"Boys need an arena"

"I used to think Rudyard Kipling was an American," reveals Tuck, whose most memorable encounter with the Indian-born Brit was his house Naulakha (above) in Brattleboro, Vermont. Who knew? According to Wikipedia, Kipling "built the house and lived in it from 1892-1897 and wrote the Jungle Books and Captains Courageous while there." You're a better home builder than I am, Gunga Din. "I used to drive out there when I was in Brattleboro doing errands, and I just used to think that was the most beautiful house I'd ever seen," says Tuck.

"Several Northern Ireland veterans who worked with him in Baghdad this year came away with the opinion that it is now America, not Britain, that is the world leader in counter-insurgency," reports The [London] Sunday Telegram [via Instapundit], whose editors -- unlike Time Mag's BDS-wracked opinionators -- named General David "Hard is not hopeless" Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, "Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement." Their citation reiterates how Petraeus's success on the ground fits into the larger picture of the War on Terror. We suppose that Hillary & Company's suspension of disbelief is still hanging in the wind, so don't try confusing them with the facts. For the rest of us, a concise reminder of why we're "over there" [Be sure to savor the whole thing]:

He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq's escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible . . . Iraq, whatever the current crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan, remains the West's biggest foreign policy challenge of this decade, and if he can halt its slide into all-out anarchy, Gen Petraeus may save more than Iraqi lives.

A failed Iraq would not just be a second Vietnam, nor would it just be America's problem.

It would be a symbolic victory for al-Qaeda, a safe haven for jihadists to plot future September 11s and July 7s.

"King David: What a guy!!!!" comments our imail correspondent as we free associate connections among "the Army's own Lawrence of Arabia," the victorious New England Patriots, birthday boy Rudyard Kipling's "If . . ." and The Dangerous Book for Boys:

She: Did you watch the game live?

We: I'm just catching highlights now.

She: I'll bet there are a lot of proud mothers out there. At least 11. Dangerous Boys happen, thank God. Boys need an arena. Without the gladiator thing, they end up shooting their classmates and teachers. I think the problem started in the 70's, when boys and girls had to have gender-neutral toys.

We: It started when Marxism infiltrated feminism. They turned it into yet one more futile and destructive attempt to deny human nature.

She: I always let my sons have guns because if you don't, they'll just pick up a stick, and go "Bang, Bang, you're dead".

We: And shoot their eye out, the way I almost did yours.

She: I'll bet [Petraeus's] mother is mighty proud. Re Rudyard [who would have been 142 today], one of his quotes from "If . . ." is frequently used on cards for the birth of baby boys. I think Matt has always followed it.

"Kipling said that he had the traits of Leander Starr Jameson in mind when he wrote of what it takes to be a man" in "If . . ." says Answers.com. "I wonder if Leander Jameson was a relative," ponders Goomp -- AKA A.C. Jameson (our maiden name, Jameson). "I understand the Jamesons came from Edinburgh before they moved to Liverpool." Gotta get our genealogist-in-residence, sis-in-law Ellen, on the case. Leander Starr Jameson -- above center, we assume, (Photo from Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Dr. Helen introduced us to TDBFB with her post "Boys Just Want to Have Fun" last February. It's been the talk of the sphere ever since and showed up under many a Christmas tree -- including our own -- last week. 'Course in Tuck's case, he probably could have written 99 percent of the book himself. So could "King David" General Petraeus, who pinned down the problem a year or so ago in response to a well-meaning but clueless journalist's earnest if condescending concern that for some losers "the Army may be the only option":

"That's the problem," [Petraeus] says. "It may not be an option for [a loser cited by the journalist]. We have a profile we're looking for; we need high school graduates who are physically fit and driven by the desire for self-improvement. We need men who are prepared to be better soldiers.

"They need direction to stay on the straight and narrow, a push to participate in athletics and extracurricular activities, help to pursue a healthy lifestyle, recognition that they must be accountable for their actions, and reinforcement of good performance."

Kipling would understand. A few stanzas from "If . . ," voted Britain's most popular poem in a 1995 BBC poll according to Answers.com ['Wonder what they'd choose nowadays with the creeping Dhimmitude that seems to be turning the Old Sod into a Nouveau Saudi Arabia?] 

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 . . .

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man my son!

Despite the Marx-lite community's best efforts, we've still got a few good men out there making the world safe for democracy.

Update: Instalanche! Talk about a few good men.

Update II: Meanwhile, Dr. Sanity is making the world safe for lunacy in her latest Carnival of the Insanities.

Comments

[Jim Christ]

[Editor's note: BDS-wracked opinionator alert!]

well george
you've only got a year left
and some of us
are on pins and needles
waiting to see what
you may do to go out
with a bang

your cohorts covered up your
mysterious Air National Guard
records nicely. when
reporters interviewed
commanders, fellow officers
and other peers in your group
not one person
remembered you attending weekend meetings
or annual summer encampments
or anything what-so-ever.
guess you found that
cloak of invisibility, eh?

you took us to war and killed
a half million iraqis and
a few thousand of our own
to revenge your daddy
and grab the oil
that ran through your fingers
all over that desert
while the iraq infastructure
is more feeble than ever.
you got saddam but somehow
family friend bin laden traipses free.

you spent and spent and spent
everything from this to that
from special funds to
monies earmarked for
social security and
who knows what else
as all the while your family
and friends made more money
on oil in the last eight years
than they had in the last eighty.

go george go - you're on a roll.
you've clipped our inalienable rights
and taken away what the forefathers
tried to insure for all time
with chimp smile and cabinet
rife with treason and worse.

two fraudulent elections.
photographs of you holding books
upside down while pretending to read them.
pictures of you waving the satan sign
which you said was a texas longhorn
thing - BUT GEORGE -
you had it freaking backwards!
and your buddies,
a vice president who shot a friend
while hunting and didn't report it
until 24 hours later when the blood
tests wouldn't reflect the alcohol level
and the cover up would be guaranteed.
oh yeah, and that other cabinet member
who exposed CIA operatives in the
middle of a top secret mission.
probably tips of a few icebergs.

now you want to pass a bad joke
that will let you remain president
and suspend elections
if another 911 or other tragedy
"just happens" our way.

george, you're the strongest link
in the uglification of america.
your mindless puppet doings
have [expletive deleted] us all for decades
without a clue.

[nichevo]

"Jim Christ," forsooth. Ideally, President Bush would cap his career by hunting through IP logs, finding out where you live, and seizing you and throwing you into Guantanamo or someplace far, far worse.

Sadly, no, he won't do that, because he isn't the tyrant your political Tourette's makes him out to be.

"Think as I think" or not, you are a toad.

[SPQR]

You know, "Christ", you spoiled a really great original post with comment filled with silly nonsense and stupid slanders.

Sissy Willis ought to delete it just because of the fact that you are attempting to piggy-back on the work of your betters to get exposure for your vapid prattling.

[Teresa]

Nichevo and SPQR... you guys actually read that whole comment??? I bow to your fortitude. I got tired after the first 3 or 4 lines and skipped to the end. Same old - same old simply bores me to tears.

Sissy - I can see why Tuck loves that house - what a beauty!

[WAL]

Posted by: Jim Christ | December 31, 2007 at 12:28 AM

While we're trying to deal with solving the problems in the Middle East, avoiding tossing millions of people in Iraq into a state of genocidal anarchy, handing over Iraq to Iran, handing a victory to Al Qaeda - do ya think you could cool your Bush hatred for a second to actually focus on any of that or is the possibility that us rightwingers wont receive our comeuppance just too much for you to accept?

I mean, really, that's what gets you right?

Screw Iraq, screw leaving all the people there to out to dry, screw what would happen to the place if we left - you want the neocon scum to fry, and if that means leaving 30 million people in Iraq to fry also, so be it.

If the opportunity for this mission to be successful ends up meaning you'd no longer get to act smug - well, that's just too much for you to accept.

How about a compromise? Your side can crack Bush jokes till you're 80 and, in the meantime, you'll actually give a shit when a strategy looks like it's working.

-

P.S. a half million Iraqis might have been killed in some alternate universe where pixies cure cancer, but not in this one. Every study (the U.N., Iraq Body Count, etc.) but one puts it at a distant fraction of that and the one you're citing estimated that more Iraqis died as a result of this war than had died in Iraq as the result of anything (i.e., it was a little off).

[WAL]

Nichevo and SPQR... you guys actually read that whole comment???

No kidding, I only bothered with the first and last stanza.

If you read the first five lines and were actually expecting anything insightful in the rest of it, it's your own damn fault.

[Gregory Koster]

Dear Ms. WIllis: I had completely forgotten that today was the anniversary of Kipling's birth, many thanks for the reminder. But the post is much too ironic: how many of your readers know that Kipling left "Naulahka" because of a violent quarrel with his American wife's brother-in-law, a quarrel that seeped out into Brattleboro, and soon turned into Rudyard the Stiff-Necked Englishman vs. A Good Yankee Town That Won't Be Buffaloed by No English, No Sirree!! Kipling already had feelings against Americans because many American publishers from about 1888-1900 pirated his works robbing him of income---much like the recording industry's feelings toward file sharing these days.

Next, you are quite right to unearth Leander Starr Jameson, who did embody the precepts Kipling set down in "If." Trouble is, from the point of view of the Afrikaners who ran the Transvaal and Orange Free State African settlements, Jameson was no better than Osama bin Laden. Jameson was a foreigner who ran about, trying to stir up revolutions that would overthrow the Afrikaner governments (and, if he had succeeded, would have nipped apartheid in the bud---more complications), though failing, being captured and heaved out of the country. Yet he was the embodiment of all "If's" virtues. Which shows that good that goes wrong is just as dangerous as that which is evil in the first place. Your readers who are interested in all of this could read THE BOER WAR by Thomas Pakenham and THE LONG RECESSIONAL by David Gilmour. I hope Jim Christ doesn't take this advice. All that reading would tire out his lips, get them all numb and swollen, so that when he attempted to kiss his girlfriend, he'd slobber, she'd say ewww, hit him, getting him all excited and pressing forward, followed by more hitting, flying objects, a call to 911, prosecution of the only crime the police seem to be able to enforce these days, and nine months later, a small contribution to the answer to Mark Steyn's worries in AMERICA ALONE. Good heavens, how complicated this post has gotten! But many thanks for putting it up.

Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster

[Public Domain]

It ain't kipling but it's fair poetry
http://www.thestarlitecafe.com/perl-bin/base/search.cgi?from_poem=na&setup_file=&sort_by=6&fuz=in&keywords=public+domain&poet_sort=&name=&type=&new_hits_seen=

[Joan of Argghh!]

Growing boys into good Men has to be the one of the best things one can do for their own self, their community, and their country.

[Mr. Forward]

For Jim Christ:

We hung Saddam
It's such a shame
You'll write a poem
And Bush you'll blame
Dictators are just fine with thee
Can't stand Iraqi's being free
It's Bush that's bad
And you that's good?
Between your ears
Sawdust and wood.

[goomp]

To think that the author of all those books I read and loved as a boy can still arouse such passion.

[SDN]

Rudyard Kipling had to deal with the Jim Christs of his time, and how they dishonored and lied about those who served, and wrote this:

Memories

THOUGH all the Dead were all forgot
And razed were every tomb,
The Worm-the Worm that dieth not
Compels Us to our doom.
Though all which once was England stands
Subservient to Our will,
The Dead of whom we washed Our hands,
They have observance still.

We laid no finger to Their load.
We multiplied Their woes.
We used Their dearly-opened road
To traffic with Their foes:
And yet to Them men turn their eyes,
To Them are vows renewed
Of Faith, Obedience, Sacrifice,
Honour and Fortitude!

Which things must perish. But Our hour
Comes not by staves or swords
So much as, subtly, through the power
Of small corroding words.
No need to make the plot more plain
By any open thrust;
But-see Their memory is slain
Long ere Their bones are dust!

Wisely, but yearly, filch some wreath-
Lay some proud rite aside-
And daily tarnish with Our breath
The ends for which They died.
Distract, deride, decry, confuse-
(Or-if it serves Us-pray!)
So presently We break the use
And meaning of Their day!

He wrote this in 1930. Socialist scum don't change.

[Patrick Carroll]

Dear Jim Christ: It's not that you can walk on water, right? It's just that you can't swim.

In other words, it's all about the prism through which you view reality.

Yours is a prism shared by a small percentage of Americans. And thank God for that.

[John Fembup]

The "person" who authored the inane ditty in the first comment above illustrates - remarkably well, I think - exactly what Kipling was saying in "If".

There is no need to paraphrase Kipling's words. He describes precisely the challenges of leadership - and of maturity. The ditty's author betrays zero understanding of these.

He is instead betraying something else.

[Irvine]

This ain't exactly Kipling either, but it sures gets the point across. Written by an active duty NCO:

"Through a plethora of triple-starred, quadruple-holds-barred sissies
Did it take to finally unearth GW’s own present day Ulysses
A Patton cum Grant, no Westmoreland come lately
None of that tell us what we want to hear and we'll reward you accordingly
The Surge'on General
Surge Projector
Aka, Insurgency Home Wrecker
Dismantling AQI via PowerPoint and a cordless Black & Decker
His team of Ph.Ds in ass kickery deemed precisely the trick
The Petraeus ex machina of this overbudget war flick"

Read the whole piece at:

http://www.bucksargent.net/

"Legislators on frequent holiday
Political reconciliation unthinkable
Landlocked spoils,
Deadlocked oil,
All deemed patently unworkable
Unsecured borders,
Politically launched mortars,
Gridlocked parliamentary morass
But I digress,
Enough already about our own Donkey Kongress..."

[bill roberts]

One correction, Kim ( my favorite book as a child) was written in 1901, therefore could not have been written in VT.

[Martin Lindeskog]

Sissy,

My friend Michael Gold in Houston sent me an email about R. Kipling's birthday on December 30.

Check out: http://www.kipling.org.uk/

All the Best,

Martin Lindeskog - American in spirit.
Gothenburg, Sweden.

[GW Crawford]

Want Kipling's prognosticative ability shown?

Try 'Gods of the Copybook Headings', the following 3 in particular

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

In university I had one sociology course where the essay was 'pick any subject and write an essay using any school of thought'

The top mark went to a gentleman who wrote a structural functionalist analysis of the Pentateuch
I was second with "A Critique of Marxist Critical Theory as Presented in Rudyard Kipling's 'The Gods of the Copybook Headings'"

The Prof was liberal but he actually preferred interesting topics that were thoughtful rather than the usual tripe that sociology students mass produce

[Sissy Willis]

Kim: Correction made. Thanks. :-)

[jim christ]

Enjoyed the sophmoric verse retort in knee-jerk reaction to a poem that posed many more references to G.W. Bush Administration than were addressed in reactionary ditty.

The Point was that (using G.W.'s sloppy speech patterns) "The Uglification of America" was more than ever before advanced by G.W. and his band of scoundrels.

Yes, almost all politicians are bought and paid for lobbyists of national and international CORPORATIONS, but G.W. and his band of greedmongers have taken the cake for all-time liars, thieves and rapists of the American Way as envisioned by our hallowed forefathers.

Concerning the spirit of the American Revolution and our Constitution; G.W. Bush and his gang have departed further from it and done more harm to America and the people of planet earth than any other administration. If you don't get that you probably lie to yourself, don't have a clue or are suffering from organic brain dysfunction.

over and out,

[jm christ]

thanks for the reads and attentions no matter how narrow-minded or lacking in logic and "take things with a grain of salt" mentalities. these United States were FOUNDED by our forefathers and not only born of dissent but check and balanced and PROTECTED by the same. since this administration has compromised YOUR citizens rights more than any other in American history and put our forefathers warnings and spirit of country into a tailspin; please retort with inane additions and know that I for one will value your viewpoints no matter how silly, short-sighted or completely brainwashed that they may be. do the same for me and you are a good citizen too.

happy holidays and roaring recession to all!