The Anchoress

Yes, I’m on a kick, but don’t stop me - this stuff is good for us.

“Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.” - G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News 9/11/09

G. K. Chesterton’s helpful assessment of fundamental liberty. By his measure, our liberty is indeed threatened.

“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.” - Broadcast talk 6-11-35

Emphasis mine. Jay at STACLU has a great quote on a similar theme:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” –C.S. Lewis”

Two Christ-professing Englishmen warning us from the early 20th Century, that to give up our freedom “for our own good,” is not freedom. It is acquiescing to tyranny with thumb in the mouth, iPod buds in the ear and the tv set on an endless loop of Sex and the City reruns.

We live in a world where a candidate trying to be elected president says he will talk to anti-semitic, genocidal tyrants “with no preconditions.”

It is a very strange world. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is instituting compulsory spying and snitching, in Russia Vladimir Putin is disappearing satirists and dissenters. In Canada, writers are being silenced for daring to discuss demographics, and in Paris an aging screen siren is convicted of hate speech for having an opinion and expressing it. In Rome, tyrants mug for the cameras (though not without protest! Go Italy!). In England, one lone bishop seems to be all that stands against the overhauling of British Common Law for something quite different.

Here in America, we see someone like the dubious Al “Entrepreneur” Gore - who will not debate or allow public discussion of dissenting opinion on the issue of global warming, thrusting his hoax forward like a determined bull, negatively influencing our economy while reaping incredible profit.

Czech president Vaclev Havel, an economist who has some personal acquaintance with the tyranny of evil men, is trying to warn us. He says the planet is not at risk, but we are.. Our liberty and our sovereignty is at risk as too many useful idiots, move forward on the legislating of an insidious lie, even as scientists are backing off on the “settled” matter.

Everywhere, substance and fact are pushed aside for amorphous sensation.

All we can do is hope that the guy everyone is actually calling a tyrant will continue to hold steady in the face of madness and political pressure. And we have no reason to think he won’t. He’s been holding steady against an incessant current, and keeping to a promise, for the past 7 years.

And we’re going to miss him when he’s gone, and no one is left to hold steady against anything.

Meanwhile, the “free” press in America, sits back quietly while voters are disenfranchised to advance a manufactured candidate of a socialist bent. H/T Larwyn.

…they will be beyond saving.

Especially now that Nancy Pelosi - as incompetent a House Speaker as has ever held the post - has decided that Congress does not even have to send the president whole and complete bills (staggering arrogance!), if the GOP does not find the gumption to first DEMAND a revote and then do a 180 and represent the will of the people over their own fat, they deserve to lose everything, for the foreseeable future.

Ed Morrissey explains it better than I can.

It seems to me that McCain and the GOP can pull out a last-minute rehabilitation of themselves before the election if they take a few really sensible steps:

1) Start demanding that America drill, process and refine her own energy resources (and consider serious alternatives and nuclear power) instead of being held hostage to foreign governments while China drills 75 miles off our shores.

2) Start making serious noise about the do-nothing, obstructionist congress that is completely out-of-order under Speak Pelosi. It wasn’t great before she got in; it is now a parody of our legislative branch.

3) Get in front of the cameras and start taking back a few narratives. Refuse to join in Obama Hosannas. Start talking about the scientists who are debunking global warming. Start to talk victory against terrorism and in Iraq and even (gasp!) take some credit and give the troops and president some credit for it too. After all, the Dems see the writing on the wall; they’re beginning to take some - they ain’t shy!

When chumps act like impotent fools, chumps get treated like impotent fools, and the GOP looks pretty damned limp.

Way back in 2005 we saw how ineffectual and complacent the GOP was, so I don’t expect them to do any of these things. When the economy was doing well, they did nothing to stop the press and the Democrats talking it down, but maybe now they can help get good news on the air.

Are they capable rejecting the narratives and standing for a difference? I doubt it. The Republicans have allowed every media meme to go unchallenged for the past 7 years, and now they face extinction for it. But if they would make an effort, take a few bulls by the horns, — if they could identify and and stop the farces instead of riding them like merry-go-rounds — they may still be able to snatch a victory from the jaws of what looks to be inexorable defeat.

I really believe in my heart that Americans are dying for someone - anyone -to stop accepting media storylines, PC framings and a status-quo of illusion, mediocrity and feckless double-talk, and just be straight and firm on these issues.

Absenting that - and I don’t see any of the three major presidential candidates willing to do any of it - I almost wish the president would adapt Bill Clinton’s attitude and take control of these issues - particularly the energy issue - by Executive Order.

Can he? I don’t know. Seems to me no one ever minded it when Bill Clinton “flicked his wrist” to make a “law of the land,” and then smiled and said, “pretty cool, eh?”

When the congress is out of control - and it seems not only out of control but out of its mind - do not the other two branches of government have a basis to step in? I’m no scholar, so it’s a serious question.

UPDATE: So now, a Democrat has called for a government takeover of the oil industry. That’s what we need, because the government runs everything else so well, it can’t even send a bill to the president. Come on, Republicans - do something or go down and go down for a long, long time.

Honestly, I see this sort of crap in my email all the time - I get an “is it the end-of-the-world” missive every day or two - but I just blew it off as fringe element stuff. Now, Novak is bringing it to mainstream attention:

An element of the Christian community is not reconciled to McCain’s candidacy but instead regards the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a Biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as “God’s candidate” running for president in 2012.
[...]
One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me Huckabee in personal conversation with him embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible’s prophecy.

Mike Huckabee is “God’s candidate?” Holy moley!

You know, any Christian who presumes to know that the American people “deserve” a bad president, who presumes to know the will of God, or who presumes to know who “God’s Candidate” is, is about two steps away from the Westboro Baptist Hate Cultists who give all Christians a bad name.

You can be concerned about a path America is taking, but you cannot decide America “deserves” bad things. You can shudder at a million babies being aborted a year, but you also must take heart that there is an energetic faith-based opposition to abortion and euthanasia that is making real inroads into the heart of society. You don’t like the way the country is going, you work to change it and you pray…you do not sit there deciding, “well, I’m upset with the way America’s going, so I think God wants me to sit this election out because the country deserves a few years of pain.”

It almost sounds like, “I don’t have the candidate I want, so I will spitefully sit it out, and use belief in a just and vengeful God as my excuse and my justification. And boy, after that, America will learn to take my concerns and my votes more seriously! Go get ‘em God!”

Ace writes:

That’s a Novak column, so it can’t be dismissed as a left-winger making up kooky stories about the hated Christian right.

Unfortunately you don’t have to make this stuff up. You can find some stragglers and fringe-ists declaring that “America needs to be taught a lesson,” on many right-wing political forums. They’re not the majority, but they’re definitely out there. Their emails usually contain a scripture verse and a rant about John McPain, Jorge Arbusto, Illegal Immigration, Obama-the-Muslim, Hillary-the-beast, the gold standard and how everything will be better after we let America go to hell from 2009-2012.

I think they’re optimistic, myself. Put Obama or Hillary in the White House with a Democrat House and Democrat Senate and perhaps as many as three SCOTUS judges ready to kick the bucket or retire…you got yourselves the making of a whole new world of pain, and God’s got nothing to do with it.

Speaking of Presidents - doesn’t it seem like talking directly to the American people instead of letting the press and the opposition define him, is something he should have been doing for - oh…the last 5 years?

Yes, I’ve been saying this all along…

Indeed. And indeed.

A while back (pre-Obama-surge) I wrote:

Come on - the last president who had a “D” after his name saw the 5.6% unemployment rates trumpeted as “essentially full employment” with no “ifs, ands or buts” about it. Every day was a rainbow day when the last “D” President was in office, and most of the news was good news. If the stock market went up - you heard about it. If it went down, that was just a correction and some profit-taking; no big whoop. And even if American interests and vessels were being blown up here, or overseas, there was no terrorism. The only real terrorist was the homegrown one, and I think he was the only one put to death for it, too, if I recall. When the American president had a D after his name, the troops that were deployed were never in harm’s way, and they were all going to be “home by Christmas.”

If the American President had a D after his name, do you think you would have to be your own news service in order to get some relief from the unendingly bleak-everything-everywhere-is-bad-and-the-world-will-continue-to-spin-into darkness and all-nations-will-continue to-hate the USA until-W-is-out-of-office and -our-guy-presumably-Hillary is-in-the- White House?

It’s going to take getting another D into the White House for good news to be allowed out to play in the American psyche, again. It may well take getting another D into the White House for our troops to be able to rely upon their funding, for their heroism to be noted and applauded with appropriate fanfare.

It’s very tiresome, isn’t it? The agendas and double-standards of the press and the willingness of the American people to accept superficial analysis and headlines. Yes, things are more expensive right now, mostly because of oil prices and the soaring food prices that are part-and-parcel of the enviro-hysteria that has America held-hostage to foreign oil (rather than independently supplied by her own resources) and is content to starve the world to burn dubiously “clean” bio fuels. I am at a loss to understand - and a little worried by - America’s willingness to be led about by the nose on these issues.

And I am coming concerned about how easily some Americans digest rank antisemitism without discomfort. That’s chilling.

Many Americans - seemingly more and more - are so busy entertaining themselves - with their flip videos, ear-buds, increasingly balkanized personal lives - that they don’t really care about the details; they just wants to plug in, tune out and (increasingly) let whoever they assign to be “Mom & Dad” in the government take care of them while they stay in their rooms, chat online and try to do as little around the house as they can.

For them, the coup is complete.

The ending, of course, is the coup d’état. Believing that the rest of us, now disillusioned, are no longer clinging to romantic ideals of honor, or truth or nobility, these always-restless First Children, devoted to deconstruction, believe they are about to take down the presidency, the churches, the “old” government and even the “old” media. They expect to put into place something “brand new.” But believe me when I tell you what they are building is older than dirt. And up from it. Which is why they will need their fortresses. Castro lives in one, too.

They’ve been practicing all of this, by the way, perfecting the Art of the Painless Coup so thoroughly that most ordinary folks do not even realize what has occured.

Over the past 40 years these hyperactive First Children have been pulling off small scale coups with varying levels of success. They managed to deconstruct the academies, so that education is less a broadening of knowledge than a narrowing of perspective. They have deconstructed the liturgy to insist that a pantomime in clownface is a vast improvement over 2000 year-old sacrament and liturgy. They have deconstructed government by constructing something so huge and unweildly that nothing coming out of it is reliable or dependable, and almost no one is accountable, either. They have deconstructed the press to the point where the truth of a story is less important than how it may be framed and spun. They have deconstructed the idea of fascism to mean “those democracies in Israel and America” rather than the freedom-suppressing regimes which surround them.

And all the while they have been busily pulling things apart, they have kept the rest of the family distracted with the television, with the radio, with the cinema - any or all of which have instantly been called into service whenever someone got a little bored and looked around, wondering what these kids were up to. “Abortion?” said Aunt Sally, “Abortion is a terrible thing!” Suddenly every news story is about the grim circumstance of illegal abortion. Suddenly sitcoms are showing the way. “Well, if Maude had an abortion…maybe sometimes it’s a good thing…”

“Free love,” sputtered Uncle Jim, “it’s immoral! It’s damaging to the family!” Suddenly every film hero or heroine is having free, uncomplicated, undamaging sex, and flashing some gratuitous T and A at Uncle Jim in the process. “I dunno,” he smiles to Aunt Sally as he settles back, “maybe it’s not all that bad…”

What we’re now being told is “not that bad” is the sort of socialized medicine that is bankrupting Britain and has her citizens pulling out their own teeth. We’re being told that we have no right to choose what sort of light bulbs we will use, what sort of television we will watch. We’re hearing that the inexorable creep of suppression of our free speech and our free press is meant to protect liberty, whose definition seems flexible for some.

Again:

Well, one way to prevent the coup is to be utterly fearless and authentic in pronouncing the things we believe. Pope John Paul II made enormous headway against the Painless Coup which had gone so far as to turn our beautiful churches into bare concrete monstrosities (ready-made for quick-conversion into temples to secular reason) and he managed to reclaim the liturgy and renew appreciation for the Eucharist by repeating the truth over and over, with the reminder, “do not be afraid!”

Thus so, we must repeat, over and over, that while illusions may well be all around us, some amorphous notions, like honor and freedom and truth, are still real. They are not just real, they are Eternal.

We must repeat again and again that America’s honor is no illusion. Imperfect as it may be this is still the land to which - in large or small ways - every free nation owes its current liberty. This is the nation that has routinely sent its idealistic young men off to foreign lands, to die there, not for empire, not for real-estate, but for the protection and advancement of that unseen thing that is freedom, the strengthener of the human spirit, the burnisher of human potential…this is still the nation to which millions of every creative or industrious person wishes to come, it is the nation to which the oppressed call out for rescue and relief.

We must repeat, over and over, that the American Presidency is, like a papacy or a monarchy, larger than the person who occupies the office, and it is noble. The American President freed slaves when too many would not entertain the notion. The American President has carried the big stick used to overthrow tyrants and bullies both foreign and domestic. The American President has put his airmen to use to keep his vanquished enemies in Berlin from starving in a brutal winter, he has used his navy to bring aid after tsunami. The American President has dreamed great space voyages into reality, has opened closed markets, has encouraged a people to tear down walls. The American President has envisioned tens of millions of people raising purple fingertips to the sky, and made it so.

We must repeat, over and over, that Liberty is the means by which we created creatures are meant to live and to grow and be. That Liberty lives in the Truth. That Liberty lives where people can speak freely, without fear of injury or reprisals. That Liberty lives only when the press is free and unencumbered - when it is detached from events instead of entwined in them. That Liberty lives when people refuse to be intimidated into silence or acquiescence, whether in the workplace or within the community. That Liberty is the fragile thing that diminishes whenever one refuses to acclaim it for oneself.

In between all of those repetitions, we must do something else, if we are to stave off the Painless Coup. We are going to have to turn away from our distractions - the television, the radio, the magazines, the talkshows, the films, the fashions, the escapist entertainment, even the internet. We will have to turn away from these empty things - to make them smaller in our lives, where they and the popular culture now loom so large - and we are going to have to get quiet.

A good musician knows that music is not created only by playing notes, but by understanding the spaces between the notes, and their value. Just so, it will not be enough to simply repeat what is true - if that is all we do, it will only add to the din - there must also be silence, in which to do our other, more powerful work.
[...]
It is true that there are many illusions in the world. And on the world stage there stride some masters of the sleight-of-hand and the misdirection - you can recognize them because they are all of a mind, and of a piece, and they are all working different parts of the same trick.

But if you can recognize a trick for what it is, you can prevail against it.

We are down to a few shabby illusionists, and if the audience is distracted enough, they can finish the misdirection and convince you that the best way for Americans to grow and be free is to submit to an ever-increasing and intrusive government. The noise is deafening, as everyone turns away, chattering amongst themselves - even here in the blogosphere.

I don’t have a good feeling. I think we really have to get our free - and by free I mean unencumbered and disenthralled - press back. And soon. I wrote someplace else:

There have only been 43 American Presidents in 230 years. There have only been 267 popes in 2000 years. There have been billions of other people. Greatness is not an illusion. And it is not fomented with easy praise. I worry sometimes that our over-indulged, over-applauded youngsters may not have the requisite strength within themselves to find “greatness” when we will need it.

How are you feeling about things, these days?

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

Related:
Let’s do it; let’s impeach Bush
Shame, Praise, Idols and Undercutting Greatness
There go 800,000 jobs? Not really
The Rodney Dangerfield Economy
Maxed Out Mama: Wiped out by slackers

Barack Obama has made a strong statement of repudiation as regards the extreme sermonizing of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, which has been the subject of much attention, particularly here on the internets.

Spake Obama:

I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
[...]
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

You’ll want to read the whole thing and make up your own mind about it. Jay asks is it enough?.

For some, yes. For me, yes. For others, nothing ever will be enough.

I was in the car today and flipped on Sean Hannity and heard him really carrying on, saying that because Obama “sat in those pews for 20 years,” even if he repudiated Wright it would not be “credible.”

That’s baloney, and as a Catholic, Hannity should know better. We Catholics have more than spent our fair share of time listening to priests with whom we disagree. I don’t know how it is with Protestants - maybe their relationships with their pastors are different from ours (I do have a few Protestant friends whose families seem to shift churches whenever a pastor doesn’t 100% reflect their feelings and opinions) - but as someone who has been sitting in a particular pew for over 20 years, I know that a church is more than a pastor; it’s a community. We can say, “well, this priest or preacher doesn’t agree with me all the way - or even “I am ashamed of this priest” - but the community is my home, I love the people and programs and the worship here, so I stay.”

Is Hannity suggesting that a politician must review a pastor’s sermons each week and run around denouncing and deserting those preachers who might cause him a little bit of political heat? Wouldn’t that be both extreme behavior and a bit dis-crediting?

I think all the “denouncing” and “demanding that denouncements be made” and “denouncing whoever doesn’t denounce” and “disbelieving the denouncing” is beyond absurdist theater - it is an intellectual wasteland of expedient “gotcha-ism” that is utterly shredding our political process.

Things are getting out of hand; and I am concerned that some flames are being recklessly fanned in a way that could be very, very detrimental to the country. It seems some - both on the right and on the left - are looking to help along a perfect storm of politics/religion/race which could wreck more than mere political careers. Rather than being horrified by the prospect, some seem almost giddy with anticipation.

I denounce them.

Wright’s rhetoric is extreme, but it’s just rhetoric. After 9/11 he said “the chickens have come home to roost?” Yeah, well, so did Pat Robertson and - I think -Jimmy Swaggart. Either Ruth or Billy Graham once said “if God doesn’t punish America, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” For that matter, just last Tuesday, completely buying some badly reported nothingburgers from Rome, Jimmy Swaggart’s Wife announced that Pope Benedict XVI was espousing witchcraft.

On her show “Frances and Friends” with Francis Swaggart she was answering listener email…she just announced to the world that Tae kwon do was evil and not a good thing. The second email was “Francis can you please talk about these new “Social Sins the Pope has added?”.

Well, One would think that Frances Swaggart of all people would be careful of how the secular media reports religion and Christianity…However she was off to the races…Francis announced that Pope is talking about sins relating to the Environment and if you threw a wrapper down on the ground you could be damned!!! That the Pope was basically promoting witchcraft and that all this Pagan Mother Earth stuff was coming from the Vatican now. She ended her commentary by going ” Well You Catholics know what your Pope is doing now!!!!”

How is that for ignorant and inflammatory? And a look at - ferinstance - oh, say the September 2006 issue of her magazine suggests this was no mere blip in her radar. That’s from a nice little Christian middle-aged lady, not from an angry black Christian man who has served in the military of a country that has not always done itself proud in matters of race, and his politics originate stage left, rather than stage right.

And don’t kid yourself, “stage” is also an operative word, here. There is a bit of theatricality in all preaching - at least if it is meant to stir.

Rev. Wright is a Christian preacher from the left wing. He’s going to preach to left-wing sensibilities, overfocusing on some of the touchier parts of American history (because every nation and history has its darker moments, and it is stupid to pretend otherwise).

Some Christian preachers on the right do the same in reverse, glossing over issues that perhaps could stand some constructive criticism, and overfocusing on the shinier pages of history.

(The extreme hate-and-madness of the Westboro church goes beyond either example. For all that Wright may piss some off, he is basing a good deal of his stuff on history and perception and his perspective as a black man in America; he is not standing outside of AIDS funerals with signs saying “God hates fags;” he is not out disrupting soldier’s funerals).

I wrote yesterday,

What a way to run an election, or divide a nation. This is using a massive and annihilating cannon to destroy an opponent when something much less destructive could do the trick.

If someone wants to defeat Candidate Obama in this election, there are plenty of ways to do it that don’t involve messing with his church and igniting an issue that can flare into a conflagration uncontrollable. You don’t defeat the candidate by scorching the earth, unless you don’t give a damn about the nation and care only for your own voice, your own sensibilities or your own acquisition of power.

I say let’s get back to talking about real issues - let’s get back to the real game of politics instead of the secondary game of illusion, misdirection and character assassination, which serves more to run out the clock than to move the ball. Let’s stop - for heaven’s sake let us stop - this endless goosing and gotcha-ing which has become a substitute for substance in this horrid election cycle. We all deserve better than this.

I’m sure many will disagree with me - I seem to be out of step with everyone, everywhere, lately - but I really do believe that you don’t destroy a candidate because of his pastor - I think this is a place we don’t want to go.

Rich Lowry read a bit of Obama’s book and again, I don’t see anything so awful. “White folks greed?” You don’t have to be black to say that, if you’re on the left - or even on the right, sometimes. Again - Wright is a preacher of the left. The right may not like his message, but he’s not saying much that most extreme leftists - white or black - would not agree with. Obama, let us remember, is (like Hillary) a guy on the left. The folks on the left are entitled to their preacher’s too.

Richard Miniter says it much better than I do. H/T Instapundit.

Also writing:
Jim Geraghty
Ed Morrissey
Stop the ACLU
Transterrestrial Musings, who also writes here.
Patterico
Allahpundit
Just One Minute
Politico
Powerline
Protein Wisdom
Ace
Andrew Sullivan
TNR

Thank heavens for Peggy Noonan who so often manages, so elegantly, to articulate the meandering germs running through my brain but remaining unexpressed due to my lack of skill.

In appreciating William F. Buckley today she writes:

…When Jackie Onassis died, a friend of mine who knew her called me and said, with such woe, “Oh, we are losing her kind.” He meant the elegant, the cultivated, the refined. I thought of this with Bill’s passing, that we are losing his kind–people who were deeply, broadly educated in great universities when they taught deeply and broadly, who held deep views of life and the world and art and all the things that make life more delicious and more meaningful. We have work to do as a culture in bringing up future generations that are so well rounded, so full and so inspiring.

That’s precisely what I thought upon hearing of Buckley’s death. I wasn’t thinking of the political, but of the patrician. I too thought of Jackie Onassis and her elegance, because Buckley was all elegance, himself - in his writing, his bearing, his self-assurance and quickness. You might call it “old money” elegance, except that plenty of people from “old money” are crass and trashy, completely at-home with all that is vulgar in a very vulgar age.

The quality of elegance I’m talking about though, really has little to do with money. I might have argued, once, that it had to do with education, and perhaps - once - that was true. The people coming out of the great universities - back when they really were great institutions dedicated to the quest for understanding - would leave Yale or Oxford or the Sorbonne having been imbued with such a broadness of mind and scope of knowledge that he or she would be capable of drawing upon their exposure to art, great literature, philosophy and higher mathematics to hold forth on almost any subject, discussing even - as Ms. Noonan writes Buckley did - the subject of peanut butter, with intelligence, humor and humility.

I say humility, because that sort of education cannot help but enlighten a student as to how privileged he has been to receive it. The truly privileged, when educated rightly, understand that their good fortune in having been exposed to higher things obliges them not to insularity, but to openness. A William F. Buckley or a Jackie Kennedy may not often rub elbows with the hoi polloi, but when they did they used their best manners, because to do less would be disrespectful to the other, and demeaning to everything they had been taught by the great ones who came before. They had no difficulty engaging others outside their spheres because their security within themselves - part of which comes from that humility that recognizes the random vagaries of privilege - allowed that generosity of spirit.

But I don’t think education completely explains this quality which we see disappearing with the deaths of these sorts. Americans are - in terms of numbers, if not in real study - better educated now, than at anytime in our history, but we no longer see the graduates of Yale and Harvard emerging with thoughtful humility, having nourished on the fields of past greatness. Much of that is due to the politically correct curriculum which substitutes weak identity appreciation over strong reason, but part of it is due to our ever-fading sense of wonder and awe at anything but ourselves.

Chris Matthews, recalling that he started out as a Bill Buckley Conservative and said poignantly of Buckley:

He wrote once of a young man who stood alone in an empty church, juggling balls in the air: it was something he could do–throw balls into the air and catch them without dropping, in a swirly feat of personal mastery. As I said, it’s something he could do. It was the one thing he could offer up to God when they were, as best as he could arrange it, alone together. And all the books and columns he wrote, and all the editions of National Review he published, our great William F. Buckley, Jr. was offering up his prayer. This is what he could do.

It takes humility to juggle before God because it’s all you can do, and also takes self-knowledge and self-confidence. It also requires the security of knowing, with absolute certainty, that you were loved into being and for a purpose, which - no matter how privileged your birth or education - makes you just like everyone else.

William F. Buckley and Jackie Onassis seemed to know that, and it made them graceful and great.

It has been told that often when Buckley had a big dinner party, he’d invite a leading liberal to be a guest of honor; Buckley believed in giving attention to those with whom he disagreed. He believed he could learn from them.

Last night I posted a clip from the old Johnny Carson show. It begins with him appreciatively laughing with the post-1960 election Richard Nixon, then allowing his guests to shine in hijinks, and finally with him talking to a woman with a hen. I’ve been watching a lot of Carson lately, and marveling at him. Unlike Buckley, he was not from old money and he did not go to Yale; he was a Nebraskan boy with a quick wit and a curious mind who supplemented his U of N degree by educating himself throughout his life, reading great books and political tomes and studying astronomy, and - like Buckley -he was capable of fully engaging with his guests whether they were political thinkers, opera singers, poets, entertainers or American eccentrics. One had the sense that he knew what he knew, and was glad to discover what they knew, too, to add to his store, to enrich his own understanding. That’s the same gracefulness.

Buckley and Carson were two sides of an American coin forged when society was busily broadening its intellect and admitting all comers, when there was a sense of relishing the battle while respecting the foe, and of looking out for the little guy who might get caught between the thrusts and parries. We’re losing it. As the nation becomes more “privileged” in the superficials she is echoing empty at her depths.

The paradox of privilege is that it is meaningless when it only serves the self, when it thinks it has nothing to learn from anyone else. Buckley, I think, understood that; now he is gone. Who is left to teach it?

Obi’s Sister has a nice round-up.

Michelle Malkin’s round-up - unsurprisingly - is comprehensive

Deacon Greg links to an interesting story about a priest who is fighting for smoker’s rights.

I suspect we have found here one Catholic whom Christopher Hitchens might appreciate.

As each customer walked into Mort’s Cigar Bar in Old Town on Monday night, the Rev. H Setter quickly opened a wooden box and held out a Chateau Real cigar.

“Are you here for the rally?” he’d asked each patron, dampened from the rain.

If the answer was “yes,” he’d hand out a free cigar.

The priest at All Saints Catholic Church, Setter held to his promise to advocate for smokers’ rights by holding a rally at Mort’s. He plans to be there next Monday, too.
[...]
Setter, who realizes some may see him as an unlikely advocate for such a cause, is against banning smoking for two reasons.

“No. 1, tobacco products in the United States are legal, and business owners should have the right to make decisions about whether they’re smoke-free or smoker-friendly” without government regulation, Setter said as cigar smoke filled the bar.

Second, he believes a ban on smoking would effectively kill a charity dinner he’s sponsored for 11 years. Father H’s Annual Benefit Cigar Dinner has raised more than $150,000 for local charities since 1997, according to Setter’s Web site, HolySmoke.com.

A while back I wrote:

I am perfectly able to decide for myself whether or not I wish to bring my money to a smoking establishment or not…a business can simply place a nicely lettered sign at the door indicating whether smoking is or is not permitted inside. If they are polite, they can offer to make suitable recommendations to other businesses that cater to what they do not. But they needn’t even be polite about it, if they don’t want to be.

and here:

A right-thinking [Mayor Bloomberg] would allow “smoking establishments” to announce clearly that they cater to smokers, and are willing to make suitable recommendations to non-smokers, who can then go sip their white wines elsewhere and leave Christopher Hitchens to his gin and tonic in peace.

I think I’ve since learned that Hitchens is a scotch drinker, and that shouldn’t surprise me; my experience with gin drinkers is that they’re a bit meaner than scotch tipplers.

I’m a non-smoker, but I understand what it is to relax over a drink with a cigarette, and I think a fella ought to be able to go smoke a cigar with like-minded fellas if that’s what they want, without local, state or federal governments chasing them down.

The scolds of the world want to take away everything fun - cartoons that go boom, playgrounds with see-saws, hot fudge sundaes and a smoke. All in the name of helping you to “live longer.” I’m surprised no one has decided that homeowners should not be able to own propane tanks and barbecues…or kitchen stoves…because someone might get hurt.

Life is too short, even if you live to be a hundred, and I’m not sure I want to live to 100. 80 would be great. 75 would be fine, too…but a little freedom to relax and unwind has to be part of the bargain.

My son Buster’s pet peeve is the way fathers and young men are portrayed on television either by advertisers or in sitcoms. Overall it seems to Buster that in sitcoms men are fat, sloppy, stupid, lazy, sex-obsessed and unable to function without the help of the fit, very together, stylish, driven, educated and sex-sensible woman. In ads, young men are brain-dead, game-playing couch-potato louts or stupid, monosyllabic Jeff Spicoli knock-offs, and in ads fathers are routinely portrayed as profoundly mindless, deceitful, immature and yes, stupid.

But no matter how stupid young men are in these ads, or sitcoms, their fathers are always stupider, and in some commercials, both parents are completely vapid and need to be set straight by their lecturing, Superior Lifeforce Children.

“Don’t buy stuff from those advertisers,” Buster would tell me. “Don’t patronize businesses that make men look like bums and idiots. I’m all for women and girls being portrayed respectfully, but I’m tired of it being at the expense of men. And don’t buy stuff that uses kids to lecture at you.”

Yes, I do note the irony of my child lecturing me not to allow myself to be lectured by “children.”

Needless to say, this is not something Buster had to say to me more than once. I’ve never much liked the idea