0 comment Friday, October 24, 2014 | admin
Over at the Forum, Glenn W. asks some very good questions, and in hopes of getting some responses from blog readers, I asked Glenn's permission to post this here. There are some very good issues raised and I hope by posting it here to share with you all, it might generate some thoughtful responses:
I have been told that the seeds of the American revolution were sown in the many taverns scattered throughout the thirteen colonies. Men would meet in these taverns and discuss politics and over time began to formulate ideas as to how we could break away from England. I have been encouraged by what I have seen on the internet because I believe that the blogosphere has become the tavern of the 21st century. For the first time in my lifetime men (and woman) can actually meet and discuss important issues of the day without it being filtered by large news organizations. The potential impact is huge.
I can see many issues being discussed as to how to protect our freedoms and our posterity from the very real dangers we are facing in this day and age. Meeting in the "VA tavern" to discuss these issues is the start of finding a solution. So, here we are and the modern version of parliament (aka the imperial congress) just tried to pass the modern version of the Stamp Act (the illegal immigrant amnesty bill). Since those jokers aren't as bright as there press releases would like us to believe, they will keep trying to pass that abomination. This caused alarms to go off for a lot of people who usually don't follow politics and possibly galvanized a real resistance to the insanity.
This is the time to decide on a strategy as to how we should react when the next abomination occurs. Or, maybe there does not need to be only one strategy. I identify with people such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry who would now be branded as "bomb throwers." I am sure there were many patriots who were more measured in their approach but as strong in their resolve as Adams and Henry. I do believe that attacks from many directions could be very effective. What should those approaches be? What do I need to do to hold up my end of the bargain? I believe that the political situation will get worse before it gets better. I have never been active in political campaigning but I am willing to hand out tracts and make calls for candidates I believe in but is that enough? If the situation deteriorates to the point where I won't take any more, what should my actions be? Would I be willing to push matters to the point that the founders did with the Boston tea party? What should our Boston tea party be?
This is a bit of a tangent but I will throw it in as well. Going forward we will need a set of common principles that we can agree on. I have seen some of the attempts to come up with a conservative manifesto where there are broad principles that we can all agree to. I am afraid that we have become too fractured and may not be able to come to a consensus. What if we once again used the founders as our inspiration and agreed to restoring a government where we could all live in freedom while having moderately different world views, something like:
1) Once again set boundaries on the federal government so they fulfill their obligations of defending the U.S. from invasion and regulating interstate commerce.
2) Restore the states to being the watchdog over the federal government.
3) Restore the liberties inherent in our constitutional republic where certain rights cannot be violated by any government body. This guards against a tyranny of the majority which the founders feared.
Under this concept of states rights (I may not be using this term precisely but I hope you get my point) I can live in a state where rugged individualism is honored and you can choose to live in a state with a more paternalistic approach to government. You stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours.
I am sure that most of you are way ahead of me on this one and I am interested in what your thoughts are. Can we come up with an approach that we can all live with, and fight for, that avoids some of the stumbling blocks we seem to keep running into?
The time is coming soon where the crisis will be here. How are we going to react to and exploit the next crisis? Will we be willing to sneak out in the middle of the night to dump a ship load of tea into Boston harbor? I hope so.
I have been told that the seeds of the American revolution were sown in the many taverns scattered throughout the thirteen colonies. Men would meet in these taverns and discuss politics and over time began to formulate ideas as to how we could break away from England. I have been encouraged by what I have seen on the internet because I believe that the blogosphere has become the tavern of the 21st century. For the first time in my lifetime men (and woman) can actually meet and discuss important issues of the day without it being filtered by large news organizations. The potential impact is huge.
I can see many issues being discussed as to how to protect our freedoms and our posterity from the very real dangers we are facing in this day and age. Meeting in the "VA tavern" to discuss these issues is the start of finding a solution. So, here we are and the modern version of parliament (aka the imperial congress) just tried to pass the modern version of the Stamp Act (the illegal immigrant amnesty bill). Since those jokers aren't as bright as there press releases would like us to believe, they will keep trying to pass that abomination. This caused alarms to go off for a lot of people who usually don't follow politics and possibly galvanized a real resistance to the insanity.
This is the time to decide on a strategy as to how we should react when the next abomination occurs. Or, maybe there does not need to be only one strategy. I identify with people such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry who would now be branded as "bomb throwers." I am sure there were many patriots who were more measured in their approach but as strong in their resolve as Adams and Henry. I do believe that attacks from many directions could be very effective. What should those approaches be? What do I need to do to hold up my end of the bargain? I believe that the political situation will get worse before it gets better. I have never been active in political campaigning but I am willing to hand out tracts and make calls for candidates I believe in but is that enough? If the situation deteriorates to the point where I won't take any more, what should my actions be? Would I be willing to push matters to the point that the founders did with the Boston tea party? What should our Boston tea party be?
This is a bit of a tangent but I will throw it in as well. Going forward we will need a set of common principles that we can agree on. I have seen some of the attempts to come up with a conservative manifesto where there are broad principles that we can all agree to. I am afraid that we have become too fractured and may not be able to come to a consensus. What if we once again used the founders as our inspiration and agreed to restoring a government where we could all live in freedom while having moderately different world views, something like:
1) Once again set boundaries on the federal government so they fulfill their obligations of defending the U.S. from invasion and regulating interstate commerce.
2) Restore the states to being the watchdog over the federal government.
3) Restore the liberties inherent in our constitutional republic where certain rights cannot be violated by any government body. This guards against a tyranny of the majority which the founders feared.
Under this concept of states rights (I may not be using this term precisely but I hope you get my point) I can live in a state where rugged individualism is honored and you can choose to live in a state with a more paternalistic approach to government. You stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours.
I am sure that most of you are way ahead of me on this one and I am interested in what your thoughts are. Can we come up with an approach that we can all live with, and fight for, that avoids some of the stumbling blocks we seem to keep running into?
The time is coming soon where the crisis will be here. How are we going to react to and exploit the next crisis? Will we be willing to sneak out in the middle of the night to dump a ship load of tea into Boston harbor? I hope so.
Labels: American Society, Conservatism, Conservative Principles, Government, Patriotism, StateS Rights
0 comment Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | admin
Over at Intergalactic Source of Truth, the Colonel linked to this piece from One Cosmos, entitled 'The Pathetic Last Children of Nietzsche's Pitiable Last Men.' Blogger Gagdad Bob writes a very cogent analysis tying together the present degenerated state of party politics in America and the breakdown of the family and male/female polarities. Some of you may have read this post when it first appeared way back in January 2006, but I missed it, and it's a great read, touching on some themes that I have dealt with here at times.
In this piece, Bob also mentions an article entitled Wimps and Barbarians, by Terrence O. Moore, which you may read in its entirety here. Moore's article discusses the lack in our modern society of manly virtues such as what the Greeks called Thumos, which is
...the part of the soul that contains the assertive passions: pugnacity, enterprise, ambition, anger. Thumos compels a man to defend proximate goods: himself, his honor, his lady, his country; as well as universal goods: truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Without thumotic men to combat the cruel, the malevolent, and the unjust, goodness and honor hardly have a chance in our precarious world. But two conditions must be present for thumos to fulfill its mission. First, the soul must be properly ordered. Besides thumos, symbolized by the chest, the soul is composed of reason and appetites, symbolized by the head on the one hand and the stomach and loins on the other. Reason has the capacity to discern right from wrong, but it lacks the strength to act. Appetites, while necessary to keep the body healthy, pull the individual toward pleasures of a lower order. In the well-ordered soul, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the head rules the belly through the chest." In the souls of today's barbarians, clearly thumos has allied itself with the unbridled appetites, and reason has been thrown out the window.
The second condition that must be present is a sufficient level of thumos to enable the man to rise to the defense of honor or goodness when required. Modern education and culture, however, have conspired to turn modern males into what C. S. Lewis called "men without chests," that is, wimps. The chest of the wimp has atrophied from want of early training. The wimp is therefore unable to live up to his duties as a man:
'We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.''
Please read the discussion thread following Bob's essay on One Cosmos. The discussion covers, among other things, the role of anger in our society, and the tendency of some religious traditions to censure anger, notably Christianity (or some interpretations of it) and Buddhism.
Bob says
To the extent that a tradition tries to eliminate anger, it is a false or partial teaching. Righteous anger is needed, but only in service of what is good or moral. Again, these traditions apparently noticed that anger was a problem in human affairs, and thought that they should just jettison the whole thing instead of doing the much harder work of diferentiating between healthy and pathological anger or moral and immoral violence.
[...]We know so much more today about psychology than they did then, about the roots of pathological anger in childhood trauma. The key is not to split off or repress anger, but to integrate it harmoniously within the psyche.
With regard to Christ's teaching, if in saying that we should always be passive in the face of violence, he wouldn't be a very wise man, would he? He certainly wouldn't be worthy of worship. After all, if I am more moral than the God I worship, what kind of God is that?''
Evidently Bob is not a Christian, although unfortunately there are many nominal Christians who interpret Jesus' words in the same negative way. I would judge the dominance of psychology and the therapeutic culture, which Bob seems to be very conversant with, to be a huge part of the breakdown of our society and to be a contributing factor to the number of 'men without chests.' All the navel-gazing that is at the heart of modern man's self-focus, all the hand-wringing and ambivalence, and all the psychobabble about not being 'negative' or not 'judging' others, contributes to the loss of the manly qualities. Think of neurotic urban postmodern culture, embodied in Woody Allen movies and Dr. Phil, and secular liberal culture in which the least manly 'men' reside, the men who think hunting is barbaric, firearms are for redneck crazies, and war and self-defense are regressive ideas.
These people do not get their lack of manliness from Christianity and traditional Western culture.
A commenter, Kelly, on the discussion thread, makes some insightful comments about women and the loss of the male virtues; she says that women, too, suffer from the lack of courage and commitment. This seems true; the attitudes of many of today's ultraliberal women would not have been of much use on the frontier or back in the early days of the colonies. Women, too, are affected by the breakdown of our culture's values.
Moore's article says, in describing our culture's emasculating effects:
A close look at the culture in which boys are raised reveals not only that they are no longer encouraged to become vigorous and responsible men, but also that practically every factor affecting their development is profoundly hostile to the ideals and practices of traditional manhood and the painstaking steps necessary to attain it. The demanding regime of physical and moral instruction that used to turn boys into men and the larger cultural forces that supported that instruction have been systematically dismantled by a culture that ostensibly enables all individuals but in reality disables men. "It's too easy!" complained John the Savage of the overly efficient, overly sexual, overly youthful, overly fun Brave New World. That dehumanizing tyranny of pleasure, described by Aldous Huxley, resembles the world of easy effort and easy virtue that entices adolescent males today to indulge in their appetites at the expense of their nobler longings and passions.''
Moore also describes the debilitating effects of fatherless families, deficient discipline in schools, and the lack of male rites of passage in guiding boys to healthy manhood.
The essay and the blog discussion are stimulating reading.
I think the discussion of the role of anger, specifically, is one of the more important ones for us today, given that our society is under threat by some formidable forces -- demographic assault, and an invasion marked by sporadic violence, to which we seem unable or unwilling to offer the necessary resistance. Are we ourselves lacking in the courage and conviction, or is it only our rulers? Or do we get the government we deserve, as Joseph de Maistre said, and as I have quoted him? Why do we seem to choose the 'wimps' as rulers? Is this all we have to work with these days? Are there no 'men with chests' to lead? This also ties in with our discussion of the lack of leaders in our time.
And what's the solution? In our political scene, we seem to be locked into this struggle between the 'mommy party' Democrats, and the 'daddy party' Republicans. Or are the Republicans becoming another mommy party, with their 'compassionate conservatism', their political correctness, and the 'welcoming nation' policies? Do we need a real 'daddy party' to represent the masculine virtues which are so essential? Maybe this is part of the reason why a new party, a real conservative party is needed; the male virtues are not really represented in the two-party system we now have.
Personally I think we desperately need the male virtues in this day and age; the female approach, accommodation and peacemaking, are useless against merciless and aggressive enemies and rivals.
In this piece, Bob also mentions an article entitled Wimps and Barbarians, by Terrence O. Moore, which you may read in its entirety here. Moore's article discusses the lack in our modern society of manly virtues such as what the Greeks called Thumos, which is
...the part of the soul that contains the assertive passions: pugnacity, enterprise, ambition, anger. Thumos compels a man to defend proximate goods: himself, his honor, his lady, his country; as well as universal goods: truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Without thumotic men to combat the cruel, the malevolent, and the unjust, goodness and honor hardly have a chance in our precarious world. But two conditions must be present for thumos to fulfill its mission. First, the soul must be properly ordered. Besides thumos, symbolized by the chest, the soul is composed of reason and appetites, symbolized by the head on the one hand and the stomach and loins on the other. Reason has the capacity to discern right from wrong, but it lacks the strength to act. Appetites, while necessary to keep the body healthy, pull the individual toward pleasures of a lower order. In the well-ordered soul, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the head rules the belly through the chest." In the souls of today's barbarians, clearly thumos has allied itself with the unbridled appetites, and reason has been thrown out the window.
The second condition that must be present is a sufficient level of thumos to enable the man to rise to the defense of honor or goodness when required. Modern education and culture, however, have conspired to turn modern males into what C. S. Lewis called "men without chests," that is, wimps. The chest of the wimp has atrophied from want of early training. The wimp is therefore unable to live up to his duties as a man:
'We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.''
Please read the discussion thread following Bob's essay on One Cosmos. The discussion covers, among other things, the role of anger in our society, and the tendency of some religious traditions to censure anger, notably Christianity (or some interpretations of it) and Buddhism.
Bob says
To the extent that a tradition tries to eliminate anger, it is a false or partial teaching. Righteous anger is needed, but only in service of what is good or moral. Again, these traditions apparently noticed that anger was a problem in human affairs, and thought that they should just jettison the whole thing instead of doing the much harder work of diferentiating between healthy and pathological anger or moral and immoral violence.
[...]We know so much more today about psychology than they did then, about the roots of pathological anger in childhood trauma. The key is not to split off or repress anger, but to integrate it harmoniously within the psyche.
With regard to Christ's teaching, if in saying that we should always be passive in the face of violence, he wouldn't be a very wise man, would he? He certainly wouldn't be worthy of worship. After all, if I am more moral than the God I worship, what kind of God is that?''
Evidently Bob is not a Christian, although unfortunately there are many nominal Christians who interpret Jesus' words in the same negative way. I would judge the dominance of psychology and the therapeutic culture, which Bob seems to be very conversant with, to be a huge part of the breakdown of our society and to be a contributing factor to the number of 'men without chests.' All the navel-gazing that is at the heart of modern man's self-focus, all the hand-wringing and ambivalence, and all the psychobabble about not being 'negative' or not 'judging' others, contributes to the loss of the manly qualities. Think of neurotic urban postmodern culture, embodied in Woody Allen movies and Dr. Phil, and secular liberal culture in which the least manly 'men' reside, the men who think hunting is barbaric, firearms are for redneck crazies, and war and self-defense are regressive ideas.
These people do not get their lack of manliness from Christianity and traditional Western culture.
A commenter, Kelly, on the discussion thread, makes some insightful comments about women and the loss of the male virtues; she says that women, too, suffer from the lack of courage and commitment. This seems true; the attitudes of many of today's ultraliberal women would not have been of much use on the frontier or back in the early days of the colonies. Women, too, are affected by the breakdown of our culture's values.
Moore's article says, in describing our culture's emasculating effects:
A close look at the culture in which boys are raised reveals not only that they are no longer encouraged to become vigorous and responsible men, but also that practically every factor affecting their development is profoundly hostile to the ideals and practices of traditional manhood and the painstaking steps necessary to attain it. The demanding regime of physical and moral instruction that used to turn boys into men and the larger cultural forces that supported that instruction have been systematically dismantled by a culture that ostensibly enables all individuals but in reality disables men. "It's too easy!" complained John the Savage of the overly efficient, overly sexual, overly youthful, overly fun Brave New World. That dehumanizing tyranny of pleasure, described by Aldous Huxley, resembles the world of easy effort and easy virtue that entices adolescent males today to indulge in their appetites at the expense of their nobler longings and passions.''
Moore also describes the debilitating effects of fatherless families, deficient discipline in schools, and the lack of male rites of passage in guiding boys to healthy manhood.
The essay and the blog discussion are stimulating reading.
I think the discussion of the role of anger, specifically, is one of the more important ones for us today, given that our society is under threat by some formidable forces -- demographic assault, and an invasion marked by sporadic violence, to which we seem unable or unwilling to offer the necessary resistance. Are we ourselves lacking in the courage and conviction, or is it only our rulers? Or do we get the government we deserve, as Joseph de Maistre said, and as I have quoted him? Why do we seem to choose the 'wimps' as rulers? Is this all we have to work with these days? Are there no 'men with chests' to lead? This also ties in with our discussion of the lack of leaders in our time.
And what's the solution? In our political scene, we seem to be locked into this struggle between the 'mommy party' Democrats, and the 'daddy party' Republicans. Or are the Republicans becoming another mommy party, with their 'compassionate conservatism', their political correctness, and the 'welcoming nation' policies? Do we need a real 'daddy party' to represent the masculine virtues which are so essential? Maybe this is part of the reason why a new party, a real conservative party is needed; the male virtues are not really represented in the two-party system we now have.
Personally I think we desperately need the male virtues in this day and age; the female approach, accommodation and peacemaking, are useless against merciless and aggressive enemies and rivals.
Labels: American Society, Feminism, Political Parties, Societal Decay, Therapeutic Society
0 comment Tuesday, September 2, 2014 | admin
Pat Buchanan has a new book coming out, as reported by Drudge:
NEW BUCHANAN BOOK DECLARES 'END OF AMERICA'
Sun Nov 25 2007 20:40:15 ET
**Exclusive**
"America is coming apart, decomposing, and...the likelihood of her survival as one nation...is improbable -- and impossible if America continues on her current course," declares Pat Buchanan. "For we are on a path to national suicide."
The best-selling author and former presidential candidate is on the eve of launching his new epic book: DAY OR RECKONING: HOW HUBRIS, IDEOLOGY AND GREED ARE TEARING AMERICA APART.
This time, Buchanan goes all the way:
"America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive."
The U.S. Army is breaking and is too small to meet America�s global commitments.
The dollar has sunk to historic lows and is being abandoned by foreign governments.
U.S. manufacturing is being hollowed out.
The greatest invasion in history, from the Third World, is swamping the ethno-cultural core of the country, leading to Balkanization and the loss of the Southwest to Mexico.
The culture is collapsing and the nation is being deconstructed along the lines of race and class.
A fiscal crisis looms as the unfunded mandates of Social Security and Medicare remain unaddressed.
All these crises are hitting America at once -- a perfect storm of crises.''
Read the rest at Drudge Report, as linked above.
I don't see how any sentient person can fail to realize that we are in an unprecedented situation here in America, the like of which we have never experienced. However, the human tendency is to try to deny troubling realities and to pretend that all is well.
In some situations, that is a laudable tendency, to try to maintain a positive outlook, but in many situations it does not serve us well at all. In order to take appropriate action, we have to first acknowledge that the situation demands a response. The longer we delay responding, assuring ourselves and others that things are just fine, the more difficult it will be to rectify the situation, and usually the more costly.
The first reaction I had when I read the synopsis is: what, then, does Pat propose can be done? Apparently he does offer recommendations, such as:
� A new foreign-defense policy that closes most of the 1000 bases overseas, reviews all alliances, and brings home U.S. troops
� A purge of neoconservative ideology and the "Cakewalk" crowd" from national power.
� To avert a second Cold War, the United States should "get out of Russia�s space and get out of Russia�s face," and shut down all U.S. bases on the soil of the former Soviet Union
� To reach a cold peace in the culture war, Buchanan urges a return to federalism and the overthrow of our judicial dictatorship by Congressionally mandated restrictions on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
� To end the trade deficits and save the dollar, Buchanan urges a Hamiltonian solution: a 20% Border Equity Tax on imports, with the $500 billion raised to be used to end taxation on American producers
� To prevent America becoming "a tangle of squabbling nationalities" Buchanan urges: No amnesty for the 12-20 million illegal aliens; a border fence from San Diego to Brownsville; Congressional declarations that children born to illegal aliens are not citizens and English is the language of the United States; and a "timeout" on all immigration.''
I can't disagree on most of those points, especially the last part about a timeout on immigration.
But is it possible that Pat is sensationaliizing the situation in an effort to sell books? I ask this only because I know people will make that accusation, and the fact is, Buchanan has been predicting doom and gloom for a while now, and people will say, 'well, the sky hasn't fallen yet, has it?'
The fact is, I see him on MSNBC as a regular commentator on Tucker Carlson's show. And Buchanan seems to see the Republican party as the preferred vehicle for conservatives to take part in our system. Sometimes I wonder what his actual political position is now vis-a-vis the GOP? To my mind, the crisis we are in will require, to use the cliche, thinking outside the box, recognizing that our two existing political parties are a huge part of the problem, and as such cannot be expected to provide a solution.
What say all of you to Buchanan's diagnosis and prescriptions? Any thoughts?
NEW BUCHANAN BOOK DECLARES 'END OF AMERICA'
Sun Nov 25 2007 20:40:15 ET
**Exclusive**
"America is coming apart, decomposing, and...the likelihood of her survival as one nation...is improbable -- and impossible if America continues on her current course," declares Pat Buchanan. "For we are on a path to national suicide."
The best-selling author and former presidential candidate is on the eve of launching his new epic book: DAY OR RECKONING: HOW HUBRIS, IDEOLOGY AND GREED ARE TEARING AMERICA APART.
This time, Buchanan goes all the way:
"America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive."
The U.S. Army is breaking and is too small to meet America�s global commitments.
The dollar has sunk to historic lows and is being abandoned by foreign governments.
U.S. manufacturing is being hollowed out.
The greatest invasion in history, from the Third World, is swamping the ethno-cultural core of the country, leading to Balkanization and the loss of the Southwest to Mexico.
The culture is collapsing and the nation is being deconstructed along the lines of race and class.
A fiscal crisis looms as the unfunded mandates of Social Security and Medicare remain unaddressed.
All these crises are hitting America at once -- a perfect storm of crises.''
Read the rest at Drudge Report, as linked above.
I don't see how any sentient person can fail to realize that we are in an unprecedented situation here in America, the like of which we have never experienced. However, the human tendency is to try to deny troubling realities and to pretend that all is well.
In some situations, that is a laudable tendency, to try to maintain a positive outlook, but in many situations it does not serve us well at all. In order to take appropriate action, we have to first acknowledge that the situation demands a response. The longer we delay responding, assuring ourselves and others that things are just fine, the more difficult it will be to rectify the situation, and usually the more costly.
The first reaction I had when I read the synopsis is: what, then, does Pat propose can be done? Apparently he does offer recommendations, such as:
� A new foreign-defense policy that closes most of the 1000 bases overseas, reviews all alliances, and brings home U.S. troops
� A purge of neoconservative ideology and the "Cakewalk" crowd" from national power.
� To avert a second Cold War, the United States should "get out of Russia�s space and get out of Russia�s face," and shut down all U.S. bases on the soil of the former Soviet Union
� To reach a cold peace in the culture war, Buchanan urges a return to federalism and the overthrow of our judicial dictatorship by Congressionally mandated restrictions on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
� To end the trade deficits and save the dollar, Buchanan urges a Hamiltonian solution: a 20% Border Equity Tax on imports, with the $500 billion raised to be used to end taxation on American producers
� To prevent America becoming "a tangle of squabbling nationalities" Buchanan urges: No amnesty for the 12-20 million illegal aliens; a border fence from San Diego to Brownsville; Congressional declarations that children born to illegal aliens are not citizens and English is the language of the United States; and a "timeout" on all immigration.''
I can't disagree on most of those points, especially the last part about a timeout on immigration.
But is it possible that Pat is sensationaliizing the situation in an effort to sell books? I ask this only because I know people will make that accusation, and the fact is, Buchanan has been predicting doom and gloom for a while now, and people will say, 'well, the sky hasn't fallen yet, has it?'
The fact is, I see him on MSNBC as a regular commentator on Tucker Carlson's show. And Buchanan seems to see the Republican party as the preferred vehicle for conservatives to take part in our system. Sometimes I wonder what his actual political position is now vis-a-vis the GOP? To my mind, the crisis we are in will require, to use the cliche, thinking outside the box, recognizing that our two existing political parties are a huge part of the problem, and as such cannot be expected to provide a solution.
What say all of you to Buchanan's diagnosis and prescriptions? Any thoughts?
Labels: American Society, American Sovereignty, Demographics, Mass Immigration, Societal Decay
0 comment Friday, July 18, 2014 | admin
There is a discussion going on over at VFR about the Turner Classic Movies channel, or TCM.
The discussion began with Spencer Warren's piece about the Hollywood Ten, a group of people in the movie industry of the 1950s who were investigated for Communist connections.
Warren took exception to the leftist slant of the story as presented by TCM's Robert Osborne. Warren detected a bias, and another commenter at VFR, Mark E, wrote a long and impassioned defense of Osborne and TCM, extravagantly praising TCM for being
...THE bastion of conservative/traditionalist films, views, images, sense of life, historical perspective, film aesthetics and morality, etc., simply because of what it is in its very nature, and all the movies they show.
It is the only place in the contemporary media where the un-censored, un-PC, pre-Boomer past is presented with reverence as a good thing and not the family shame that is elsewhere the common dispiriting leftoid/"progressive" narrative about America.
They do not censor the past to edit out un-PC images of race relations, smoking, drinking, sexual attitudes, relations between men and women, etc.''
I tend to agree with Warren that Osborne displays a pronounced liberal bias, as does the station, despite Mark E.'s denial.
I've blogged about the decline of TCM before, here, and here.
I happen to be a fan of TCM, and a regular watcher -- if and when they show the old classics I prefer, which is becoming more and more infrequently these days. As I said in an earlier piece
Recently I've noticed that my favorite movie channel, Turner Classic Movies, has been gradually inserting more and more recent movies, at the expense of the old films. Yes, I know the official explanation: this month it's 31 Days of the Oscars or some such theme, which offers an excuse to show many films which are much more recent than what TCM has heretofore shown.
We old movie buffs have already witnessed the trashing of the old American Movie Classics channel, which used to show actual classic movies from the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood: you know, the age before the movies became obsessively focused on the seamy, ugly side of life, full of explicit and perverse sexuality and violence, not to mention gutter language and subject matter. And more than that, the movies in the PC era invariably shove political messages down our gullets as well, making them a must to avoid, for me. I watch movies to be entertained, diverted, uplifted, or inspired. If I want a sermon, I prefer to get it from a minister of the Word, not some Hollywood nihilist.
AMC in its heyday used to show the classics, and they showed them uninterrupted. Now, in addition to the change in the quality and vintage of the movies shown, the movies are also riddled with commercials.
So scratch AMC from the worth-watching column. So, remembering the sorry fate of AMC, it's not unreasonable to suspect that TCM may be slated for the same kind of transformation. After all, sex-n-violence is a sure-fire commercial formula, and the old movies are woefully lacking in those things, so it only makes good business sense to throw in some more recent movies with the requisite amounts of 'adult' content.
[...]
I don't know that there is a plan to gradually decrease the proportion of old movies to newer ones on TCM; it would seem so. I have noticed that the old 30s movies, to which I am partial, are often shown in weird time slots only, like 3 AM local time, while the newer movies get shown in the primetime slots, such as 8 PM. It's clear the newer movies are being given the best slots.''
And since I wrote that piece, the newer movies (to me, 'newer' means anything from the post-PC era, from the late 60s onward) are becoming more and more dominant in TCM's programming; I notice as before that the old movies are relegated often to the 3 AM slot, while prime-time might have 80s and 90s movies. Now the idea seems to be that any newer movie which is set in the past is appropriate for TCM.
And TCM has begun to show 'cult' movies of rather sleazy content, rather than the more respectable fare they started out with in the past. I'm referring to movies such as 'Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!' Classic movies, indeed.
If people want to watch those kinds of movies, they can be rented from Netflix, or they might show up on some of the more eclectic movie channels, such as FLIX or RetroPlex or something, but why do they belong on a Classic Movie channel? Especially when the real classic movies are shown only on TCM, having been banished from the other channels? Every 'Faster, Pussycat' takes up a time slot that might have been given to a real classic movie.
As for Mark E.'s contention that TCM is PC-free -- are we watching the same TCM? The TCM I get on my TV observes all the PC high holydays --- Black History month being reverently presented every year. And with many of the movies about the black experience, we get a lecture by some black 'expert' who holds forth on the correct interpretation of what we are about to see.
TCM showed the ultra-controversial Birth of a Nation last year or so, but not without an accompanying exegesis by a black expert. And to think, Birth of a Nation was a mainstream movie when it was released.
Personally I think TCM is slowly departing from its classic roots and aiming for a younger, hipper more 'diverse' demographic. That will surely mean fewer of the wholesome old classics with their racially ingenuous characterizations and politically incorrect tendencies. I see fewer hours being devoted to the old movie greats, and more being given over to later movies, with their crassness, vulgarity, and politically correct unctuousness.
Maybe I am inclined to see the glass as half-empty, but I am very jealous and protective of my old movies, which are a piece of the dear, dead past I love.
The discussion began with Spencer Warren's piece about the Hollywood Ten, a group of people in the movie industry of the 1950s who were investigated for Communist connections.
Warren took exception to the leftist slant of the story as presented by TCM's Robert Osborne. Warren detected a bias, and another commenter at VFR, Mark E, wrote a long and impassioned defense of Osborne and TCM, extravagantly praising TCM for being
...THE bastion of conservative/traditionalist films, views, images, sense of life, historical perspective, film aesthetics and morality, etc., simply because of what it is in its very nature, and all the movies they show.
It is the only place in the contemporary media where the un-censored, un-PC, pre-Boomer past is presented with reverence as a good thing and not the family shame that is elsewhere the common dispiriting leftoid/"progressive" narrative about America.
They do not censor the past to edit out un-PC images of race relations, smoking, drinking, sexual attitudes, relations between men and women, etc.''
I tend to agree with Warren that Osborne displays a pronounced liberal bias, as does the station, despite Mark E.'s denial.
I've blogged about the decline of TCM before, here, and here.
I happen to be a fan of TCM, and a regular watcher -- if and when they show the old classics I prefer, which is becoming more and more infrequently these days. As I said in an earlier piece
Recently I've noticed that my favorite movie channel, Turner Classic Movies, has been gradually inserting more and more recent movies, at the expense of the old films. Yes, I know the official explanation: this month it's 31 Days of the Oscars or some such theme, which offers an excuse to show many films which are much more recent than what TCM has heretofore shown.
We old movie buffs have already witnessed the trashing of the old American Movie Classics channel, which used to show actual classic movies from the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood: you know, the age before the movies became obsessively focused on the seamy, ugly side of life, full of explicit and perverse sexuality and violence, not to mention gutter language and subject matter. And more than that, the movies in the PC era invariably shove political messages down our gullets as well, making them a must to avoid, for me. I watch movies to be entertained, diverted, uplifted, or inspired. If I want a sermon, I prefer to get it from a minister of the Word, not some Hollywood nihilist.
AMC in its heyday used to show the classics, and they showed them uninterrupted. Now, in addition to the change in the quality and vintage of the movies shown, the movies are also riddled with commercials.
So scratch AMC from the worth-watching column. So, remembering the sorry fate of AMC, it's not unreasonable to suspect that TCM may be slated for the same kind of transformation. After all, sex-n-violence is a sure-fire commercial formula, and the old movies are woefully lacking in those things, so it only makes good business sense to throw in some more recent movies with the requisite amounts of 'adult' content.
[...]
I don't know that there is a plan to gradually decrease the proportion of old movies to newer ones on TCM; it would seem so. I have noticed that the old 30s movies, to which I am partial, are often shown in weird time slots only, like 3 AM local time, while the newer movies get shown in the primetime slots, such as 8 PM. It's clear the newer movies are being given the best slots.''
And since I wrote that piece, the newer movies (to me, 'newer' means anything from the post-PC era, from the late 60s onward) are becoming more and more dominant in TCM's programming; I notice as before that the old movies are relegated often to the 3 AM slot, while prime-time might have 80s and 90s movies. Now the idea seems to be that any newer movie which is set in the past is appropriate for TCM.
And TCM has begun to show 'cult' movies of rather sleazy content, rather than the more respectable fare they started out with in the past. I'm referring to movies such as 'Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!' Classic movies, indeed.
If people want to watch those kinds of movies, they can be rented from Netflix, or they might show up on some of the more eclectic movie channels, such as FLIX or RetroPlex or something, but why do they belong on a Classic Movie channel? Especially when the real classic movies are shown only on TCM, having been banished from the other channels? Every 'Faster, Pussycat' takes up a time slot that might have been given to a real classic movie.
As for Mark E.'s contention that TCM is PC-free -- are we watching the same TCM? The TCM I get on my TV observes all the PC high holydays --- Black History month being reverently presented every year. And with many of the movies about the black experience, we get a lecture by some black 'expert' who holds forth on the correct interpretation of what we are about to see.
TCM showed the ultra-controversial Birth of a Nation last year or so, but not without an accompanying exegesis by a black expert. And to think, Birth of a Nation was a mainstream movie when it was released.
Personally I think TCM is slowly departing from its classic roots and aiming for a younger, hipper more 'diverse' demographic. That will surely mean fewer of the wholesome old classics with their racially ingenuous characterizations and politically incorrect tendencies. I see fewer hours being devoted to the old movie greats, and more being given over to later movies, with their crassness, vulgarity, and politically correct unctuousness.
Maybe I am inclined to see the glass as half-empty, but I am very jealous and protective of my old movies, which are a piece of the dear, dead past I love.
Labels: American Society, Old Movies, Political Correctness, Popular Culture, Tcm