Amen.
Allow me to quote Rod -- positively, for a change -- on the news that the GOP has lost the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate:
Well said, Rod, and it is perhaps hubris of an especially irresponsible sort that seeks to hand the reins of power to a party wholly unserious about foreign policy during wartime just to punish the ones who are serious about facing our enemies, even if that party's weighed down by incompetence and corruption.
It's counter-productive and frankly moronic to give power to the party of John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and your precious Jimmy Carter, but with too small a tent for its 2000 vice-presidential nominee. It's counter-productive if, that is, you actually take seriously the threat of jihad and actually don't want another thirty years of appeasement and half-measures against an enemy with the will and increasingly the means to kill us and our allies by great numbers. As Cubeland Mystic pointed out, "this election now just about guarantees that all those little kindergarten males you see today will now certainly be fighting in wars twenty years from now." In matters of war and peace, modern Democrats are utterly incapable of wanting or even achieving a decisive victory.
But you should go ahead, tell us how "buoyant" you are after this defeat for those who are serious about foreign policy, and then continue to preach to us about hubris.
By acknowledging that nemesis always follows hubris, you've set the stage for another principle of Greek drama: irony.
Update, November 14th. Thomas Sowell has a great article out today, and it addresses precisely the sort of attitude Rod Dreher displayed as the election approached. It ought to go without saying that Rod wasn't the only self-professed conservative throwing such a temper tantrum; would that he were.
Counting the cost remains a sound principle that is too often ignored.
Nemesis always follows hubris.
Well said, Rod, and it is perhaps hubris of an especially irresponsible sort that seeks to hand the reins of power to a party wholly unserious about foreign policy during wartime just to punish the ones who are serious about facing our enemies, even if that party's weighed down by incompetence and corruption.
It's counter-productive and frankly moronic to give power to the party of John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and your precious Jimmy Carter, but with too small a tent for its 2000 vice-presidential nominee. It's counter-productive if, that is, you actually take seriously the threat of jihad and actually don't want another thirty years of appeasement and half-measures against an enemy with the will and increasingly the means to kill us and our allies by great numbers. As Cubeland Mystic pointed out, "this election now just about guarantees that all those little kindergarten males you see today will now certainly be fighting in wars twenty years from now." In matters of war and peace, modern Democrats are utterly incapable of wanting or even achieving a decisive victory.
But you should go ahead, tell us how "buoyant" you are after this defeat for those who are serious about foreign policy, and then continue to preach to us about hubris.
By acknowledging that nemesis always follows hubris, you've set the stage for another principle of Greek drama: irony.
Update, November 14th. Thomas Sowell has a great article out today, and it addresses precisely the sort of attitude Rod Dreher displayed as the election approached. It ought to go without saying that Rod wasn't the only self-professed conservative throwing such a temper tantrum; would that he were.
If the Republican leaders have learned nothing from their recent defeat, perhaps some Republican supporters will. Some of the most baffling e-mails received from conservative Republicans before the election were those which said that they were so disillusioned and/or disgusted with the Bush administration that they were going to vote for Democrats in order to send a message.
This is the kind of emotional self-indulgence common among liberals but apparently some conservatives have now also come to see elections as occasions to vent their feelings rather than to choose among existing options for the future of the country.
Sending a message may have its benefits but — as with all benefits — the question must be asked: "At what cost?"
On the Left, it is acceptable to say things like "open space" or "alternative fuels" without any thought of the cost. What is new is finding the same spirit now flourishing among some conservatives as well.
As events unfold over time, perhaps those conservatives will reconsider whether it was worth it to "send a message" to President Bush at the cost of making Senator Pat Leahy chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senator Leahy’s control of that committee virtually guarantees that the only kind of federal judges who can get confirmed are the kind who are likely to spend decades on the bench creating new "rights" for criminals, illegal aliens, and terrorists.
Was that price even considered by conservatives who indulged their anger instead of weighing alternatives?
Counting the cost remains a sound principle that is too often ignored.
posted by Anonymous at 9:10 AM
53 Comments:
Benedict is bouyant because he sees this election as a sanction of the ideas in his book, therefore he thinks this election is proof that he is a visionary (as he has suspected about himself all along).
anyway bubba, what are you worried about? doncha know we're going to have a democrat congress that is *more socially conservative* than the republican congress was? all is one, man. breathe. it's all good.
You've probably read this, but if not, the brilliant Sowell.
i love the thinking that "america's foreign policy is creating generations upon generations of terrorists", which thinking couples itself with "rumsfeld is the reason we are losing iraq -- he's gone! calloo callay! happy days are here again!" what is the thinking, exactly? that we are now going to withdraw from iraq and the terrorists will leave us alone? OR that we are now going to kick ass in iraq, while simultaneously pacifying the terrorists who resent our being there? and that one man, rumsfeld, was the reason there were difficulties in the first place? i wish.
allow me to compare and contrast conservative Benedict Rod Ray with conservative Limbaugh:
"I'm not going to eat my own, and I'm not going to throw my own overboard, particularly in a campaign, and particularly when the country is at war -- and I'm not going to do it for selfish reasons, and I'm not going to do it to stand out, and I'm not going to do it to be different. I'm not going to do it to draw attention from our enemies. I'm not going to do anything I do so that the Drive-By Media will like me or think that, 'Ooooh, Limbaugh has changed! Ooooh, Limbaugh is coming around!' That's not my thinking. My thinking is: the left doesn't deserve to win. My thinking is: the country is imperiled with liberal victory. We may not have the best people on our side, but they're better than what we have on the left. "
-- so what is the opposite of this thinking? conservatives who would rather "stand out" and "be liked" than protect the country from further peril by facilitating a democrat win.
Pikku
Rod is a pendejo.
Bubba
Thanks for quoting me in your post. Not my best sentence though. You can remove two of the three usages of “Now” in the quote. You guys should consider turning this blog into a regular magazine. You can start by confronting hyphenated conservatism. You should expand beyond your current subject.
I manage to hold to my simple values without stupidly enabling Stalinists to take control of our country. Perhaps it is the result of working in big business that I see that rolling back the clock 300 years is not the answer to modern problems. It is our forefather’s intentions that interests me, not how they lived on the farm. There is something so et tu Brute about this loss.
Today is a good day to criticize Republicans because the election is over, not yesterday. Now we have Senator Leahy.
There is enough style and talent here that you all should seriously consider broadening your scope.
I have to feel kind of bad for Rush when I imagine him hurrying after his show to the CrunchyCon blog to see if Rod mentioned him so he can maybe get a bunch of new listeners. Then he sees how thoroughly Rod refutes and trashes what he says. It must be really depressing to him. After all, he's only human. Like Dan Rather.
But SVS, Benedict is a great example of an attitude that is rampant today: forget the truth, forget principle, forget intellectual consistency or coherence forget maturity and accountability -- all that matters is *I LOOK SMART*, *I LOOK SPECIAL*, *PEOPLE LIKE ME*, *PEOPLE APPROVE OF ME*. you could also say it's a failure of Our Working Boy and many in his generation to grow up. I'm not so interested in Benedict per se (God knows, my eyes usually glaze over by sentence 2 of any given post of his), just the fact that he is a great example of this attitude, which screams to be taken down.
gee SVS, it's not like he posted about ted haggard more than 7 or 8 times.
SVS
Don't you think that is a little hard? You are a little older than he us, he is still kind of young. Late 30's is when you put your house in order and sign the check. It's just immaturity.
What you should do is look at hyphenated conservatism, and start to redirect people's thinking using your humor and skillful argumentation. Try to promote this blog and get your readership up.
Also, there is room in conservatism for ideas that promote simple lifestyles. The ideas that I'd promote are thrift, hard work, saving, faith, etc. Those don't really work in big business, but at the domestic level they still do. It could still be satirical but not as a reaction to CCism.
The man has some disagreeable habits of mind manifest in certain public postures (e.g. an insistence that errors of judgment on his part are a consequence of others misleading him - accusations, accusations). Saying he is despicable globally is rather de trop. He makes an unconvincing James Bond villain.
I do not imagine Mrs. Dreher is terribly pleased with dyspeptic speculation about the future trajectory of their marriage (and she is an innocent party).
"If they actively desire a failure in American foreign policy because such failure would vindicate their ideology, it can't be said that they're truly patriotic."
How long are you going to abide the dems and their foolishness, before the dems can make the same assertion about you?
I don't disagree with your assertion, but your point is interesting. There is a limit when politicians go too far. There is something to be said about sacred ground. Perhaps your attitude about these things is influenced by the amount of your own DNA beneath your feet as you walk through a graveyard.
Admittedly I don't have a lot of DNA in the game here. But there others who do. I can understand the reticence about throwing it all away on something you don‘t understand.
This is where we probably part company. Someone directing my life's choice horizon from a Washington or some corporate boardroom is more than a little distasteful. These decisions get into some visceral areas like taxes, retirement, healthcare, education. At some point the elite thinking is so different than your own you say "no thank you, I'll pass on this little piece of idiocy."
You ask yourself why are we really fighting? Is it because short sighted managers have leveraged their companies to the teeth and if the economy slowed that it would mean universal disaster. So the unvoted deeds of a few impact us all. Enough to send your sacred soil (a child) to die in an avoidable economic war. Especially if conservative values were applied to the problems in the first place. Those people who call for war better be pretty darn aligned with my values before I am going to buy into it. Plus, I am old enough now to see meat axe logic applied to plenty of subtle situations that require a more nuanced response. In other words, I would say to the leadership, "go think this through, you can probably do better."
Sorry that's my hidden inner Larison comming out. :-)
"How long are you going to abide the dems and their foolishness, before the dems can make the same assertion about you?"
In other words, would you follow the dems into war if you did not agree with it, and when they called you a traitor for your dissent how would you react?
Hey, JC weighs in against Dreher's latest Catholic attack. Classic Carp.
Just for the sake of clarity my question was not my opinion in the form of a question. It was really a question.
"I will not desire an American defeat because of her."
I could not agree with you more here. I suspect that the Iraq war is more stategic than anything. If we stay the course or leave it sends a message to our enemies that we will still fight, despite the cost of cheap goods turned out by slave labor ;-) For us to run away now, is to horrible to ponder.
"Patriotic Americans can disagree on whether a war is just or wise, but once we're in it, patriotic Americans pull for the team."
This is my view also, and the problem for me. There is one "but monkey" though. The lead up to the war. I have trouble identifiying with pro-death types as a fellow citizens. I can't quite get on the same page with them. I cannot get past it. It's hard for me to see them as part of the team. In the build up phase, it would be hard for me to support their war. But once the war started, I could fight, it would be reluctant. I could see my kids go to protect the Bubbas of the world. But to make the commitment for a the leftists who hate our country and us, my faith is not that strong.
For you guys, Rod, most of the others on the right with whom you disagree I could go to war for you all. But the hardcore left, I don't know. I really struggle with it as I get older. I am not sure we are on the same team. That's why I ask the question.
Bubba
If you are inclined to agree with the Iranian supreme leader, then who gave the Iranians this victory?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Pauli, Bubba, SVS
What is a Nazgul?
Cubeland, I think I know exactly what you are saying (even if you weren't exactly clear the first time around). Western culture is, increasingly, indistinguishable from the Culture of Death. Given this fact, why should we root for American victory abroad? Do we really want the world made over in our own, increasingly dubious, image?
By the way, before anyone clubs me too hard for what I've said here, not rooting for American victory isn't the same thing as relishing the idea of American GIs getting maimed or killed. It just means seeing the big picture for what it is.
"Western culture is, increasingly, indistinguishable from the Culture of Death. Given this fact, why should we root for American victory abroad? "
I was trying to look at it from the paleo-con perspective. Not that I understand what one is really, but I am trying.
The reason we should root for an American victory abroad is because one is never sure of the strategic motivations of the war. It may have more to do with the Chineese sub following the aircraft carrier than stomping out the fanatics.
The broader point that I was trying to make is at what point has the leadership violated the intention of the Constitution, and what is the proper reaction to it.
Diane, the difference between us is that I felt the same way prior to the election, and I would have felt that way if the election had turned out differently. I don't think American/Western culture is still a Culture of Death today even when the GOP is in charge, although the GOP is admittedly more likely to appoint judges less enamored of "Roe" than the Deathocrats are.
my post should read "American culture is still a culture of death"-- the "not" is an imposter. Sorry for the confusion.
Diane, when you wrote "thy Kingdome come" were you thinking of the Seattle Kingdome?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
aren't (a) (cast a spell) and b (voters are morons) the same thing? in other words, people do what they do because they are morons. how very unlike Our Working Boy's premise in "crunchy cons".
OK - finally read that painful U2/REM post. What can I say? It's just really incomplete. What about the Smiths? What about Softcell? What about Echo and the Bunnymen? What about the Devo, Ocean Blue, Cocteau Twins, Housemartins, New Order, Gene Loves Jezebel, Ultravox, Siouxie, Cure, PIL, Love and Rockets, Blow Monkeys, Fugazi, Alarm, the Church, Pixies, Clan of Xymox, J&M Chain........
WHAT ABOUT KITCHENS OF DISTINCTION!?!?!?
I firmly believe that Duran Duran in the 80s was better than both REM and U2. How's that for a contra-crunchy, anti-snob stance, comrades?
And Bubba, it doesn't hurt my feelings if it's hard for you to take me seriously. I'm just right, that's all. (I'd write a sideways winking smiley face here, but I'm too much of a snob to do something so pedestrian-- although not enough of a snob to enthusiastically declare my alleigance to Duran Duran...)
above post should read: "not enough of a snob TO BE ASHAMED to declare my allegiance to Duran Duran..."
THE POLICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had to search the page to see if I missed someone's mention.
Pikku
You got five Mariachi songs on your Ipod? Are you serious?
Pikkuhueño,
I got some beer. You got the mariachi music?
I'll make Mrs. Mystic barbeque some tripas.
I liked REM before anyone ever heard of them. in fact, i liked REM before they were formed. No, I liked them even when they weren't yet born. I liked them when they were a mere clump of stem cells and hadn't yet started breathing, let alone speaking and singing and performing. do i get a nobel prize for that?
No problem Bubba. After all, as poet LeBon once wrote, "the reflex is an only child who's waiting by the pond." Meaning, we all make snarky remarks on reflex sometimes.
pikku, i have the joni mitchell jazzy songs on my ipod too. i too never listen to them. it's time to clean ipod.
perhaps this should be a regular feature, what contras have on their ipods. our playlists will no doubt be greeted with snorts of derision from the likes of larison and stooksboy. which is probably a good reason to post them. we owe it to our audience.
"Was that price even considered by conservatives who indulged their anger instead of weighing alternatives?"
That really says it all.
If the USCCB disapproves of Sowell's remarks maybe Rod will cover it. Otherwise, fat chance.
If you want to "send a message" to your congress-person or the President or anyone in government there are excellent ways to do this without voting in worse actors. For example, what about writing a letter? I've done that several times. You can send emails, but most agree that a signed letter is much more effective.
You can phone someone's office as well. We did that to ol' King George Voinovich when the rumor got around that he was going to take a pass on endorsing the marriage defense amendment in 2004. An email went around all day with his phone number on it. By the time I called the number, the staffer was answering the phone by yelling "HE'S SUPPORTING THE AMENDMENT, OK??" Senator George obviously got the message.
But how does not voting for someone send any discernable coherent message at all? I'm sure the high-school prom queen was broken up that you didn't have the nerve to ask her out and she probably guessed that this non-action of yours was due to your disapproval of her views on illegal immigration. I suppose an incoherent message delivered at the polls would be a good match for the incoherent blog ramblings of many of these tantrum-throwing troglodytes.
Sowell rocks, thanks.
do we have a count as of wednesday AM, with yet *another* new post about bishops and gays, what percentage of benedict's posts are about the catholic church and/or gays? (and how many of those end with a question mark?)
oh sorry, he's not the one with obsessions, we are.
Kathleen, I was just thinking about how damning such a count could be. You're the expert on stuff like that, so I think you just nominated yourself.
yeah, but last time i did that jennifer said i was obsessed and i sulked about that for a good .5 seconds.
I knew Mark Shea would have a couple of posts up today defending himself from the Rod defenders. It would be great to hear what Shea says off the record about Captain Crunch, but they agree on so many of the "Buck Fush" items that he stands down.
oh yeah, the mark shea blog. that brings back fond memories of what one might call sheaboarding.... anyway, what i don't understand about amy's comments -- "it would have been 'good form' for benedict not to talk about the bishops, but what's the big deal?" -- is why "good form" is treated as so marginal a consideration. "good form" is a sign of maturity, of healthy functional adulthood. because it is sadly lacking almost everywhere doesn't mean such lack should be tolerated in decorous silence.
Kat: "...what i don't understand about amy's comments -- "it would have been 'good form' for benedict not to talk about the bishops, but what's the big deal?" -- is why "good form" is treated as so marginal a consideration...."
Amy provides a good example here of how some members of the club a given a pass. Rod will probably always be a popular guy with Mark and Amy and my guess is that he'll continue to push the envelope on the Catholic thing. The main reason Rod doesn't attempt to uncover the skeletons in Greek Orthodoxy is because the copy would seem so irrelevant. After all, it's not being talked about on NPR.
It's pretty funny Mark Shea keeps baiting me on his blog while i'm still banned from commenting on it. that's class! you'd think he would have washed his hands of the likes of me, what with me being a "Witch Queen" and all, but he has let slip the fact that keeps reading us.
hey Mark Shea! back for another daily dose of damnation?! you just can't stop yourself, can you?
i keep thinking i'm done with dreher and his friends, but astonishingly they keep coming back and asking for more. it's like shooting fish a in a freaking barrel.
back to the more interesting subject of 80's bands and what's on my ipod:
in 50 years, people will still be listening to Journey. Steve Perry has the voice of a god. deal with it.
and Cube, thanks (once again) for your chivalrous vote of confidence over at sheaboarding central.
meanwhile, over at benedictblog, *yet another* new post about gays as of this (wednesday) evening. my cup runneth over.
"Wheel in the Sky keeps on turning" -- great band, too, killer drummer -- was it Steve Smith? I really liked that song "Lights" with that 6/8 beat and those great "whooooa" harmonies.
Cube -
I am moved beyond words by your saintly and inveterate acts of Christian charity and educational "outreach" in posting comments to this blog.
I thought I'd pass on two killer items from the current week's installment of the third-best "blog" (as I think they're called; third, that is, after The Immakulate Direktion and those "Skrappy" Kontra-Grungies 'Hi-O SilVal[Steve], Away', 'Johnny B[olton] Goode', 'Pauli Boy', 'The Kathleen O. Reilly Factor', and (as if we had any choice to forget) former president 'Bubba') I've ever read, at
http://www.solopassion.com/node/1908
The first item, at top, provides the bread recipe of a lifetime:
"I’m not counting sliced bread as a positive step, but Jim Lahey’s method may be the greatest thing since...the results are indeed fantastic...The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I’ve used, and will blow your mind...The baking itself is virtually foolproof...you will be rewarded with the best no-work bread you have ever made."
The other item, second from the bottom, salutes the cream of American radio:
"Chalk it up to convert's zeal - but as of a week ago, just one listen, that's all it took - and I wish I had been tuning into Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour since its debut in May on XM satellite radio's commercial-free 'Deep Tracks' station on channel 40 - even though it would have required me, in the months before our hearthside transmitter arrived to complement its automotive godfather, to sit out in the cold in our Denali by the garage for an hour. It's a delight - Bob plays his all-over-the-map collections of rarities and venerable chestnuts with an unpretentious blend of hipster cool, puckish humor and innocent childlike glee.*
*[Those without XM radio but with DirecTV on satellite can pick up Bob's show on channel 840 five times weekly (and four times on upper-tier channel 813). The show is also 'broadcast' over the internet, with a free three-day trial for newcomers. See here for details and times.
Bob was in top form with his latest installment, which debuted at 10am Eastern last Wednesday - his theme of the week was Sleep, and among his interdisc patter came a passage from Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquoy ('For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...'), and others from James Joyce and Rainer Maria Rilke; a clip of Ed Norton from The Honeymooners, calling out while sleepwalking for his beloved childhood dog Lulu, and another clip of 'Third Stooge' Curly snoring in rhythm; a puckish capsule history of the death-defying development of the mattress in the 19th century; even, as Bob riffed on the sleep theme in lore and legend, the theme to the early-1960s Bullwinkle-sidebar Fractured Fairy Tales. To say nothing of the rock, country, folk and blues tracks he played -which included a choice 1966 cut from George Jones ('I must have seventy George Jones records in my collection by now, which also serve as a history of men's hairstyles - here's a track from when George had a brushcut and muttonchop sideburns') - and another from The Monkees ('Love Is Only Sleeping').
Since many of us have played Rip van Winkle during Bob's first six months on the air, the urge to start taping Theme Time Radio Hour instanter meets no resistance. And not for nothing did the Orange County Register say of the show, 'It's as if the guy somehow stole the heart (but not the soul) of a 25-year-old', for within minutes, a listener feels like one of those ghostly hands from the cartoons beckoning characters with seductive aromas has magically lifted you from the muck of latter-day Kulturkampf and set you down unawares smack in the middle of 1966 (when BD was, in fact, 25) at its sunniest, most enchanted and alive with energetic promise, where you have just made fast friends with a newcomer to the bar who you feel like you've known all your life and can't wait to hang with and catch up with world without end.
I like Bob's show."
Back in these comboxes very soon - I've off to do my part in shoulder-to-the-wheel solidarity with The Great Patriotic War to blow a Rod, while doing my feeble damnedest to hide how deeply indebted to him and his blog I really am for my continued *raison d'etre.*
Scott
Thank you for the technique I will pass this on to Mrs. Mystic. She's the baker.
She does bread really well. We also have the equipment.
I have trouble with this debate, since we are technically all on the same team so far. It's easy to be saintly with folks on the same team. I am not so saintly with the folks on the other team. I feel at home with religious conservatives.
Even though I don't think this argument is really about style over substance, the book did not do a good job of demonstrating that.
For example, food. The mystic can go weeks without eating store bought vegies, but when I have to go back to them I can sometimes taste the pesticides on the produce. It tastes like the way the house smells if you have it sprayed for bugs. Another example is when you have some processed foods after a fast. They taste excessively smokey, salty, greasy, or stale. These are foods you ate your whole life. Then you think something is not right here.
When you read the lables of common foods a lot of them have sugars added to them. Then you wonder why there is a lot of fat diabetics running around.
Food is so small, I only use it because we all relate to it. But then on the other hand, I wonder how fast the organic movement will last when those ultra hip trendy upper middle class liberal chicks bite into an apple maggot in their unsprayed apple. Or when the organic restaurant gets sued because someone finds a live grasshopper in their salad. Give up poison eat bugs. You can't have it both ways.
hey Mark Shea, you linked to *my blogger profile* while calling me the Witch Queen of Angmar? you know what? you're a creep, and for all i know a dangerous one. you've got a screw loose.
When it comes to arguments that Western Civilization is not only unsalvagable but not worth salvaging, this is the nuts:
in 50 years, people will still be listening to Journey.
If I believed that, I'd be stockpiling food and textbooks up in the mountains somewhere so hard it'd make squirrels preparing for winter stop and hang their heads in shame.
Since, however, the only people listening to Journey in 50 years will be over 90, I remain sanguine about the future of our civilization.
What about Urge Overkill? Great arena rock schtick, too bad about Blackie and the China White issue. My take on UO is that it is tribute and parody wrapped up in 90's vermouth-dry sarcasm with great guitar licks and pompous high-collared uniforms. Loved "Sister Havana" and almost everything on Saturation.
amazon rank for journey's greatest hits: #316
for the cure's greatest hits: #868
dude, i'm so right.
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