Author: VD

Jay Nordlinger writes on NRO:

I have said it before, friends, and will remind you again: There will never be another like him. Enjoy it while you can.

In light of my column today, I found myself wondering if that is a threat or a promise?

TJ doesn’t want to get chipped:

Do you see any way around this? My first idea is to get out of this country while the getting is good.

It’s important to keep in mind that Christians have been expecting the end times for 2,000 years, and so far, they’ve been wrong every time. The historical odds are that the equation of implantable chips with the Biblical mark is incorrect. That being said, most Americans aren’t aware of how far in advance of the rest of the world we are in terms of going cashless.

Only the UK comes anywhere close to our bias towards electronic payments and you can pay cash for a new car everywhere from Italy to Norway without anyone blinking an eye, much less filing a government report on you. Until quite recently, one could buy a cell phone without providing ID as well, although that’s changed under pressure from US authorities.

But if the mark is not some sort of metaphor but truly is a mandatory cashless currency implant, at this point one would have to assume that it’s going to begin in the United States. This is because Asians an Europeans don’t like credit cards; debit cards are about as far as they’ll go, and despite the EU’s average tax on savings at 53.5 percent, Europeans still sock away much more money than Americans do. German households, for example, save 11 percent of their after-tax income compared to less than 1 percent by their American counterparts. This is tangential, to be sure, but is indicative of a mentality not likely to be easily swayed by the current marketing appeals of Verichip and other advocates of cashless currency.

Anyhow, it’s a point to ponder, since most Christians have long assumed that the USA was the last and best defense against one-world government, not where the ball would start rolling.

The Trunk writes on Powerline:

I would go one step further and observe that the little history that contemporary high school students learn (Hanson refers to it as “therapy”) is more often than not factually wrong — that blacks and women were excluded from the proposition that “all men are created equal,” that the founders believed in the rightness of slavery, that Lincoln was a racist and a politician who would change his tune depending on his audience, that the Civil War didn’t have anything to do with slavery, and so on.

I don’t know where Scott went to school as a kid, but in my Minnesota public school, we sure learned that the Civil War was about slavery and nothing else. Also, I’m pretty sure that if George Bush proposed shipping off America’s blacks to Africa tomorrow, he’d be considered a racist by people of every color. There’s no debate about Lincoln’s personal racism, which he repeatedly demonstrated in his own words.

And while slavery played a role in the events that brought about the Civil War, it certainly wasn’t the primary element involved. The fact that 35 percent of the slave “states” fought for the Union – Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, the District of Columbia and the rump state of West Virginia – suffices to prove that.

Lincoln was the great centralizer, who respected American freedoms and civil liberties, not to mention the Constitution, less than any president prior to FDR. He was, in my opinion, the third-worst American president, following FDR and Woodrow Wilson. Of course, if George Bush manages to turn NAFTA into the Union of the Americas within the next three years, I may have to rethink that rating.

Nate, if you’re so inclined, perhaps you might email Scott a few of Mr. Lincoln’s choicer quotes regarding his warm feelings towards his fellow human beings possessed of more melanin.

However, the Trunk remembers things a little closer to our own historical epoch very well indeed, as he demonstrates in this amusingly titled piece on the Star & Sickle’s two-faced approach to filibuster reform.

CORRECTION – I am informed by our resident War of Northern Imperialism expert that Kentucky did not send troops to fight for the Union as a state although it stayed in the Union and contributed money and supplies to Union armies. As this was a blatant violation of the state’s neutral position, the state legislature was disbanded and the new legislature voted for secession. However, it is estimated that three times as many Kentuckians fought for the Union as for the Confederacy despite Kentucky’s status as a slave state. In fact, Kentucky and Delaware, two Union states, were the last American states where slavery was legal and both voted against ratification of the 13th Amendment.

The key point of deception is that it has to, at the very least, confuse people. While some evils announce themselves with trumpets blaring from down the street, the more dangerous ones are adept at concealing themselves in a manner that many people will find convincing.

For a long time, I’ve found it very annoying that most pastors don’t ever stop to think, “You know, the Bible says that there will be people working to destroy my church from within. I wonder who they are?” I’ve only ever met one pastor who watches out for wolves hidden within his flock, and he only does this because he’s learned from experience.

Early in his first pastoral experience, a group of families that were heavily involved with the church began pushing hard for a restructuring that would make the pastor accountable to a board of deacons. When the pastor refused to go along with this, the families, who dominated the board of deacons, caused a schism within the church. About thirty percent of the church left, reducing it to around eighty members.

What was intriguing, though, was that two years later, the pastor learned that the same group of people had unsuccessfully tried to take over two other churches prior to his own, and had successfully managed to install a supreme board of deacons at a fourth church, the one they’d invaded after leaving his. It is interesting, I think, to note that the method of conquest was to promise the people of the church more power by giving them elections and oversight.

Mere human organizational politics or something more? The pastor told me that to him, there was a definite “hint of brimstone” about the whole affair. I don’t know what happened to that fourth church since then, but it would be interesting to find out.

Like the church, America is too powerful to be destroyed from without. But it can be destroyed from within and like that fourth church, there is some reason to believe that its enemies may already be in a position to do so at an opportune moment.

UPDATE – Spacebunny reminds me that I left out one significant fact. In the three years after the schism, the church that had seen attendance decline by a third due to the pastor’s stand on principle, was forced to move twice into bigger buildings in order to accomodate all of the new members who began coming.

tick… tick… tick….

Nihilist in Golf Pants explains the real reason for The Miss:

4. January 1999. The 15-1 Vikings are about to ice the NFC Championship Game with a field goal by Gary Anderson, who hadn’t missed a single one all season. As they line up for the kick Ben says “That f——- going to miss. I know he is.” The f——misses. Ben takes no solace in his spot-on predictive skills.

I do hope someone nearby gave him a resounding slap on the back of the head after that happened. Come to think of it, I may do it myself when I finally meet Atomizer. It’s not that I’m still bitter, it’s just that I’m still pissed. There’s a brief spasm of inchoate rage that courses through my veins every time I see Gary Anderson knocking one through the uprights for the Titans. If no one is around, I sometimes snarl at the TV. “Oh, yeah, sure, no trouble hitting THAT one.”

I am absolutely certain that someone is eventually going to prove that through some freak of quantum mechanics, wearing or not wearing your gamer has a decisive influence on sporting events.

And when they do, we’ll have to put a suicide watch on Big Chilly.

Transcendent Visions, aka Khross. Get it to me on Friday with a maximum of 1k words. Bane, my darling, is this too group-bloggish for you?

John Hawkins polls the right-wing of the blogosphere about its most popular columnists:

20) William F. Buckley (14)
18) Jeff Jacoby (17)
18) David Limbaugh (17)
17) Michael Barone (18)
16) Christopher Hitchens (19)
14) John Podhoretz (20)
14) David Brooks (20)
13) John Leo (22)
12) Walter Williams (23)
11) Rich Lowry (28)
10) Peggy Noonan (30)
09) James Lileks (36) — 1
08) Ann Coulter (45) — 4
06) Michelle Malkin (48) — 1
06) George Will (48) — 1
05) Thomas Sowell (58) — 3
04) Victor Davis Hanson (72) — 3
03) Charles Krauthammer (75) — 4
02) Jonah Goldberg (76) — 3
01) Mark Steyn (96) — 24

There’s some interesting things here. First, it seems remarkable that when the 2004 Jewish vote went overwhelmingly for Kerry, a solid 25 percent of the most popular columnists on the “right” – including two of the top three – should be Jewish. Second, it’s even more remarkable that a Democrat, Victor Davis Hanson, should come in at number four. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like VDH and have several of his books, but I do wonder if the bloggers polled have ever read anything but his war-cheerleading on NRO. And, of course, Christopher Hitchens is very far to the left as well. Somehow, I doubt that ten percent of the left-wing bloggers’ most popular columnists lean rightward.

My votes are below. I find it amusing that except for the inimitable Miss Coulter, none of my top five even made the list. I would have voted for Thomas Sowell as recently as two years ago, but he’s slipped quite a bit of late. VDH is one of the better writers, but I realized that I’ve been skipping his column more and more since his repetitive war-cheerleading went from being tiresome to instant REM generation over the last year. Also, PJ O’Rourke and Camille Paglia are still my favorites but neither are actively writing commentary and while I do have two favorite Italian columnists, I assumed they didn’t really count. Do keep in mind that the determinative factor was “favorite” not “best”, because Will, Buchanan, Brooks, Reed and Ponnuru would top my list if it were based on pure quality.

1. Vox Day (the greatest love of all)
2. Fred Reed
3. Ann Coulter
4. Jay Nordlinger
5. John Derbyshire
6. George Will
7. Jonah Goldberg
8. Pat Buchanan
9. David Brooks

It’s really funny to see that the lefties couldn’t even find 20 columnists THEY find worth supporting. Krugman, Hitchens and Alterman, despite their various flaws, are the best of the lot. The left is clearly in complete disarray; the reliably buffoonish Arianna Huffington was nearly able to crack their top ten. She makes Maureen Dowd look astute and educated by comparison.

Who’s your favorite right-wing and left-wing columnist, present company excluded?

From the Onion:

ACTUAL EXPERT TOO BORING FOR TV

Dr. Gary Canton, a professor of applied nuclear physics and energy-development technologies at MIT and a leading expert in American nuclear-power applications, was rejected by MSNBC producers for being “too boring for TV” Monday….

MSNBC chose Skip Hammond, former Arizona State football player, MBA holder, and author of Imprison The Sun: America’s Coming Nuclear-Power Holocaust. Hammond is best known for his “atomic domino” theory of chained power-plant explosions and his signature lavender silk tie.

“Absolute Armageddon,” Hammond said when asked about the dangers increased reliance on nuclear power might pose. “Atoms are not only too tiny to be seen, they’re too powerful to be predicted. Three Mile Island? Remember it? I do. Don’t they?”

“Clouds of radiation, glowing rivers, a hole reaching to the earth’s core—that’s what we’re facing, ” Hammond continued. “Death of one in four Americans! Count off, everyone: one, two, three, you. Millions of people gone. And no one’s even mentioned terrorism yet. You have to wonder why not.”

It is always important to keep in mind that the vast majority of anchors and commentators don’t know a damn thing about almost anything except selling themselves. Thus, they honestly have no ability to distinguish between a genuine expert and someone who’s blathering on in ignorance. Consider the seemingly diametrically opposed pair of Michelle Malkin and Maureen Dowd. The former studied English at Oberlin College, the latter has a degree in English from Catholic University. No wonder neither one of them knows anything about military or political history.

The TV commentariat in particular is filled with third-rate minds from fourth-rate universities who studied nothing but English and journalism. Most of them don’t even speak a second language much less have any detailed knowledge of a serious liberal arts, technical or engineering field. They have refined their ability to communicate, to be sure, but they have little meaningful to say. In high school and college, I dated a girl who was on the journalist track; she was pretty and possessed an intelligence above average, but she was utterly uninterested in anything genuinely intellectual. She never made it above the bottom tier – as a political reporter for a minor newspaper – and ended up going back and getting a law degree, but I have recognized her attitude in many male and female journalists I’ve encountered since, from NPR to the Star and Sickle.

The problem is that while they may not know much, they are adept at using their connections and verbal skills to make it appear as if they do. The easy way to expose them, of course, is to ask them simple but specific questions, like “how many aircraft carriers did the US Navy possess in 1942” or “how do you compute GDP?” Actually, you probably could stump most commentators outside of Thomas Sowell and Paul Krugman by simply asking “what does GDP stand for?” They will desperately seek to avoid being forced to answer such questions because they can’t and their failure will expose them as the frauds that most of them are.

I’d like to see a celebrity Jeopardy dedicated to newspaper and cable news commentators one day. It would be interesting to see if their performance would be closer to the normal contestants or the actors and rock stars.

The U.S. government is considering a plan to force farmers, feedlots, and packinghouses to track every cow, pig, and chicken from birth to slaughter by 2009, the Associated Press reported….

Meat producers, concerned about privacy issues, have resisted a mandatory government-run identification system, the wire service said. They prefer the idea of a voluntary database to which state and federal officials have limited access.

But surely someone will explain to these poor, confused meat producers that it wouldn’t be safe for the US government to begin tracking every man, woman and child from birth to slaughter without first testing the process on animals.