The American Spectator

Big J| 10.21.09 @ 7:06AM

Liberals see only chaos in the world. They don't recognize the greatness that America has achieved. They don't recognize that we have been a force for good for over 233 years.

I have posted the link before, but feel it very appropriate here:

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev030309a.cfm

Evan Sayet describes the modern liberal better than anyone I have ever heard.

It is a lengthy video, but well worth the watch.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 7:13AM

This is a season of patriotism, but also of something that is easily mistaken for patriotism; namely, nationalism. The difference is vital.

G.K. Chesterton once observed that Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of British imperialism, suffered from a "lack of patriotism." He explained: "He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English."

In the same way, many Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be "the greatest country on earth" in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the 2nd-greatest, or the 19th-greatest, or, heaven forbid, "a 3rd-rate power," it would be virtually worthless.

This is nationalism, not patriotism. Patriotism is like family love. You love your family just for being your family, not for being "the greatest family on earth" (whatever that might mean) or for being "better" than other families. You don't feel threatened when other people love their families the same way. On the contrary, you respect their love, and you take comfort in knowing they respect yours. You don't feel your family is enhanced by feuding with other families.

While patriotism is a form of affection, nationalism, it has often been said, is grounded in resentment and rivalry; it's often defined by its enemies and traitors, real or supposed. It is militant by nature, and its typical style is belligerent. Patriotism, by contrast, is peaceful until forced to fight.

The patriot differs from the nationalist in this respect too: he can laugh at his country, the way members of a family can laugh at each other's foibles. Affection takes for granted the imperfection of those it loves; the patriotic Irishman thinks Ireland is hilarious, whereas the Irish nationalist sees nothing to laugh about.

The nationalist has to prove his country is always right. He reduces his country to an idea, a perfect abstraction, rather than a mere home. He may even find the patriot's irreverent humor annoying.

Patriotism is relaxed. Nationalism is rigid. The patriot may loyally defend his country even when he knows it's wrong; the nationalist has to insist that he defends his country not because it's his, but because it's right. As if he would have defended it even if he hadn't been born to it! The nationalist talks as if he just "happens," by sheer accident, to have been a native of the greatest country on earth — in contrast to, say, the pitiful Belgian or Brazilian.

Because the patriot and the nationalist often use the same words, they may not realize that they use those words in very different senses. The American patriot assumes that the nationalist loves this country with an affection like his own, failing to perceive that what the nationalist really loves is an abstraction — "national greatness," or something like that. The American nationalist, on the other hand, is apt to be suspicious of the patriot, accusing him of insufficient zeal, or even "anti-Americanism."

When it comes to war, the patriot realizes that the rest of the world can't be turned into America, because his America is something specific and particular — the memories and traditions that can no more be transplanted than the mountains and the prairies. He seeks only contentment at home, and he is quick to compromise with an enemy. He wants his country to be just strong enough to defend itself.

But the nationalist, who identifies America with abstractions like freedom and democracy, may think it's precisely America's mission to spread those abstractions around the world — to impose them by force, if necessary. In his mind, those abstractions are universal ideals, and they can never be truly "safe" until they exist, unchallenged, everywhere; the world must be made "safe for democracy" by "a war to end all wars." We still hear versions of these Wilsonian themes. Any country that refuses to Americanize is "anti-American" — or a "rogue nation." For the nationalist, war is a welcome opportunity to change the world. This is a recipe for endless war.

In a time of war hysteria, the outraged patriot, feeling his country under attack, may succumb to the seductions of nationalism. This is the danger we face now.

- Joe Sobran

Ned| 10.21.09 @ 7:30AM

I think the above all depends on what the definition of "is", is.

Christopher Holland| 10.21.09 @ 11:13PM

What a wank by this guy Stoddard! If you are dead, debating patriotism and nationalism will mean nothing - you are still dead. And the main reason people are dead is because they don't defend themselves and they let others think they can get away with attacking them. Ronald Reagan had it right when he said that nobody ever insulted Jack Dempsey. Reagan talked about strength and courage and standing up for yourself and he ended the cold war without firing a shot. Stoddard just pisses around being a limp wrist bargain basement philosopher. Big difference between him and Ronald Reagan.

Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.21.09 @ 8:16AM

Dude? Your record player is skipping, I think the quarter fell off again. Seriously S. L., did you just cut and paste this off of your own post from just yesterday? Or am I suffering from a case of déjà vu here? Because I can swear I just read this post yesterday. You see, it was only then (after reading your post), that I finally came to the realization after all these years, that I’ve been a Patriotic Nationalist for many years now. And I didn’t know that up until yesterday. S.L. this website isn’t a NASCAR race, we don’t want to read the same post, lap after lap, day after day, it gets, hmmm?, what the word I’m looking for here?, repetitive!! Yeah, that’s it, repetitive and boring!! You’re more original than that, even for just a lowly Patriot as you are, so don’t cut and paste even off your own posts (some people actually read what you write here, even if we do not agree with you, most of the time, so put a little work into it). Oh yeah, the Yanks are now only one game away from the World Series. (LGY’s) USA, USA, USA, we’re #1, we’re #1, we’re #1!! (you see? Patriotic Nationalist!!)

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 8:55AM

I believe that's the third time I've posted that, actually. I wish it wasn't required, but it's so clear that it is that I would be remiss in my duties if I neglected to do so.

You'll simply have to bear with it.

Helen Donnelly| 10.21.09 @ 3:28PM

Toddard: Wrong, my friend. We don't have to "bear with it". That my be your opinion, but I don't have to read it.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 7:22PM

And yet you do. How curious.

Anyway, thanks for your readership.

pete the mediocre| 10.22.09 @ 1:26AM

S.L. Your bombastic arrogance is eclipsed only by your stupidity.
As a patriot my desire is for the best for America and her people. Is that concept too hard for you to grasp?

SoCon| 10.22.09 @ 1:58AM

Thank God for the scroll button; I hit it immediately when I see another of your noxious comments .

Too much time on your hands, bitter old man: Your best days are behind you, aren't they? It shows. Pity.

R Martin| 10.21.09 @ 9:31AM

S.L., I have read your posts in the past with a bemused smile and a gentle head shake. However, this one caused a different reaction because, while you normally present us with harmless fustian twaddle, here you are just shockingly wrong.

"In the same way, many Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be "the greatest country on earth" in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the 2nd-greatest, or the 19th-greatest, or, heaven forbid, "a 3rd-rate power," it would be virtually worthless."

What a load of rubish. With the possible exception of Michelle Obama, most Americans admire their country greatly specifically because it is America, because American stands for something: freedom, liberty, independence and a wonderful Constitution granting everyone equal opportunity and protection from government oppression.

It is those values people cite in these pages, not the benefits of military strength, even though such strength helps protect and defend those values. The nationalism you refer to best describes Germany in 1940, not America now...or ever.

What in the world are you thinking?

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 10:09AM

"most Americans admire their country greatly... because American stands for something: freedom, liberty, independence"

Precisely! As Mr. Sobran notes, "the nationalist, who identifies America with abstractions like freedom and democracy, may think it's precisely America's mission to spread those abstractions around the world"

"and a wonderful Constitution granting everyone equal opportunity"

Curious. What Amendment grants "everyone equal opportunity"?

Mark C| 10.21.09 @ 4:35PM

Why should we not try to spread those "abstractions" around the world? What you are engaging in is blatant moral equivalence. The most significant threats to what we hold precious in America come from other cultures that are trying to spread THEIR "abstractions" around the world....particularly one culture that is being hijacked by extremists. They intimidate other cultures into accepting their way through terrorism and violence, demographics, and political correctness while simultaneously claiming victimhood. That's the reality of our world. We are in a global battle of ideologies. If you don't think freedom, capitalism, and democratic principles are any better than those to which I am referring, I'll buy your plane ticket to Tehran or Damascus....provided you stay there.

Linda| 10.22.09 @ 1:22AM

I think Mr. SLT must be psychotic. Certainly he is delusional. An arrogant know-it-all who is deceived by his own delusions of grandeur. Reminds me of my ex-husband. Aggghh! For the rest of you, with clear heads on your shoulders, consider storming your congressmen with objections to this action against our sovereignty that our president is poised to commit as portrayed by Lord Christopher Monckton:
http://wrightrepublican.blogsp.....-miss.html

Linda| 10.22.09 @ 1:25AM

That website did not paste right so I'll type it out here: http://wrightrepublican.blogsp.....-miss.html

Linda| 10.22.09 @ 1:28AM

hmmm, showing my ignorance, I guess. The link works despite not including the complete url! go figure.... and do check it out!

S.M. Carter| 10.22.09 @ 8:42PM

S.L. There is no amendment that grants everyone equal opportunity. Our Founding Fathers made that distinction in our Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the United States is built solely to limit the power of the government and not to dole out the rights of individuals like porridge in a orphanage. If it weren't for people like you who think the Ten Amdendments are directed at the governed instead of the Government, we would all be much better off.

Further, America IS an idea. It is the only thing that makes America what it is. We are too varied, too many, and too free to be boxed by anything other than an intangible idea. Being American is as much a state of mind as it is a state of citizenship. Anyone who doesn't want to export that idea is decidedly sick. Freedom and liberty from government to live the life I wish to choose is a natural right from my Creator.

SoCon| 10.23.09 @ 1:44AM

Clear and concise post, Carter. Beautifully written, too. Bravo!

KyMouse| 10.21.09 @ 9:58AM

Mr. Sobran says that "many Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be 'the greatest country on earth' in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the 2nd-greatest, or the 19th-greatest, or, heaven forbid, 'a 3rd-rate power,' it would be virtually worthless."

Exactly who are those Americans? Names, please, so we can verify that Mr. Sobran is correctly representing their beliefs.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 10:10AM

Well, there's you, R Martin, Peter Ferrara. Most proponents of "American Exceptionalism", of course. The list goes on.

Doorgunner| 10.21.09 @ 10:33AM

We've been bearing with your dissembling, your disingenuous-ness, hell, your outright lies... and your re-posting of pedantic drivel from lefty bloggers for so damned long that you've become like that asshole pontificating uncle at the holiday dinner table- everyone wants to smack you, but no one does because they know it'll upset Mom.

Your insistence upon continuing to pose as the one true Life-or-Libertarian/O.G.Conservative, long after you've revealed yourself with words and argument as a damnable, anti-semitic, lefty subversive is laughable. The "monomania" jibe re ACORN yesterday was just one more bit of mortar in the defensive wall of a lefty apologist you've built for yourself. It is the joke that defines your existence.

And please, don't bother to argue otherwise; a googling your moniker reveals you in all your true blog comment section glory.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 10:39AM

Great Scott - another superfan, obsessively searching out any tidbit they can find on me. Don't get me wrong - I'm flattered, really, but if you seek instruction from me just ask. Don't be shy.

KyMouse| 10.21.09 @ 12:38PM

The trouble with your list, Mr. Toddard, is that I don't fit on it. For all you or I know, neither do the other two people you name. You read into our comments what you want to read into them, and it doesn't work. Mr. Sobran doesn't know us, either.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 12:40PM

How do you know I don't know you? We don't even know each other.

John II| 10.21.09 @ 1:16PM

Nay, Toddard. To paraphrase Harry Truman, the list stops here. You left out the name "Toddard"--a proponent of the brand of American Exceptionalism which preaches that America among all nations is uniquely bound by its true character to turn into herself, safely insulated from the consequences of letting the rest of the world go to hell in a handbasket, so to speak. (One needs the help of cliche to promote so rigorously narcissistic a variety of American Exceptionalism .)

And now back to a second viewing of Laurel and Hardy's "Bonnie Scotland," which seems flawed by an abrupt ending dissolving into chaos.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 1:30PM

"America among all nations is uniquely bound by its true character to turn into herself, safely insulated from the consequences of letting the rest of the world go to hell in a handbasket, so to speak."

Really. America would then be the only nation to remain neutral militarily in matters that did not directly endanger its security? It would be the only nation on earth that pledged to go to war only when attacked or when there is clear and present danger of imminent attack?

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 1:48PM

Actually, don't bother. I know that you know that "American Exceptionalism" means more than the belief that America is in some ways exceptional.

John II| 10.21.09 @ 1:57PM

Not precisely. Rather, America would be the only nation on earth for which such prim neutrality would constitute so colossal an abrogation of responsibility. Boy, would we ever be exceptional THEN.

In fact, you're being extremely imprecise, Toddard, with terms like "directly" and "clear and present danger," which deeply disappoints me. Get thee to your Greek text!

Let's see. Read the original Krauthammer piece, and then reread the Sobran piece. Then reach deep into your soul, Toddard, and ask yourself, really, what the hell one has to do with the other.

Now stop interrupting me when I'm trying to parse "Bonnie Scotland."

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 2:21PM

"Rather, America would be the only nation on earth for which such prim neutrality would constitute so colossal an abrogation of responsibility"

I should think it a welcome return to a responsibility - the first responsibility of the American government, in fact - that has been neglected for far too long: the liberty, welfare and security of the American people. With our economy in ruin, our people being submerged beneath a tidal wave of immigrants, our culture and traditions being hounded out of existence and our grotesquely distended leviathan state extending its tentacles into every sphere of American life only to seize and draw back more and more power and wealth perpetually unto itself we hardly need to go abroad to find monsters to destroy. They are already here, and they are more of a threat to us than anything we will find in the Middle East.

The responsibility of the American government is to the American people - no one else. It is really a sort of arrogance to think the world could not possibly get along without you. We can either have a small, constitutionally-defined government or the sort of leviathan state necessary to rule over, lead and police the entire world. I prefer the former.

John II| 10.21.09 @ 6:11PM

So do I, of course. But I would like it to rain beer too. (Or at least a reliable, cheap claret.) But we are where we are with what we've got, and we're not trying to "police the entire world." We have evolved, willy-nilly, into the only practical alternative to a world state run by thugs under cover of a leviathan UN. That's what's on the horizon, and the USA is currently the only power with sufficient clout to throw a monkey wrench into the machinations of the one-worlders. And now the USA herself, at the top at least, is under the sway of the one-worlders.

Read the frigging Krauthammer piece. Answer it point by point, if you choose, but don't smother it with Sobran's gah-gah talk. If Doctor A points to a cancer that needs to be resisted and excised and Doctor B starts rhapsodizing about the joys of youth when there was no cancer eating away at the health of the patient, then we may suppose that Doctor B is not paying any serious attention at all to Doctor A's diagnosis, much less responding to it concretely.

We are not abroad "to find monsters." They've already found us. And they'll be coming for us as soon as we appear to flake out and stop hunting them down.

In other words, with the current political psychopaths in power in America, the monsters will be coming pretty soon. At what point will you decide that it's appropriate for us to defend ourselves?

I am very concerned about the lack of resolution in "Bonnie Scotland."

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 7:15PM

"We are not abroad "to find monsters." They've already found us. And they'll be coming for us as soon as we appear to flake out and stop hunting them down."

How is that not a domestic security issue? An immigration issue? To stop terrorists from attacking us here, does it make more sense to prevent them from entering or to try to eliminate terrorism from the entire world? Is it your belief that if we ever succeeded in Afghanistan and created a stable, secure country out of that region (for the first time in history) so secure that nowhere in its vasty mountain fastnesses could any terrorists gather, that the terrorists would then not find someplace else to gather? Or do we just wage perpetual war until we have enough of the globe under our dominion, sufficiently cowed and incapable of resistance?

Lastly (and I don't really expect you to answer all of those questions, I guess) do you reject the findings of the Defense Science Board Task Force, directed by Donald Rumsfeld to assess the effects of the administration's policies in the War On Terror, Iraq and Aghanistan (link below):

"The Task Force began by noting what are the "underlying sources of threats to America's national security": namely, the "negative attitudes" towards the U.S. in the Muslim world and "the conditions that create them":

“Negative attitudes and the conditions that create them are the underlying sources of threats to America's national security and reduced ability to leverage diplomatic opportunities.”

And what most exacerbates anti-American sentiment, and therefore the threat of Terrorism? "American direct intervention in the Muslim world" -- through our "one sided support in favor of Israel"; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan":

"American direct intervention in the Muslim World has ... elevated the stature
of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

• "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the ... support for ... tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

• "Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that 'freedom is the future of the Middle East' is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.

• "Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination."

http://www.salon.com/news/opin.....index.html

http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/rep.....cation.pdf

John II| 10.21.09 @ 7:53PM

Well--okay, I guess that answers my question. We have to wait until they are here in force and then fight them here in America. I disagree, but thanks for the answer.

The one-dimensional rationalist optic reflected in the claptrap of the DSBFT was precisely what finally gave us 9/11. Talk about condescension: Mr. Understanding right to the core.

In the immortal words of the Kingfish, I not only reject the allegations; I resent the allegators.

Daisy| 10.22.09 @ 2:04AM

John II, he's worthless, don't you see? A dirty, soulless b@stard, to boot.

Don't cast your pearls before swine, sir.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 7:40AM

"Well--okay, I guess that answers my question. We have to wait until they are here in force and then fight them here in America"

I've mentioned this before, but this is a good example of something you do quite often. I did not say, nor did I imply that we "have to wait until they are here in force and then fight them here in America". What is the reason for being so disingenuous? Why are you pretending to think I meant that? You do this quite a lot, and I can come to no other conclusion than that you simply have no real answers to the questions I've asked. That's what you're forcing me to believe (and no I don't think what I believe should be high - or anywhere, really - on your priority list). It never made sense to me that you seem so learned generally (certainly moreso than myself) but when we get to the meat of a debate you often resort to obfuscation, straw men, and (interestingly enough) ignoratio elenchi, which you somewhat ironically accused someone else of recently. We often get to this point and I actually expect you to give straight responses that refute or discredit the implications of my questions and you cop out. Either you have already thought deeply about these questions and what they imply and what you've found has discredited what I'm implying by them and so you feel no need to respond, or you (like so many on the right) get to the point where it starts to get uncomfortable and you abandon that line of thinking for fear of where it might lead. The former is understandable and what I hope is happening, the latter is just not something I'd expect of you, at least from the tiny, microscopic, infinitesimal bit that I know of you, which obviously is not much at all. What's the deal though? I don't get it.

I guess I'll ask again (and when I said earlier I didn't expect you to answer all of them, I certainly didn't expect instead that you would respond to something I neither said nor implied), and this time I really do hope you'll respond to all of them, because I sincerely want to know what you think:

How is terrorists "coming for us" not a domestic security issue? An immigration issue? To stop terrorists from attacking us here, does it make more sense to prevent them from entering or to try to eliminate terrorism from the entire world? Is it your belief that if we ever succeeded in Afghanistan and created a stable, secure country out of that region (for the first time in history) so secure that nowhere in its vasty mountain fastnesses could any terrorists gather, that the terrorists would then not find someplace else to gather? Or do we just wage perpetual war until we have enough of the globe under our dominion, sufficiently cowed and incapable of resistance?

Lastly (and I don't really expect you to answer all of those questions, I guess) do you reject the findings of the Defense Science Board Task Force, directed by Donald Rumsfeld to assess the effects of the administration's policies in the War On Terror, Iraq and Aghanistan (link below):

"The Task Force began by noting what are the "underlying sources of threats to America's national security": namely, the "negative attitudes" towards the U.S. in the Muslim world and "the conditions that create them":

“Negative attitudes and the conditions that create them are the underlying sources of threats to America's national security and reduced ability to leverage diplomatic opportunities.”

And what most exacerbates anti-American sentiment, and therefore the threat of Terrorism? "American direct intervention in the Muslim world" -- through our "one sided support in favor of Israel"; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan":

"American direct intervention in the Muslim World has ... elevated the stature
of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

• "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the ... support for ... tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

• "Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that 'freedom is the future of the Middle East' is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.

• "Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination."

Mark C| 10.22.09 @ 10:34AM

If "direct intervention" is so responsible for Anti-Americanism by muslims, how do you explain their jihadism everywhere else in the world that has absolutely nothing to do with America?

You have a point though...we should concentrate on defending ourselves only from direct attack. We shouldn't have any problems guarding and searching every seaport, every ship, every airport, every airplane, our borders, train stations, our bus stations, refineries, chemical plants, schools, malls, sports stadiums, movie theaters, government buildings, office buildings, apartment buildings, my house, your house....we'll... you worry about your own house.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 10:50AM

"If "direct intervention" is so responsible for Anti-Americanism by muslims, how do you explain their jihadism everywhere else in the world that has absolutely nothing to do with America?"

I don't explain it. It's not at issue here.

"We shouldn't have any problems guarding and searching every... etc"

And so securing entry points and restricting immigration is somehow *less* realistic than conquering the enough of the globe so that we eliminate terrorism itself from the Earth? Really? And so the plan you're implying would A) continue the exact policies that have been discovered to inflame anti-American hatred in the first place, thus increasing the number of terrorists while B) leaving America wide open to their entry.

Mark C| 10.27.09 @ 1:59PM

Oh you'd better believe it's at issue here. You see, your argument is that our "intervention" (which you mischaracterize anyway) is what's exacerbating muslim Anti-Americanism, but if that is true, there should be insignificant levels of anti-Western muslim activity in countless other countries in the world that do not engage in such "interventions". The fact is whether there's "interventionism" or not, there is rampant anti-Western sentiment amongst muslims all over the globe, which indicates that something other than "interventionism" is the driving force behind it. If you open your mind, you will see that it's an ideology that is deeply rooted in anticapitalism and that despises our freedoms, particularly freedom for women, freedom of religion, and even for sexual preference. As a lib, I would expect you to see this very clearly.

No I don't expect that we have to conquer "enough of the globe". We can export the virtues of freedom and capitalism though non-violent means, but we, along with the rest of the West, should not tolerate despotism. When enough of the world embraces freedom and capitalism and is pro-Western, the rest will take care of itself.

John II| 10.22.09 @ 11:18AM

Toddard, this is madness! Didn't I quote the Kingfish to your satisfaction when I responded directly to that asinine DSBTF "finding"? I was charitable enough to overlook your question-begging use of the term "finding." And then you just toss the same drivel back at me?

What good will it do if I point out the obvious? Will you listen to me if I tell you that there is not a shred of evidence in that report that anyone FOUND anything? It's just a cheap regurgitation of the same old smug Georgetown claptrap about the "Muslim world" and (I love this one especially) "the eyes of Muslims" and how the West needs somehow to adjust its pose thereto. AFTER 50 YEARS OF THAT KIND OF THINKING, WE GOT 9/11! Doesn't THAT event and its antecedent "conditions" of secular Western smugness register with you at all? At the very minimum, 9/11 proves that Western rationalist blather about the "Muslim world" is utterly useless and irrelevant to the violent resurgence of Islam. (Which, interestingly, was predicted in an essay by Hilaire Belloc way back in the 1930s--without benefit of harebrained "Task Forces" and "findings.")

You talk about MY not responding! Did you ever respond to MY pointed reference to the character of the December 2007 NIE ? Did you sample even a tiny portion of Aristotle? Did you ever ONCE look into my concerns about "Bonnie Scotland"?

This won't do. What the hell do you expect of me? Shall I post the collected writings of Bernard Lewis? Would you read them if I did? You won't even read and respond to Krauthammer, for Pete's sake.

I'm sorry if I seem a bit overwrought, Toddard. I just learned last night that "Saps at Sea" has a few of the same weaknesses as "Bonnie Scotland." Nonetheless, if you will take the time to view "Bonnie Scotland," you will learn more about international relations than you could possibly glean from all the grandiloquent asseverations of Professor Obama's speechwriters, from all the prognostications of Dr. Ron Paul's ouija board, and from the doddering "findings" of Rummy's Task Force.

I wonder if my VHS copy of "Saps at Sea" is defective . . .

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 11:45AM

"AFTER 50 YEARS OF THAT KIND OF THINKING, WE GOT 9/11"

Excuse me? The study found that the main causes of Muslim anti-American hatred are "American direct intervention in the Muslim world", our "one sided support in favor of Israel", our "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia". That is the "thinking" in question - that these are primary causes of anti-American hatred and terrorism. Our policy for the last "50 YEARS" does not reflect that "thinking" whatosever - those were essential elements of our foreign policy for the 50 years to which you refer.

This is what I'm talking about with your obfuscation. The task force concluded that these factors - all pillars of our Middle East foreign policy for the last half century at least - are significant contributors to and causes of anti-American hatred and terrorism. You respond that we've had "50 YEARS OF THAT KIND OF THINKING". Are you being purposely nonsensical? Is that a dodge?

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 11:51AM

"WE GOT 9/11! Doesn't THAT event and its antecedent "conditions" of secular Western smugness register with you at all?"

Yes - after 50 YEARS of "American direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia", we got 9/11.

Is there even any debate about that? Even if you contort logic in an effort to deny any causal relationship, you still can't refute that *this is exactly what happened.* Nor can you claim with any credibility that our foreign policy reflected a consensus that these factors - pillars of our foreign policy - were causes of anti-American hatred and terrorism. To do so is simply nonsensical.

John II| 10.22.09 @ 12:28PM

"Is there even any debate about that?"

The well-to-do Saudi twits who were primarily the perpetrators of 9/11 were schooled in Muslim hatred for the Judaeo-Christian West, which antedates the very existence of America by several centuries. There is some very interesting speculation about the peculiar psychological disorders of many young Islamic terrorists forced by their ambitious parents into techie lines of education when the young men are of a temperament that would make them better suited to humane letters, of which there is precious little available in the Muslim canon. And then there's the problem of Islam itself, a "faith tradition" (so to speak) particularly prone to fanaticism for reasons obvious to anyone who takes the time to read the derivative nonsense running through the Qur'an.

Just a few nuggets from a rather vigorous debate that you seem unaware of, Toddard. So, if your question cited above is not merely rhetorical, my answer is: yes.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 12:38PM

Man.

I said even if you "deny any causal relationship" it is still true that after 50 YEARS of "American direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia", we got 9/11. In other words, 9/11 happened after a half century (or whatever) of these policies.

So what are you debating? That the half century of US foreign policy in the ME that preceded 9/11 was *not* characterized by "direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia"?

And it's your belief that "direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia" do NOT play any role in increasing the anti-American hatred at the heart of terrorism? Seriously?

Also there are the questions from earlier: To stop terrorists from attacking us here, does it make more sense to prevent them from entering or to try to eliminate terrorism from the entire world? Is it your belief that if we ever succeeded in Afghanistan and created a stable, secure country out of that region (for the first time in history) so secure that nowhere in its vasty mountain fastnesses could any terrorists gather, that the terrorists would then not find someplace else to gather? Or do we just wage perpetual war until we have enough of the globe under our dominion, sufficiently cowed and incapable of resistance?

John II| 10.22.09 @ 1:20PM

Apart from your fondness for the warrantless either-or hypothesis, Toddard, it might perhaps be useful for me to point out that your interest in the issue appears to be exclusively political. My interest is cultural, and I am persuaded by 50 or so years of study that culture runs deeper than politics or ideology.

Which isn't to say that my own interest is exclusively cultural, as yours seems exclusively political. But I shall respond this much to your rhetorical hectoring by saying that I don't believe the terrorists could possibly give a rusty damn about American "interference" in the Middle East if they weren't being egged on by something deeper that would not disappear one whit if America herself were to go into a condition of total international isolation, with a protective electronic bubble-shield sealing us off from the rest of the universe. They'd still come after us.

A closer viewing of "Bonnie Scotland" would make all this clearer to you.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 1:31PM

"I don't believe the terrorists could possibly give a rusty damn about American "interference" in the Middle East if they weren't being egged on by something deeper"

Well, that's fine, I suppose, though it seems to me to be willfully ignorant. Although reducing - really, dehumanizing - a group to demonic caricature is certainly the easiest way to excuse and justify any treatment of that group. And I suppose it must be pleasant to imagine that their grievances have absolutely no basis in reality, and that there couldn't possibly be any negative consequences to our foreign policy in the middle east as it has been conducted since WWII.

At least you've abandoned asserting that 9/11 was a result of 50 years of a non-interventionist foreign policy we never had.

Is it your belief that if we ever succeeded in Afghanistan and created a stable, secure country out of that region (for the first time in history) so secure that nowhere in its vasty mountain fastnesses could any terrorists gather, that the terrorists would then not find someplace else to gather? Or do we just wage perpetual war until we have enough of the globe under our dominion, sufficiently cowed and incapable of resistance?

John II| 10.22.09 @ 1:51PM

"Well, that's fine, I suppose, though it seems to me to be willfully ignorant. Although reducing - really, dehumanizing - a group to demonic caricature is certainly the easiest way to excuse and justify any treatment of that group. And I suppose it must be pleasant to imagine that their grievances have absolutely no basis in reality, and that there couldn't possibly be any negative consequences to our foreign policy in the middle east as it has been conducted since WWII. "

As usual, I don't know precisely what you're talking about, but the way you say it is indeed instructive. Res ipsa loquitur.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 1:59PM

"As usual, I don't know precisely what you're talking about"

Or, rather, that you do, but you choose to act otherwise rather than address the argument presented.

I am "talking about" the implication that anti-American hatred is based not on real-world grievances resulting from American foreign policy in the ME, but instead on "something deeper." That the grievances as they state them are fictitious. That Muslim hatred is entirely irrational, and has as its lone cause their own culture and religion. They do not, in short, hate us for our policies - they hate us because their culture makes them insane and irrational. No matter what we do, they will still hate and "still come after us". Ergo we can do nothing to alleviate their hatred, other than (presumably) bomb their countries into rubble and then make of the survivors a US-friendly, peaceful nation.

Is it your belief that if we ever succeeded in Afghanistan and created a stable, secure country out of that region (for the first time in history) so secure that nowhere in its vasty mountain fastnesses could any terrorists gather, that the terrorists would then not find someplace else to gather? Or do we just wage perpetual war until we have enough of the globe under our dominion, sufficiently cowed and incapable of resistance?

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 2:03PM

I don't know if you've read David Rhode's account of being held by the Taliban. If you haven't, and you find yourself with some time, give it a read and let me know what you think of his account of the Taliban's reason for their anti-Americanism:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10.....stage.html

John II| 10.22.09 @ 5:27PM

Yes--I saw it. But I wasn't much impressed by it, I suppose. Although the human interest angle was duly fascinating, I frankly didn't care for the voice coming through the piece, which reminded me all too much of a patois I've grown all too familiar with since the days of the fraudulent reports that started pouring out of Vietnam after the Tet offensive in 1968. There's too much of the author in the piece, too much of that tedious narcissism that seems to have infected the culture over the past few generations--all the more revolting because you might reasonably expect someone who's been through such an experience to have acquired a better sense of proportion. I wonder how Rohde squares the part about Taliban grievance with the part about the Taliban penchant for deceit.

But above all, I wonder what the hell he thinks he was doing in a place like Pakistan if he has a wife and family and isn't on military duty (perish the thought: I'm sure he considers himself too important for THAT).

Sorry. That's the best I can do, since it's the most I even care to do, given the somewhat creepy voice that comes through.

John II| 10.22.09 @ 4:14PM

"I am 'talking about' the implication that anti-American hatred is based not on real-world grievances resulting from American foreign policy in the ME, but instead on 'something deeper.' That the grievances as they state them are fictitious. That Muslim hatred is entirely irrational, and has as its lone cause their own culture and religion. They do not, in short, hate us for our policies - they hate us because their culture makes them insane and irrational."

My dear Toddard, you are and indeed should be free to discern any implications you wish, just as you are and should be free to ignore what I actually say. I don't know where your bias toward the either-or mode comes from, but I can tell you that my own bias toward the both-and mode almost certainly comes from my immersion in Roman Catholic theology.

Yet "both-and" never implies an equal status. For example, the Protestant's preference for the symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist seems in part to grow out of a rationalist leaning toward "either-or": either the Eucharist is symbol or the Eucharist is the sure-enough body of Christ. The Catholic responds, of course, by the device of "both-and" (thus reconciling what appear to be contradictory statements sewn through the voluminous writing of St. Augustine): the Eucharist is both symbol of Christ and the sure-enough body of Christ. But the so-called "realist" Eucharistic theology of the Catholic obviously places infinitely greater weight on one side of the "both-and."

Similarly, the politico-rationalist interpretation of Islamic disgruntlement need not be sacrificed to the cultural interpretation. One can hold to both--all the while placing well-nigh infinitely greater emphasis on the cultural as being constitutive of the politico-rationalist.

I believe you're overgeneralizing the nefarious character of post-WWII Americano "interference" in the Middle East, inasmuch as, for example, the interference has often been to the obvious advantage of the Middle East, broadly speaking, against the residual effects of declining European and British imperialism. Be that as it may, however, your broad strokes are, to my mind, not only indiscriminate (why don't the Jordanians and the Kuwaitis and the Yemenis hate us, for example?) but also utterly inadequate to the task of matching cause and effect.

So I do not deny your politico-rationalist adducements, Toddard; rather, I accord them more discrimination and almost infinitely less import than you do. It is perhaps merely incidental that I thus accord the Muslims far greater respect than you do, inasmuch as I do not regard them as morons easily manipulated by shadow grievances and incapable of the sort of discriminate thinking to which I have just treated you with this gracious response.

Where was I? Oh yes, the problematic denouement of "Bonnie Scotland": a far more difficult puzzle than the Middle East.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 6:31PM

More (and seemingly desperate) misdirection and verbosity. What is the problem here? You took 7 paragraphs and said nothing substantive whatsoever, apart from "it's not either/or, it's a question of the degree to which each has a real world impact vis a vis terrorism", more or less (and I'm paraphrasing here so there will be plenty of hairs to split, minutiae to parse, and semantics to fasten upon should you choose to take yet another long winded break from the discussion) , only to negate that practically by asserting that the political, real world grievances are of "infinitely less import" with regards to their causal relationship to terrorism, and then negate *that* by characterizing their stated grievances as "shadow grievances" and manipulations. Oh, and you noted that our foreign policy in the Middle East has at times been a boon to the areas Muslims. What is this? When you go into this mode, is it a conscious decision because you have run out of argument? I just cannot believe that. There has to be more. I was sincerely hoping you would be able to refute or at least challenge my argument. Why these games? I am really baffled. If you have run up against a wall you should ask yourself why you are so committed to this narrative that you would shield it from scrutiny (my own and yours) behind a ditch of circumlocution and a rampart of pedantic prattle. I already know you've a better education than I do. Beating me over the head with it might be fun, but it doesn't substitute for a substantive argument.

I'm going to try and disentangle your argument (I'm sure you'll have something clever to say about how it would have been clear to someone who'd read such-and-such etc - you can put that part here):

Do you believe that "American direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia" are grievances (however baseless or otherwise) sincerely held by a significant percentage of anti-American Muslims, esp radical Islamists/terrorists, or do you believe it a fiction falsely attributed to them, or something else entirely?

If you believe these are sincerely held grievances, do you believe these grievances were cynically concocted by cagey Islamist leaders merely for recruitment, and then adopted by their credulous recruits, or do you believe these were grievances previously held by the recruits which led them in that direction, or something else entirely?

Do you believe there would be a terrorist jihad directed against America if America had never engaged in "direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia?" I know that is sheer speculation but I'm curious.

Do you believe the terrorist jihad against the U.S. would cease or diminish significantly if the U.S. ceased "direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia?"

Do you believe the terrorist jihad is primarily a product of the Islamic religion (as practiced by the terrorists) and the native cultures of the jihadis, and that US intervention as described above is merely a convenient excuse or at best a minor grievance they have latched onto to give their primarily religious cause a sheen of political legitimacy?

Lastly, is it your belief that if we ever succeeded in Afghanistan and created a stable, secure country out of that region (for the first time in history) so secure that nowhere in its vasty mountain fastnesses could any terrorists gather, that the terrorists would then not find someplace else to gather? Or do we just wage perpetual war until we have enough of the globe under our dominion, sufficiently cowed and incapable of resistance?

John II| 10.22.09 @ 8:50PM

Let me first of all assure you that I love the expression "vasty mountain fastnesses." It sounds like something out of Kipling, and you may continue saying it as many times as you like: totally charming.

Where was I? Oh, I also rather like your list of questions--it has the rhythms of the Creed in its interrogative form. Let's see, I have to avoid verbosity, so let me respond laconically, numbering the last six paragraphs in the order you present them:

1. Don't know. Sincerity in that part of the world is hard to measure.

2. Ditto.

3. Yes, probably--and, as I think I mentioned, it was anticipated by Hilaire Belloc in an essay titled "Mohamedanism" back in 1938 when America depended for all its oil on Texas and California and wasn't even a world power yet. Boy, those were the good ol' days, if we can agree on that one.

4. No, not at all. My literary instincts tell me that it would probably get worse--the kinds of folks who do terrorism are basically bullies, excited by the scent of weakness.

5. Yes and no. It apparently depends on who's practicing the jihad. Al-Qaeda, for example, appears to be indifferent to the issue of Israel, and the mullacracy in Iran appears to be elaborately millenarian in its motivation.

6. No, they'd find some place else, probably some place less difficult to make shorter work of them--and I would then be free to visit the vasty mountain fastnesses with my broad-brimmed fedora and tourist camera. That's really all I care about, being a vulgar Americano.

Well--no. I do care about Laurel and Hardy. And I'm deeply concerned about "Bonnie Scotland."

S.L. Toddard| 10.23.09 @ 8:07AM

"Let me first of all assure you that I love the expression "vasty mountain fastnesses."

I don't know if "vasty" was commonly used, but I swiped it from Fritz Lieber, the pulp SF/Fantasy master.

S.L. Toddard| 10.23.09 @ 9:00AM

First, let me thank you sincerely for your forthrightness.

You state that you "don't know" whether the grievances they've stated, and that have been attributed to them, are real, or sincerely held, or not. And yet you're sure that the terrorist jihad would be happening now regardless of whether the causes of these stated grievances existed. Doesn't that imply that you do not believe these grievances are real, or sincerely held?

If terrorism is the inevitable result of their religion and culture, why do you believe there was no terrorist jihad waged against America before America's "direct intervention in the Muslim world", "one sided support in favor of Israel", and "support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia?"?

As a better man than me asked, how would you react - how would Americans react - "if some foreign army from a Muslim nation invaded and bombed the U.S., occupied the country for the next several years with 60,000 soldiers, killed tens of thousands of citizens here, set up secret prisons where they disappeared Americans for years without charges or even contact with the outside world, imposed sanctions that blockaded food and medicine and killed countless children, invaded and ransacked our homes at will, abducted Americans and shipped them halfway around the world to island-prisons, instituted a worldwide torture regime, armed their allies for attacks on other Western nations, and threatened still other invasions.

Do you think Americans might be seething with rage about that, wanting to kill as many of the people from that country as possible? Wouldn't it be rather obvious that the more that was done to Americans, the more filled with hatred and a desire for violence they would be? Just consider the rage and fury and burning desire for vengeance that was unleashed by a one-day attack on U.S. soil, eight years ago, by a stateless band of extremists, that killed 3,000 people."

And consider the above question in light of the new U.S. intelligence reports that find "nearly all of the insurgents battling US and NATO troops in Afghanistan are not religiously motivated Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors, but a new generation of tribal fighters vying for control of territory, mineral wealth, and smuggling routes," and that "US commanders and politicians often loosely refer to the enemy as the Taliban or Al Qaeda, giving rise to the image of holy warriors seeking to spread a fundamentalist form of Islam. But the mostly ethnic Pashtun fighters are often deeply connected by family and social ties to the valleys and mountains where they are fighting, and they see themselves as opposing the United States be cause it is an occupying power."

http://www.boston.com/news/wor.....ports_say/

I anticipate that you will discount and disregard the findings of this intelligence report, as you did the findings of the Defense Science Board Task Force. Is that because the conclusions they've reached are not the ones you hoped they'd reach? Which is to say, do you discredit these studies and reports because you don't like what they've found, or do you have a substantive reason, and if so, what is it?

John II| 10.23.09 @ 12:57PM

The term "vasty" is an archaism, with its roots in Saxon. It has a mellifluous and dreamy cadence about it, evocative of the primeval. But everything I've had to say to you is without substance, so I'll just have to go my unsubstantive way.

On final thought: Your characterization of the American presence in Iraq would, according to the polls, be disputed by more than 70 percent of Iraquis--and if that's not substantive enough, let me cut to the chase with a totally unsubstantive remark: the characterization is slanderous and vile, and your fondness for it speaks ill of your moral sense and powers of judgment.

But pay no attention to the likes of me, Toddard. We bookish literary types are without substance--and when I think of a lot of the idiots I work with, I often think I'm a much bigger fool than you apparently take me for.

Meanwhile, my daddy's words come back to haunt me: Never wrestle with a tar baby.

S.L. Toddard| 10.26.09 @ 9:23AM

A dodge. These are questions you refuse to address, both to me and (it seems) to yourself. I really am surprised. I did not expect that you would have an argument that would change my mind entirely (or immediately), but (because of the conclusions you've reached in thinking about the same subject, and the longer period you've had in which to ponder) I sincerely thought you would at least have explored - and then exposed me to - a train of argument and logic, a way of thinking about it, that challenged my own, or exposed flaws in mine, so that I would need to reexamine. It seems though (and I could be totally wrong, and maybe you just tire of the back-and-forth) that you just sort of leave off when it gets difficult; that you are so attached to your conclusions that you won't follow a line of reasoning if it leads anywhere else. It seems in fact that you've attached yourself to a conclusion (one that you're comfortable with, and that reaffirms things you'd like to believe), and then entertain and only arguments that lead to it, rather than the other way around. Much like you disregard the conclusions of the Task Force mentioned earlier ("They reached conclusions that make me uncomfortable, ergo their reasoning is faulty and suspect" rather than "their reasoning is faulty and suspect, ergo their conclusions are without merit").

In the end, it seems to me that you are someone who - like Bill Buckley - accepts the need for a hyper-centralized leviathan state (a "totalitarian bureaucracy"), because you believe the real world is such that we have no choice but to wage perpetual war, to be a War Fighting State, which categorically precludes small, constitutionally-defined republican government. Though I disagree emphatically, it is certainly a legitimate way of thinking, but I do not believe it can be described as "conservative" in any meaningful sense.

"the characterization is slanderous and vile"

Vile - yes. Slanderous? No. To characterize a vile business as vile is not "slanderous". If there is anything in that characterization that is factually incorrect please point it out.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 11:58AM

Just an FYI - I did not include "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan" in the list of relevant causes as it does not directly apply to the 50 year period you referenced.

John II| 10.21.09 @ 10:58AM

"When it comes to war, the patriot realizes that the rest of the world can't be turned into America, because his America is something specific and particular — the memories and traditions that can no more be transplanted than the mountains and the prairies. He seeks only contentment at home, and he is quick to compromise with an enemy. He wants his country to be just strong enough to defend itself."

Well, as usual, the devil is mucking around with the details. What on earth can "just strong enough" mean, concretely, in today's shrunken world?

Sobran is a fetching writer, and I've been reading him since the days when he was a regular at National Review and writing under the Brit-like initial-sobriquet "M.J. Sobran." But under somewhat closer scrutiny, his writing dissolves into the sophomoric, such that his broadly deductive sweep bears little relation to the devilish details to which they're supposed to be applicable.

The technical term for this kind of sophomorism is ignoratio elenchi. Get thee back to Aristotle, Toddard, even as I return now to Laurel and Hardy.

John II| 10.21.09 @ 1:33PM

Ooops. The penultimate paragraph of the preceding post should read, say, "such that his broadly deductive strokes bear little relation . . . etc." Pardon my inadvertent syllepsis, Toddard. I was composing too quickly under the strain of a deadline.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 1:47PM

Writing a dissertation on Laurel and Hardy?

John II| 10.21.09 @ 2:02PM

No--but that's an idea! In fact, I had to get to class on time. Hmmm, a dissertation on Laurel and Hardy. I dunno. Stan Laurel himself, in an interview, once said that humor is like a fine Swiss watch. If you want, you can take it apart to see how it works--but you'll never get back together again.

I think I'd better stick to regular boring academic fare--and idle posting, which is somewhat akin to pencil-sharpening.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 2:22PM

A half hour class? Come on - you're loafing!

John II| 10.21.09 @ 5:32PM

Well--no. The class is much longer, and I just got back from an even longer one. On the other hand, what else can you call this kind of pastime except . . . loafing?

Of course, watching Laurel and Hardy movies must be considered a pastime on a more elevated plane than that of loafing, though I admit to being stumped for the right word.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 6:59PM

Laurel and Hardy, for whatever reason, have not aged as badly imo than the Stooges. L+H are still funny enough to make me laugh. The Stooges though - I just don't get it at all. I find it interesting, like Henny Youngman's comedy, but not at all funny, also like Henny Youngman's comedy.

John II| 10.22.09 @ 12:56PM

Well, Youngman's comedy was of the stand-up sort, not the dramatic, so it wouldn't occur to me to compare him with L&H. I suppose I would compare Henny Youngman with Victor Borge--and favorably, by the way: I admired both of them, but for much different reasons than my admiration for L&H.

Curly was the real ballast for "The Three Stooges." When he was felled by a stroke in the late 1940s, the act fell apart. Shemp was funny in his own way (as a foil to W.C. Fields in "The Bank Dick," for example), but he couldn't bring the necessary chemistry to bear on the later Stooges after Curly's demise. There was nothing left after 1948 except what had been the incipient weaknesses of the Stooge act.

Laurel and Hardy suffered a similar fate when their contracts with Hal Roach expired. Roach had given them a free hand, after which they came under the leaden direction of the big-studio 20th Century Fox mill. But that's only part of the explanation for their decline; cracks were already starting to show in the edifice, so to speak, by the time (1935) of "Bonnie Scotland," although the later (1937) "Way Out West" is undeniably their masterpiece.

Still, "Bonnie Scotland" should be required viewing for students of international relations.

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 1:03PM

"Well, Youngman's comedy was of the stand-up sort, not the dramatic, so it wouldn't occur to me to compare him with L&H."

Sure. It was just the first name that popped in my head when I thought of comedy that seemed to be so of a particular time that it doesn't translate well to contemporary, unschooled ears.

"I suppose I would compare Henny Youngman with Victor Borge--and favorably, by the way: I admired both of them, but for much different reasons than my admiration for L&H."

I don't know about that - I think Borge quite funny. Youngman's jokes just thud on my ears.

John II| 10.22.09 @ 1:45PM

Well, de gustibus non disputandum est, and all that, but I wouldn't consider Youngman's material dated, and he pioneered the one-liner. E.g., "My dad was the town drunk; usually that's not so bad, but in New York City?" or "My best friend ran away with my wife--and let me tell you, I really miss him."

Borge's comedy was of a different sort, but the comparison occurred to me because of the central prop: I mean, Borge's piano and Youngman's violin. But I liked both, which may go some way towards explaining our political differences, Toddard. Your instincts appear to favor "either-or," while mine favor "both-and."

JimE| 10.21.09 @ 7:41PM

The toddard moron still incapable of independent thought, a just and paste drone.

ds80| 10.21.09 @ 8:31PM

There ya have it, folks: SL Toddard speaks. We get it straight from the horse's *ss.

Richard Bendure| 10.21.09 @ 9:52PM

I am so happy that people are writing as you are. there IS hope for America! It is within each of us.

Ned| 10.21.09 @ 7:25AM

Charles Krauthammer (and what a wonderful name, imagine Sergeant Krauthammer and Sergeant Stryker teamed up to save the world) is great. I hope many heed his warnings and observations. If the adults don't wake up soon and straighten the child President's world playroom it may well be too late. The only thing that makes me think it isn’t too late now is the inherent greatness of our country.
I hope we are not looking forward to a military defense like England’s. Then our military can yell boom, when the few that are left, practice firing their weapons.

Eric Cartman| 10.21.09 @ 10:21AM

I used to think there were adults in D.C. I voted for Bush (I and II) and got screwed both times. I had interviewed W when I had an off-campus news paper at Texas A & M. He came across as sincere and intelligent. More conservative than his Dad, but was more of a regular guy (Hell I was even stationed at Ellington AFB and knew of his famous parties)

He seemed like the antidote to Clinton and Gore in 2000. At least I could say I knew him better. And Dick Cheney was a smart, reliable conservative. What could go wrong.

Well . . . . look at us now! It is because of W that we have Obama. He let the Democrats walk all over him, define him, crap on this country and then he kissed up with Teddy the Drunk to further destroy education, McCain to further destroy elections, and Mexico to destroy America. He didn't defend with any gusto whatsoever Gitmo, conservativism - our borders! He never came out forcibly against the pending mortgage debacle (did you ever hear of it?), reign in banks, credit card companies, or offer a health insurance alternative that went anywhere. And then they spent our money like a homeless bum in a liquor store with a crisp Ben Franklin he found.

I will give him thank yous for keeping us safe and taking the war where it belongs: over there ---->>>> But the Republicans are not the adults anymore - they're the Dumb Asses Who Will Fall For Any Liberal Fad They See On Good Morning America! What useless asses!

JBobs| 10.21.09 @ 3:12PM

Well said, Eric. I fell for W as well, but came to regard him as a disaster for conservatism... for all the reasons that you cite.

Eric Cartman| 10.21.09 @ 4:37PM

Thank, JBobs. Doesn't it piss you off to understand WHAT could have been and then look to see what has become?! D.C. is the problem, tar and feathers is the answer!

JimE| 10.21.09 @ 7:44PM

You two fell for Bush because you were never conservatives in the first place. Let us hope you have learned the error of your ways.

SoCon| 10.22.09 @ 2:07AM

Pompous ass. How the hell do you know?

SoCon| 10.22.09 @ 2:09AM

Two words: Compassionate Conservative. I never thought George W. was a conservative.

Melvin| 10.21.09 @ 7:37AM

Could it be said, that Barrack Obama, and the Legislative Branch and their unilateral disarmament of our military and economy borders on the criminal for laying this Country naked and cowed before our enemies?

stephanie| 10.21.09 @ 7:48AM

How in the hell did this country elect a man who wasn't even raised in the continental US? who was raised in part, by a muslim in a mostly muslim country? Were they all so blinded by his "clean and articulate" self? Or perhaps their hatred for George Bush? God help us.

Melvin| 10.21.09 @ 8:08AM

God helps those who help themselves. Stephanie, my latter statement could be construed as being too much of a cliché, but, we must first have faith in ourselves and our fellow countrymen.
This hour upon us may indeed appear dark, and we as a Country should perceive it as that. But, I for one do not advocate a mood of melancholy defeatism, but rather take note of a quote by Winston Churchill:

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

I for one sister, choose to fight.

JimE| 10.21.09 @ 7:46PM

It happened because good people chose to sit on their ass and down nothing.

Indiana Alex| 10.21.09 @ 8:10AM

Childish is the best way to describe this President, and liberals in general.

Bohred| 10.21.09 @ 8:34AM

Impeach.

The Beachhead| 10.21.09 @ 9:05AM

As WWII heralded the end of the British Empire and glory days or the internal decadency of the Roman Empire, so to the policies of the Obama administration will be marked as the debarkation of American virtue and goodness.
When the people cannot admit that they have made a horrible mistake and chose to continue to support polices of self destruction, both foreign and domestic, the nation has indeed lost it's soul. If it's true(and I believe it is) that the lunatics are now in charge of the asylum and are in process of locking down all the sane caretakers, how can there be any escape. Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the media\academic elitist are in a liberal, fantasy induced delusions and are INCAPABLE of identifying, let alone rationally responding to, REALITY.

ncatty| 10.21.09 @ 9:14AM

Even Warren Christopher, in his confirmation hearings as Secretary of State for Bill Clinton, stated that the ultimate goal of US foreign policy is what is in the best interest of the American people. Our best interest is no longer relevant to our foreign policy.

WilliamInWien| 10.21.09 @ 9:40AM

The Obama Administration has taken on so many activities that the average voter cannot comprehend what is going on. For George W. Bush, the people "only" had to be for or against the war in Iraq for the most part. With Obama, he and his cohorts (unelected and unconfirmed Czars) are everywhere, from GM to Afghanistan to Healthcare to having little children sing his praises (to mention only a few). The answer may well be to identify a few understandable issues and hammer away to a point where they are not headlines and soundbites, but issues that the "average" American can understand. Yet, we are sent astray by the "war of Fox news", Letterman appearances, the Nobel Prize and dates with Michelle. Conservatives, moderates and other thinking voters have to cut through the chaff and focus on what Obama really is and the damage he is inflicting on our nation across a broad spectrum. This will take some "hard bark" for one who criticizes Obama will (too many times) be labeled as a racist which will essentially cause many people to retreat.

Wesley Mouch| 10.21.09 @ 10:07AM

I don't know what you guys are talking about. The country's being downhill ever since the 70's. Obama's doing his part, sure, but so has every other president since LBJ. Laying this all at Obama's feet qualifies as Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS). ODS makes you look silly to those in the reality-based community.

Juno| 10.22.09 @ 2:11AM

Don't know about that, Wesley--Obama's favorables are tanking along with the economy. Your boy's in big trouble.

Joe| 10.21.09 @ 10:11AM

Wrong again stoddard. Patriotism and Nationalism are both good when it is attached to this country. We are #1 not because of us but because of what men set up 233 years ago with the help of God. Yes God. And no I do not need your post again to show you do not love the greatness of this country only the few of mistakes blow out of proportion or lies of this great Country. Try reading the "10 Big lies about America".

Al Adab| 10.21.09 @ 11:28AM

So the conversation at the morning coffee group today was, "Where is the organized opposition?"

Not a bad question. Unless the Conservative movement, the TEA party movement and others coalesce to defend American traditions and Freedom where will this end. Future ages will curse us for delivering them into a new dark age. We can only hope (oops) that somewhere the lamp of freedom will shed its light and that future ages will rediscover the "...blessings of liberty"

Where can we begin?

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 11:34AM

jeezy peezy. the world ends tomorrow.
i'm no liberal, and fully embrace the conservative point of view, but doom mongering has it's own teachable moment in history, and if we're all right about the way our history works (and has worked so far) the only danger we are in is in not paying attention to wrongward trends and not throwing the bums out if they misbehave in their 4 year shot at running things. i mean, y'know...

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 11:40AM

Hey Turd:

Do you have a sneezeguard installed over your keyboard - you know, to prevent inadvertent onanistic spills that occur when you feverishly read over what you incorrectly suppose is your brilliance?

You think so highly of yourself, and yet you don't seem to comprehend that everyone sees right through you. In truth, you are Mr. Cellophane. You are the archduke of nada.

If you impressed anyone on this site one tenth as much as you impress yourself, that might be something. But, alas, you are simply yet another narcissistic blowhard for whom scroll bars were invented, trolling around a Web site because you apparently have no other means of psychological support.

But if it'll get rid of you, here goes: What a good boy are you!

Now pat yourself on the back and go do something useful.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 12:20PM

Looks like someone put on their crankypants this morning. How adorable!

Ken (Old Texican)| 10.21.09 @ 11:45AM

Hi Wesley
I believe you are entirely mistaken.
We have certainly had our wins and our losses...since day one.
But
When I genuinely try to remember a President before Obama that was actively trying to dimantle our society, I can't think of one.

We have had sleaze balls like slick Willie, doofus Carter, Mr. Reagan, and the Bushes, who just can't figure out who their enemies are.

W. Bush surrounded himself with supposedly loyal, bright people, and he counted too much on them to advise him correctly. Some were great, Cheny, Rice, come to mind, but some who proved to be deeply flawed like Paulson.

Heck, every time a panicked Paulson went on TV the Stock market crashed.

All that aside, Dubya did some good stuff and some dumb stuff. As do we all. (smile)

I believe Mr. Obama despises our country as constituted. He has said so repeatedly, and very directly.
I believe it is time for impotent grumblers like you to take some mental viagra! Better than that, even, get on day to day doses of Cialis.
A few courage vitamins are in order as well.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 11:46AM

was that for me? am i the turd? because i suggested that our system works and always has?

It's OK stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 12:21PM

stevie ray I am 100% sure that the "Turd" salutation in the post immediately following your earlier one is a quite-appropriate abbrieviation for "S. L. Toddard." If you look back, you can see that the response addressed to Turd relates more to Toddard/Turd's ramblings. The poster just didn't use the "reply to comment" function after one of Toddard/Turd's posts, and added his bit out-of-order, quite coincidentally after yours.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 12:03PM

No, Stevie Ray. It was not directed at you. It was directed at the blowhard above, S.L. Toddard, whose bloviating is singlehandedly melting the antarctic ice caps.

I don't resort to insult with people who aren't trolls. :-)

But I do disagree with your assertion. I think four years of this bunch of goons will render this country unrecognizable.

Sometimes hyperbole is warranted. I hate analogies to 1930s Germany because they are so easy to label as extreme, but some of them are apt.

I'm sure a lot of folks weren't alarmed in 1933 when Hitler became chancellor - in fact, many were happy to abrogate the Versailles Treaty and rearm. He was quite popular, as the Nuremberg rallies attest.

But history has a way of delivering unto us myriad unintended - and unforeseen - consequences, and while we aren't headed toward a Hitler, we are headed over a statist cliff.

Obama is NOT the beginning of this - he is the culmination of generations' worth of ignoring the constitution, which is about as relevant to governance in modern America as the Magna Carta.

It really, really can get very, very bad. The wonder of American Exceptionalism isn't its people. It's the Constitution - or used to be. That's why we became a world power while France, after its revolution, became, well, France. Yes, we were lucky in terms of our geography and other factors, but our constitution was the real engine of progress - not faux progressivism.

I wonder if you'll have the same relatively sanguine opinion one year from now?

Simon Templar| 10.22.09 @ 3:08AM

Excellent comments and analysis! Yes, its our constitution and the vision and insight of our founding fathers that set the climate and conditions for our exceptionalism as a nation, culture, and people. We are now at a defining crossroad...a place that we have not been before but one that will lead to either the survival of our republic or its destruction. I wish people would wake up.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 12:14PM

so, violent overthrow, grz...is that what you want?

no thanks, i'll stick with the system.
now, you seem to say that the constitution is irrelevant to governing and in the next breath, that it's exceptional and we're in trouble because we've strayed from it. could you clear this up? bit of a dimwit here, i lost the thread of your logic.

Al Adab| 10.21.09 @ 1:03PM

Just a suggestion, but rather than "violent overthrow" it may be that Restoration is the desired end. Don't read too much into it. How to achieve a Restoration of Constitutional government is the question. We can only hope that it does not take place in the streets but rather through our institutions.

Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.21.09 @ 1:23PM

Stevie Gay: Howdy Stranger!! You must be new to this website? I can tell, because you sound frightened to me!! Plus, I hate your guts already!! You see, we’ve got a big enough Troll problem around here already, without you adding to it. So if you want to pick a fight with Grzmlyk, well I’ve got a small piece of advice for you, you better be packing a dictionary, on top of that computer you’re typing on. Otherwise, you’re in for a long night, of having no idea what’s going on. So if you ain’t got one of those, well, it’s due time to get the “F” out of town, because he’s going to bury you. Plus on top of that, I really can’t stand your guts already, you sound like another big fairy wimp (once again-we’ve already got our fair share of them here).

Is it raining outside today or something? Is that why you're trapped inside today on this website? Go ahead Stevie, it's okay, go outside, you won't melt.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 1:48PM

Thanks, "It's Ok Stevie Ray." You're right; I should use the "reply" function.

Stevie Ray, where did I say I support the violent overthrow of the Obama administration? Such a leap of logic is ridiculous.

I do not believe it has to come to violence. Not if people like you wake up.

The constitution has been eroded piecemeal. Up until the Progressive Era took hold, I'd say that we pretty much followed it (yes, I know about Lincoln and Habeas Corpus). And even up until, say, the Great Society, a large portion of the body politic still revered capitalism and respect for the dominant culture; victim groups had yet to become the tail that now daily wags the dog.

But as time has gone on, and America has reaped the cornucopia of benefits that were the direct result of American Exceptionalism, we became lazy. We forgot what it takes to make our country work. We acceded, bit by bit, to the demands of the race-baiters and the hate-mongers and the lefties, those greedy, power-hungry parasites posing as benevolent, altruistic angels.

We succumbed to White Guilt. We decided that a go-along-to-get-along Republican Party was just dandy. Across the political spectrum, we silently accepted the Federal government's takeover of great swaths of our economy even as it failed every time to create anything except bloated bureaucracy and intractable fiefdoms. As long as you appease the forces of totalitarianism just a little bit every day, no particular day feels like surrender - just like the frog that’s immersed in tepid water and realizes too late that the incremental rises in temperature have rendered him boiled.

So we have been moving away from the constitution in fits and starts such that here, on this bank and shoal of time, we are a decadent, moribund, sclerotic, feckless welfare state a la the European Union. Our founding fathers wouldn't recognize this country.

Now, we have an affirmative action president and a Supreme Court justice who gleefully admitted - without repercussions - that judges legislate from the bench. We have Kelo v. New London. We have the deliberate misreading and misappropriating of the constitution such that we read POW's Miranda rights. There are literally thousands of examples of the ways in which our constitution is no longer the supreme law of the land.

The point of the constitution was to guarantee that the government would serve the people. Now we have the reverse situation: If Obama has his way, we will all exist to serve the State. This country is no longer about protecting individual liberty - it's about the benefits that accrue to "the collective." That is far closer communist statism than it is to the capitalist representative republic we started out as.

So I don't know what "system” you are declaring allegiance to.

Can you tell me, if you don't see the extent to which we've strayed, what makes you a conservative? What are you trying to conserve?

With "conservatives" like you, why fear liberals?

Mango| 10.21.09 @ 12:53PM

This has got to be one of the dumbest articles I've ever read. American exceptionalism? Yeah, exceptionally human. When you're flat broke, you are no longer exceptional.

Juno| 10.22.09 @ 2:15AM

Mango is a liberal--all about money all of the time. That's all you nitwits care about.

Ken (Old Texican)| 10.21.09 @ 1:12PM

Hi Mango
We productive persons are not even close to flat broke. In fact, many of us can sit down strike for a couple of months if need be to keep from paying taxes. We can damned sure make the gubmint and their stooges broke.

Stevie ray

GRZ doesn't believe in violent overthrow.
I believe our administration has committed violent overthrow when they nationalized banks and autos, and trying to nationalize health care and the energy industry.
Pure Marxist Fascism!

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 1:36PM

didn't vote for obama, here. voted for mccain, might have voted for george again (or cheney). hope that establishes some conservative street cred.

the conversation on this blog is uncivil and you guys really ought to get out of your mother's basements and meet some girls.

try to remember that good writing is packing as many ideas into the fewest (and if you can, shortest) words possible. ernest hemingway said that. he was a writer. pretty good one, too.

Campy| 10.21.09 @ 2:12PM

stevie ray,

Which is it? You hope to establish some conservative street cred, but also say you'll stick with the system? You're talking out both sides of your mouth.

Maybe you should spend some time reading and learning from these men here, instead of posturing manhood:
"the conversation on this blog is uncivil and you guys really ought to get out of your mother's basements and meet some girls."

Uncivil? Sheesh, man... grow a pair. What is 'uncivil' is the throwing of our constitution under the bus.

Melvin| 10.21.09 @ 1:41PM

In my opinion in what we are dealing with is a ideology that was planted in college students post war WWII. This socialist/Marxist ideology was fostered and nourished by Marxist professors to the current crop of politicians/ appointees/professors/lawyers/ diplomats, is now come to maturation.
The Liberals have had minor victories in public education, inner cities with social re-engineering by creating millions of wards of the state.
We have to look no further than cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Cleavland, Columbus to name a few are the poster children of what Conservatives consider as once proud independent cities that have evolved into crime, decadence, drugs, and dependence on government for housing, food, and health care. Make note that crime in these cities isn't regulated to blue collar crime.
But if your a Marxist Statist these cities are no considered to be failures, but shining beacons of successful socialism.
For those who believe in the system as it is, need to expand the parameters in why they would want to retain the current corrupt system.
Do we need to reinvent the political wheel, it depends who one talks to, but as a nation we cannot keep pouring resources into a Marxist/Socialist ideology because in the long run we cannot pay bills and maintain our lifestyle with an ideology all we need to look at is the failed city states as I have described above. What has failed in them will fail us all.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 1:49PM

BTW, thanks, Lullabyes. Nice to know you have my back. Right back atcha!

Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.21.09 @ 2:17PM

Anytime Grzmlyk!! I figure, I’ve got to support the person, who's made me look up more words in the dictionary in the last six month, than in the previous 20 years combined.

And about this Stevie character, I don’t know man, he just don’t smell right to me. He says, “Hope that establishes some conservative street cred”-What Stevie? Excuse me “street cred”? And, “the conversation on this blog is uncivil and you guys really ought to get out of your mother's basements and meet some girls.”-What was that about girls Stevie? Seriously have you ever met one? Other than your Mom?

Go away now Stevie!! Go outside in the rain, and read Old Man and the Sea again, and come back when you finally need to shave everyday. You can tell us how the book ends, I hope it has a happy ending. And we’ll still be here being uncivil to each other while your gone, complaining about the Left, and Toddard!! Let’s Go Yankees!!

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 2:03PM

melvin: agreed! we're conservatives for a good reason. we have to resist the urge to organize systems that control. the fewer laws the better. all that stuff. but the liberal 'urge' looks so noble to so many people because of the 'kumbaya' nature of any handout...it seems like selflessness (but is actually initiative-killing).

so that puts us right back to wonder about the original intent of the framers (and in the very preamble to the constitution) when they said 'promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense'——sometimes i wish they had stopped right there at the common defense part.

Melvin| 10.21.09 @ 2:42PM

Sometimes in our lives we tend to think too much into something. The original framers in my opinion had tremendous insight into human behavior in connection with political power.
But, they couldn't make our Constitution idiot proof. Maybe at the time they didn't figure that they had to.
I advocate not deviating from or looking too far into our Constitution. The document itself is simple, straightforward and easy to follow, and applies to all.
Where the problem comes in is that many people in academia, and all branches of the government have so bastardized the Constitution to give legitimacy to their political ideology that it no longer represents what the framers had crafted.
We keep hearing from people who think that they are smarter than we are, what the framers intent was. Finding out the intent is rather difficult because last time anyone checked these guys have been dead for quite sometime now.
For example, I could go to Grzmlyk place of work and tell his boss Grzmlyk intent was that the boss would give me $100.00, well the boss can go to Grzmlyk and ask him, "Did you tell Melvin that I was to give him a $100.00?" Grzmlyk would reply, "Hell no! That was not my intent." So applying this logic to the Constitution is wrong because their is absolutely no way that we can determine what the intent of the Framers of the Constitution was, we only can or should go by what the Framers wrote and States ratified.
I apologize for being so wordy. Melvin just has allot to say. Hopefully the readers of American Spectator find some relevance in it.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 2:28PM

campy: what i mean by 'system' is this thing the framers set up. the way our government works; three separate branches, fidelity to the constitution, regular elections; you want to do away with that? really i'm trying to understand (without rancor, honestly) just what is being advocated here. we either work with this system of government or we don't. you want to try..a parliament? a prime minister? how else do we bring about this change other than 'the marketplace of ideas' to quote krauthammer?

Al Adab| 10.21.09 @ 2:31PM

Stevie Ray:

Al Adab| 10.21.09 @ 2:32PM

OOPS Darn Arthritis anyway.
What is needed is a restoration of Constitutional government. See above comments.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 2:37PM

al: thanks. saw the above comments. so how does that get done? nice word restoration (and i'm sure lullabye and mr. new thesaurus for christmas will love it since it's more than 3 syllables), but what gets it marching?

Al Adab| 10.21.09 @ 3:29PM

The entire movement seems to be looking for just the right catylist to set the wheels in motion. What that will be I don't know. Governator had the opportunity with the San Juaquin water issue. March in the State Guard and rebuils the system. He didn't and won't do that.

TEA Party organization has yet to define itself into a movement although actions are underway, like the film last weekend, eading in that direction. Do they need to select and endorse candidates? The Conservative wing of the GOP is alive but small. Old Texican has TEAM America another group. What might coalese the various segments into a whole?

There is still too much emphasis on "who" rather than "what". It is the principle and ultimately some overt action that will bring results. Either we can cause that action or wait for it to happen naturally.

Juno| 10.22.09 @ 2:32AM

The Conservative wing is small? Dude, you're so wrong, we own the GOP! We just have to get rid of the RINOs.

Al Adab| 10.22.09 @ 11:29AM

Juno,
Small in terms of office holders, not population. Maybe about ten in the Senate, about 80 in the House. There are a couple Govs. and more in lower levels ie State Leg and City Halls. But the fight goes on. The GOP is RINO, the accomodationists, it is the Cons who must rise to the top.

Juno| 10.22.09 @ 3:22PM

Agreed. We must stop supporting RINOs --they don't represent us.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 2:46PM

Hi Lullabyes. Thanks - I enjoy reading your posts too.

I suspect Stevie is young. And he's wrong about Hemingway. Sure, the sentences were relatively unadorned, but he didn't skimp on the narrative. Thank god.

Stevie: I believe we are going to have to, as the Declaration of Independence says - in fact, charges us - dissolve this byzantine, multi-headed hydra we call the Federal government. It is tyranny, and, although past presidents - like both Bushes - have made deals with the devil in order to kick the can of responsibility down the road, we now have our first president who actively wants to implement a Marxist economic system. If you don't believe that, I can only say you are naive. Our government - and its dictates to its citizens - only grows.

Even Reagan, our most effective conservative president since Lincoln, couldn't keep government from growing and extending its tentacles further into our lives. It wasn't because he didn't want to, it was because the Federal government has become a juggernaut, far too big and weighted with inertial momentum for anyone to stop it. And whereas prior presidents always at least paid lip service to the idea of a private sector, Obama's actions - and many of his words - betray a vision that is pure marxism.

The dirty secret is that, as constituted (pun intended) the constituition IS a suicide pact. Because it has allowed all of these shenanigans to take place under its aegis. So when we hit the "reset" button on America, some further guard rails are going to be needed.

But, Stevie, I remind you of the first words of the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. "

Hope this clears things up, Stevie.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:09PM

Citing the portion of the Declaration that legitimizes secession, then citing Lincoln - who denied the South the right to "alter or to abolish" their pact with the Union "and to institute new government"- as... a "conservative"?

Lincoln was as radical a president as ever sat in the Oval Office. The country he left was entirely alien to the one he swore to protect and defend. If one wants to trace America's drift away from Constitutional government, one can find no better place to start than with King Lincoln.

Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.21.09 @ 3:41PM

I think it’s been scientifically proven, that if you want to trace the drift away from the Constitutional Government in American history, it actually happened; ten minutes after George Washington was sworn in as President. Come on now Toddard, can we just stick to the last 100 years or so, to define today’s problems? Because if we go back any farther in time, we might just end up blaming today’s problems on Columbus, or that Viking Guy whose name I can’t remember, but the guy with the long Red beard and the Longboat, or maybe we can blame the Dinosaurs next (Hmm? the start of Global Warming maybe)?

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:44PM

"Come on now Toddard, can we just stick to the last 100 years or so, to define today’s problems?"

I'm sorry - are you under the impression that I brought Lincoln into the discussion?

Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.21.09 @ 4:06PM

You may not have brought up Lincoln, but you did say that's when we started drifting away from the Constitution, and I just wanted to rein you in just a little bit. Let's not get carried away here.

I think the current (last 100 years) drift away from the Constitution, can be identified as, the moment we became a Global “Super Power”. Ever since then, we can’t seem to stop putting our nose into everybody else’s business, which invites more problems (back here at home and abroad). World War-II was a fight we needed to get involved in (no doubt!!), but afterwards, we should have pulled back to our side of the Globe, and let Europe/Asia deal with the post War problems (even dealing with the big bad Russians). That was their problem, not ours, but we sure did make the post War problem ours in the end, and at great expense too. But ever since we became the “World Police”, we been sinking in the mud deeper and deeper, and our only plan to get out of it, has been to step on the gas even harder. And we never seem to get out of it, nor do we appear to be changing our plans either. Step on the gas, we’re almost there!!

It’s very late, I’ve got to call it a night. LGY's (Ha!)

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 6:54PM

I'm with you for most of your post. I only mentioned Lincoln because he was held up as some sort of conservative, which is really a misapplication of the term - Lincoln subjected America to a radical transformation perhaps unparalleled in all of American history. He was elected to lead a voluntary nation of sovereign states, he left a state involuntarily unified and centralized through coercion. When he was elected to lead, the United States of America were referred to in the plural. After he died and even now the United States of America is referred to in the singular. Lincoln transformed a most essential nature of our system of government. I agree that this was not the only instance of America clearly straying from a constitutional path, but it is, I think, the most profoundly significant and radical alteration of our system of government that ever happened over so short a period of time. Taking away the right of secession took from the people an extremely valuable check on the federal government. As the marvelous writer Joe Sobran - who seems to have many, many fans here - explained:

"Peaceful secession was a state’s ultimate constitutional defense against Federal tyranny. Without it, the Federal Government has been able to claim new powers for itself while stripping the states of their powers. Lincoln neither foresaw nor intended this when he crushed secession. But today the states are helpless when, for example, the Federal Courts suddenly declare that no state may constitutionally protect unborn children from violent death in the womb. If even one state had been able to secede, the U.S. Supreme Court would never have dared provoke it to do so by issuing such an outrageous ruling, with no support in the Constitution."

Something I think people should consider (and I'm not directing this at either you or Mxlplyx, really) whenever they glorify Lincoln or mistake the war between the States for a simplistic fairy-tale where a villainous rabble of sadistic, sinister evildoers were vanquished by the forces of liberty, equality and brotherhood. We in the north gained the territory of the Confederacy, but paid for it, in time, with our own self government. The North won, the South lost, but Washington kept all the spoils. More than a conquest of the South by the North, it was a conquest of all the states by the federal government.

Anyway, I found it jarring that Lincoln was referenced positively in an argument advocating the right to self government as expressed in the Declaration. The South no longer consented to be governed, believed the US government destructive of their rights, and asserted that it was "the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government." Lincoln wasn't so keen on the idea, as you more than likely know.

And before anyone mentions slavery (and again, not directing this at either you or Mxlplyx), Lincoln did not conquer the Confederacy to flee the slaves; he conquered it to keep those territories under the power of the U.S. federal government, and he himself said so more than once.

Campy| 10.21.09 @ 2:47PM

stevie ray...
My bad... misunderstood 'system' part, though methinks the system is broken.

But "without rancor, honestly," the rest stands.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 2:55PM

grz. the first words of the declaration of independence are 'when in the course of human events...'

the 'we hold these truths...' part doesn't come until later.

Campy| 10.21.09 @ 3:01PM

stevie ray...

Lullabyes was right. Go away. You obviously want to show your superior publik skool educashun, rather than engage in bona fide discussion. I mean, really man... what was the point of your last post otherwise?

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 3:04PM

You GOT ME! You have SOOOOO put me in my place.

Hey, Mr. Google, I initially put the first graph in, but then realized the meat was in the second graph. And I had to take into account your attention span.

Guess that obviates everything else, eh? Now that we've established those aren't the first words, no need to address the content? Ka-Ching, baby. I want YOU on my debate team.

BTW, Campy, if Stevie thinks his writing is in any way superior - or even cogent - well, all I can say is, he'd better get used to a lifetime of saying, "would you like fries with that?"

Juno| 10.22.09 @ 2:19AM

stevie ray= Turddard: Troll is just more bored than usual, today. Worthless loser.

Campy| 10.21.09 @ 3:10PM

And why I got confused on the system comment, Grz.

Maybe he's a mini Toddard, only T can at least write a cohesive sentence.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 3:18PM

I agree, Campy.

Lullabye's is right - the guy's a troll. Nothing more pathetic than a clueless troll. Toddard can write; next to building sandcastles in air, its his most obvious skill.

But Stevie has wandered in here in search of a clue like a hampster in a laboratory maze in search of the food.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:24PM

You people really need to go outside and run around a bit. Work off some of that aggression. Stevie came here, wrote some rather benign, vague, somewhat clueless but ultimately utterly insignificant posts. I don't see anything there really worth responding to, never mind this rage-fueled berzerker attack you've enjoined.

Take a breather for the love of Pete.

Helen Donnelly| 10.21.09 @ 3:31PM

Better idea - you go outside and run around a bit, instead of spending an eternity on this website.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:34PM

No way. This is my home. I'm loved here by one and all.

Campy| 10.21.09 @ 3:36PM

Snap, Helen!! You rock.

Curtis Rasmussen| 10.21.09 @ 3:46PM

You're right. I do need a break.

I think I'll go to the bathroom and pinch off a toddard..

Grzmlyk, your cellophane comment was off the mark. Toddard is thick and brown and reeks almost as bad as his posts.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:51PM

Hm. Poopy-talk. One should not wonder at the course this country has taken when grown "men" not only believe it apropos to engage in this sort of discourse, but believe it constitutes a "debate".

*sigh*

Simon Templar| 10.22.09 @ 3:18AM

Poopy-talk? Hey, it made me laugh so hard I fell off the chair. Its a damn sight better than listening to your drivel!

S.L. Toddard| 10.22.09 @ 7:13AM

That's fine - it's okay to enjoy bathroom humor when you're still an adolescent. When you grow up you won't find it quite as funny though.

Johnno| 10.22.09 @ 3:26PM

Turddard doesn't like bathroom humor anymore because he's embarrassed that he crapped his Depends again.

Now that's funny!

Simon Templar| 10.22.09 @ 4:31PM

Its not a question of growing up but one of comic relief..cause if I did not laugh at your constant arrogant fraudulent drivel, I would get quite angry..which is what you want Miss Toddard. Poopy-talk is exactly what you deserve and in this situation is exactly what is appropriate. Let me make a suggestion my fellow conservatives of all stripes and colors..let it be poopy-talk for Miss Toddard from this day forward!

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:25PM

Stevie - the system we have is not the one the framers set up. That is the problem that I and some others here have.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 5:43PM

well, specifically, you're right. the system we have is the one that the first virginia assembly set up (and that george mason outlined) in 1768, and that the framers used as their model. hey buddy, we're stuck with this thing. unless you are ready to pick up the pitchforks and run through the streets. what you're saying is that those guys (the framers) were deficient to the task in creating our government. that they didn't provide for a way to change it and i say they did. it's called the vote. we conservatives won't always get our way, but sometimes we will. good government is figuring out how to use the power effectively while we have it. and if we can, to make it as sealed against the onslaught from the other guys when they get the power as we can. we will never all agree. the framers in their wisdom knew it. so far, it's worked. people are getting sick of the dems and mighty early. it's fun to rattle swords and use scary language full of apocalyptic predictions, but americans have been doing that all 233 years. just because obama wants american decline doesn't mean he'll get it. watch the 2010 congressional races. that stuff's already coming apart (or together).

Juno| 10.22.09 @ 2:28AM

stevie ray = Turddard: Only an A-Hole would converse with himself. Moron.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 3:26PM

campy: i guess a 'bona fide discussion' here is one where i simply agree with everything that's said. that's what liberals do. i thought we were different— willing to hear other points of view—'big tent' and all that sort of thing.

i called out mr fun with the dictionary because he was flat wrong and thinks he owns the high ground on this exchange. how can the declaration begin with 'we hold these truths to be self evident' when no truths at that point have been listed (if he's right and and it begins that way). he's a blowhard and a sad, strange little man with a tiny life and he's found a bunch of acolytes (save you flipping through the webster's lullabye——it means devotees) and it's the only pleasure he gets when they fawn over his 'command' of the facts and 'skill' with words. he deserves to get called out now and then. anyone does.

Campy| 10.21.09 @ 3:30PM

Aggression? Rage-fueled?? Shucks, Toddard... I even threw you a kiss. But you're right; playtime's over.
C.

campy| 10.21.09 @ 3:43PM

you know what? stevie's right. gryz is a blowhard. he rambles on and on and and it's like you're reading the same three paragraphs over and over.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:44PM

This was not a very artful hoax, stevie.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 3:49PM

I don't think we "enjoined" it. I think we "joined" it.

But thanks, Toddard, for explaining IT ALL for little Stevie. It wasn't redundant AT ALL. But since you are the final word in All Things, I'm sure Stevie will appreciate the personal note.

What would we do without you? One shudders to envision such a world. It would be a bleak trollscape indeed.

As for Stevie, I can't write more slowly, so try to have someone read it to you slowly, ok? My error was one of EDITING, not of LOGIC. I neglected to delete a word. For which I am much chagrined, believe me. I don't know how I can show my face at the next meeting.

Regardless, the point of the post wasn't about what the first words of the Declaration are. You do know that, right?

I muse say, I'm impressed that you know so much about me. Tell me, what's my favorite movie? What's my favorite kind of music? What did I have for breakfast this morning? What am I wearing? What kind of car do I drive?

Your perspicacity is truly impressive.

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:54PM

Look - more impressive "arguments" from an adult American male.

Simon Templar| 10.22.09 @ 3:22AM

Your a female! Right? I thought so! That's why the S.L.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 3:50PM

gotta go guys, fun afternoon, thanks.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 3:53PM

By the way Stevie, I wrote "muse" instead of "must" just now. don't worry! I'm on it! I have already thrust the dagger into my heart in penance.

Why, these are no doubt the very last words I shall ever ty

S.L. Toddard| 10.21.09 @ 3:59PM

^ Nothing juvenile about this post at all.

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 4:00PM

my work is done here.

Grzmlyk| 10.21.09 @ 4:15PM

Whenever I am confronted with a humorless, irascible, braying jackass, I am reminded of the words of The Bard - I believe it's Cymbeline, Act II, scene iii:

"I'm rubber, thou art glue; everything thou sayest bounceth off me and sticks to thee."

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip your waiter.

(Doesn't really rhyme, what with the Elizabethan construction and all.)

Daisy| 10.22.09 @ 2:24AM

Grz--you're hilarious!

Louis Jenkins| 10.21.09 @ 4:26PM

Charles Krauthammer's comments always ring of the truth, at least as I see it. Obama's policy to hinge the strengthening of US forces in Afghanistan on a re-election shows that he does not care one bit about the situation those soldiers are in. If he is more interested in a fair election maybe he should send his ACORN buddies over to run the next one. Chances are they'd come back missing hands, have multiple lashes on their backsides, or just plain kidnapped. But those soldiers put their lives on the line, although it is a soldier's lot not to reason why, every day. And yes, it is nationalistic to care about those soldiers regardless of whether there is a valid reason or not to be in that cesspool. These people sucked it up, and volunteered to serve. No re-enforcements, or a failure to get out be that as shameful as it is, is a prime example of Obama's hand in this nation's decline. Or is he actually looking for defeat? The Commander in Chief Messiah should suck it up and be decisive. As grandpa always said if one spent too long in the toilet-if ya ain't going to do your business, get off!

stevie ray| 10.21.09 @ 4:57PM

hey, louis, (finally someone making sense) would you stick around and keep that guy grzsantxcdxtz in line? you'll recognize him by his over-reliance on 12-pound words that he'll use to impress a disciple-like group of followers known as 'campy', lullaby, sneezy, doc and bobo the eunuch.

they love him.

Juno| 10.22.09 @ 2:22AM

stevie ray = Turddard--I thought you were leaving.

Now go!

Margie| 10.21.09 @ 5:40PM

I agree with Louis Jenkins. I think this is a fabulous article, and it is also encouraging to hear from men who are in their right minds and feel as I do about our country. Excellent, excellent, excellent! Thank you!

Rmm| 10.21.09 @ 6:07PM

After wading through the Animal Farm food fight,ala the previous ten minutes of posts, I was ready to jump in the shower. Although there was plenty of comic relief, the fact remains, what Krauthammer suggests is some pretty eye-popping stuff.
As a disabled Vet, this really got my tension up.
BO is an over-the-top, narcissistic, con man doing the bidding of some very insidious forces behind the front lines. George Soros, anyone.
We had better hope that the stars align in our favor to stop this attempt to cut America off at the knees.

DOWNTOWNDUBAI| 10.21.09 @ 6:44PM

WANTED:

THE AMERICAN PINOCHET !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ASAP

bluecollarbytes| 10.21.09 @ 10:07PM

P. Ferrara:"But if America abdicates global leadership, what will replace us?" -Chinese Iranian Russian with special involvement from Venezuela, 'liberated' Afghanistan Pakistan & Iraq, realigned Mideast oil producers, followed behind by declining western powers. These Are 'the majority of world people' Obama wants to concede to. It's just a matter of time now, as Obama's resolve to surrender is tested. The only meaningful variable now left in the course that's set is American voters.

davelnaf| 10.21.09 @ 11:30PM

No one, at least no one in their right mind, takes Obama the Thinker seriously. As president he gets to play act the part of President Earthshaker that he has dream about for most of his adult life. Let us hope we get to the 2010 election before this misfire of a president does too much damage.

P. Kearny| 10.21.09 @ 11:39PM

Krauthammer and Ferrara are right on the mark. Obama is quickly destroying America and its positive global role. And they're right that some power will step into this vacuum - and it will be Russia and China. In fewer than four years of Obama "leadership" America--and with it any hope for freedom in nations facing these threats--will be emasculated and the world will be powerless to stop these rising powers. But the power wielded by these nations won't be the obvious power of the rolling tank--which might alarm people to their real intent--but rather political and economic influence that seeks dominenece. Witness Russia's use of energy - the recent progress of its South Stream gas line--which is moving ahead while the Obama Admin. does nothing--as only the latest proof that the Kremlin is seeking domination of Europe's energy. And make no mistake - dominating Europe's energy markets is driven both by Russian leaders' personal greed and by its pursuit of the control of Europe. And where will our economy be once Russia dominates Europe and China dominates Asia? Dead in the water - and with it the future of America. Obama and his fellow leftist travelers are a menace and dangerous. We MUST vote in Rebpublicans--or anyone--that can provide a check on this nieve monster before our nation withers and hope for freedom is extinguished.

Spam Canopna| 10.22.09 @ 6:40AM

Why get caught up in SLT's self-referential and self-reverential pompous snobbery. If he/she wants to view himself as an intellectual, let him. As other posters have pointed out, that's what the scroll down button is for.
Keep the focus on obstructing Obama's agenda for national suicide and re-making congress in 2010.

Johnno| 10.22.09 @ 3:28PM

Right on, Spam!

Honest Abe| 10.22.09 @ 8:21PM

To paraphrase Milton, "It is better to Rule Absolutely over a 3rd world hell-hole than to serve as a mere president of a super-power."
--HRH Obama Kenyatta I, First World President of the UN.

Richard Baker| 10.23.09 @ 10:40PM

'Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.' Stephen Decataur.
I'll stand with Decataur everytime. Liberals, if you're not for America then you're against her. Don't like it? Leave.

Richard Baker| 10.25.09 @ 12:49PM

Toddard:
Do you actually LIVE in the United States? Reading your "comments", one would be curious about your location on a topographical map.

gene hauber| 10.30.09 @ 11:26PM

If obama were a foreign force doing the things that he is doing to undermine America's military ability to conduct a war and to be undermining America's economy with his policy of wealth redistribution from the folks who have earned it to the loathsome "takers" of our society and of his UNCONSTITUTIONAL use of the weakest wing of our "CHECKS AND BALANCE" form of government to legislate from the bench by 9 UN-ELECTED , for the most part COMMIE SYMPATHIZERS, who want to destroy our way of life, "THE BEST IN THE WORLD AND ADMIRED BY THE WHOLE WORLD" and with impeachment probably out of the question, because there are enough REALL STUPID people in this country to oppose it on the grounds that obama is our first black president. That is not true,,,,,Clinton was our first black president. If you doubt this, just ask the BLACK CAUCUS, in congress. THEY SAID IT !!!.............what if we had a white caucus????, HUH?

obama is a commie, niggar trying to appeal to the most useless of Americans and doing it in a manner that glorifies them and at every turn DEMEANS the real, HARD WORKING PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY THAT BUILT IT FROM THE GROUND UP......the rightful owners of this country"s wealth.

obama is an enemy of the state and as such should be assasinated at the very first opportunity.

HE LOATHES THE COUNTRY THAT HAS GIVEN HIM AND HIS WIFE SO MUCH.

RID US OF HIM NOW!!

gene hauber

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