Category: Uncategorized

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.

My big concern: how to properly deal with parents and the community? I know that issues has gotten most of the coaches I’ve know into some type of hot water… Is there a ‘rule of thumb’ out there for coaches that works?

My answer is necessarily incomplete, because there are fewer potential problems for the little kids with whom I have experience than there are for high schoolers. But the one thing will inevitably come up at all ages is playing time.

I tend to favor the rather brutal approach of demonstrating to everyone the foolishness of their ideas by applying them ruthlessly. For example, I decided to invite all of the kids, not just the tournament team, to our first tournament this spring so the little ones could see what they were like. This proved to be a bit of a mistake, as the parents of the young ones were upset that their kids weren’t playing at all and many of them were complaining about having to waste their morning there.

Their kids weren’t even close to being ready to play, of course, and all the children knew it. The older kids in particular were aghast when I announced the starting lineup for the last game, which consisted of the five youngest kids on the squad. The little ones gave up three goals in the first twenty seconds, at which point my best midfield raised his hands to the skies and howled with heartfelt anguish, “what are you doing?”

“Making a point,” I answered, loudly enough for all the parents to hear. After another minute and a few more goals, one of the smaller kids blocked a shot with his chest and went down crying. The parents then began begging me to take the little ones out, which I did, although I kept our starters sitting since I’d already decided to concede the game and I wanted the substitutes to get more tournament experience. They did pretty well, actually, and we ended up losing by only a goal after spotting the other team six or seven.

I haven’t heard a peep out of a parent about playing time since. Once you demonstrate that you know exactly what you are doing, people are significantly less likely to question you, much less argue with you.

A good tactic is to pull a few of your better players early, when you go up by two goals. Let the team coast a bit with the substitutes, and the starters are usually fired up to get something done as soon as they get back on the field. Once the game is put away, either by your team or your opponents, take out all your starters and let the substitutes finish the game out. When everyone is confident that they’ll get to play, they don’t complain if you leave the stars in longer on the few occasions that it’s required.

To conclude on a tangential note, most coaches from the kiddy to the college level make the mistake of regularly overplaying their best players, leaving them exhausted just when you need them most. Even my track coach at the NCAA D1 level used to do this at every major meet. It’s interesting to note how often professional teams make substitutions in comparison with teams at lower levels; sure the substitutes may be better, but the margin for error is smaller as well.

The Evolution of Character
by The Crystal Lake Observatory

A rare event it is when I – out of boredom – view a program with such vapidity as I did The O’Reilly Factor the other night. O’Reilly and a Catholic priest was discussing the new pope and, in their discussion, the lack of integrity and character was exalted to the highest realms for the sake of institutional survival and conformity. O’Reilly felt that Catholic doctrine needed to be changed (on such issues as contraception, for example) in order to make the Catholic church more palatable to those of us who disagree. Thank you, O Reilly, for reducing the Catholic Church to a social club where changes in policy can be made in order to draw in more members.

To some there is a seductive pull to this kind of compromise. It isn’t just an issue of liberal and moderate seminarians, clergy members, or even the laity of any church – whatever the denomination. It exists everywhere. There’s nothing wrong with changing one’s mind after sincere, internal, and rational deliberation upon discovery of some error; there is nothing wrong with conscientious hearts attempting at least to remedy that error. It is vile to change one’s position on anything for self-serving reasons or to please others. Politicians are famous for it, but the current state of things in this world has put even the church in the position of politician.

How weak we must be to bow before the storms of trial, to sell our souls in order to gain something for ourselves! It is admirable to remain true to one’s principles and despicable to abandon them. Of what worth will any of our values be if we are too afraid to keep them? How trustworthy does that make us? And if we love God, family, and our neighbours, isn’t it hypocritical to give up our mores and beliefs in order to satisfy some urge to become like everybody else? In a way, it would have been better – in a moral sense – for us to have always been selfish in both word and deed. At least, we wouldn’t be hypocrites and cheats. Admittedly, it is difficult to remain standing in the face of harsh criticism, hard times, and persecution. The temptation to just give it up is very real. Such empathy does not absolve the compromisers as ‘faithless’, though.

O how seductive that reasoning is. It almost makes sense. The church is told to change or die. It has been said by the likes of heretic Bishop Spong and there are many, many others who say this every day. It really sounds like something the devil would say. People seem to assume that our culture will become more and more ‘liberal.’ Giving up ‘truth’ for evolution, they fall into the progressive mentality that the church will become mired in obscurity, the fringe, and then down into nothingness if it remains so fundamentalist. We are told everyday to get with the twenty-first century and conform to the greater culture, but true religion is not only to take care of the poor but also to remain unstained from this world. The narrow way is not the popular, nor is it always easy.

The days are dark and the nights are death itself. We throw away spouses because it is convenient and children because we don’t want the responsibility. We steal for utopia in the form of mandatory taxation. Morals and ethics are whatever we want them to be and isn’t it grievous? We are treacherous and live for ourselves..

and..here I am, the moralist excoriating the sins of others, the sins of this world.

Such a moral slide doesn’t just exist within the church. It is just an issue that is closest to my heart, and bothers me to no end when people in the church behave as if God’s truth is no truth.

Loyalty has always been very important and the greatest guilt I’ve felt comes when I behave treacherously. I hate betrayal in others; I hate it in myself. I’ve had to ask myself the question of what is really important in my life – everyone’s approval, convenience, or personal excellence? I guess that is up to each one of us to determine. Who or what will you serve?