Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Conversations With The McBoobadoobs

(This is the transcript of my Blog Talk Radio presentation of last Sunday evening. Normally I wouldn't have posted it here at Eternity Road, but requests from a few friends and my anxiety over the upcoming election have militated otherwise.)

***

Recently, a Long Island blogging colleague of mine, Elizabeth Scalia, better known as The Anchoress, mentioned a fellow of my acquaintance in the course of a disquisition on how the Main Stream Media have treated Joe Wurzelbacher, now better known as "Joe the Plumber." What matters, she wrote, is the response Barack Obama, the socialist candidate for president, made to Joe's innocent question about how Obama's tax plan would affect him. It wouldn't have made a difference, Elizabeth said, whether it had been Joe or Booby McBoobadoob who'd asked the question.

I immediately took exception. Joe is apparently a fine fellow, a good plumber, a loving father to his kids, and a credit to his community. But he's not Booby.

Aloysius Christopher McBoobadoob was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 13, 1967, the first child of Hector and Clarice McBoobadoob of that city and state. He acquired the cognomen Booby in grammar school, and insists to this day that it has nothing to do with the shape of his upper chest.

Booby's early life was undistinguished. He graduated high school with average grades, served a three-year stint in the Army, and was honorably discharged with the rank of Corporal. Upon reentering civilian life at age twenty-one, he accepted employment at an agricultural-supplies concern on the outskirts of Des Moines as a general handyman and maintenance person. At twenty-six he married Amarantha Sullivan, his longtime sweetheart. The two then moved from Des Moines to Indianapolis -- Amarantha, who's usually called just Maire, insisted on being close to her aging parents -- which is where they live today. Over the past fifteen years they've acquired one house, one son, two daughters, one dog, and two cats. Today Booby works as a facilities supervisor for a large Indianapolis self-storage company, while Maire volunteers in the children's section at one of the city's public libraries. The two drive used cars -- hers is a 1998 Buick Century; his is a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix -- and are oppressed by the usual complement of credit card bills, Jehovah's Witnesses, and calls from telemarketers.

Booby and Maire live reasonably well on his $58,000 annual salary. He has to do a few things himself that better-off persons usually hire done -- oil changes on the cars, maintenance of the furnace and hot water heater, repairs on household appliances -- but he does them cheerfully, observing that he once did them for an employer for pay, so what's so bad about doing them for himself and his family? Maire sometimes comments disparagingly on the seemingly permanent dirt under Booby's fingernails, but he can usually put an end to that with a kiss, dinner out, or a gift of shoes.

Justin, Louise, and Adele, the three McBoobadoob children, attend public schools. Booby and Maire aren't perfectly happy with what the kids are being exposed to. There's quite a lot of non-education, even anti-education, going on in public schools these days. Maire tries to keep up with the trends and counteract them when the occasion demands, but she often wonders if her kids are telling her everything she ought to hear. Along with that, a couple of the teachers in the high school have become aggressive about their anti-religious convictions. Booby, a non-practicing Catholic, tries to shrug it off, but Maire, a devout Methodist, is becoming concerned that these "educators" have more traction with Justin than her parish pastor does.

The cost of living has them concerned, too. Combined property taxes on their modest three-bedroom home, for which they paid $110,000 in 1993, have risen to $6200 per year -- more than ten percent of Booby's before-tax salary. Partly it's because they're within the city limits -- three miles further west and the tax bill would be only $4300 -- but there's nothing to be done about it except sell and move, and Maire is flatly against that while the kids are still in school. The tax burden, the rising cost of oil, gas, and electric power, and the need to start putting together a college fund for Justin have them looking for economies. They haven't found many they can exploit.

Booby and Maire don't discuss politics. She's a little bit left of center; he's a slightly mushy conservative. She usually votes; he usually doesn't. They instinctively avoid political involvement; it would take a team of horses to drag them to a campaign rally. But this year, both of them are engaged. This year, they sense that more than trivialities hang on the balloting on November 4.

***

I asked Booby what he thought of the Joe the Plumber episode and its sequels. I'd never before heard him raise his voice. He's angry at everyone involved: at Barack Obama, for his oily invasion of a peaceful private neighborhood; at the Obama campaign, for its assault on Joe Wurzelbacher's good name in the hope of salvaging Obama's public image as a friend of the middle class; at the media, for their attempt to paint Joe as some sort of Republican stooge; and at Joe himself for, as Booby put it, "not cold-cocking the bastard and laying him out flat in the street, right then, as he deserved."

"I don't own much firepower," Booby said, "just this little Ruger .22 caliber target rifle, and I haven't even taken it to the range this year. But by God, if that lying sonofabitch had paraded down my street like a tinpot dictator, I'd have loaded, locked, and filled his ass with lead. These political assholes think they can shove their faces in wherever they want, whenever they want. Then if they don't get the reception they think they deserve, it's us poor slobs who have to suffer. Why the hell didn't Joe knock him on his ass? The Secret Service? He would have been out on bail in two hours and a national hero in three!"

"Would you have done that to John McCain, everything else being equal?" I said.

Booby took a long pull on his Coors, sat back, and thought for a spell. "Maybe," he said. "Left or right, black or white, an invasion's an invasion. We didn't ask the Japs about their politics after Pearl Harbor, did we? We just gave 'em the back of our hand." He brightened. "But I'll bet McCain's never done anything like that. Has he?"

I thought about it. "I don't think so," I said.

Booby nodded. "Good," he said. "He's a good man. Maybe not the best man in the country, but he'll do. Another beer?" he said.

I smiled. "Sure."

***

Maire McBoobadoob is even more incensed. I didn't expect that. What I knew of her politics seemed to agree with Obama on more than half his policy points. It turned out that that hardly mattered.

"It's a question of decency," she said. "I don't care nearly as much about politics as I care about decency. Decent people treat other people decently. Obama doesn't. If you ask him a question he doesn't want to answer, you're a racist. If you look into his friends and allies, you must hate minorities and the poor. If you investigate his fundraising practices, or his ties to an organization like ACORN, you're Public Enemy Number One!" She took a ladyfinger from the faux-silver tray between us and dipped it halfway into her tea. "These are pretty good, even if they do come in a five-pound bag," she said.

I nodded, as my mouth was still full.

"Who I'm really worried about," she continued, "is Justin. The more I look into the schools, the more I see that I don't like. A lot of Obama's cronies call themselves educational reformers, which is about like calling a sewer worker a sanitation executive. They want to push all this 'progressive' PC garbage into the curriculum and push all the English, history, math and science out! As if the schools weren't already full of their nonsense!"

"Is there a part of it that bothers you more than the rest?" I said.

Maire drained her teacup and pursed her lips. "I think...the sex education part," she said. "Louise and Adele have already gotten a helping, and it's not what we were told it was. The teachers are against chastity, if you can believe it. They've been telling the kids to experiment, that it's all in good fun. Hey, maybe you're gay, try it out, you might like it! Almost nothing about the risks, the diseases, or the heartbreak." Something flickered across her face, something swift and sorrowful, as if she were remembering a heartbreak of her own from long ago.

"Were you offered a chance to opt them out?" I said.

Maire shook her head. "No one gets that. Not around here. Do they do that where you live?"

"No," I said. "It seems to be mandatory everywhere, now."

"I should have guessed," she replied. "Once they get their meathooks into the system, they never pull 'em out, only drive 'em deeper. More tea?" she said.

I nodded, though my back teeth were floating. "Sure."

***

Booby and Maire are Middle America. Yes, they're fictional -- neither the Scots McBoobadoobs nor the Polynesian branch of the family will admit to them, anyway -- but they embody the full spectrum of American middle-class virtues, values, priorities, and fears for the future. They've sensed the rotten core at the heart of the Obama for President campaign, and want nothing to do with it. And so, to Booby's surprise and for the first time he's aware of, Maire has decided to vote Republican. Barack Obama has a lot more to fear from the McBoobadoobs of America than from Joe Wurzelbacher.

There've been Republican accusations of vote fraud against the Democrats, and Democrat counter-accusations of vote suppression against the Republicans. The Republican charges are well supported by evidence while the Democrats' accusations are not. If anyone's votes are likely to be suppressed, or in some way nullified, they're the votes of Booby and Maire, and millions like them. It's from the low of character that we expect such villainies. Such persons are heavily over-represented among Democrats, and on the political Left generally.

But we already knew that from first principles, didn't we? The Left has forsworn all standards of justice or decency; they might get in the way of stealing the next election. A man who says that only the Cause matters, that anything is permissible in service to the Cause, has pre-declared his ethical boundaries: he has none. It's among the ironies of human life that when a man of low character accuses you of something vile, it's because he's actively considering doing it himself.

Consider well before you cast your ballot on November 4.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Storm: Further Thoughts

As you might imagine, I've received quite a bit of feedback about Sunday's post. Some of it, of course, has been vicious and small-souled; you have to expect that when you rub a sore spot such as left-wing amorality, or the linchpin of contemporary licentiousness. But most has been at least thoughtful. More, it's kept me thinking about the hurricane analogy around which I structured the piece.

All analogy is inexact; "exact analogy" is a contradiction in terms. But some analogies do a better job than others of highlighting the important aspects of a public controversy: the driving forces behind the issue, or the consequences foreseeable from its possible outcomes.

A hurricane is a violent cyclone: a circular standing wave of wind, whose fury stems from the heat energy flowing between its upper and nether ends. Meteorologists tasked to the detection of nascent hurricanes look for indications of "rotation" in areas where such thermal differences exist. When a swirling air current arises in such a locale, if it's not swiftly disturbed by a cross-current of sufficient power to break up the standing wave, it will strengthen and grow to whatever magnitude is dictated by the thermal gradient. The hurricane is actually an equilibrium-restoration effect: the atmosphere's attempt to narrow a dramatic temperature difference. Of course, that Mother Nature is merely responding to a thermal itch is small consolation to persons whose homes stand in the way of her backscratcher.

We speak often enough of "hotheadedness," "the heat of anger," and "heated rhetoric" that the attachment of temperature to emotion deserves a closer look. When a subject arouses great passion in those discussing it, their animation rises. The intensity of the sequel depends upon the intensity of those passions and the degree of difference between the contestants. In the most dramatic cases, tempers flare, and personal insults or blows are exchanged. Such an exchange is a close approximation to political controversy. One might even call it a political campaign conducted between individuals. And in its similarities to a natural hurricane at one side, and to a national political contest on the other, it is remarkably illuminating.

***

In Thermopolitics, light is converted into heat. The Thermopolitical crucible softens the old, hard-edged forms so that they can be twisted into new, sometimes grotesque shapes. Thermopolitics tends toward what physicists call "the heat death," the melting down of everything into the same liqueous mass. [Arthur Herzog, The B.S. Factor: The Theory and Technique of Faking It in America]

Political issues can be partitioned, somewhat roughly, into the following categories:

1. Issues that are incontestably about right and wrong: i.e., matters of justice.
2. Issues that are principally about ameliorating some social condition.
3. Issues that address unexplored or under-explored possibilities for national advantage.

Starting from the bottom, the space program is a good example of a Type 3 issue. Though there were assertions at its inception that an American foothold in space was vital to national defense, overall we've treated the exploration of space and the other bodies of the Solar System as possibilities for growth, specifically scientific and technological growth. NASA, in consequence, stirs little passion as a political issue except among a relatively small number of hard-core space-travel enthusiasts. Nor does it receive a great deal of attention most of the time.

Anti-poverty programs are a good example of a Type 2 issue. The United States, the last of the Christian-Enlightenment civilizations, is the most prosperous nation in history. Consequently, we find it rather offensive that any great number of persons among us should be in need. However, the extent to which political structures can -- or should -- intervene in our lives and pocketbooks to redress such need is hotly debated; it impinges upon both our tax bills and our varying senses of responsibility for persons we don't know, and whose responsibility for their condition we can't judge. Considerably greater heat arises from differences over such programs than over something like NASA.

Abortion and the right to life of the unborn are the perfect example of a Type 1 issue. The difference here is over right and wrong; whichever side loses has had its position declared unjust. Criminally unjust, at that. Under current law it's illegal to impede the business of an abortion clinic even with a sidewalk protest. Were Roe v. Wade overturned, or nullified by Constitutional amendment, a state government could criminalize abortion, perhaps even make it a species of murder. Nothing stirs a man's passions quite as high as being told that his convictions do, or should, make him an outlaw.

It's supremely difficult to discuss a Type 1 issue dispassionately, as a mere matter of social improvement. Try to imagine a dispassionate debate over murder or kidnapping, and you'll have the idea. But the injection of passion into a discussion distorts the actual issues under consideration, for passion is the most personal of emotions. One can only be truly passionate about one's loves and hatreds.

***

I've written on other occasions about the tendency among activists and the politically engaged to frame every issue as a matter of justice. This is now the dominant mode of political discourse in America. The reason isn't far to seek: political campaigns require a huge investment of time and energy from those involved in them. Marshaling that energy practically requires the elicitation of one's passions. Thus, arguments over differential taxation are promoted into issues of "social justice," discussions of pollution control are characterized as "environmental racism," and considerations of the deficiencies of public education are treated as equivalent to child abuse. An activist whose juices don't flow copiously over such things is unlikely to put much of himself into a campaign about them.

But the passions thus engaged by such subjects tumble us into Herzog's Thermopolitical crucible: the facts of the matter are melted into a white-hot slag from which no useful tidbits can be extracted. And so, for the same reason a steel plant has no open windows, activists' camps must be ideologically pure. Any vent to cooler outside thinking would produce a hurricane inside the camp, destroying its effectiveness.

Of course, if opposed camps exist, any meeting between them will produce an even more violent storm. The temperature differential guarantees it. Unfortunately, political hurricanes don't wear out as atmospheric ones do. Even after one side triumphs at the polls, in the legislatures, or in the courts, as long as the difference of conviction remains, the storm will rage on.

***

On the Right, even the most morally charged of issues, such as abortion, are normally treated with as much sobriety and restraint as we can manage. Conservatives are aware of the power of such subjects to evoke hatred and violence. The overwhelmingly greater number of us -- there are always exceptions -- respect public order and common decency too much to permit that. Along with that, we do try to keep in mind that we might be wrong.

This is not the case on the Left. Left-liberals have chosen to treat every policy difference with conservatives as a Type 1 issue: a matter of fundamental right and wrong. They've needed the energies thus generated to fuel their interest-group coalition. In consequence, they're no longer able to back away from the combative style this has engendered. Even to moderate their rhetoric a trifle would imply that the enemy might have something relevant to say on the subject, that he might not be evil, but merely wrong or misguided, or...heaven forfend...that he might be correct.

When I speak of the importance of humility, most often it's this effect I have in mind. Anyone can be wrong. Nearly all generalizations about human conduct and public policy are, at the least, open to question and subject to exceptions. It's next to impossible to keep that bit of wisdom firmly in mind if you're charging with fixed lance at the Devil incarnate. Such moral certainty is the enemy of humility; the one leaves no room for the other. It was in this spirit that the Redeemer charged us:

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again [Luke 6:37-38]

Humility properly exercised dampens the passions to a controllable level. It prevents eruptions of violence, whether rhetorical or physical. Our political storms are the clearest possible indication of our deficit of humility.

***

The eye of the storm approaches. The major party campaigns are still in progress, of course, but it's unreasonable to imagine that any great number of persons have yet to make up their minds about whom they'll support on November 4. One of the ironies of the situation is that the presidential race is so closely balanced that the handful of uncommitted voters that remain might actually decide the outcome. Therefore, the activists must remain charged up; the noise machines must blare at maximum volume; the wheels of the chariots must roll on. But for more than ninety-five percent of us, the election is already in the "Out" box; we've bolted the doors, closed the shutters, and tuned to The Comedy Channel. Or perhaps to TVLand, for a few reruns of Father Knows Best or Ozzie and Harriet.

Nevertheless, though one side will "win" and the other will "lose," the force of the winds will return, for the Thermopolitics that fuels them will have gone unchanged. And like it or not, we can't sit in front of our tubae boobae forever; at some point we'll have to go out for beer and chips for Sunday's game.

The Day’s Must-Read

DO NOT MISS this extraordinary bit of soul-baring from an Obama campaign worker. Nice Deb, endless thanks for unearthing it.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Sleight of Hand and Harlan Savage

Many years ago (1957 to be precise) this wizened senior citizen was a naive and callow youth employed in the oil fields of California. Being not only naive and callow, but imbued with the populist philosophy of his paternal grandmother he was recruited as a foil by his older and reticent colleagues into being their representative in the adversarial collective bargaining relationship with their/our employer, the Continental Oil Co. (today known as Conoco Phillips). The role necessitated his somewhat regular attendance at various meetings at the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union hall in Long Beach.

At that time, a regular fixture in the environs of the union hall was a long time very senior member by the name of Harlan Savage. He was retired from one of the local refineries (Texaco I believe) but continued to be active for what appeared to be seizing the opportunity to address the members and anyone else he could corner on the subject dear to his heart, i.e. the unconstitutional actions of the U.S. Federal government; specifically the provision contained in Article I, section X of the Constitution which states among other prohibitions that no entity other than the Federal Government shall..."coin money"... He pointed out that the "private" Federal Reserve central bank was a de facto "coiner of money" by its issuance of fiat legal tender in the form of Federal Reserve Notes as well as the practice of allowing the entire banking system to engage in the practice of "fractional reserves"; that is, retaining only a small portion of deposits and investing the balance in loans. Harlan swore that if this situation were allowed to continue it would constitute a serious threat to the prosperity, nay the survival of the republic.

A discussion of the ramifications of the 1913 act establishing the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank is beyond the capabilities of this humble scribbler as is the institution the same year of the income tax. Harlan Savage insisted that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was improperly ratified and therefore null and void.

The subject of fractional reserves and fiat money is a frequent subject addressed by scholars of the Austrian School of economics such as F.A. Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises and the late Murray Rothbard who states as follows in the August 1987 issue of Free Market:

The mystery, the tricks, are necessary, because the fractional-reserve banking system over which the Fed presides is bankrupt. Not just the S&Ls [and now the investment banks] and the FDIC are bankrupt, but the entire banking system is insolvent. Why? Because the money that we are supposed to be able to call upon in our bank deposit accounts is simply not there. Only about 2% of that money is there.

The mystery and the confidence trick of the Fed rests on its function: which is that of a banking cartel organized and enforced by the federal government in the form of the Fed. The Fed continually enters the "open market" to buy government securities. With what does the Fed pay for those bonds? With nothing, simply with checking accounts created out of thin air. Every time the Fed creates $1 million of checkbook money to buy government bonds, this $1 million quickly finds its way into the "reserves" of the banks, which then pyramid $10 million more of bank deposits, newly created out of thin air. And if someone sensibly wants cash instead of these open book deposits, why that's okay, because the Fed just prints the cash which immediately become standard "dollars" (Federal Reserve notes) which pay for this system. But even these fiat paper tickets only back IOU's of our bank deposits.

This pretty well sums up the pass to which we have come this dark October in 2008. And we're assured by the officials of our government on whom the blame for this mess rests that we must be patient as they apply more of the same lunacy in order to repair the damage which they criminally blame on "laissez fair" economics which has not obtained in this nation since before 1819.

The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire...

One need only view the plethora of federal, state and local departments, agencies and bureaus ("such as the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the FBI and CIA, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA. Under laissez-faire capitalism, all such agencies and commissions would be done away with, with the exception of the FBI"), with their volumes of ukases and regulations which intrude into every facet of our lives to understand that we live more or less under what could arguably be characterized as a moderately benign(?) fascism.

As for Harlan Savage, I lost contact with him shortly after being fired laid off by Conoco in 1960 for union activity "lack of work".

cross posted with other musings from the Crab Nebula at: Fighting in the Shade™

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Eternity Road On The Air

The next segment of this adventure will air this evening, Sunday, October 26, 2008, at 7:00 PM New York time. It will be a fifteen-minute show, followed by text chat for those interested in commenting. Tonight’s topic is the trials of Booby McBoobadoob. Click the button below:

...to link to the program. If you miss it in “real time,” it will be available from the BlogTalkRadio archive shortly afterward.

REMEMBER:

From now to the end of the year, Eternity Road On The Air will air Sunday evenings at 7:00 PM New York time, not the original 6:30 PM time at which the first few segments aired.

The Storm: A Screed-Rumination “TwoFer”

When a hurricane passes over a region, for a brief interval in the middle the winds are stilled, the rain all but ceases, and the storm appears to have spent its force. That's the "eye" of the storm: the central zone in which the forces that propel the hurricane are imperceptible. They're still in operation, of course; it's just that the rotational lever arms of the cyclone are too short to accomplish much. As the storm travels onward, the eye soon passes and the full force of the winds is renewed, until the hurricane has completely departed the area.

We are about to pass into the eye of our ongoing political storm. It's been violent enough, these past few weeks, considering all the attacks on the McCain for President campaign and its two candidates the Old Media have mounted. But in just a few more days, those attacks will be temporarily stilled. Americans -- at least, those of us who vote on the traditional schedule -- will go to the polls, cast their ballots, and return home to watch the election returns...perhaps, if the margins are narrow, until far into the night.

On Wednesday morning, no matter whom the returns have favored, we will find that the eye has passed.

Despite the lofty proclamations of Old Media pollsters and the Obama camp, this election is almost guaranteed to be a squeaker. It could be as close a race as 2000, when a handful of votes from a single, hotly contested state made George W. Bush a one-electoral-vote victor over Al Gore. If I'm correct in this surmise, both campaigns will dispatch battalions of lawyers to the most closely balanced states: some to attack the opponent's margin of victory there, others to defend its own.

That's not all. There will be localized disturbances. Civil unrest. Some amount of violence against persons and property. There might be gunfire in city streets.

Perhaps my hurricane analogy is inexact. That sort of storm would appear much more violent after its eye has passed.

We can hope that these things might not come to pass, but hope is a feeble reed before pronouncements such as this:

If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.

A McCain "win" will not be illegitimate because I disagree with his policies, but because he himself has rendered it illegitimate. He and his campaign and allied supporters have sought to illegally remove hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, fraudulently registered people as Republicans without their knowledge and against their will, obstructed voter registration drives, falsely warned students against voting where they attend school, falsely accused community groups of voter registration fraud, falsely alleged the widespread existence of voter fraud, and encouraged supporters to falsely believe McCain's opponent is a foreign terrorist through speeches, recorded phone messages, and flyers. Already in early voting in a number of states there have been cases of votes on electronic machines visibly flipping to McCain or McKinney when intended for Obama. We will see McCain supporters on November 4th challenging people's right to vote, seeking to force people to vote on provisional ballots, and seeking to have provisional ballots discarded. And we will see electronic vote counts wildly out of step with the most recent polls, although not with exit polls -- which we will be denied any access to unless they have been "adjusted" to match the official counts.

This is but the most egregious example of the forces that propel our current political storm.

I'd like to leave you a short reading list for the day. I hope you have the time to give these pieces their due:

• Death Threats Sent To Pollster
• Can This Year's Presidential Race End Peacefully?
• The Ultimate Law:We Will Take Away Your Words
• Reporter Grills Joe Biden: How Is Obama Not Being A Marxist?
• Not So Shy About Retirement

If you've doubted up to now that the Left has decided to pull out all the stops, or that Leftists would say and do anything and everything to gain their ends, or that what remains in freedom will be in terrible danger should they prevail, the pieces linked above should bring an end to your uncertainty. On November 4, whether and when you go to the polls, let your conscience be your guide.

***

Speaking of storms and conscience...

Today, Long Island Catholics observe Spiritual Adoption Sunday, on which we're exhorted to "spiritually adopt" an unborn child and pray regularly for his safe conduct into this world. It's a noble custom, and one I exhort all Christians, of whatever denomination, to follow with me over the coming nine months.

A particular bumper sticker, one I used to see rather frequently but, sadly, haven't seen in quite a while, is much on my mind this morning:

ABORTION:
One Dead,
One Wounded

Devastatingly true. An abortion doesn't just kill a child in the womb; it also has lasting, debilitating effects on the woman who aborts. Many women who abort suffer from terrible emotional surges, roughly equivalent to a combat soldier's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, for several years. Some never get over them.

It doesn't matter how you feel about the laws concerning abortion. I myself believe that the earliest-term abortions -- roughly the first thirteen weeks of gestation -- must remain legal, not because such abortions are morally acceptable, but because banning them would produce still worse consequences. All the same, when I pray, I ask always that God touch the hearts of the troubled and enraged, stilling their respective anxieties and fears -- and what could trouble the heart of a pregnant woman more than the thought of destroying the life developing in her womb?

Too many women feel they must abort. They disbelieve in the support structures the pro-life movement has labored to create for them. They disbelieve in the willingness of their families, neighbors, and friends to assist them as they navigate the shoals of early motherhood. They disbelieve, all too many of them, in their own resiliency and strength.

It's the duty of every Christian, whatever his political or legal convictions, to do what he can to undo those life-destroying, soul-crippling disbeliefs.

Here's an example:

Pilar hesitated before the sacristy door. Gail Borden turned to her with eyebrows raised.

"They're waiting for you, P."

Pilar nodded and looked down. "I know. I just don't know how ready I am for this. Gail, couldn't you...?"

The big blonde woman took her by the shoulders and squeezed gently. "It's your show, P. They all know it's your show, not mine. You're the sparkplug, and it's time to fire. Do you need a glass of water or something?"

"No, I..." I need to be somewhere else. Somebody else. "Okay, let's go."

Gail looked at her critically for an instant longer, took her hand and led her out into the church. They were greeted by applause of surprising volume and duration.

Gail left her standing there at the altar rail and squeezed herself onto a front pew. Pilar was alone and defenseless before the crowd.

And a crowd it was. Every pew was filled to capacity. Both walls were lined with standees, and more clustered at the back before the tall oaken doors to the church. There were at least five hundred people there, all of them watching her, awaiting her words.

It is not for me. I am no one. It cannot be for me.

"I..."

They are here because they care, or because they bear a guilt like mine. But it is not for me.

"I..."

I cannot do this without Father Keane!

She clamped her lips together and prayed swiftly for strength. The church was silent.

"You are here," she faltered, "because you care about the unborn. You have seen and heard and read about the slaughter around us until it has sickened you to the core of your soul. Thinking about it makes you want to rip out your heart. And you want to do something about it. You just don't know what to do.

"I must confess this to you: I don't know what to do either."

She waited for a cry of protest. None came.

"We know what not to do. We know not to do it because we have done it, and it has not worked. Politics. Protest marches. Letter-writing campaigns. Carrying angry signs in front of abortion clinics. We have tried all of that, and the blood still flows.

"I am not the smartest of women. I clean other people's houses for a living. I have no husband, no children, and no education. I live in an apartment so small that I must fold up my bed before I can set up a table to eat on. I am no one and nothing.

"But I am smart enough to know that one does not continue with what does not work. We must try other ways."

The crowd's murmur flowed caressingly over the church walls.

I must give them what I have, or I have called them together for nothing.

"I know a woman who stopped an abortion once. She had a friend, not a Catholic, who confided to her that she had betrayed her husband with another man, and had become pregnant. The friend could think only of killing her baby to save her from the shame of her sin. But the friend had never had an abortion, and did not know what to expect. The woman knew, for she had had one, even though she was a Catholic.

"The woman told her friend of the event, the fear that came before and the terrible shame that gripped her after. She told her friend about being opened to the instrument of death, feeling it enter her and suck out her baby to feed its hunger. She told of the horror, the guilt, the sense of having been disconnected from God. And because she had spoken from her heart, from the truth her sin had etched into her bones, her friend listened, and believed, and changed her mind."

A second murmur raced around the room. The attention of the huge crowd was riveted upon Pilar, compelling her to complete the story she had not known she would tell.

"The woman..." Her voice cracked and fell to a whisper. "The woman who'd had the abortion was me." She bowed her head.

There had never been a silence like the one that filled St. Gregory's in that moment. It was a thing of such palpable grief that it seemed the church might fail to hold it, might burst to let it mushroom through the city, down every street and into every home for miles around.

Dear God, give me strength enough to face them.

She looked out once more across the throng that filled the church. The sea of faces was still fixed raptly upon hers. The eyes were uniformly bright with the glitter of tears.

"So we know...we know it can be done. We know we can reach them, awaken their hearts to what they propose to do to their babies, if we have the truth, and the desire. We will not always succeed. But we know it can be done. And I think this is what we must try.

"We should talk about our attempts, whether they succeed or fail. We should keep records. We should invite others not of our faith to join us in our efforts. We should be warm to those we counsel, not scold or threaten. We should be good confidants, and good allies, and good friends.

"That is what I am going to do. It is all I know how to do." She spread her arms to encompass the gathering. "Will you help me?"

The church exploded with the thunder of clapping hands and the music of joyous cheers. Dozens of men and women surged forward to embrace Pilar. They lifted her off her feet and bore her aloft, down the center aisle, through the great double doors and into the sunset glow like an icon of life and hope.

[From an unpublished novel]

You might not feel it's any of your concern. You'd be wrong. The storm of rampant abortion, which destroys innocent babies in the womb -- nearly 1.5 million per year in the United States alone! -- cheapens all human life, including yours. Haven't you heard about the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, written specifically to prevent hospitals from killing babies that survive abortions, which nearly half of our legislators -- including United States Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama -- voted against? Haven't you heard about the ravings of "ethical philosopher" Peter Singer, who believes it morally acceptable for a mother to kill her newborn as much as thirty days after his birth, and who holds that there's an ethical duty to abort children who can reliably be forecast to be born defective? Haven't you heard about the Groningen Protocol, and the swelling ranks of American physicians who are pressing for its implementation here in the United States?

Is it possible to believe that such infamies would be entertained, that such obscene notions would be voiced aloud, were the hurricane of abortion not raging around us?

It may sound trite, but your parents chose life for you. If you're grateful for that choice, accept a duty to defend and champion it for unborn others.

May God bless and keep you all.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

De Agony Of De Feet

Your Curmudgeon has decided to take Duyen at her word:

• Geena Davis
• Joan Severance
• Julie Strain
• Mimi Rogers
• Natasha Henstridge
• Elle Macpherson
• Maria Sharapova
• Brigitte Nielson
• Maggie Gyllenhall
• Olga Kurylenko
• Fausta Wertz

What do these women have in common? Apart from being beautiful and in the public eye, that is. (Don't demur, Fausta; the cat's out of the bag already.)

That's right: they're all quite divinely tall. The shortest of them is 5' 10", the tallest 6' 3".

It's pretty rare to see a woman that tall wearing high heels. She's unlikely to appreciate the extra stress they put on her hips, knees, and ankles. Also, body parts normally being sized proportionally to one's height, a tall woman is more likely to need a shoe in a difficult-to-find size, a problem the moguls of fashionable footwear have been slow to address. The ladies above, being public personages, have fewer choices in the matter; the glamorous image they must present more or less demands heels, at least when they're publicly visible, which is the case for all of them much of the time. But your Curmudgeon would bet a pretty that once the cameras have been expelled and the doors have closed, they shed those accessories with dispatch.

Tall women may yearn to wear heels for their fashionable and glamorous aspects, but they seldom actually prefer them to flats. (Unlike a certain person of your Curmudgeon's acquaintance.) However, this rule has a few exceptions, to one of whom your Curmudgeon is married.

The C.S.O. is tall. She also favors heels. Quite recently, this caused your Curmudgeon a spot of...well, not trouble, exactly, but a certain awkwardness.

You see, your Curmudgeon no longer numbers either deft fingers or keen eyesight among his assets. He commits quite a few fingerfehlers. Now and then, one of them will cost him a few bob. That was the case recently, when he ordered a present for the C.S.O. from Nordstrom's website:

The quantity spinner found its way to "2" without your Curmudgeon's noticing, and remained there until the order was irrevocable. The C.S.O. was delighted...with the first pair. The second one caused her to raise an eyebrow.

"Who are those for?" she immediately asked. Your Curmudgeon is unsure whether she believed his explanation.

Because these items are, well, in a less common size, finding someone who'd take them off your Curmudgeon's hands -- off his hands, confound it! -- has been very difficult. Asking around among colleagues and friends has produced far too many suggestive titters. Fortunately, a dear but distant friend, Liz Pavek, recently found a recipient: a young neighbor of hers in Alaska, to whom the shoes will presently be shipped. Deo gratia.

For his part, your Curmudgeon has resolved never again to order anything online without first hunting down his glasses.

These Internet Memes!

Getting up early in the morning is a habit I can't shake. Even on vacation, I rise no later than 5:00 AM. It has its drawbacks -- it's been twenty years since I last made it to midnight on New Year's Eve -- but it also has its pleasures and surprises:

Fetiche: Flashy! Did you read what Mark said about us? http://www.babytrollblog.com/dolly_ee/index.php/not_generally_a_big_fan_of/

Your Curmudgeon: About twenty minutes ago, dear. What's got you up so early on a Saturday?

Fetiche: Oh, you know. [Censored] And not a thing I can do about it...from here.

Your Curmudgeon: Cut that out!

Fetiche: Something itching you, Flashy? I could hop a train.

Your Curmudgeon: Duyen...

Fetiche: Okay, okay. But seriously...?

Your Curmudgeon: I must let him know that his check is in the mail.

Fetiche: Throw a few Dong in there for me, too.

Your Curmudgeon: I'll be sure to.

Thank you, Mark. Truly, words cannot suffice. And now, on to the obligation this award imposes: our nominations. (Duyen and I are submitting a single slate of candidates.)

1. Any list of great Internet writers must include Gerard Van der Leun. American Digest is my first stop on the Web, each and every afternoon. Gerard, as I've said before, has the poet's gift: he chooses the best words and puts them in the right order, always. No one working in this medium does it better.
2. We're particularly impressed by DJ Drummond of Wizbang. DJ writes about a broad range of topics, including fundamentals such as the one touched on in the linked post. He's consistently incisive, clear, and morally sound.
3. Duyen suggested The Writer Chick, and a fine suggestion it is. WC is considerably less concerned with politics and so forth than us here at Eternity Road, which makes her site a refreshing change of pace for us. Her stylistic grace and close engagement with strong emotional themes are most noteworthy.
4. A recent affectation of mine is S. Weasel. This pseudonyme mixes strong insights and remarkable turns of phrase with an unfortunate aliquot of profanity, but the directness and pungency of the result makes it worthwhile.
5. Last, but most certainly not least, is that jewel of the Catholic Quarter of the Blogosphere, Elizabeth Scalia, a.k.a. The Anchoress. Whether she's writing about politics, faith, or family matters, Elizabeth is a nonpareil.

Remember, co-nominees: you must provide five nominations of your own, and also backlink to this post. And once again, thank you humbly, Mark, from both Duyen and myself.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Straight Lines

The news is not comforting. We have massive voter registration fraud all over the country, all of it to the advantage of a single candidate. We have even more massive campaign contribution fraud, all of it going to the same single candidate. We have conclusive evidence that the aforementioned candidate is a race-hustling scoundrel. And of course, you're not allowed to criticize said candidate: regardless of the topic, it's racist to do so. The lot has your Curmudgeon in mind of a not-terribly-old song:

Everything
Everything gives you cancer
Everything
Everything gives you cancer
There's no cure, there's no answer
Everything gives you cancer

Don't touch that dial
Don't try to smile
Just take this pill
It's in your file

Don't work hard
Don't play hard
Don't plan for the graveyard
Remember -

Everything
Everything gives you cancer
Everything
Everything gives you cancer
There's no cure, there's no answer
Everything gives you cancer

Don't work by night
Don't sleep by day
You'll feel all right
But you will pay

No caffeine
No protein
No booze or nicotine
Remember -

[Joe Jackson, "Cancer"]

Given the sum of it, your Curmudgeon is all but overpowered by the urge to pick up his marbles and find another game. Trouble is, there aren't any other games.

Some moron at Slate recently tried to put over the canard that stolen elections are nothing to get exercised about, that they're as American as sushi, gelato, and tofutti. Hmph! If the theft of an election doesn't render it invalid -- if the insouciance of the gendarmes watching the thieves at work is of no consequence -- then why bother holding elections? Why not select our public officials in a less expensive and more entertaining fashion, perhaps a live-ammo edition of Survivor: Abandoned In Newark With A Loin Cloth And A Beretta, or even a simple steel cage death match? After that, at least we'd be assured that the loser wouldn't be filing a lawsuit any time soon.

But of course, the mere fact of a felonious election in progress doesn't matter, as long as the right person will come away with the booty. If the Republican candidate were to pull a tenth of the shenanigans the press is currently smiling at from the Democrat, Washington and the state capitals would be eyelash deep in lawyers. The actual balloting might never take place.

The frauds already in progress are sufficient to keep the election ten days hence well within the "margin of lawyer" (Mark Steyn). No matter who wins, there will be lawsuits at both the state and federal levels. There might even be a spate of criminal trials, though that's considerably less likely given the political distribution of the felons. If you've ever wondered why the Democrats are so passionate about keeping Republican and conservative jurists off the bench, wonder no longer.

Is your Curmudgeon telling you, in his charmingly oblique way, that you should worry? That these United States of America, the last approximation to freedom and justice observable anywhere on Earth, might soon devolve into just one more thugocracy? Gee, what was your first clue?

Yes. Unless America regains its senses in a significant degree, we're headed into the abyss. Its masters will call it "progressive." A more accurate term for it would be "social fascist." Property will become a conditional notion. Capitalism will acquire the topical adjective "crony." Freedom of expression will finally be quenched, either as a "hate crime" or on the grounds of "compelling government interest."

You might not think it possible. You might not think your neighbors would go along with it, and really, aren't one's neighbors the people who really matter? Think again.

Unless you live somewhere really, really special, you have to know one or more persons who will vote for Obama on November 4. That is, you have to know one or more persons whose ethical standards and character judgment are so poor that they'll use their franchise to affirm the elevation of a lying Chicago thug to the most powerful office on Earth.

Have you asked yourself how anyone could be that stupid? If so, congratulations: you're a conservative. The giveaway is that you didn't assume those folks are villains; conservatives are reluctant to pronounce that verdict while a shred of doubt remains.

You see, your Curmudgeon has been contemplating lines: lines that run straight from the Democrats' embrace of felonious campaigning to the behavior we can expect of them if they're granted, or succeed in stealing, federal hegemony.

No human action is divorced from all other things. Every human action expresses a conviction of some sort. The conviction expressed by the theft of an election -- electoral politics being the process that obviates violent revolution as the transition mechanism between governments -- is this one: The cause is superior to any and all ethical standards.

There's a logical straight line that runs from unquestioning devotion to a cause through the willingness to steal an election to the willingness to abrogate all guarantees of rights. That line has been sketched almost to its terminus by Barack Obama's predecessors; he and his supporters are trying to complete it. Rest assured: if he gains the White House, they most certainly will.

Cults of personality, such as the one upon which Obama has risen so far, are dangerous precisely because of the crowd's tendency to free the Maximum Leader and his lieutenants from all constraints. Few of the original constraints that were supposed to safeguard our constitutional republic remain unshredded. Even freedom of expression has taken some blows. But should Obama attain the Oval Office, you can kiss what we have left --including freedom of expression, which "liberals" once hailed as the guarantor of "democracy" -- goodbye. The man is simply uninterested in your rights; if you're not one of his supporters, you deserve to be silenced. You could even be stripped of your franchise, or have it rendered insignificant by the enfranchisement of millions of illegal...whoops, excuse your Curmudgeon, undocumented immigrants.

But what if Obama loses? Wouldn't that win us a reprieve, at least?

Not necessarily. For there's another logical straight line we can observe: the one that runs from "our side can do no wrong" to "if we're defeated, we'll have a perfect right to riot, to destroy the lives and properties of our 'oppressors,' and to make the country ungovernable." Indeed, there are no stops between the endpoints of that one.

Several of Obama's higher-profile backers have openly said that for him to be defeated could only be the result of foul play...or "racism." In our time, "racism" is one of the foulest imprecations a man can suffer. It's a justification for doing anything and everything to him, regardless of the evidence for or against it. Never mind that the word has been emptied of all objective meaning. Remember Judge Charles Pickering, and see if you can disagree.

Regardless of who wins, the election on November 4 has a staggering potential for tearing the country violently asunder. The lines make it too probable to contemplate.

Your Curmudgeon has decided not to stint on preparations. He's filled his pantry, doubled his gold reserves, and replenished his ammo stocks. How you choose to brace yourself is your own affair, and best kept to yourself. But whatever your priorities, your Curmudgeon would like to suggest at least one more item for your list:

Pray.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Sarah Palin

Normal, bright, courageous, loving, smart, ambitious, wildly popular with the people of Alaska, optimistic, good natured, good sport, patriotic, and an wonderful example of taking the initiative and fighting for small people against privileged, arrogant politicians. 

This might sound like a Hollywood blurb for a movie about a young liberal woman outraged by oil company pollution and drug company profits (always “obscene").

That would be minus the overt patriotism part, of course, unless it plays as patriotism derived from slandering American businessmen and the free enterprise system. That will be wrapped in a flag as wide and as long as Obama’s secret history of sucking up to Weather Underground communists, black power zealots, and Saudi Wahhabis.

But, no, it applies to a likable and dynamic female right winger who’s doing the work of 20 diesel locomotives and seventy strap-on rockets to get the McCain train across the finish line before the ice-people-scum-of-the-earth, open-door-to-terrorists, sushi-loving, nipple-ringed Obama freak freight gets there.

How can this be?! Every subversive’s and malcontent’s unholy, crawl-out-of-the-basement, swamp-spawn-of-Dick-Cheney, drill-for-oil, actually-kill-our-enemies, five-row-electrified-border-fence @#$#%ing nightmare is now the number TWO gal on the REPUBLICAN ticket!

Liberal nightmare.

To leftists . . . Sarah Palin’s a disgrace to women everywhere and a traitor to the agenda of radical feminists and other America haters.

Lest you think this latter point too harsh, check out the article by Catherine MacKinnon cited below.  American women, you see, exist in a living hell of males intent on controlling them and sucking the marrow out of their bones.  Women’s status in this filthy country is characterized by “sex-based poverty and impunity for sexual abuse from childhood on.”

In the Colonel’s experience as a Public Defender in a fly-over state, he never ran across any prosecutor – not one—who didn’t give a damn about prosecuting cases of spousal or child abuse.  In fact, prosecutors seemed very ready and willing indeed to file those kinds of cases.  What garbage!

As for sex-based poverty, another load of garbage, it has everything to do with a culture that long ago began to denigrate the role of men in the family and sell women a bill of goods that they can have sexual freedom and parenthood subsidized by the state welfare agencies.  The Colonel spent a brief (but insufficiently brief) time working for a state welfare agency one time while waiting to go to law school and personally, per instruction, denied benefits to a single mother who had made the mistake of revealing the existence of a man in her home. Good luck to her getting assistance from a man with her life’s problems. Poverty City here we come.

And then there was the 15-year-old child, already a mother of one child, who came in eager to learn what her check would be now that she was pregnant again.  Presumably that was America’s fault.  But who do you think was responsible for her subsequent poverty?  Sexist American patriarchs who don’t give a damn about women, or women with poverty stricken attitudes listening to very, very bad political advice to put their faith in government?

I don’t know where Ms. MacKinnon stood on the issue of AFDC payments to unmarried women in the 60s through the 90s but I’m willing to guess that she saw them as a salutary milestone on the way to freeing women from subservience to men.

To MacKinnon, now, life in America for women is life on a bed of nails where everyday existence is nothing but discrimination, humiliation, and exploitation.  Always compared to the ideal society, of course, not the one comprised of imperfect humans, finite resources (pretty much), and trade offs between good, but competing policy choices.

For radical feminists like her, Sarah Palin’s getting elected to the office of governor is a sick travesty of an accomplishment for a woman.

For me, I say, “It @#$#%ing A is an accomplishment!” and “Go SARAH!”

”Obama Is the Way Forward for Women. Abortion rights and equal pay are at stake in the election.” By Catharine A. Mackinnon, Wall Street Journal, 10/21/08 (subscriber’s only).