"It compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies"

Sunrise at Camelot-by-the-Sea from Goomp's terrace this morning.

L'heure bleu. Tuesday morning after Labor Day meant the first day of school for us children of the Fifties, a day of trepidation for ourselves, a smartie pants with social-skill issues. We were great at reading, writing and 'rithmetic but borderline pathologically shy. 'Wonder how we'd have taken a presidential "live cable-cast speech on values and education" piped into the classroom back then? We were still wet behind the ears when our radar screen began to pick up blips of the insidious Big Lie behind the Gramscian march through the institutions. As we blogged back on Flag Day of 2005: 

We remember the first inklings of the emasculating Marx-lite mindset beginning to infiltrate our elementary and high school classrooms in the fifties and sixties, when reflexively p.c. teachers -- before anyone really knew what p.c. was -- told us there was no such thing as human nature and keened that we shouldn't have a battle hymn for a national anthem.  We should change it to "America the Beautiful," they told us. While we love the poetry and religious fervor of "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies," with its unspoken recognition of what used to be called "Manifest Destiny," as a national anthem it falls short, missing the point that came crashing into our consciousness on that awful 9/11: Freedom isn't free.

Last gasps of summer. Tiny attends Ellen's plate for a Sunday bookend to our season-opening lobster bake with all the fixin's last May.

The light fantastic caught in the folds of a little linen shirt hung out to dry.

L'heure bleu, last gasps, hung out to dry. And now Tiny, above, sucking out the juices of a lobster carapace. The psychological landscape closes in. Intimations of creeping statism. We jumped into the Medicare maelstrom last week as our 65th approaches, waiting an hour (but we brought Jonah's Liberal Fascism, so no time wasted) to register at the local Social Security office, only to find they had us listed by our maiden name. That meant going back home to fetch the marriage license and then back for more waiting. Their error but our time. Unnerving inklings of things to come with the President's and Congress's medical-insurance meddling? In related frustrations, Goomp had asked us to help him switch from pro-Obamacare AARP to Humana for his Medicare supplemental. We duly researched, called and made an appointment for today, turned our schedule upside down to accommodate, but the rep never showed. Arggghhhhh! Public insurance, private insurance. Where's the competition to keep 'em honest? Rudy Giuliani had the libertarian's answer to an attempted Tom Brokaw gotcha the other day:

BROKAW: "What's been interesting to me is that the Republicans have raised the public option as some kind of Orwellian monster. Half the health care in America is already delivered by the government ... Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, Federal Employees insurance ..."

GIULIANI: "That's part of the problem. Part of the problem is that half of it is already in the hands of one massive monopoly. You make that monopoly greater and you destroy private insurance."

The rest of the problem with the dark cloud of "universal coverage" looming on the horizon is Tocqueville's "network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd":

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Baa!

Update: "The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subued to man, its presence refreshes him," wrote Thoreau. Head on over to Modulator's Friday Ark #260 and be refreshed.

Update II: The News Junkie at Maggie's links.

Comments

[Gayle Miller]

What we have accomplished - particularly with this whole speech to elementary, middle and high school students nationwide - is that The Won is now well aware that we are watching every move he makes and that it is becoming exponentially harder on a daily basis to pull the wool over our ever-vigilant eyes.

[Stoutcat]

Gayle: And yet he and his minions still consider us riff raff, the hoi polloi, lumpenproles, whose opinions (and lives, apparently) really don't matter at all.

Sissy: as a child of the 60s, I recall similar things. It is fortunate indeed that I had parents who augmented my public school education by after-dinner sessions of flash cards, reading aloud, geography, word games, and the like.

That said, my sibs and I attended very fine elementary and junior high schools, probably because my parents, and others like them were VERY active in our school careers, and made it a point to be on first name basis with the teachers and the principal, and to know the curriculum, what homework was expected, and any and all special projects required. As a child, this all was embarrassing in the extreme, but THEY DIDN'T CARE about our delicate psyches, they were more interested in ensuring that we got a good education.

By high school, each of us was packed off to boarding school, which is an entirely different story!

I believe most families no longer have family sit-down dinners, parents active in the schools, or after-dinner games (which actually turn out to be educational). It's a shame, really.

Also: was that a photo op, or does Tiny really get the lobster carcase? Toby would very much like to know.

[Gayle Miller]

So too would Sam the Wonder Cat who is, no doubt about it, totally enamoured of his Taste of the Wild crunchie food (venison and smoked salmon - I should eat so good) but might occasionally enjoy a treat of a lobster carcass!

My parents slammed my happy hiney into Catholic school where no sass (my specialty, even as a child) and no sloth were tolerated. My father always said that my brain was way too grasshopperlike in nature and needed to be tamed. The nuns succeeded - temporarily.

[Teresa]

I have been amazed at the number of otherwise intelligent people trying to protect the kidlets from "indoctrination". *sigh* By keeping them away from all the "bad ideas" you do not give them the tools to combat these same ideas later on.

It's exactly like the idiots who insist that "the chirren" be protected from alcoholic beverages until they turn that magical age of 21!!!! (as if they will be suddenly endowed with knowledge at that age - just out of the blue) These same people then lament the binge drinking by kids who don't learn to drink in moderation. The temptation into excess exists because block headed adults want to shield "the chirren" from every ill that might befall. Can anyone see the parallels with college age kids and liberalism? I certainly can.

It happens over and over again and yet every generation of parents seems to think that this type of protectionism works. Much better to let the kids hear it, find out what they think and then teach them how the real world works. But hey - that's like... not safe. Some kids might not listen!!! And it involves... work on the part of the parents!

Yes, I find it all very annoying. Especially the fact that all liberal speak (which - like cockroaches - needs exposure to the light in order to be eradicated) is being treated like it's pornography. (hide it from the kids!!!) Thus the tykes will be permanently scarred by any exposure at all... Good Grief!

BTW - love the misty soft look of the top picture. It's fabulous.

Oh and it looks like typepad finally fixed the issue it was having with Firefox. Yay!

[Sissy Willis]

Toby and Sam: Eat your hearts out. She plucked the thing herself right out of the garbage as I was distracted shelling a tail to make Goomp's lobster roll. :-)

[retriever]

Perfect! Were my kids still that young, I would be nervously awaiting the calls from the school about their exegesis of Pinocchio and WHY was I reading inflammatory and divisive literature with them at home...

Distracted by the carapace also....my cat is equally enterprising.