THE IDEOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s
The Real Van Jones Scandal: Why Glenn Beck Is Right:
I remember when George W. was inaugurated how relieved I was that
the grown-ups had returned to take charge of our affairs. The
sense of a mature seriousness and purpose were palpable and quite
a relief after the eight years of Clintonian histrionics,
sloganeering and the myriad other neuroses of liberalism. Gone
overnight were the childish responsibility avoidance, blame
shifting, name calling and “he made me do it” finger pointing. It
was as if the adults had reentered the room to still the chaos.
As Mr. Lord aptly recounts, the same palpable sense of serious
leadership obtained during the Reagan presidency from day one
after the mad tea-party antics of the Carter years. It is not for
nothing the Iranians released the embassy hostages on that day.
Even they sensed serious men were now in charge. Is there a
pattern here?
I think so. I have said for 25 years that Liberalism is the
ideology of adolescence. A perpetual, preserved-under-glass
adolescence. Talk to any liberal, even an ostensibly grown up
one, and it’s like talking to a teenager. Or examine any of their
Big Ideas and they are all, at bottom, founded on a “life isn’t
fair” complaint and determination to make the unfairness go away
by any means necessary, if necessary. And it always is because
life’s realities don’t go away, all of the whining and
complaining notwithstanding. As Margaret Thatcher said, “the
facts of life are conservative.” Contemporary Liberalism itself
is the outgrowth of the emotional and intellectual immaturity of
approximately half the ‘60 baby boomers, the spoiled half, who
began by trashing their own college refuges from the war and just
about every other American institution and then went on their
long march to seize and remake them. For our liberal boomers it
is ever the Summer of Love or Days of Rage, depending on who’s
ascendant in the government. Either way the country is subjected
to their childish drive to have chocolate cake and ice cream
every day and nobody has to do chores or go to school or
inflicted on the body politic are the crying fits of spoiled
brats demanding they be taken seriously and run the show again.
But no matter what, for at least 30 years or so, about half our
electorate and their leaders alternately promise pie in the sky
or stamp their feet and hold their breath.
Like the duality of any enthusiastic adolescent given a little
power and authority our little liberal rascals are quick to abuse
the power while neglecting their rightful duties. Again, take
your average modern 17-year-old, please. He expects to use the
family car at will but must yet be told twice weekly, as he has
had to be told for years, to take out the garbage lest he
“forget” and the garbage pile up. So the fulfillment of his
duties becomes the responsibility of someone else. And then he
indignantly demands his own car on his parents’ dime because,
after all, it’s demeaning for a 17 year old in this day and age
to have to ask for permission. Should he be given a car that will
only instill a greater sense of self-importance and nullify, in
his mind, the now unreasonable demand he take out the garbage at
all. Because, after all, is he not now more grown up? And so it
goes and how it is we have an administration who alternately
elevates ranting loons, tax cheats and other poseurs to newly
created political offices building the New Utopia while roughly
half the positions in the workaday offices that actually attempt
to get something done go unfilled.
— Mark Shepler
Jupiter, Florida
Of course, the White House knew about Jones’s past and ideology.
They recruited him. They swooned over him.
He had the creds Obama wanted: Marxist, anti-American,
anti-Republican, anti-Bush, anti-conservative, anti-capitalist,
economic reconstructionist, eco-religionist, racist and
race-baiter, liar, demagogue, community organizer, know-it-all
and arrogance.
But to me, the real scandal is that 69 million or so of the
electorate, through ignorance and/or hatred of George W. Bush,
installed a Marxist who would hire someone like Jones and who, it
seems, has no respect for the Office of the Presidency he holds
and our country that he’s supposed to represent.
Obama and his troupe continue to reveal the real color of their
brand of change. For example, Sunday morning, Obama’s mouthpieces
David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs were on, respectively, “Meet the
Press” and “This Week.” They offered no criticism and/or
condemnation of Jones. That shouldn’t be news, given how, during
this flap, Obama never did.
And Barack Hussein Obama continues to reveal that he wasn’t,
isn’t and won’t remotely be a centrist, regardless of how many
times he claims to be, or how much the state-controlled media
insists he is.
— C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton , West Virginia
I was going to read your article then I saw the obscene hate
pop-up and left. Now I know you guys are partisan hacks without
the common sense to employ reason over ignorant hype.
At some point you and everyone else on BOTH extremes (yes, you
are an extremist if you use antagonistic anti-left rhetoric) is
either going to have to take a breath and try to act like
adults.
— Jesse Putnam
Has it occurred to anyone that the powers that be in this
particular White House want Van Jones precisely because of his
police record?
— Gretchen L. Chellson
Alexandria, Virginia
OUR CULTURE IMPERIALISM
Re: Doug Bandow’s
Killing Girls Is Bad, Killing Boys Is Okay:
“Obviously, there’s work to be done in both India and China,
because the infanticide rate of girl babies is still
overwhelmingly high….”
More cultural imperialism from the white-skinned she-devil!
” … unfortunately with technology, parents are able to use
sonograms to determine the sex of a baby, and to abort girl
children simply because they’d rather have a boy. And those are
deeply set attitudes.”
Unfortunately? Ultrasonography is a great medical advance.
Ignorant peasant women in China and India, with no access to
such modern healthcare, are reduced to postpartum abortion
of their female issue. How else can these women exercise
choice?
Maybe abortion clinics should require women to view their
sonograms prior to the procedure. Perhaps we ethnocentric
self-righteous Americans should try it here before imposing
our values on other cultures. Sell it to the sisterhood
as “informed choice.” Let us know how that goes, Madame
Secretary.
Did those “deeply set attitudes” afflicting the ignorant
masses of the world ever hold sway in Western thought? And
if so, how did the West overcome the notion that women and
children were chattel?
Madame Secretary, do not let your heart be troubled.Remember that
“a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”
Just substitute girl for boy — all are mammals. And if it’s
any consolation, you gals aren’t alone — African-American
fetuses have no civil rights either.
— Dan Martin
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
CLOSE SHAVE
Re: Roger Scruton’s Dealing
With Iran:
Dear sir, I must protest at an element of “beardism” in Scruton’s
otherwise perceptive essay. Personally I choose not to scrape the
stubble off my chin every morning, but this does not make me a
mad Mullah or any other kind of ranting hypocrite. There are
smooth faced Mullahs, mad and otherwise, but often paranoid, who
are just as dangerous. I agree about paranoia, the drive behind
it is that one is superior therefore hated and bedevilled by the
inferior, in other words, an inferiority complex. Paranoids are
always victims no matter how much damage they wreak, cf
Hitler.
— Fred Middleton
UK
QUIBBLING
Re: Christopher Orlet’s Beautiful
Freaks:
What a great surprise to read about my favorite singer’s
autobiography on The American Spectator. There are a few
factual problems with the review, however. One is that E’s mother
died two years after the album in question; it’s his sister that
died close to its release. In addition, Linklater’s view of Many
Worlds is the pop-culture one (a human-centric version, which
states that we ultimately make every decision we consider), not
the actual one (which states that anything that is
quantum-dynamically possible occurs). Thus it is not truly a
“good … introduction to the theory.” Also, the Star
Trek episode aired over a decade prior to Hugh’s death.
Finally, the final paragraph shouldn’t be indented.
Still, minor quibbles aside, great to see it (and to see that
mention of the Bush campaign’s dunderheaded decision to vilify
one of his albums didn’t deter or even warrant mention in the
review).
— Michael
KEEPING THEM ON LIFE SUPPORT
Re: Eric Peters’s
Government Could Save Detroit:
Mr. Peters offers the correct prescription for healing Detroit.
And if it is good enough for Government Motors, it is good enough
the American public, or more specifically, the American health
care system, but the problem is one of diagnosis. Peters’
medicine would cure the patient if money were the true the
problem. The problem is not one of pure economics, but one of
economics as a political tool. The Left is only concerned with
power and how to keep it. No, as long as the Left is in charge,
this patient is staying on long term life support.
— I.M. Kessel
“YOU PEOPLE” IN AMERICA
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s Is
Sarah Palin the Next Ted Kennedy?:
Sarah Palin and Ted Kennedy do not belong in the same sentence.
Sarah is a joke to us here in Canada, while Kennedy was a
statesman. You people are very scary.
— Maggie Laird
