Vox Popoli

Maureen Dowd writes: The Philippines. Thailand. Italy. Spain. Poland. Denmark. Bulgaria. Ukraine. Romania. The Netherlands. Norway. El Salvador. Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?

I know I can speak for my friend, the Italian tank commander who served in Afghanistan and was stationed until recently at Nassiriyah where he lost a schoolmate, in saying va fanculo, puttana di merde. He and his boys were good enough for the USMC, so they’re good enough for me and they’re bloody well good enough for a clueless old has-been who hasn’t written a single thing worth reading since Monica was getting her kneepads and Dowd was wishing she could. Well, maybe she has written something worthwhile in the intervening years, but I wouldn’t know because I quit reading her trite and boring attempts at wit long ago.

Dowd is a moron, but even her extreme level of vacuity doesn’t excuse this. I’d like to see Maureen and her fat thighs thundering along one of the mountain runs that the Alpini do for training. The Italians may not be the world’s finest fighting force, but here’s some news for her: neither are the bloody French! I notice she just happened to leave the Brits and the Aussies off her list.

Blackfive calls BS on her, comparing the coalition in Korea to the one in Iraq. Citizen Smash draws a picture that even Dowd should be able to grasp. Don’t you just love how liberal New Yorkers like to pose as being worldly and sophisticated, when truly they’re some of the most insular examples of Americanus Uglicus. I’ll bet she just adores Florence.

Witrack asks: Any chance we’ll see you write/release any books in the steampunk genre? I love that style of sci-fi. The whole idea of advanced technology in the 19th and 18th century. The whole Jules Verne, Wild Wild West, League of Extraordinary genre. Very cool. It’s why I liked the Thief video game series. The hybrid of swords and sorcery and 19th century technology. The game even had 19th century motion detectors, etc. I didn’t know what to call the genre until I heard the recently coined term steampunk.

Thief was good, but you’ll have to hit up the Original Cyberpunk if you’re into steam… heh heh heh. I don’t read much of it, and as one who is neither skilled nor interested in things mechanical, I wouldn’t make much of a writer of it either. I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that yesterday I was asked to write the text for three comic books in a popular series that has sold about a million copies, which should be an interesting new format for me. I also turned in a novel to my publisher a few months ago that I wrote with another fellow entitled Stalking the Beast; it’s about two centuries-old secret societies that are tracking the development of the Antichrist, one with an eye to “know the season” and the other with an eye to profiting from it. Think of it as pre-apocalyptic Christian fiction.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I will not be writing The Red Hand of Government for WND Books as Joseph Farah previously announced, since one of the execs decided that the premise was ridiculous. Everyone knows, apparently, that governments don’t kill their own people. Right, whatever, Mr. History Expert. As it was the third concept of mine that they rejected, I think I’ll stick with fiction and leave them to publish essays by radio personalities. It’s a formula, and quite clearly it works for them, but since I’m not a talk show host it just doesn’t apply to me. Also, being a novelist, I prefer to delve more deeply into a single subject instead of dancing from one to the next.

The one nonfiction book I thought would be particularly amusing to write was Screwing Themselves: why no one wants to marry 30-something women, based on the Spiting Their Pretty Faces column. The proposal was pretty funny, especially the chapter devoted to line-by-line exegeses of feminist anthems such as You Oughtta Know and Bitch. That didn’t go over particularly well with the Oprah fans on the pub board, believe it or not. I suppose this is what basing your media career on the WWCDD principle gets you: What Would Chuck D Do?

I don’t mind. I write for pleasure, not profit, and with two novels due this year and two next year, I’m already pushing my maximum output level. Novels are more amusing and challenging than nonfiction anyhow.

This is how to celebrate the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. By challenging it and refusing to recognize it at every opportunity. It is bad law, worse social engineering and makes a total mockery of any claim that America may have once had to being a moral nation.

I understand some libertarians are pro-choice. I have about as much regard for their logic on this particular matter as I would have for anyone who would attempt to use libertarian concepts to justify slavery or the Endlösung. Africans, Jews and the unborn are all human, with the same claim to the unalienable right to life as anyone else.

The “it’s my body” justification is hopeless, both from a legal point of view – there are dozens, if not hundreds of existing laws exploding this notion – or even from a purely hypothetical point of view, considering that the other individual inside has his own distinct DNA.

There you go, Pieter.

A National Review editor writes: “Perhaps we have been a bit soft on the president….”

I don’t think the magazine is intentionally soft on the Bush administration, just misled by the hopes and expectations of its conservatives who have been hoodwinked by the administration. Jonah [Goldberg] was right to be leery of “compassionate conservativism”, for as Hayek once wrote of social justice, any noun that is modified by an adjective is no longer the pure noun. (I’m paraphrasing, of course.)

Personally, I believe that we are witnessing the beginnings of a landmark transformation, comparable to the death of the Whig party more than a century ago. An Italian admiral once pointed out to me that in political terms, the great intellectual battle of history is between the collectivist vision of Plato and the individualist vision of Aristotle, and so the merger of the Republican and Democratic parties into a Platonist big tent will inevitably lead to the birth of a new party championing many of the ideals for which the Republican party once stood – and in which many Republicans still believe.

There is a hoary old excuse that claims as soon as the Republicans achieve power, we’ll see their true colors. This has actually proven to be true. A Republican House, Senate and White House have combined to create the most expansionary central government since LBJ. Just as no honest capitalist would see any need to choose between a Stalinist or a Trotskyite candidate, no supporter of small government and individual freedom should feel any pressure to support the lesser of two evils presented by the two major American parties.

It was not pragmatic to oppose a three percent tax on tea, when the net price was actually cheaper. It was principle George Washington and Ron Paul – whose singular principled support for the US Constitution has rendered him so popular as to be politically unassailable – prove that in the end, principle defeats pragmatism every single time.

If the American people have no principles, pragmatism will only slow, slightly, the national decline into full-blown socialism. And if no one offers them a principled alternative, this decline will be inevitable.

Nancy froths: YOU WRITE AS A MAN WITH A HIGH ENOUGH INTELLIGENCE WHICH IS WHY I FIND IT SOOO LUDICRIOUS THAT YOU WOULD CONVINCE YOURSELF THATAMERICA IS BETTER OFF WITH THE DIM BULB PRESIDENT WE HAVE NOW! IF YOU ARE EVEN VAGUELY AWARE OF THE REAL POWER HOLDERS IN D.C. WHY ARE YOU NOT MENTIONING KARL ROVE,DICK CHENEY,RICHARD PERLE,PAUL WOLFOWITZ, TO NAME A FEW……..GET REAL!

Read the previous week’s article, Nancy. Alternatively, wait for next Monday’s. Not everyone who despises Wesley Clark and Howard Dean is enamored of George Bush. Furthermore, a 125 IQ is far above average; George Bush is more intelligent than JFK, to name one predecessor. He’s closer to Clinton and Gore than he is to the average American. Don’t mistake verbal agility with intelligence; the two often run in parallel, but they are not synonymous.

MM writes: I was skimming a group of links yesterday on one of my favorite news sites yesterday, and I happened across your article, in which you, basically, say that a high IQ leads to a clouded, disillusioned mindset. I thought that it was very interesting, considering the content of your article, that your blurb at the end of the piece mentions your membership to Mensa, an organization for those with IQs in the top 2% of the population. I would think that this invalidates your argument comepletely. I mean, considering that you juxtapose a high IQ with a distorted worldview, and you must have a rather high IQ to be a member of Mensa, doesn’t that imply that you have a twisted perspective as well? Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting something, but it seems like you’re being a bit hypocritical.

Far from being hypocritical, I am speaking from both direct personal experience as well as firsthand observation. First, Mensa is a floor, not a ceiling, and many Mensans do not fit the very high IQ profile I was describing. It would be absurd, however, to suggest that a strong tendency to think in the abstract is always tantamount to disillusionment, twisted perspective or a distorted worldview. It is a tendency, and as such can be successfully controlled, although Wesley Clark’s actions suggest that he has made no effort to do so. Or do you seriously wish to argue that the highly intelligent don’t think differently than those of average or subnormal intelligence?



Then there’s the fact that Mensa itself states that one of its goals is to create a society that is non-political, while your very article is written for WorldNetDaily, one of the most notorious extreme-right news sites around. Just so you know that I have a bit of a bias, I’m pretty liberal, but I’m not judging your article on the fact that you go off on the Democratic candadites, I’m rather dissatisfied with them this year too. I just thought you’d want to be aware of the irony of the fact that you not only disparage those with high IQs whilst belonging to Mensa, but also write for one of the most politically bent news organizations ever.

Mensa wishes the organization to be non-political, not to eradicate politics from society. And WND is far from being, as you say, “one of the most politically bent news organizations ever”. Our weekly commentators hail from a far broader range of the political spectrum than any major news organization, featuring left-liberal Democrats such as Bill Press, Ellen Ratner and Marilyn Polak to conventional Republicans like Pat Buchanan, David Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin, independents such as Joseph Farah and Libertarians such as Harry Browne, Ilana Mercer, and myself. WND also features a daily piece selected from the middle to extreme Left, which is far more than any left-liberal rag dares to do. (Okay, one of my pieces did appear in Pravda once, but I don’t think it’s left-wing anymore.) In any case, your statement is not only hopelessly incorrect, it borders on silly. Do you honestly believe the New York Times features a more balanced view than WND, devoid as it is of everything to the right of John Maynard Keynes with the exception of two moderate Republican editorialists?

I was not disparaging high intelligence, I was only warning of some of its inherent dangers. There has to be some reason that the intersection of intellectuals and government power tends to have a high body count, after all. I am suggesting a partial explanation.

I don’t know if the story about Commandant Gray is true, but this one is. When I was in college, Big Chilly and I stopped by to visit with a certain Marine general of my acquaintance, accompanied by another friend. Big Chilly and my other friend were a little taken aback when, after being introduced, the general pointed to a North Korean colonel’s hat and said: “You know the difference between you and me? I killed the man who wore that hat.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Big Chilly’s eyes so wide.

However, the general is nothing if not charismatic, and by the time we left his house two hours later, we were not only singing the Marine Corps anthem, but abandoning our respective plans for med school and starting a computer game development company while arguing vociferously about which branch of the Corps we were each going to pursue. Big Chilly wanted to take his perfect vision and go for a Harrier pilot, our other friend was intent on Force Recon, and I hoped to follow the lead of my grandfather into the 2NDMARDIV. This went on for about 90 minutes, until Big Chilly suddenly held up his hand and said: “wait a minute, I don’t want to join the Marine Corps!”

At which point the spell was broken and we went ahead with our lives, as previously planned. But if the USMC ever lacked for volunteers, all they need to do is put a recruiting station right outside the general’s driveway.

One Kiwi commenter reminded me of my Ozzie friend, Firestarter. I was exploring the Lombard interior with a pair of Australian couples in search of the mythical Zegna outlet, which gave me the opportunity to observe the species up close and personal. Firestarter was trying to figure out if an associate of his brother’s, who worked with the other guy’s wife, was the jerk he suspected him to be. The woman was reluctant to be forthcoming, which finally prompted her husband to burst out: “look, is he a wanker or is he a mate?”

But the women can hold their own. Both the guys were rhapsodizing all morning about a statue they’d seen the day before entitled Primavera, which, naturally, was a scantily-clad, barely pubescent, beautiful young girl. After listening to a long and monotonous duet on the aesthetic charms of youthful pulchritude, one of the women finally gestured to a young boy walking by and snapped: “You know, I’d really like to suck his d—!”

The other woman and I burst out laughing, while the two Ozzies looked suitably chastened for all of about five seconds, then cracked up themselves. Ozzies are great; they’re the only aliens I know who fully grok the fullness of American humor. And speaking of Firestarter, it’s been too long since we’ve talked. Give me a call, mate.

TBOGG comments: Unfortunately you make no case whatsoever, and so…no link for you. I do await your evidence of your “actual knowledge” of American military jargon.

Apparently someone’s not only ignorant of military nuance but also the fact that this blog is not where most people read me. No link to a blog? What, do I look like a blogwhore? As for actual knowledge, well, Joe Carter knows the evidence, but he won’t tell you. And neither will I, although this story might amuse you.

Some people just don’t understand a shot across the bow.

From NRO’s Corner: It strikes me that the Republican party is rapidly becoming the Democratic party of the first half of the 20th Century. Bush can be compared to Theodore Roosevelt – the first big government Republican, to FDR, and you yourself [Jonah Goldberg] compared him to LBJ. The Democratic Party today seems to be imploding while the GOP is rapidly recreating itself. I believe that in twenty years there will be a new conservative party, the Republicans will be the Old Democrats, and there will be no Democrats as we know them today. And I don’t mean a Patrick Buchanon-type conservative party.

Precisely. Now, if we can just get the Constitutionalists and the Libertarians to team up and adopt a Christian Libertarian position on abortion – using the unborn child’s unalienable right to life as a justification for secular libertarians while Christian conservatives will have to abandon their fondness for the War on Drugs – we can actually get things rolling. What the NRO reader describes is exactly what I’ve been envisioning myself.

The Republican Party is dead. Long live republicanism.