Category Archives: The West

Updated: Mitt’s Sincere Sermon

America, Christianity, Elections 2008, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Objectivism, Religion, The West, The Zeitgeist

I don’t think a commentator can credibly understand or expatiate upon America, in particular—and the West, in general—without reference to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Heck, one can’t appreciate the greatest composer of all times—Bach—without acknowledging the contribution of his muse—Christianity—to the glory of his music. Ditto for many other great artists.
This is why there’s a sterility and a lack of believability to the religious-hating aspects of Objectivism. As to Christopher Hitchens, he’s an ex-Trotskyite. Why would he understand America?
I say all this even though I am irreligious (although very Jewish in my thinking). America is undeniably and deeply religious.
Having no dog in the fight over Mitt’s Mormonism, I have to say, moreover, that listening to his speech about his faith was moving. Admittedly, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may have some odd ideas. Not so the Mormons I know; they are very fine people. And quite magnificent is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; it’s in fact the finest in the world.
As you can see, it’s impossible to untangle religion in the West and the glorious cultural contribution it has inspired in the faithful.
Particularly loathsome in their mocking commentary about Mitt’s sincere sermon were Keith Olbermann and his Washington-Post henchman—they compared Mitt to their idol, J. F. Kennedy, and found him lacking, to put it mildly. The two did, however, drive home how loathsome the liberal left can be.

Update: Jerri (listen to her great interviews) will enjoy this excerpt from the Hebrew Bible in the First Book Of Samuel. It’s one of the oldest, greatest, most forceful injunctions against the wickedness of centralized power. (Let me tell you, it’s so much better in the original Hebrew). How can one grasp the ancient quest for liberty without proper reverence to this tradition and its revelational component? Note that the king, warns G-d, will take a tenth of the people’s wealth. If only! Send us such a king who will enslave us to the tune of a tenth only!
1 Samuel 8

Israel Asks for a King
1 When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. 3 But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead [a] us, such as all the other nations have.”
6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”
10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle [b] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

Desperately Seeking Bollywood’s Brangelina

Christianity, Ethics, Hollywood, Morality, Religion, The West

What happens when the pale, patriarchal, penis people, in the words of the inimitable art critic Robert Hughes, are finally dethroned?

Who will fix stuff? Who will man Doctors without Borders? Who will do the world’s charity work? Who do you think does it now? Arabs? Africans? Indians? As much as I despise Brangelina, where is Bollywood’s equivalent of these naïve, giving do-gooders?
I’m afraid those maligned pallid patriarchs and their likeminded women do the world’s good works.

The largest charities by revenue in the US (which means the world) are Mayo Clinic, Salvation Army, YMCAs, United Way, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, American National Red Cross, Catholic Charities USA, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Goodwill Industries International, and The Arc of the United States. By whom were they founded?

Mayo was founded by William Worrall Mayo (hint: he’s not an African). The Salvation Army by William Booth (another Englishman). Ditto the YMCA (George Williams). Two ministers and a rabbi midwived the United Way. Drs. George Crile, Frank Bunts, and William Lower founded the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in 1921, and Clara Barton the Red Cross (you don’t need to see their mugs to guess their origins). And so it goes for the rest.

Are Hippie Parents Sending Kids Into The Maw of Death?

America, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Family, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The West, The Zeitgeist

Another young girl died overseas on a school trip. I saw the item on CNN, but cannot find the link (help please). The parents allege foul play.
American and European parents are blasé about their kids, be it in the way they discipline or supervise them. They are also stupendously naïve, sending their precious progeny, during their most stupid years—the teens—to dangerous spots around the world. Bermuda, for instance, which “US and British crime advisories have warned of as having a medium-high crime rate.”

Consider the case of Rebecca Middleton. This Canadian 16-year-old was packed off to Bermuda by starry-eyed parents with her friend Jasmine Meens, ready for a “trip of a lifetime.” A left-liberal mindset has these folks believing the world is one big happy place, and that walking the streets of Mogadishu and those of Montreal (lovely city) are one and the same thing.
In any event, Middleton “accepted rides on motorcycles, operated by Mr. Smith and Mr. Mundy.” (Here’s Justis Smith.) the Bermuda Online described what these predators did to the girl as “the most animal sexually-depraved, most violent and inhuman murder of any woman or man anywhere in the world.” (Wild and Wooly English, that’s for sure.) Intriguingly, the appeals in the case—no one was convicted—were argued in the Bermudan courts by Cherie Booth Blair.
The hippie spirit was also alive and well in Natalie Holloway’s family. (Never mind the male predators waiting to prey on trusting North American girls, I would not have entrusted my child to any adult chaperon chosen by a North America schools.)

Paine and The Painful Brother Hitchens

Iran, Political Philosophy, The West

“A nation of nose jobs, not nuclear war,”? is how Peter Hitchens describes the Iranians. Hitchens offers a much-needed corrective to the neoconnery’s perspective: they’ve been itching for a fight. Iranians are a modernizing people, with Western sensibilities to match their demographic youth. But, contra the “cake-walk,” they’ll-greet-us-with-bonbons-and bouquets-crowd, “that will not stop [the Iranians] fighting like hell if we are foolish enough to attack them.”

Peter’s lesser brother, the Trotskyite-turned-neocon Christopher Hitchens, is more at home shedding darkness. He has a new book out: Thomas Paine’s “Right of Man.” Christopher has dedicated it, “by permission,” to Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq. Trotskyites share with neocons an ahistoric approach —to say nothing of philosophical Alzheimer’s —that has made it quite acceptable to compare the neocon-initiated carnage in Iraq to the constitutional cramps of early America. But, as I have pointed out over and over again, there is absolutely no philosophical link between the feuding Mohammedans and the American founders, followers of John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu.

Although he wrote some great libertarian tracts, Paine was too much of an acolyte of the French Revolution for my tastes, at one stage nuzzling up to the Jacobins (until they turned on him), and writing in opposition to Edmund Burke’s condemnation of that blood-drenched revolution.

Paine’s emphasis on the universality of political rights is also so French Revolution. I believe that all men are imbued with natural —but not political —rights. I believe taxpayers alone ought to have the vote. Not tax consumers. And that goes for politicians, who pay taxes out of what they loot from the taxpayer. As the very American John C. Calhoun explained in “A Disquisition on Government,” a sizeable majority of the people “receives in disbursements more than it pays in taxes.” The minority funding the orgy “pays in taxes more than it receives back in disbursements.” The latter, not the former, should have the vote.

But even Paine should probably not be paired with Talabani and his paired-down, uninspired mission: staying alive politically and literally. But then what would Hitchens know.