1. James W. Caesar takes an interesting look at the Democrats, and tells us why they are now "The Stupid Party." Since the demise of the Old Left and the rise of the New Left, the party has struggled to define its "public philosophy." Caesar doesn't say this, but I believe much of their woes come down to the fact that they are socialists, but openly admitting it would be electoral suicide. So they lie to America and to themselves -- and yes, that would make them stupid. The piece is well worth reading for its historical perspective of how the Democrats changed in the 20th century.
2. Metrosexuals, real men and Hollywood. What conclusion can we draw from this list of types common in post-modern Hollywood?
The Doofus Dad. The strong-willed woman. Gangsta rappers. Punk and pop singers.
They show how egalitarianism affects culture. The father figure is a person with power in the old patriarchal system, so he must be made a lovable doofus at best, a mean bastard at worst. Women must be shown as stronger than men (see the Alien series and The Core, a wretched movie in which men break down and cry all over the place). Writers quickly pick up on these cultural cues delivered by the New Left's political correctness and make their scripts conform. (In this post I give an example of what we're missing nowadays by making our stories conform to political correctness.)
3. Monica looks at the religious right.
4. Captain Ed on the angry demagogue, Alan Keyes. Captain Ed agrees with this part of Keyes's message:
The genius of the Declaration, and later its influence on the Constitution, came in the recognition of natural rights that flowed from man's relation to his Creator. Eliminate the Creator, and humans become nothing more than mere organisms that have no claim to any rights as a natural function of their being, and instead must rely on the mercy of his fellow men and the governments they create to bestow or deny these rights.
If we eliminate the Creator (for whom there is no evidence), we do not wipe out man's nature as a rational animal. Man's rights come from his nature as a being who uses reason. Men must treat one another with reason; if instead they initiate force, then they violate other men's rights.
5.
| What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane. | |
| Dedicated Reader | |
| Book Snob | |
| Literate Good Citizen | |
| Non-Reader | |
| Fad Reader | |
| What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz | |
(HT: Born Again Redneck)
6. Read Richard Salsman and weep. For seven years stocks have been stagnant -- like the 1970's.
(HT: Inspector)
UPDATE: If you want to know why inflation is a problem, check out this chart. Could the fact that federal spending has risen more under Bush than any other President in 30 years have something to do with it? That spending has to be paid for somehow, and inflation is the hidden tax that does it. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" comes at the expense of those who have saved and those on fixed incomes.
7 comments:
"Compassionate conservatism" is just another name for liberalism.
Not to mention, it shows the effect of the anti-hero and altruism's inability to write a convincing Good Guy. We either get an altruistic pansy or an egoistic, but really flawed and predatory anti-hero.
I really like how the author of that piece characterizes it. I, too, have used the word "starving" to describe living in and trying to find nourishment in today's culture. It's like eating some kind of thin gruel: you can fill your stomach with great volumes of it, but can never really be satisfied.
Hmm, I may have to HT you myself, as I feel thoughts coming on.
Thanks for the link. As I mentioned in the post that caught your eye, I have a long history of commenting on the dunderhead family patriarch.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+site:mkfreeberg.webloggin.com+doofus+dad
http://mkfreeberg.webloggin.com/the-doofus-dad-list/
Pardon the spam, I tried to send this to you in an offline but couldn't find your address.
MK Freeberg, thanks for the links. I don't consider that spam.
Ed, maybe compassionate conservatism is the real conservatism. Maybe we need radicals for capitalism instead.
Your link to "The Stupid Party" is interesting; despite its lack of philosophic grounding (e.g. regarding the New Left of the 1960's as somehow a break with old-guard liberalism, rather than the latter merely reaching its logical end-of-road) it nonetheless provides a glimpse into what is coming for the Republicans when their Big Tent falls. Swap in the God wing for the cultural Left, and the pragmatic Democrats for the secular libertarianish Right, and, there you go; the logic is the same.
The only difference I see is that the Republican collapse and subjugation to the religious conservatives will happen much faster -- I say within three election cycles. Also, unlike the old-guard liberals, who could flee to the opposing party, the pro-American remnants on the Right won't have anywhere left to go -- unless Objectivist ideas have taken sufficient hold in the culture to give them a philosophical standard to which they can repair.
Myrhaf, the modern day "conservative" is a myth. We have liberals in the GOP and socialists in the Democratic party.
I'm not surprised to see that you are also an "Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm."
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