armchair activists like ourselves — who'd never done anything much political but gripe and moan on the blog and maybe write a few letters to the editor — to get up out of that armchair last March and April, Tea Party signs in hand, to tell the powers that be that we are "as mad as hell and aren't going to take this any more."

Update: Dan Riehl links with "Saving Scott Brown." Thanks, buddy.

Update II: Feeling the buzz in Michelle Malkin's "Buzzworthy." Good for the stats!

Update III: Instalanche! Could anything be cooler than disintermediating* a bunch of old fuddy-duddies via the Internet? Thanks for the link, Professor, and for your concise, terse, pithy way with words.

Update IV: "Outstanding," writes Scott Brown himself in a message on Facebook:

We have been getting a ton of donations from GA. I believe there is a radio talkshow host that keeps talking about this race.

Disintermediate at will!

Update V: "It's up to the people now," says The Barrister at Maggie's. Thanks for the link!

*Disintermediation. n. Withdrawal of funds from intermediary financial institutions, such as banks and savings and loan associations, in order to invest in instruments yielding a higher return.

I'll drink to that!

It's not all about Instalanches. Roger L. Simon and Stephen Green have floated our boat from time to time.

What could be more delicious than a toast from the divine Vodka Pundit, Stephen Green to our recent post "The GOP's secret weapon: William Shatner" in his "Week in Blogs — The Links!" at Pajamas Media with "Fade away and radiate." PJM's the one who threw us not under but off the bus way back when they went professional, even as Roger L. Simon once lifted our heart with his golden words:

Sissy is one of my favorite bloggers because she is so skilled at moving from the personal and the cultural to the political and back again, something I think often gives a blog its authenticity.

That took us through a lot of hard times, but as Roger himself told Red Eye's Greg Gutfeld last winter:

I'm an intellectual to an extent, so I read things through, but I didn't think things through.

But who can't love the big lug? We adore him. Stephen too. Thanks for the linky love, you handsome devils!