Category Archives: America

UPDATED: USA, USA…

America, Human Accomplishment, Russia, Socialism, Sport

Not even the central planners that run the Olympics could suppress excellence and effort. (In its pursuit of egalitarianism, the Olympics rules committee decreed that “only two members of each team can advance to the all-around, meaning that even if one team is predominant above all others it can only have equal representation in the all-around at best.”)

Although America’s superb athletes may come short in many track and field events, our athletes have dominated the Olympics in the sports that count: gymnastics and swimming. (Who cares about ping-pong?) An American, Carmelita Jeter, became the second fastest woman in the world, winning silver in the 100 meter dash. The Jamaicans are unbeatable; gold medalist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce a fierce runner.

I confess that the magnificent, down-to-earth Missy Franklin and team swim America charmed me more so than our bionic gymnasts. I am of the old-fashioned mindset that appreciates gymnastics when it balances the artistic and athletic elements. (The Russians still accomplish that, but they’ve lost their stamina.) Still, what amazing athletes these young women are and how impressive is each one’s quest for excellence. (Aly Raisman was my favorite.)

And what does one say about that meteor Michael Phelps? The way he brought home the 4×100-meter medley relay, tonight!!! Supernova.

Comedian Lily Tomlin once said that “98 percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy 2 percent that get all the publicity. But then – we elected them.”

This lousy minority is the inescapable obsession of the weekly columnist. That’s why it’s so nice, for two weeks every two years – to shunt the kleptocracy to the sidelines, revealing it as the freak show it truly is.

For once, we can look to the unabashed individualism instantiated in the eager young faces, the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory.

Go USA. And well done.

UPDATE (Aug. 5): I’m awe struck. So should you be. What a strong, strategic marathon Ethiopia’s Tiki Gelana ran. She set “an Olympic record while winning the event in 2:23:07, fending off Kenya’s Priscah Jeptoo by five seconds.” Anyone who races through a marathon is my hero. That race is mind over matter. I was pleased to see Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova of Russia, who came third in 2:23:29, doggedly hold on to her position in the leading pack.

Enoch Powell At 100

America, Britain, English, IMMIGRATION, Literature, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Race

Enoch Powell’s famous, much-maligned “rivers of blood” speech has devolved over the years to suit Powell’s adversaries. Delivered in Birmingham, in April 1968, notes The Times Literary Supplement, the famous segment read as follows:

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. . . . To see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

The TLS’s welcome, if marginal, mention of Powell is on the occasion of the publication of Tom Bower’s “balanced critique of Powell’s rhetoric”: Enoch at 100: A revaluation of the life, politics and philosophy.

Helped along by oodles of ignorance, the “foaming Tiber mutated over the years to ‘rivers of blood’, notionally streaming through British cities as the tide of immigration rose unchecked.” (TLS)

As Bower points out, “the official figure for immigrants at the time was relatively small”:

“only 7,000 males every year”, but “the government did not announce that annually a further 50,000 dependants of established immigrants were also entering Britain”.
Powell’s fear was less of immigrants as such (though his “Rivers of Blood” speech contains passages about “negroes” which might land him in [a British] court today) than of a breakdown in “social cohesion”.

“Repeatedly,” it is observed in this TLS editorial, Powell “pointed to rioting in American cities, then at a fearful pitch. Why was Britain inviting the ‘tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence’ of the country?”

Stupidly, the TLS editor joins in blaming Powell’s “oratory” for making “immigration a taboo subject by silencing even reasoned opponents of immigration and multiculturalism who feared being tarnished as racists.”

From the fact that “plain talk about the topic is rare, even dangerous,” the TLS concludes that Powell is at fault.

Oh my!

I do like what Saul Bellow said about the “intractable phenomenon” in the US: “we lack a language in which to talk about it.”

IT being unfettered immigration, also known as “The Suicide of the West.”

Still, I’m pleasantly surprised that the TLS (July 6, 2012) made even marginal mention of Enoch at 100. Surprised because the TLS, once so objective and rigorous, is tilting to tinny, lefty, obscurantist postmodernism. (To modify a Joan Rivers witticism, Why would you want to reproduce a rash?)

That’s one way to reduce circulation, and suck the joy out of English literature (“the English-speaking people” is a concept TLS reviewers now routinely mock or “deconstruct”).

UPDATED: Those Gay Berets

Aesthetics, America, Business, Capitalism, Constitution, libertarianism, Outsourcing, Regulation, Sport

There is an alphabet soup of government agencies that ride American business. Business is buried under regulation, having to expend money and time on licenses, permits and forms for almost every transaction. What with the legal obligation to give an employee practically a lifetime of benefits, who can afford to make these gay-looking Olympic berets in the USA?

Capital flows to where it is best utilized.

I expect the PC patrol to come after me for saying that America’s Olympic team’s caps look campy.

But what’s wrong with a cowboy hat made in Texas? The gay berets cost a pretty penny and look … well, both gay and French.

My sartorial suggestion?

This here “Cattleman Wool Felt Cowboy Hat” costs $26.99.

And it looks American.

UPDATE: I FORGOT TO REMIND YOU ALL: Join the thread on Facebook, if you wish to contribute comments.

Here are my replies to the thread on Facebook:

To GJ: A cowboy hat is militarism to you? Where do you get that? Cowboys used to represent the (dying) great American frontier mentality. The equivalent of a “voortrekker” in South Africa.

To MP: MP is, of course, correct; there is no warrant in the Constitution or in libertarian law for state sponsorship of sports. But I always broaden the discussion to include more than libertarian justice/law—or else there would be little to discuss, as most of what the Federal Frankenstein does is unconstitutional/immoral, etc. And how dull, dour and lazy would that repetition be! But you already know that much about this writer, MP.

UPDATED: A Leg Up For Ladies

Affirmative Action, America, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Labor, Law, Regulation, Sport

Like the “good” conservatives that they are, the women at Fox News support Title IX regulations. I heard quite a few celebrate the fact that the US has sent more women than men to the 2012 London Olympics.

“There are to be 269 women and 261 men on the team.”

This skewed outcome is a result of gender-based affirmative action.

Writes Phyllis Schlafly:

Title IX regulations, which impose gender quotas on sports for institutions that receive any federal money. …
Title IX regulations have forced educational institutions to eliminate men’s teams until the number of men and women on sports teams is the same ratio as the number of men and women enrolled in academic classes. In the numerous colleges that are now 60 percent female in academic enrollment, Title IX requires that men’s teams be eliminated until only 40 percent of the athletes are men.
Title IX quotas have caused the elimination of all but 19 men’s college gymnastics teams. This deprives boys of the scholarship incentive to take up gymnastics as a sport in high school and takes away the competition needed to improve their skills in college.

Granted, they are sweet. Look at these eager young faces; the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory, the brutal regimen required to become the best, the irrepressible spirit that compels athletes to submit to the grueling grind. It is all so very exhilarating.

But c’mon: if you are a basketball fan, for example, how can you settle for the inferior game the women play? For me, the high point of the competition is the American-dominated, testosterone-fueled, always magnificent, 100-meter men’s dash.

Forget it ladies: You are not in this league.

UPDATE (July 15): In reply to thread on Facebook:

“Yes, MM, sports is important. I have been a runner for the last 22 years—and not because my (Israeli) high- and middle school instilled the love of the effort in me. And, as to who would I rather watch play: Kobe Bryant for the U.S. men’s basketball team? Or the equivalent woman star (whose name no one, but her parents, cares about, b/c she is incapable physiologically of matching the thrill of watching Bryant)? The answer is obvious. The reality cannot be tweaked by central planning. Not should it be legislated away.