Category Archives: English

UPDATE (8/27/017): Rod Dreher’s Dreadful Writing At The American Conservative

Conservatism, English, Literature, States' Rights

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How many first-person references can you count in this Rod Dreher bit of tedium? “I think.” “I believe.” “I’m not.” “Call me sentimental.” “My grandmother …”

Opinion differs about how often to use the first person pronoun in various genres of writing. But its overuse in opinion writing is a cardinal sin.

You may abuse “I” when the passive-form alternative is too clumsy. Or, when the writer has earned the right to, because of his relevance to the story. (There is no good reason for Dreher to insert himself in practically every other sentence here.)

To get a sense of how bad someone’s writing is count the number of times he deploys the Imperial “I” on the page. Dreher is very bad indeed. He is like a dripping tap. Half of this diarrhetic post could have been cut.

A good editor would have removed superfluous phrases like, “It’s strange, actually.” There are many like it: the aforementioned “call me sentimental” and “It seems to me.”

The American Conservative’s attitude to editing is decidedly un-conservative.

There are some redeeming observations in “Duty, Dishonor, & The South,” but they’re lost in the wishy-washy meandering narrative of a poor writer.

UPDATE (8/27): Noonan is bad (always has been), but not as awful as Dreher. She’s effective in her messy emotionalism. He’s not.

UPDATED (1/2/019): Meir Shalev: Easily One Of The Greatest Novelists

English, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Israel, Literature, Pop-Culture

I’ve been reading two classic novels by Meir Shalev in Hebrew, in the hope of reviving my extant Hebrew reading skills.

The one completed some time ago was Roman Rusi (“A Russian Novel,” translated), which was changed to The Blue Mountain. A lot hangs on the translation, naturally, but having read “Roman Rusi” (aka “The Blue Mountain“) both in English and Hebrew, I can say Hillel Halkin’s translation of that book was superb.

Shalev, for the richness of his descriptions and the depth of the depictions and characters (down to the animals), is up there with the greatest writers. Nabokov of the Israelis? Maybe, but Shalev doesn’t have Nabokov’s prurient preoccupied with decadence.

Even finer than “The Blue Mountain” is “As A Few Days,” which is currently tearing at my heart. Read it (and my non-fiction books, of course). It also goes by the title “Four Meals” or “The Loves of Judith.”

UPDATED (1/2/019):

Amos Oz was not a good writer, Tom Segev. He had nothing on Agnon, of whom he was madly jealous, or on Meir Shalev, a literary giant. I recently completed Oz’ latest door-stopper in Hebrew: undisciplined, cumbersome, narcissistic. Absolutely no literary finesse.

MORE.

The Declaration Of Independence Has Been Mocked Out Of Meaning

America, Britain, English, History, Liberty, Multiculturalism

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“The Declaration Of Independence Has Been Mocked Out Of Meaning” is the current column, now on Townhall.com. It toasts The Declaration, Thomas Jefferson and the Anglo-Saxon tradition, from which Jefferson drew.

An excerpt:

For most Americans, Independence Day means firecrackers and cookouts. The Declaration of Independence—whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate—doesn’t feature in the celebration. Contemporary Americans are less likely to read it now that it’s easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

It is fair to say that the Declaration of Independence has been mocked out of meaning.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. Printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet,” recounts historian David Hackett Fischer in Liberty And Freedom. And the president of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, urged that the “people be universally informed.” (They were!)

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it “an expression of the American Mind.” An examination of Jefferson’s constitutional thought makes plain that he would no longer consider the collective mentality of contemporary Americans and their leaders (Rep. Ron Paul excepted) “American” in any meaningful way. For the Jeffersonian mind was that of an avowed Whig—an American Whig whose roots were in the English, Whig political philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Come to think of it, Jefferson would not recognize England as the home of the Whigs in whose writings colonial Americans were steeped—John Locke, Algernon Sidney, Paul Rapin, Thomas Gordon and others.

The essence of this “pattern of ideas and attitudes,” almost completely lost today, explains David N. Mayer in The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson, was a view of government as an inherent threat to liberty and the necessity for eternal vigilance. …

… READ THE REST. The complete column is “The Declaration Of Independence Has Been Mocked Out Of Meaning,” now on Townhall.com.

UPDATED (6/29): To See How Your Country Is Being Given Away, Visit Your State’s DHS

America, Britain, English, Etiquette, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism

Americans all should visit their state’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in charge of immigration, to get a feel for how American citizenship has been debased, the country turned into a Tower of Babel.

Early today, there were 2 other English-speaking people in the crowd, a total of 4 with my husband and me. The rest wore robes, doffed turbans and embroidered North African skullcaps. And they all spoke in tongues, were gruff and quite unfriendly. You see, the English-speaking people share certain social niceties. We often smile at The Other as he or she passes. We say, “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” “lovely weather,” and, “I’m sorry” when we bump someone.

At least two were badly crippled. They’ll cost taxpayers many thousands in medical care. As the crowd grew, the ratio of English-speakers (Caucasians) to the rest remained the same.

Tower of Babel America is a hostile mass of aliens with no place for shared social pleasantries.

In 2013, I chronicled waiting in line at the ASC (the Application Support Center), in Washington State, when an officer of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services called out, “Number 69, number 69.” Number 78, yours truly, was there to renew the green card. Despite having been summoned time and again, #69 stayed put. She did not understand English.

UPDATE (6/29)” It’s too late. Without a moratoriums on immigration, the country will be lost. Or at least, allow only immigration enforcing the country’s host population:

“Two-In-Four: Six Fast Facts From Donald Trump’s First Immigration Report.”

* Over 1 million a year.
* 100,000 a month.
* 1 new immigrant for every four Americans who turn 18.
* 1 temporary foreign worker for every five new American workers.
* 170,000 new foreign workers per month
* 2 new foreign workers for every four Americans who enter the workforce.
* 50 percent of foreign temporary workers are white-collar professionals:”high-skill engineers, nurses, doctors, professors, accountants, and designers to take the place of many expensive American graduates and skilled technicians who are trying to pay off college debts.”
* “Only one-in-eight legal immigrants have worked their way into the country — the rest were pulled in by relatives, regardless of education or health or age or productivity or ability to integrate into American society.”
* The people who’ve gained power to determine elections: Trump’s data shows that 264,553 legal immigrants got citizenship during the six months in the first report, at a rate of roughly 45,000 a month. These new citizens come from 164 countries, speak more than 164 languages, and few have the skills to pay more in taxes than they receive in welfare or aid, and most vote Democratic.