The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

America’s Decadent Elite

Posted on | July 22, 2012 | 27 Comments

More than 15 years have passed since Robert Bork published Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, one of the most astute analyses of its kind ever written. Bork emphasized that the 1960s were the pivotal epoch. In his introduction, however, Bork made an important point: The remarkably sudden collapse of the “Establishment” under the assault of Sixties radicalism indicated an inherent weakness within America’s elite, a vulnerability that was little suspected during the tranquil decade of the 1950s.

The Sixties, Bork observed, “brought to a crescendo developments in the Fifties and before that most of us had overlooked or misunderstood.” Citing various phenomena of the 1950s — including rock music, the radical social critique of C. Wright Mills and the so-called “Beat” culture of Kerouac and Ginsberg — Bork asserts that these were “harbingers of a new culture”:

“The Fifties were the years of Eisenhower’s presidency. Our domestic world seemed normal and, for the most part, almost placid. The signs were misleading. Politics is a lagging indicator. . . .
“[The rapid triumph of Sixties radicalism] suggests that the supposedly oppressive ‘Establishment,’ without realizing it themselves, had already been eaten hollow by the assumptions that flowered into modern liberalism. When the push came in the Sixies, an empty and guilt-ridden Establishment surrendered.”
— Robert H. Bork, Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (1996)

Anyone who carefuly studies the era must endorse Bork’s conclusion, whether or not they share his politics. He was clearly onto something, and it is extraordinary that his insight has not been further developed. What happened in the years between triumph in World War II — the pinnacle of our national prestige in what has been called “The American Century” — and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, which proved the flashpoint of the Culture Revolution? How was the Establishment “eaten hollow” during the roughly 15 years that elapsed between Whittaker Chambers’s exposure of Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy and that November afternoon in Dallas when a Communist sympathizer aimed his rifle at the motorcade in Dealey Plaza?

It’s not as if America had no warnings of the impending storm. In 1944, Friedrich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, which documented the inherent dangers of Western liberalism’s embrace of the Welfare State. In 1948, Richard Weaver published Ideas Have Consequences, examining the philosophical roots of modern cultural decline. And in 1951, a young man named William F. Buckley published God and Man at Yale, showing how leaders of America’s leading universities defended intellectual subversion in the name of “academic freedom.”

Taken together, those three books are now recognized as sort of an intellectual pedigree of post-war American conservatism, and constitute a fairly comprehensive critique of what Bork calls “the assumptions that flowered into modern liberalism.” Yet it is amazing in retrospect that, insofar as the Establishment’s ability to resist the subsequent radical onlaught, these prescient warnings fell on deaf ears. The Establishment either underestimated the sincerity of its radical enemies or else became “empty and guilt-ridden” because of its (perhaps not entirely conscious) sympathies with radical beliefs.

Bork’s insight has been stuck in my mind since I first encountered it in the mid-1990s, and the thought of turning it into a book, examining how we went from the Cold War liberalism of Harry Truman to the anti-American radicalism of the 1960s, has been in mind mind ever since.

What is needed, I think, is not an argumentative polemic, but rather a lively, detailed narrative history of the era, modeled somewhat on the pattern of liberal historian William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream. The point to be demonstrated is that historical change is not a product of anonymous deterministic forces — trends that are as irresistible as they are impersonal — but rather (a) history results from the ideas and actions of individuals, and (b) the beliefs and choices of leaders have a disproportionate influence on history.

Leaders who make change happen are often not recognized as leaders until after the fact. Prior to 1948, for example, almost no one could have predicted the enormous influence of the work of an Indiana University biology professor named Alfred Kinsey. Nor, for that matter, did anyone prior to 1963 suspect what changes would result from the work of a freelance magazine writer named Betty Friedan. What I have in mind would in some ways be a countweight to the Left’s class-oriented “social history” and its mechanical, materialistic concepts of change, as well as a rebuttal to the anti-American perspectives of Howard Zinn and other academic leftists.

This is another one of those Books Nobody Will Ever Pay Me to Write, but the idea has been stuck in my brain for 15 years. I spent a few minutes turning it over in my mind while driving home from the Smart Girls Summit today. It’s still a good idea. Just sayin’ . . .

 

Category: Books, History

Heston

Posted on | July 22, 2012 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Category: Uncategorized

Obama Campaign: Money for Nothing

Posted on | July 22, 2012 | 39 Comments

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia
A week ago, a Republican source pointed out that when the Obama campaign admitted its June fundraising fell short of Mitt Romney’s, they didn’t report their cash-on-hand total — an indication, the source suggested, that Team Obama’s spending was out of control. As I said, readers could “expect the Democrat freakout to intensify next Friday when we get the official FEC reports for June.”

The FEC reports show that in June, the Obama campaign raised $45.9 million, spent $58.1 million and finished the month with $97.5 cash on hand — so that their “burn rate” was nearly 27% in excess of contributions.  The Romney campaign raised $33 million, spent $27.5 million and finished June with $22.5 million cash on hand.

During a presidential campaign year, however, the national party committees are basically part of their candidate’s campaign, and when you add those funds in, Romney and the RNC actually now have more cash on hand than do Obama and the Democrats:

Heading into July, Romney and his party allies were left with nearly $170 million on hand, while Obama and the Democrats had $147 million.
That disparity — along with a record-breaking $20.6-million haul in June by the pro-Romney “super PAC” Restore Our Future — underscored the momentum enjoyed by Republicans in the money race, a source of sharp anxiety among Democrats. Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing Obama, also had its best fundraising month ever in June, but it notched just $6 million.

The Obama campaign’s June spending spree — flooding the airwaves with ads attacking Romney — might have made sense if the ads had done anything to shift the race in Obama’s favor. But if you look at the Real Clear Politics average, there is no indication that the early ad barrage accomplished anything significant, and certainly not what you’d expect to see with Obama outspending Romney 2-to-1.

On June 1, Obama led the RCP average by 2.3 points; he now leads by 1.7 points; he’s actually lost ground in the past six weeks. Nor is there any indication that Obama is blowing out Romney in the key battleground states where most of the campaign ad money has been spent. On June 1, Obama led the RCP average of Ohio polls by 3.8 points (46.8 to 43); he now leads by 4.3 points (47.3 to 43) — and the latest Rasmussen poll shows Romney within 2 points.

The takeaway point is that Obama’s poll numbers have been inflated by his early spending, but the cost-per-point has been extraordinarily high, and he can’t afford to keep it up — there will be no more months in which Obama out-spends Romney by such a wide margin as he did in  June. The overall money picture favors Romney, and everybody knows it:

“President Obama’s campaign will never have a more substantial advertising advantage than it has had over the past few weeks, yet there is no evidence to suggest that the ballot has moved,” Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, said in a July 16 memo.

UPDATE: Obama’s former economic adviser Elizabeth Warren is also burning through campaign cash at a furious rate, and with no more encouraging results to show for it. The problem with socialism is, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money, and this is ultimately as true in politics as in policy.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, Mitt Romney

No, Richard Kim, The U.S. Is Not As Jacked Up As Syria, Despite Your Ilk

Posted on | July 22, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Melissa Harris-Perry’s show featured Richard Kim from The Nation.com spouting what initially seemed more Commie piffle, but then I realized it’s kind of revelatory:

Do we want to live in that night?”Not with your creepy little indecent self, Kim. Why don’t you go line up for Sarah Silverman?

Kim Smitty
“The Dark Knight takes place in a failed state… because elites are corrupt, law enforcement’s corrupt. So far, so good. Are you going to preach that we should redistribute power, instead of redistributing wealth through that corrupt state?
But the thing that really marks it as a failed state is that the state has lost its monopoly on violence. What? There will never be a violence-free state, ever. And if you’re going to play the ‘monopoly’ card, then where in your argument would our real-world Crips, Bloods, and MS-13 fit in? Would you contend the U.S. is a failed state?
And in that situation, right, you have vigilantes like Batman, you have organized crime, you have terrorists. Kim, where in your Commie realm does the individual retain the ultimate right of self defense? Anywhere?
And what the movie depicts is that it’s very difficult in a failed state to tell what is just and unjust violence, right? Is it? Do you believe in any sort of ultimate Truth, and the freewill capacity of individuals to apply rationality to discern that Truth?
When you have people like George Zimmerman encouraged to vigilantism because we’ve cut all these police forces, you have the shards of a failed state so I think that’s a very profound, a very profound, sort of reflection, a dark reflection, really. Oh, you sucker-punching twerp! If there is any anti-justice vigilante afoot, Kim, it’s your little smarmy butt, Kim.

via Brietbart

Category: MSNBC

FMJRA 2.0: In The Rain

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 7 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


MULTIPLEX MASSACRE: 13 Dead After Shooting at Colorado ‘Batman’ Opening; UPDATE: Suspect Identified by Police as 24-Year-Old James Holmes; UPDATE: ABC News Interviews Suspect’s Mother? UPDATE: Despicable — Stephanopoulos Implicates Tea Party in Tragedy

‘Ground Zero’ in Fairfax County

‘They’re Demoralized as Hell!’

VIDEO: New Mitt Romney Ad Slams Obama’s Wasted Stimulus Money

Poison Pen E-Mail and the Harassment of the Lonely Conservative

How’s Your Gaelic, Neal Rauhauser?

Game ON.

Did Someone Say ‘Beandogs’?

Occupy Mob Riots in L.A.

Bucket List: Top Billing On A @TwitchyPolitics Post

Axis Of Fedora Puts Another Two Under The Brim

FMJRA 2.0: A Day Late And A Dollar Short

Professor Pervo’s Subsidized Wanking Class and the Higher Education Bubble

Satan Loves the Media ‘Veepstakes’

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: ‘You Know Who Likes Killing Babies? Jews Do!’

Thursday Is Mary Jo Kopechne Day; Would Government Health Care Have Been A Good Investment For Her?

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.17.12

Zany Breitbart.com, Thinking That The Days Of Legal Consistency Remain

Because Liars Hate Truth

Rewarding Failure, Punishing Success

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT: 07.18.12

Race Conditions

The Democrat Agenda 2012

‘You Didn’t Lose Your Job. Somebody Else Made That Happen.’

Chick-Fil-A Not Exactly ‘Reeling From Backlash’ Against Common-Sense Attitude

Ancient Commenter Solomon On The Topic Of Paint Huffers, Or Harry Reid, Insofar As A Difference Is Discernable

‘Higher Education Bubble’? Colorado Shooter Is Medical School Dropout

Top linkers this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (13)
  2. Daily Pundit (8)
  3. (tied) Hogewash and Zilla of the Resistance (6)
  4. (tied) Jackie Wellfonder, Nice Deb, and Zion’s Trumpet (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline for next week’s FMJRA is Friday, July 27.

Category: FMJRA Award

Colorado Massacre Caused by Heated Rhetoric and Kinky Sex Freak With 6,000 Rounds of Ammunition …

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 43 Comments

. . . but mainly it was the guy with 6,000 rounds of ammunition:

The gunman who blasted his way through a packed movie house early on Friday, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others, had apparently been planning his attack for weeks.
“In the last 60 days he purchased four guns at local metro gun shops, and through the Internet he purchased over 6,000 rounds of ammunition,” Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates said Friday night.

Contrary to anything you might have heard from ABC News, this wasn’t Jim Holmes, the 52-year-old Tea Party member whose name showed up in a Google search done by “investigative journalist” Brian Ross. No, this was James Holmes, a 24-year-old grad school dropout who was looking for kinky sex on the Internet:

Before launching his movie massacre, “Dark Knight” killing suspect James Holmes was unraveling — dropping out of a prestigious grad-school program, detaching from his family and trolling the Web for bizarre sex romps.
Police are looking into a posting on the sex Web site AdultFriendFinder.com that was apparently put up by Holmes to find group partners, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
In his lurid ad, he darkly alluded to crimes to come.
“Will you visit me in prison?” wrote the poster, who used the screen name “classicjimbo” to look for partners who were into “Women, Couples (man and woman), Groups or Couples (2 women).”
The sex posting features an image allegedly of Holmes sporting the red hair he wore at yesterday’s massacre.
He describes himself as 6 feet tall and single “with an athletic body” — though he admits he has a “short/average”-size penis.
“Looking for a fling or casual sex gal,” he wrote. “Am a nice guy. Well, as nice enough of a guy who does these sort of shenanigans.”

James Holmes — the accused mass murderer who is not a Colorado Tea Party member, no matter what anybody at ABC News may have told you — is into kinky sex, has a “short/average” penis, and was a “brilliant” science student from San Diego:

The son of a nurse, Arlene, and a software company manager, Robert, James Holmes was a brilliant science scholar in college.  . . .
The bookish demeanor concealed an unspooling life. Holmes struggled to find work after graduating with highest honors in spring 2010 with a neuroscience degree from the University of California, Riverside, said the neighbor, retired electrical engineer Tom Mai.
Holmes enrolled last year in a neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado-Denver but was in the process of withdrawing, said school officials, who didn’t provide a reason. The school later said in a statement that he left the program in June 2012.
As part of the advanced program in Denver, a James Holmes had been listed as making a presentation in May about Micro DNA Biomarkers in a class named “Biological Basis of Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders.”
In academic achievement, “he was at the top of the top,” recalled Riverside Chancellor Timothy P. White.
Holmes concentrated his study on “how we all behave,” White added. “It’s ironic and sad.”

So while the Department of Homeland Security has warned us about the threat of “right-wing extremists,” they forgot to warn us about the kinky science students with small penises.

Because I’m not an “investigative reporter” like Brian Ross of ABC News, I don’t believe everything I read on the Internet. Therefore, I urge extreme caution about reports that James Holmes — the kinky 24-year-old grad school dropout with the small/average penis — was involved in the “Occupy” movement.

The reason I urge caution is (a) I’ve seen no real evidence, and (b) it’s got that “too good to check” problem. If it subsequently turns out that Holmes was involved in “Occupy,” OK. But let’s not start speculating or jumping to conclusions, because then we’ll have no credibility at all, like Brian Ross and ABC News.

P.S.: The style of riff in the headline is, of course, completely stolen from Ace of Spades. I was talking to Jimmie Bise Jr. and he suggested it. So if you don’t like the headline, blame the Ewok and a big guy in a porkpie hat, but mainly . . .

Category: Colorado, Crime

A Tale Of Two Reviews

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 29 Comments

by Smitty

Emphasis mine throughout.

John Nolte is just a little bit gushing about the Dark Night Rises:

But unlike so many who disguise their resentment and hatred for America through the lie that criticism somehow equals patriotism, Nolan’s love for this country is without qualifiers and symbolized in all its unqualified sincerity in the form of a beautiful young child sweetly singing a complete version of “The Star Spangled Banner” — just before “Occupy” attempts to fulfill its horrific vision of what “equality” really means.
Nolan’s genius as a filmmaker is without question. The pacing, editing, performances, and humanity of “Rises” will be talked about for decades. But his real genius is in how he expresses his vision and theme. While all of Hollywood embraces nihilism wrapped in irony, Nolan moves us with an inexpressibly touching faith in humanity. While all of Hollywood embraces CGI, the shaky-cam, and hyper-editing, Nolan sets his story in the real world and allows us to see what’s going on. And as all of Hollywood embraces hollow, artless, left-wing tripe, Nolan delivers crowd-pleasing, thematically-driven classical art that ennobles the human spirit and while doing so breaks box office records.

Meanwhile, former Rolling Stone editor Kurt Loder offers a yawn:

The film is thick with politics of an obliviously nonsensical sort. In an attempt to lend the tale contemporary resonance, the script (by director Nolan and his brother, Jonathan) positions Bane as a self-declared revolutionary, come to liberate Gotham from its oppression by the city’s wealthy upper crust (the One Percent, if it need be said). But Bane is so clearly a vicious nihilist—he empties the municipal prison, arms the freed inmates, sets up kangaroo courts—that it’s not at all clear why the inexplicably angry populace (they’re living in a city scrubbed crime-free after the death of Harvey Dent—what is their problem?) would so ecstatically rally to him. Members of the real-world Occupy movement may bristle at being thus depicted, even at second hand, as witless sheep.

It sounds as though the film could be a case study in confirmation bias. Will I give up three hours of blogging to go see this flick? For some reason, I just can’t park myself long enough to watch things I know I need to see.

Category: Movies

In the 17th Paragraph, She Mentions That the Corrupt Mayor Is a Democrat

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 9 Comments

Kate Zernike of the New York Times:

TRENTON — To measure the decay here in New Jersey’s capital, residents could have counted the unfilled public pools, the shuttered libraries and police stations, the block after block of boarded-up stores and homes.
But they did not need to go that far. The city was falling apart from the top.
It started just a month after Mayor Tony F. Mack took office in 2010, when his housing director quit after it was revealed that the official had being indicted on charges of forgery and theft. Two months later, one of his judicial appointees quit over bad checks and unpaid debt, and his business administrator — the second of seven, during just nine months — resigned, having stolen from a Congressional campaign.
Then the mayor’s half brother was indicted on a charge of using city resources to do private work. And the chief of staff who Mr. Mack promised would finally bring order resigned after the police said they found him near City Hall with heroin.
So it was momentous but not surprising when the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided City Hall on Thursday morning after descending with search warrants the morning before on the homes of the mayor, his brother and one of the mayor’s chief donors. . . .

Keep reading and you’ll eventually discover that the corrupt incompetent mayor is, in fact, a Democrat.

Category: Corruption, Democrats, New Jersey
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