May
30, 2006
Into The Wilds---Sort Of
It is done. The best year of my life is done. The
best students at the best school with the best colleagues. Done for the year. Now what?
Well, I have ten weeks off---one of the very cool
things about teaching. And why complain about the pay if teachers get three
months off every year? Actually, I do not complain at all. Like I said, I just
had the best year of my life. So: Now what?
Tomorrow I leave for Oregon, there to hang out and
enjoy Tim, Kristina and David, just about the finest people on earth. Food.
fellowship and conversation beckon there. And of course, backpacking. Walking
alone in God's creation seems a fitting way to end one school year and prepare
for another. And without the wilds I would go mad.
I have walked a bit---ten days all told---on the
Pacific Crest Trail. I now have the
time to wander about for 300 miles on the thing both in Oregon and Washington.
One goal is to break my
record of 15 days alone on a walkabout. That occurred some years ago in the
Andes of Peru. And yes, of course the Pacific Crest Trail is not as demanding or
risky as walking through the Peruvian jungles, but the climes of South America will just have to wait.
As will writing. I have no
idea if I will have access to the software I need to put thoughts to my
blog.
In the meantime will come the forests and mountains
and lakes of Oregon. I am certain that God made them just for me.
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May
24, 2006
China Does the Melian Dialogue
It is almost summer, and so it is time for the
yearly scary report from the Department of Defense about the military dreams of
China. It covers the usual ground: China is an 'emerging superpower' whose
ambitions include hegemony in the Pacific, conquest of Taiwan, a spreading
influence in Latin America and control of the world's resources. The earth must
be made ready to tremble before the awesome specter of one billion Chinese
marching to the military fantasies of an all-conquering Politburo.
We have heard all of this before. We will hear about
it again next year at this time. And the next year after that. And every year
until reality does to the dreams of China what it did to the dreams of Athens.
It was in the Mediterranean some 2500 years ago that
Athens had the Chinese-type of grandiose visions, of an all-conquering Athens
dominating the Aegean, controlling Persia, defeating Syracuse---the infamous
'Sicilian Expedition'---crushing Sparta and eventually moving on Carthage and
Italy. Like China to Tibet, Athens was especially murderous to those weaker
states who would not dance to her imperial tune. Such was the case of the little
island of Melos. Her people refused to join in Athens' crusade. In a famous
speech put into the mouths of Athenian delegates by
Thucydides, we read of the
uses of political power as seen by the Greek city-state.
The standard of justice depends upon
the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they
have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.
Our opinion of the gods and our
knowledge of men leads us to conclude that it is a general and necessary
law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law we made ourselves
nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already
in existence and we shall leave it to exist forever among those who come
after us.
In an eerie echo we
read Lt. Gen. Liu
Yazhou of the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force:
When a nation grows strong enough,
it practices hegemony. The sole purpose of power is to pursue even greater
power...Geography is destiny...when a country begins to rise, it should
first set itself in an invincible position.
Here again is the philosophy of the
slave-state, a concept of power practiced from Sumer to Babylon to Assyria to
the Greeks, and on and bloody on to Nazi Germany, the USSR and Saddam Hussein's
Iraq. The business of Athens was slavery, and so it is with China.
And what
happened to those brave inhabitants of Melos? Why, the Athenians
executed every male of military age and enslaved the women and children.
Which is more or less what the Chinese did to Tibet. And what they plan to do
to Taiwan. Thus says the China Daily:
Taiwan independence means
war.
Ah yes, just
what the Athenians said to Melos if that island refused to bend the
knee. Four thousand years of history, and the best that China can do is
ape the hubris infected Athenians of 2500 years ago? Are death
and slavery all that China can offer?
Well, yes.
Here is
more on China's fantasies concerning Taiwan.
(Update: Here is
Mark Steyn's latest piece on China.)
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May
23, 2006
Miles To Go Before I Sleep
I have been teaching for
14 years, and yet always I forget how much there is to do before
students and teachers scatter thither and yon for summer. A short
summary of things undone: grades, graduation, 8th grade activities,
parent conferences, yearbook signing, book collection, supply lists,
painful goodbyes. And my classroom is a disaster, simply all a-clutter
with the detritus of one year of stuffing American History into
adolescent minds. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes not. Sometimes the
results do not come in for years.
Perhaps the Christian
life is like that. One succeeds. One fails. The results come later.
So there is much ado
these days. Not a lot of time for writing about this, that and the
other---though my mind is always a-whirl with the trivial and the
oh-so-clever. I strive to find time to put these to cyber-paper. Perhaps
it is a good thing I cannot.
And then of course there
is planning for summer, part of which will be 40 days and 40 nights
spent in one of my myriad tents walking some 300 miles across the state
of Oregon. This walk---as all my walks---will be done alone. Wondering
about in God's creation begs solitude. Christ Himself sought aloneness
far from the maddening crowd. I seek to be like Him, though failure
always follows close at my heels. But the struggle is the thing.
The results come later.
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May
17, 2006
Random Immigration
Thoughts
The fix is in. The new
immigration policy will be to have no immigration policy. None that
would really control the borders of our Republic anyway. El señor Bush
has neither plan nor desire to send back to Mexico those who have
repeatedly broken our laws. No, our jefe politico will reward
them all for their crimes by granting them in due course---denials
notwithstanding---the most precious document on the face of the planet,
an American passport. The president's speech was so much squishy goo
masquerading as policy, all emotion and
little action.
It really seems as if the White House wrote a speech to just pacify
their critics instead of actually responding to their concerns. If
this is how seriously the administration takes border security, then
we need to bring a screeching halt to the immigration reform bill
until that attitude changes.
Bush said much about the
plight---self-induced, let us remind ourselves---of the illegals living
in the US. What of the plight of the Americans who must tolerate higher
crime rates all around, Latin American gangs infecting our cities
coast-to-coast, higher taxes upon citizens to pay for the
freebies---welfare, medical care, schooling---demanded by the illegals?
There was scarcely a word about Americans and their interests.
Bush mouthed the usual
pap about America being 'a nation of immigrants.' No she is not. Almost
90 percent of us were born right here. If nothing is done about our
border, though, we will at last become what Bush claims we already
are---a nation of (illegal) immigrants.
And please stop saying
that, "At last we will be able to control our borders with National
Guard." Nonsense. Such men can be removed as easily as they can be
emplaced. A wall once built is there forever, however. Look at the one
in China, now over 2200 years old. Walls work.
If Bush meant to placate
his own base he failed. If Bush meant to placate Mexico, he again
failed. He has called Mexico an ally, which is an odd thing to say.
Mexico votes against us in the UN and floods our border with drugs,
impoverished humanity, criminal gangs and forged documents. And the
Mexican government---if that grotesquely corrupt and incompetent
enterprise can be termed such---routinely sends armed raids across our
frontier to deposit drugs and illegals. And our great ally
responded to the speech as soon as Bush left the podium.
Mexico said Tuesday that it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if
National Guard troops on the border become directly involved in
detaining migrants.
Any question about which
way and how high Bush will jump? It is painful to say that Bush's
policies serve the interests of Mexico rather than those of America. It
is also painful---and more than a little unseemly--to realize that the
president of the US consults with the president of Mexico before he
forms an immigration policy to be presented to the American people.
Some determined Honduran
chimed in:
In Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas,
Honduran Antonio Auriel said he would make
it into the U.S.
"Soldiers on the border? That won't stop
me," he said. "I'll swim the river and jump
the wall. I'm going to arrive in the United
States."
I believe him. This
fellow is most certainly more trustworthy than
our own government.
There was not a
peep about the devastation brought about in our
marvelous friend Mexico by the flight of so much
of her manpower to El Norte. Abandoned wives and
children litter the already littered Mexican
landscape. That nation is being hollowed out
economically and socially. One result will most
certainly be even more Mexicans fleeing to the
American border.
If these rootless
Mexicans stayed in their own nation they might
eventually force that dreary state to reform.
They might actually improve the place. This is
the reason why the government colludes in
shipping ten percent of its citizenry across the
American border. The Mexican elites run Mexico
as their private fiefdom. Their policies are
purely extractionary. No wealth is created and
the citizens are treated as what they really
are, serfs. Mexico is run in the same way that
Al Capone ran Cicero, Illinois.
Ask any Mexican you
meet anywhere of his opinion of the Mexican
government. Be prepared for an earful.
And it looks as if
even the watery Bush proposals will not even
pass the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Senate defeated,
55 to 40, a proposal
by Senator Johnny
Isakson, Republican
of Georgia, that
lawmakers demand
that border-security
measures be in place
before beginning a
guest-worker program
of the kind
envisioned by
President Bush.
Eighteen
Republicans voted against Bush. Perhaps
President Bush should attempt to control his own
party before he attempts to control our own
border.
Taxes, education,
9/11, Iraq, the economy and the tiresome though
always present treason of the Democrats could
not split the Republicans in six years. Bush has
done this in a few weeks with his immigration
follies.
So of course there
are those who bleat that unless we continue to
support the Republican Party---no matter what it
does or does not do---we might be faced with the
vacuous and trivial Pelosi and Reid as
congressional leaders. Perhaps so. But I recall
that in 2000 we were told to support the
Republicans because America could be so much
better. Now we are told to support the
Republicans because America could be so much
worse.
And at last, from
the venerable and staid
Heritage Foundation. Perhaps it is a good
thing that Bush's program will have a hard time
becoming the law of the land.
If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most
dramatic change in immigration law in 80
years, allowing an estimated 103 million
persons to legally immigrate to the U.S.
over the next 20 years—fully one-third of
the current population of the United States.
How well do you speak Spanish?
top
May
14, 2006
Fickle Muse
Those who have blogs love
to write. The ones I read are updated more or less daily. I admire such
energy and devotion. I wish that I had those things always at my beck
and call. Sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. These past few days my
ink-well has been rather dry. I could think of nothing clever or
thoughtful to say---or at least no reason for doing so.
The Greeks believed that
there were nine
Muses---they called them goddesses---who oversaw the inspiration for
the Arts. Poetry, dance, song, history and all things creative each had
her own Muse. If an artist failed in his inspiration he would pray and
sacrifice to the particular muse who represented his art. Were I pagan I
should invoke Clio, the Muse of history, as an aid to my writing. One
such invocation was written by old Dante:
-
O Muses, o
high genius, aid me now!
O memory
that noted what I saw,
Now shall
your true nobility be seen!
Here are those nine Muses:
Of course I could not pray to
any pagan deity today without insulting the Son of Man. And
anyway, those Muses could be fickle and more than a little
shabby. But there is a patron saint of writers. His name is
Saint Francis de Sales. He well-deserves his sainthood.
I could never be such, alas. But I will call upon him. Soon,
in fact.
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May
8, 2006
An Abundance of
Whores
Years ago I read P. J.
O'Rourke's
Parliament of Whores. Funny it was---O'Rourke is nothing if not
funny---yet maddening at the same time. While reading it I kept asking
myself how humanity could keep making the same mistakes time after time
even though examples abound in history of perfidy, incompetence,
corruption, demagoguery and slavish sycophancy and how these have always
spelled the doom of civilization. Why cannot a nation escape this
Hindu-like Dharma
wheel of degeneration and collapse? Must America go the way of
Assyria? of Rome? of Athens? of 10th century Baghdad?
Short answer: Yep. Once
enough whores burrow into and infect the political system there seems to
be no escape. The end might come slowly or it might come in a
fortnight---read of the fall of Nineveh---but come it will. We watch and
marvel as the entire things falls apart and hope that we are not buried
in the rubble.
Such musings grabbed hold
of me this morning as I wandered about the web.
Here was Karl Rove himself---the Right's own anti-Christ for the
spittle-flecked Left---pleading with those whose support should come
automatically.
Rove Is Using Threat of Loss
to Stir G.O.P.
The ambitious
second-term agenda he helped develop has faltered even with a
Republican Congress. His once-grand plans for creating a
broadened and permanent Republican majority have given way to a
goal of clinging to control of the House and Senate.
The prospect of
Democrats capturing either, however, may be one of the best
weapons Mr. Rove has as he turns to what he has traditionally
done best: motivating his party's conservative base to turn out
on Election Day.
What's that you say,
Karl? The goal is now merely to 'cling to control of the House and
Senate'? That is to say, your goal is simply to maintain power. Well
Karl, once your goal---at least you claimed it was your goal---was to
make conservative principles---in education, spending, taxation, social
policy, immigration reform, the judiciary---a permanent fixture of
American government. And after 6 years in power most of these have been
abandoned and now you wish to emulate the Russian czars, who 'wield
power so that they could wield power.'
Karl, every two years at
election time you and your bootlick Ken Mehlman try to frighten us with
the scary scenario of Democrats taking the reins of government from the
Republicans.
Here is always reliable Mehlman with his usual shtick:
Republican National Chairman Kenneth Mehlman went to
Capitol Hill last Tuesday to warn the party's House
and Senate campaign staffers of dire consequences
unless Republicans break the current legislative
deadlock.
Mehlman
stressed the necessity to pass a budget resolution
and an immigration reform bill, dealing with two
issues that seriously concern the Republican base.
Ken my boy, what might
these 'dire consequences' be? A Kennedy-approved
education bill? A horde of illegals swarming across an
unprotected US border? Out-of-control government
spending? A liberal controlling judicial appointments?
Traitors escaping punishment ala Sandy Berger? Ken, all
of these happened with the Republicans in power. Would
the Democrats be worse? And now you pretend to be
seriously concerned with the Republican base. You whore.
You ignore us until you need our vote so that you can
maintain yourself in power.
Hey Ken and Karl, I have
two words for you. You know the ones.
And of course there is the
prince of whores and media sycophant, John
McCain. Every conservative's liberal and every liberal's
conservative, he is in a race for the White House. He
spent much of the last six years insulting both
conservatives and Christians, but now he needs them. So
he is going around whoring after their vote. His latest
foray into whoredom involved his
attempt---successful as it turned out---to make up with
old Jerry Falwell. Here is a classic example of politics
over principle that well-demonstrates the loyalty of
whores:
When
McCain ran for president the last time, he denounced
Falwell as one of America's "agents of intolerance."
But now that McCain is gearing up to run for
president as the GOP's establishment candidate, he
has told Falwell that he spoke "in haste" in 2000.
And such pandering was duly
rewarded by Falwell, once a man of principle but now a
man who, in Cal Thomas' term, is
blinded by might.
In a sign
of their improved relationship, McCain has agreed to
be the graduation speaker at Falwell's Liberty
University on May 13.
Falwell is using his own
Christian university to promote the political ambitions
of a man who insults Christians. Hey Jerry, Christ drove
the money changers and wheeler-dealers out of the Temple
yet you invite them in. Just who is your master, God or
mammon?
But enough! Writing about
such things at length leads to madness.
With such pandering and
whoring all around in the American body politic, what is
one to do? Well, stock up on whiskey and ammo, and head
for the hills. And that is exactly what I will do come
summer. You see, there is this 350 mile hike across
Oregon that I will be on---my own 40 Days and 40 Nights,
all alone in God's creation. No McCains or Mehlmans or
Roves or Falwells out there. Call it a whore-free
environment.
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May
7, 2006
Dressed to Kill
Ever wonder if you are
good enough to get into Heaven when you die? Easy answer: You are not. I
am not. No one is. Heaven cannot be earned. It is a free gift.
But---and there is always
a but---there are things you can do to guarantee that you do not get
into Heaven, that you go right to the other place. Let us call that
place Hell. (I will leave out Purgatory for now. Sorry all you
Catholics.) You can think of some of these things yourself. I can too.
But we must not dwell on them as it is not healthy to do so.
While perusing the web
and checking in with
Dawn Eden I found a damned way for bringing up baby. It occurred
to me that the folks who thought this thing up are on the fast-track to
Hell. I wonder about those who purchase such things for their little
ones. Anyway, here it
is.
My favorites:
What is a M.I.L.F? See
here.
And of course we have
this:
And to make sure your
precious darling carries the proper logo:
In the words of the
company:
Pimpfants...
it's more than a name, it's a movement!
Our clothing bridges the generation gap between parents and kids,
allowing babies and tots everywhere the opportunity to
hit the playground with fresh gear and street cred.
Pimpfants uses
only the highest quality products, so
your shorties can represent in style and comfort.
If you want puppy dogs, ducks and frogs, you'll have to visit a zoo.
But if you are looking for
children's clothing that defines a generation,
look to Pimpfants!
It really is true that it
would have been better for some people never to have been born.
top
Told You So
Alas! The sexually impure
have had some bad news. It seems their giddiness over the Vatican's
alleged change of opinion concerning the grave sinfulness of condoms was
entirely
misplaced.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council
for the Family, said the Catholic Church would not change its
position on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS,
reported the Catholic News Agency this morning.
The enemies of the
Catholic Church are nothing if not consistent. They tried the
same tactic
back in 2000, couching their hatred of the Church's moral teachings
behind a false humanitarianism concerning AIDS and Africa.
Over the last few days world news media have been rife with reports
suggesting falsely that the Vatican has made "a theological U-turn"
with regard to condoms. Quoting an April 19 issue of L'Osservatore
Romano out of context and with gross errors in translation, various
papers and newswires suggested that the Catholic Church might now
accept the use of condoms in AIDS prevention programs.
And what does the
Catholic Church think of AIDS in Africa? Glad you asked:
Msgr. Jacques Suaudeau, a member of the Pontifical Council on the
Family, slams the promotion of condoms as a safeguard against AIDS
and suggests that condom programs actually put people at greater
risk of contracting the AIDS virus...
"...if people really want to prevent AIDS, they must be convinced to
change their sexual behaviour," which he stresses, "is the principal
cause of the infection's spread...The most radical prevention of
HIV/AIDS, the one which is absolutely effective and which no one can
deny, is sexual abstinence for adolescents before marriage and
conjugal chastity in marriage. This is the Church's message."
No! You mean that the
Church teaches that abstinence and virginity before marriage and
chastity after prevents AIDS? Who would have guessed!
Any questions? If so
please consult
The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
And not just the
concupiscent and foolish wasted time and ink dreaming of things condom
and Catholic. A conservative sort of girl, Kathleen Parker, embarrassed
herself on the opinion page at
Townhall. Her on-line bio
says she is "a popular syndicated
columnist and director of the School of Written Expression at the
Buckley School of Public Speaking and Persuasion." But she must have
missed a few classes.
Here she rants about the Catholic Church and
condoms.
While
some may prefer the higher ideal of abstinence in
fighting AIDS, even the Vatican seems to recognize
that the lowdown reality demands something else. You
can't change the hearts and minds of dead people.
Meanwhile, arguing to withhold help from people
ravaged by disease because someone somewhere might
have sex using a condom - now that's "wicked."
So according to Miss Parker
the Church cannot deal with 'lowdown reality' and that
the Church's position on condoms is 'wicked.' And this
girl claims to be conservative? My oh my, have standards
changed!
She might have checked in
on the
latest grotesqueries of the Episcopal Church, which
is nothing if not trendy. Condom lovers have a home
there, where the debate is whether to elect an openly
homosexual bishop in California. Three years ago a
sodomite was made bishop in New Hampshire, so this is
not a new thing. In fact, this fellow, one Gene
Robinson, heads up a program he began, called Outright.
Its purpose is to be
a support
group for "gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and
questioning" youth. Nancy Sheltra, a Republican
legislator in neighboring Vermont, says the Outright
chapter in her state promotes a lifestyle that is
very dangerous to young people. She says the
organization brings together minors who plan group
get-togethers, and supplies them with "condoms and
other devices" that are used in the homosexual
lifestyle.
I shudder at what those
'other devices' might be. Anyway, the Episcopal church
has joined the world and continues its Gadarene rush
toward oblivion. And it brags about it no less!
The
church has long prided itself for including liberal
and conservative ideologies.
One might have hoped that a
putatively 'Christian' church might boast about
preaching the Words of Christ rather than concern itself
with political blather. And just what might those Words
be? Glad you asked:
Or do you
not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the
kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither
fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
effeminate , nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the
covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor
swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
(1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
I guess the entire US
Congress is damned---but you knew that already.
Anyway, while the Episcopal
church busies itself with shedding its last vestiges of
Christian teachings the Catholic Church busies herself
with holding them firm. She always has. She always will.
And neither the gates of Hell nor the wailings of condom
lovers will prevail against her.
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May
3, 2006
Wishing and
Hoping
They are at it
again. Actually, they never stopped---they being the sexually impure who wish to
spread their concupiscence and immorality throughout the church founded by Jesus
Christ, His very own supremely lovely Catholic Church. The
headlines
are giddy with excitement:
Is Pope Poised to Sanction
Condoms?
Vatican's rethink on ban signals historic move to cut the
spread of Aids
Short answer: No, Pope Benedict XVI will not
'sanction condoms.' He has not the power to do so. (But more
on that momentarily.) The article is breathtaking in its
ignorance.
The Catholic Church is on the brink of a historic change
of approach over condoms which could bring hope to
millions in Africa and other parts of the developing
world devastated by Aids.
Condoms bring hope? When did that occur? This
fantasy is just the usual tired attack on the Church,
blaming it for all the evil in the world. The 'all sex all
the time' crowd has been raging against the light of the
Catholic Church for 50 years. It particularly despises the
moral doctrines of the Church, rightly seeing them as
interfering with the joys of sodomy, masturbation,
fornication and abortion.
At a time when more than 40 million
people are infected with HIV, and there are 13,000
new cases every day, the Vatican has been accused of
contributing to the spread of the epidemic by
forbidding the use of prophylactics.
The assumptions here
are vast and unproven yet have assumed the status of received
wisdom among the elite. To believe this nonsense you first have
to take it as a given that:
1.
There is an AIDS epidemic among heterosexuals in Africa.
2.
Condoms prevent AIDS.
3.
Condoms can therefore stop the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
None of this is
true. To believe that there is an AIDS pandemic
in Africa that only condoms can prevent is to be wholly free
from any desire for truth. AIDS in Africa is defined differently
than it is anywhere else. What 30 years ago was called TB,
malaria and a host of other killers of Africans has now been
miraculously redefined as AIDS. There is much more to this, but you can do
the research yourself. You might begin
here.
And then continue to
The
Duesberg Hypothesis.
If the elite of the world were
really concerned with the spread of AIDS it would
make an all-out assault against homosexuality, for AIDS began
with that disturbingly unhygienic perversion and has largely remained among its
practitioners. The reason why the sexually impure wish Catholic
sanction for condom use has nothing to do with AIDS or saving
lives.
What is really
desired here is for the Church to abandon her position on sexual
morality. The standard patter runs something like this: Sex is
good. Anything that stands in the way of good is evil. The
Catholic Church stands in the way of good. Therefore the
Catholic Church is evil.
Ever since Pope
Paul VI's 1968 encyclical
Humanae Vitae, contraception
has been taboo within the
church. But, in 1968, there was
no Aids pandemic. The church's
policy on condoms has remained
one of rigid rejection for more
than a generation, while a
disaster that could at least
have been mitigated, critics
charge, by the approval of
condom use, hit the developing
world.
Actually, the
Church has been against
artificial contraception since Christ walked the earth.
Judaism for 2000 years before that taught this morality as
well. (Genesis 38:8-10) Even Protestant churches, so many of
which today cannot be called 'Christian' in any real sense of
the term, were once solidly against birth control. Baptists
and Evangelicals mostly remain so today.
At any rate, the
desire of the media and sexually perverse of the world
(pardon the redundancy) to have the Catholic Church abandon
her moral teachings is a forlorn hope. The pope will not
change the dogma because he does not have the power to
change the dogma. The moral teachings of the Church fall
under the heading of
papal
infallibility. Briefly, when the pope teaches ex
cathedra ('from the throne') he is speaking with the
authority of God. The doctrines and the morality of the
Church are ex cathedra teachings. They are perfect
and not subject to human alteration. The pope may restate or
refine such a teaching but he cannot change it.
The position of
the Catholic Church concerning birth control---condoms
included---is an infallible teaching. Deal with it.
top
May
1, 2006
The Worthless Generation
The disease began to worm
its way into our body politic sometime in the early 60s. I was in high
school then, and though a callow youth I could detect symptoms of
something. Once at some sort of 'demonstration' it shocked me to see a
college kid climb up a downtown building and tear down the American flag
planted there. I protested to a cop but he simply ignored me. The guy
who had taken down the flag then displayed it as if it were a trophy of
war. The crowd roared its approval.
Such adolescent antics
continue today of course. Then as now they show little more than
ignorance, childishness and an absolute lack of seriousness. I always
wonder when these young dolts will grow up and take on the
responsibilities of adulthood. From some accounts, never.
At the University of Santa
Cruz recently there was an anti-war and anti-military demonstration.
Military recruiters there decided to vacate the campus rather than
engage in what was becoming violent confrontation. They were pushed,
spat upon and animal blood was tossed about. Those college children who
participated did so of course knowing that the military recruiters would
not respond. Would these 'demonstrators' have been so bold if they were
Chinese involved in a face-off against the Chinese military?
It is the hallmark of such
imbeciles as walk the halls of Santa Cruz---and who teach there---that
they claim the right to this and the right to that but refuse all
responsibility for such claims. One such simpleton wrote Rick Moran over
at
Right Wing Nuthouse and described UC Santa Cruz as
a school filled with young, idealistic kids determined to save the
world, feeling their way through uncertain thickets of ideology and unfamiliar
collections of ideas, and naive about the dangers of direct political action
outside a university’s protected confines. That, after all, is what college is
about—providing a protected space for young adults to experiment, learn, try out
ideas and identities.
Good God, what a fool. His description of
university students---who in a former and tougher age would become
leaders of our nation---would fit that of bubbly and precocious 6 year
olds. It would not at all fit my college experience.
Here was a typical classroom at Portland
State University in the late 1970s: veterans, retired business people,
housewives whose kids were in school, an exchange student from the
Middle East, second generation immigrants. Class discussions were
lively, informed and filled with personal anecdotes. It was an adult
environment. Truth was sought and sometimes found. We had no desire to
'save the world,' or 'try out new identities.' By and large we knew who
were we and what was required of us.
UC Santa Cruz resembles nothing so much as
a intellectual petting zoo staffed by highly paid babysitters. Its
students have not the moral, physical, intellectual and emotional
capacity to wear the uniform upon which they so readily spit.
Imagine such creatures at Lexington and
Concord. At the Battle of New Orleans. At Gettysburg. At San Juan Hill.
At Château-Thierry. On Omaha Beach. At the Chosin Reservoir.
And please imagine if United Flight 93 was
packed with Santa Cruz students instead of Todd Beamers.
Those grotesque children at Santa Cruz
protest against things beyond their understanding, beyond their
knowledge, beyond their capacity. Unlike the US military they so bravely
insult, no enemy of America would possibly fear them or any government
run by them. A civilization that relies upon such
worthless flotsam to carry on its traditions of freedom and
self-government is doomed.
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