“Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.”

- General Logan, Memorial Day Proclamation, General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

What Fools Do

"Now there sits a man with an open mind. You can feel the draft from here." - Grouch Marx

Just exactly how erumpently asinine was it for congressional democrats to stand up and applaud Mexican President Felipe Calderone’s denouncement of Arizona’s immigration law? The Internet hath not space to contain a proper answer. Let us here, however, provide you sundry observations of our own.

Instinctually, family members do not take kindly to a guest who comes into their home and sharply criticizes one of their own. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Intellectually, thinking persons are quite often stunned when encountering one who lacks the mental capacity to acknowledge the bone-snapping irony of his condemning others for refusing to pay the damages on a catastrophe for which he himself is responsible. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Politically, elected officials have rarely endeared themselves to their constituents by associating with a foreign leader sharply critical of sensitive domestic issues. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Ethically, one must question the integrity of a leader who would deliberately misrepresent the truth before an international forum for reasons we can only assume involve murky wheelings and dealings with another failing regime. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

Morally, most find abhorrent the notion of a national leader standing before another nation’s government and demanding they renounce their own laws designed to protect the sovereignty of their own nation. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

By any measure, congressional democrats are, at best, fools; for standing up and applauding a sock-puppet like Calderone in this instance is what fools do. As for those constituents who continue to support these fools—no doubt believing them to be heroic champions of “social and economic justice,” “racial equality,” or guarantors of a permanently dependent and thus democrat voting majority—they may, in fact, be something worse.

Cheers,

Charlie

STAND

Sing along!

Read along!

Any questions?

Faith, Reason and Lunacy

A funny thing happened on the way down the slippery slope at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: someone dared utter, “STOP!”

Father Robert A. Wild, president of the university, rescinded the offer of a deanship made to Dr. Jodi O’Brien, currently a professor of sociology at Seattle University. Why? A quick glance at O’Brien’s curriculum vitae pretty well answers the question. Some highlights: How Big is Your God? Queer Christian Social Movements; Seeking Normal? Considering Same Sex Marriage; Wrestling the Angel of Contradiction: Queer Christian Identities; “Do it on the Web" Emerging Discourses on Internet Sexuality; Phone Sex, Fantasy and Disembodiment.

Oddly Wild felt that perhaps the author of such material might not be the best person to publically represent the 119 year old Catholic institution’s College of Arts and Sciences, the largest of the university.

Naturally all hell has broken loose.

Charges of homophobia (had we mentioned O’Brien is a lesbian?), sexism, intolerance, and injustice swarm like locusts. Legal complications regarding the botched handling of the offer process have defenders of Wild and the university laying low. And fingers are pointing in all directions as to how the offer was ever made in the first place.

Behold the fruits of political-correctness. Marquette, like nearly every other institution of higher learning in America, has long been bending over backwards to appease the ever-increasingly preposterous demands of the champions of that which is politically fashionable: gay rights, multiculturalism and, of course, “social justice.” That among these champions—many of whom are in positions of considerable influence—are some who, by their efforts, seek not to further Marquette’s Catholic Jesuit mission but to destroy it, has likely never occurred to university leadership. Perhaps now it has.

Would that this awakening and subsequent attempts to gain footing so far down the post-Vatican II free fall proves not only successful, but seminal to the Church’s long lonely climb back to Catholicism.

Cheers,

Charlie

Goodbye Britannia

Rare is the occasion we allow another to speak for us. In this case, however, we shall happily make an exception. Our dear friend and colleague Mr. John Derbyshire of National Review has summed up our feelings regarding present-day Britain to perfection. We could add very little if we tried.

Mr. Derbyshire--for those of you who don't know--is a fellow British ex-pat who, like us, has grown weary and apathetic towards the Mother Country as she clearly no longer cares a whit about her own glorious heritage. Right then... it's off to America!

Take it away Derb:

We have a result in the British general election. David Cameron's Conservative Party has won a plurality of seats in Parliament, but not enough to govern firmly. It's hard to get very worked up about this, as the three parties in contention can fairly be described as Left of Center, Center-Left, and Tree-Hugger Left.

Certainly there is nothing conservative about David Cameron's Conservatives. It would be very difficult indeed to name anything they wish to conserve: not Britain's ancient demographic core, not the nuclear family, not restraint in public financing, not liberties of speech or assembly, not public respect for the Christian religion, not Britain's traditional wariness of European entanglements, not Britain's traditional warmth towards and co-operation with the old British-settler nations, not civic order and the suppression of crime by fair policing, not respect for rank and authority, not control over the national debt … There is no subject you can name on which Cameron's "Conservatives" wish to conserve any more than Gordon Brown's Laborites, though I'll concede that neither party would call in the U.N. to force a macrobiotic diet on the population, as Nicholas Clegg's Liberal Democrats would. Cameron and Brown may want to make homosexuals a Designated Victim Class, with special rights and privileges, but Clegg's party would make homosexuality compulsory. In this respect, at least, the Brits have dodged a bullet.

Frankly, I'm past caring. The old England I grew up in, the England of stoicism and bitter beer and dry humor, the England in which it was bad form to take public affairs too seriously, the England of puddings and bobbies and weird regional accents, of casual snobbery and dim old churches and the smell of soft coal burning, the England of, as George Orwell famously wrote, "old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning" — that England's as dead as the Wild West. It's been replaced by a multicultural bazaar with a feral underclass and a vast, suffocating public sector, neither of which it can any longer afford. The educated classes are sunk deep in ethnomasochism — hatred of their own ancestors, of themselves really. Teenage girls get pregnant and are given public housing and a dole, while married couples struggle to pay their tax bills. The borders are open to foreign agitators who loudly declare their hatred for Britain, while old folk who survived the bombs and shortages of Hitler's war are sneered at as Nazis. When you come home to find burglars have looted your house, don't bother calling the police; they'll just give you an incident number for the insurance company; but try flying the national flag in your front yard — a squad car full of cops will kick your door down and tase you in the living-room for "racism."

I couldn't care less about Britain any more. I'm nostalgic for what used to be, but I don't have any illusions any of it is coming back. These smooth-faced managerial types aim only to drag their country further along the road to perdition, with just minor differences in the speed of dragging. I said my goodbyes to England long ago. Let's turn our attention to a place that is still, in spite of some of the same dismal trends, a real country.

All sad. All true. Let's not make the same bloody mess of these United States shall we?

Cheers,

Charlie

"The country has spoken — but we don't know what they've said."

UK election results demonstrate voters' indecision about non-choices. Tory, Labour, Lib Dem... more of the same, to be sure. We are depressed, yet relieved ... as we now live in Wisconsin.

UPDATE: Good riddance Gordy!

For the latest, click here.

May Day 2010. A Nation Mugged

(Click here to learn more about this all-American celebration!)

Shut up and give us your money America. That way no one gets hurt, see. Now repeat after us:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of Amexica

And to the welfare for which it stands

One nation, under fire

Easily divisible

With benefits and social justice

For whomever we deem worthy"

and now en Espanol:

"Prometo lealtad a la bandera de Estados Unidos de Amexica

Y al bienestar para que se para

Una nación, bajo despide

Fácilmente divisible

Con beneficios y justicia social Para quienquiera nosotros creemos digno"

A joyous May Day America. May you live to see another Fourth of July.

Cheers,

Charlie

Regulating the Monkeys

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” James Madison - Federalist No. 51

Recent revelations that instead of fulfilling their mission--overseeing the exchange of securities to protect investors--senior officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission were instead flogging their dolphins as the United States’ financial infrastructure crumbled, is a surprise to exactly no one. Nero fiddled, the SEC diddled.

The colossal failure of the U.S.’s existing financial regulatory apparatus is well documented. In the second of his three-part series about the mortgage crisis in America, Jerry O’Connor, President of the National Bank of Waupun sums up the matter concisely:

“Interestingly the banking regulators failed to identify this huge [housing] bubble growing. Neither did they spread the cautions that the Washington/Wall Street mortgage models could end in the level of calamity we have seen.

The Securities Regulators did not see the Credit Default Swap as a security product, but then again the Insurance Regulators did not think it was an insurance product. The banks and other investors looked at this product as a risk management tool, without knowing if the companies standing behind it were solid enough to face a crisis. The Federal Reserve never saw this coming.

In the end, the new “cocktail investment offering” [Mortgage Backed Securities] that ultimately fueled an economic tsunami went completely unregulated. How could this happen?

The entire government apparatus that is supposed to protect the public was AWOL.”

Indeed. Now at least we know what they were doing while AWOL. (A Google search for euphemisms for pleasuring oneself produced the following gems: “Oliver's Twist”,
”Challenging Alexander Pushkin to a one-handed duel”, “Conjugating the verb”, “Roughing up the suspect”, “Boxing the Clown”, and of course the perennial, “Spank the Monkey”. This seems a splendid opportunity to add to this list, so by all means feel free!)

Predictably, the current leadership in Washington’s response to this farce of epic proportions is both Leftist and ham-fisted (another one for the list?). They would weed out age-old human depravity and fecklessness through increased government regulation. In this we are reminded of the American Left’s incessant attempts to bolster gun control legislation, oblivious to the fact that outlaws with guns care not a whit about their silly rules, existing or intended. “Guns don’t kill people,” argue the Second Ammendmenteers, “people kill people.” In the current financial crisis we might adapt that slogan to “Existing Regulations don’t fail to monitor wrongdoing in the financial sector, porn-surfing, masturbating SEC officials do.”

The fault here is not the machine, but the quality of the individuals operating it.

We find ourselves pondering, yet again, whether the ignorance of Congress and the Administration is genuine or willful as they push for ever more authority over the financial industry. Mr. Emanuel’s infamous “never let a good crisis go to waste” axiom resounds cacophonously. The Wall Street watchmen fell asleep at their posts. Now the collectivist wolves prowl the farm unopposed and shall do as they please.

As we have noted before (ad nauseam!), the belief that basic human failings—greed, lust, sloth, fecklessness, incompetence etc. etc. etc.—can be regulated out of human institutions by the power of government is both hilarious and horrifying, for history has shown repeatedly that, when put into practice, this belief ultimately results in cultural devastation, mass destitution, and mountains of human corpses.

A buzz-kill for even the most agile of porn-surfers.

Cheers,

Charlie

Earth Day Done Right

This ought to crank off the old eco-wind bags, eh? Brilliant! Click here to learn more.

For your further edification, please peruse our past slanders of this Marxist sham of a holiday and the wretched movement that spawned it:

• Earth Day - The New Religions Holy Day of Obligation
• Earth Day - At Least Marx Had Integrity
• Reading by the Light of Perverted Science
• The Rationale of Madness

Cheers,

Charlie

Only in America

UPDATE: Lefties hate that the Tea Parties are Peaceful

The animals bellow and scurry about the barnyard for no apparent reason. Farmhands shake their heads and laugh. Hours later, they join the panic as a force five tornado bears down upon the farm.

American Tea partiers bellow and scurry about the country for no apparent reason. The sophisticated shake their heads and laugh. Years later, will they join the panic as the force of unfettered government bears down upon every aspect of their lives?

Some prefer not to leave such questions to chance.

There’s much to be said for the animalian ability to detect threats long before they are apparent to others. By some fluke of nature, Americans—some Americans—have always demonstrated a similar sixth sense where their liberty is concerned.

Fresh off the boat from England, we were not a little awestruck as we experienced this phenomenon firsthand at our first ever Tea Party in Madison, Wisconsin this past Thursday, April 15.

First impressions were myriad but chief among them was the atmosphere of the event, more church social than protest: Mums and Dads pushing strollers; grandmums and granddads pushing walkers, and no one pushing methamphetamines; words most commonly heard were “hello”, “excuse me”, and polite solicitations to support this candidate or that, oppose this bit of asinine legislation or that; other than the occasional “HELL NO” we heard not a single foul word, detected no presence of alcohol, and saw not one piece of litter; there was no evidence of racism (the only sign even addressing the issue paraphrased Dr. King, “It’s not the color of his skin. It’s the content of his policies.” Brilliant!); and though motivated by anger, there was nothing seen or felt that could be identified as hatred…

… just ask the “Tea Party crashers” who attended.

Despite their best efforts, the Lefty infiltrators provoked little but amusement amongst the some 10 to 12,000 assembled. Personally we saw two groups attempting provocation. The first comprised four or five sumptuous vixens carrying signs from Planned Parenthood, one of which read, “Keep Your Tea Bags Off of My Body.” (By the looks of her, she’d had quite a few there already.) They made their way through the crowd, their boy-toy lackey in tow video taping every second in the hopes that some frothing, Jesus-soaked right-winger would rip the sign from their hands and beat them to the ground with it, just in time for the five o’clock news. No such luck. A few heckles, a number of disapproving glances, nothing more. They left, unassaulted and disappointed.

The second group bore signs supporting Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin.) Again, disinterest and amusement was the general reaction. As they withdrew from the crowd, however, a young male Feingold supporter – festooned in face piercings and heavy leather jacket (it was 75 degrees) – attempted to provoke an elderly and much larger man than he into fisticuffs. The man smiled and waved the young agitator onward toward the back of the rally and back home to his bong. We caught a glimpse of this young man; his eyes, pale blue and small, burning with rage and contempt. At who or what we wondered? What exactly about this gathering did he find so noxious and outrageous?

There were no other infiltrations that we detected other than a truck which drove round the perimeter of the State Capitol where the event took place, honking its horn incessantly. One of the event speakers--a black man by Jiminy!-- Pastor David King, referenced the truck and pointed out that it bore a sign reading, I am my brother’s keeper.

“They don’t want to be their brother’s keeper,” he declared. “They want to be their brother’s master.”

Progressivism in sum. The crowd roared.

You would not and will not experience anything like these Tea Parties in Europe or England, or anywhere else in the world. One-off protests, demonstrations, and riots in response to offenses of the state, real or perceived, are not uncommon. But a civil, sustained, growing movement like this requires more than outrage, it requires love. A love you will find only in America.

Greater than the Tea Partiers’ anger over stimulus legislation, health care reform, a legion of czars, the castration of American defenses etc. being jammed down the national throat, with the very real threat of more to come, is their love of liberty, limited government, and economic freedom. The same love that moved Americans 234 years ago to rally around a Declaration that angrily denounced a tone-deaf king, but far more importantly, articulated a radical love of life and principles worth fighting and dying for.

This is what fuels the Tea Party movement. This is what characterizes their rallies. This is what heightens their senses so. And this is what President Obama and other Democrat officials scoff at to their own peril.

Cheers,

Charlie