Eradicating Meaning

When a "player," someone who represents an interest (aka a nation) gets the Nobel Peace Prize, it damages the whole notion of "peace." Peace cannot be partisan....and when we dig into the elements of most situations where leaders or representatives of states were awarded the NPP, the partisan element isn't hard to find.

Woodrow Wilson fundamentally didn't deserve the Nobel Prize, because no matter how noble his Fourteen Points, without the U.S. taking the lead and forgiving all the war loans to the European countries (which was done after WWII, a lesson hard learned), it ultimately validated the crushing reparations exacted against Germany in the Versailles Treaty, which was a major factor in bringing Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP to power in Germany. The U.S. may or may not have deserved the pejorative "Uncle Shylock," but Calvin Coolidge was simply being Bismarckian in his realpolitik when he said "They hired the money, didn't they?" These things may be judged one way or another by history, but they don't fit into consideration for a peace prize. They just don't.

Henry Kissinger, in the context of the Vietnam War, may have been deserving of many things, but the Nobel Peace Prize was certainly not one of them.

One of the very few things James Earl Carter may deserve to be remembered for is the Camp David Peace Accords. But should anyone have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for this? Peace in that situation would have involved the Palestinians, whether the Egyptians were present or not- and the Palestinians were nowhere to be found. This may have been the first "joke" NPP.

What Barack Obama has done -in any substantive way- to merit a nomination for such a prize -let alone its being awarded- is hard to fathom. The Nobel committee's most trenchant statement on the topic seems to boil down to "He's made people feel good."

At the very least, it is questionable that the leader of a nation with tens of thousands of its forces currently in combat roles on foreign soil would be considered for such an award, regardless of the situation. It is therefore impossible to believe that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize (along with the prize for Literature...any that aren't awarded for measurable scientific achievement) hasn't devolved into the same level as the political vagaries of the International Olympic Committee or the United Nations. The Nobel Peace Prize should be ignored.

The ONLY thing.....

Mr. Obama's in a hurry, so it ought to be pretty easy to set an agenda for the Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation hearings. I'm very grateful already for one thing she's said: that the appeals courts make public policy in this country. This has been nothing but obvious for some decades now, but it's like the skeleton at the feast that no one wishes to acknowledge.

Sotomayor has brought it into the open that our elected representatives no longer make the laws, instead they ratify what they know the Federal Judiciary will approve. If I ever heard a more appropriate subject for debate, I can't remember it. Forget all the yapping about her being a "reverse racist." Let's talk about restoring representative government to this nation.

A Pox on Them...and you know who I mean

Now that we have some expectation of justice (notice I didn't say we were going to get it) in the arrest and charge of Gov. Blagojevich of Illinois for various malfeasances, it's time to give other politicians equal time to demonstrate in just how much contempt they hold our system of government.

Today's example: Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan Seeks Governor's Ouster

This is an abominable precedent, period. Madigan has demonstrated -not for the first time- her unfitness for public office. She seeks to maneuver the Illinois Constitution by her own clever definition of the charges against the Boy Blunder Blagojevich as "equivalent to a medical condition." Once this breathtaking redefinition is accepted, it then becomes trivial to accept (according to a never-employed clause in the Illinois Constitution) the removal of gubernatorial powers by the Illinois Supreme Court, making Blagojevich merely the inhabitant of a governor's mansion he has never physically occupied for the 6 years he's been in office.
Apart from Madigan's rather transparent move to spare the Legislature (aka her father) an impeachment trial, it merely exacerbates one of the truly dangerous trends in our government, where more and more important decisions are channeled into an unarguable decision by the Judiciary of either the Federal or a state government. Thus, the elected officials can avoid controversy, and a vote that will go against them in the next election.
An opinion held by many pundits seems to be that the Attorney General's request has no chance at all of even being considered by the Illinois Supreme Court. We can only pray that this is true, just as we may hope that Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald continues to successfully charge the gang of corrupt politicians who every day screw on their pants (or skirts) and feed off the commonwealth.

I believe it was Karl Marx who said that "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." When it comes to politicians in this state, we're way beyond farce. This is yet another of a series of symptoms of our disease; I begin to think our Republic won't survive it.

Do You Like What I Like?

Here's the article of the day, in the Daily Illini, student newspaper at our nearby Illinois (...it used to be The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, but is now being marketed as simply "Illinois," and....don't ask.)

Here's a Brave New World quote, now:

"I like the First Amendment," said Will Green, graduate student and member of the Graduate Employee's Organization. "And our University doesn't respect that."

And why should it be incumbent on anyone to "like" what you "like," Will? Answer: it shouldn't. Our rights proceed from basic principles antecedent to government, so that government is subsidiary to them, not that government is obliged to "like" or "respect" them. It's perfectly obvious that Will has never moved beyond an elementary school playground level of analysis. No government respects your rights, Will, it can only fear what will happen if it transgresses, and in the meantime, will attempt to get away with whatever it can.

I don't respect you OR your ideas, Will. How do you like that?

There it is.....

I don't make a practice of posting other people's rants, but I'll make an exception in this case.....and it's a comment to a blog*, of all things! There is so much that's marvelous in this comment about the fragmentation of what we have always taken for granted when we say "education," as well as what passes for culture (we now have to modify it and call it "popular culture"). Then there are the more specific things, such as the withering away of a literate readership with a capacity to sense any subtlety in what is written......just read it.

By Yancy Berns on September 23, 2008 7:34 PM
I'm just afraid that we've transformed this culture, collapsed it down to a xylophone shape, and nobody has the time, the inclination, the temperament, even the desire to see what lives within those folds.
Let's wipe away ALL the invisible quotation marks (god, to be part of the 'irony' generation, and to have no taste for the stuff, such have been my days) and state something obvious: your TV critic did not recognize the line from HAMLET, and it doesn't matter, because 10,000 of his readers won't either, and will think its funny that the critic makes a goofy of those "elitist" words... the fact that it is indeed from the greatest written work of western culture (500 years and still at the top of the pops!) would not sway them if they knew. Because they believe that they are righteous, these Invaders, these "new people" who have no time for details, no interest in ambiguity, and can only afford to take everything at face value as they hurtle down their highways. All things pander to this new uni-mind, and I say again, they brim with what must be righteousness.
I could say this to a 25 year old. I could say, "You know 'Hamlet', that play that they shoved down your throat in 10th grade? It's actually a riveting piece of writing that you will see yourself in, throughout, feel your living in, perhaps more than in any other written thing you would be able to find."
They would say, "How could someone who lived that long ago possibly write something that relates to my life?"
And I could say, "Some things never change."
And they would say, "But i live in the modern era. 2008 isn't about moping and worrying! It's about being positive! One love!"
And I would say, "There can be much positive in a dour work of art. Much you can learn about empathy and soul."
And they would say, "I've got enough drama in my own life. Have you seen those gas prices? I don't need this Hamlet business."
And at that point I would walk away defeated, because I realize this is probably the same person who can't relate to 'Under The Boardwalk' by The Drifters either, because it's 40 years old - and what could someone in the early 60's possibly know about living such a fantastic life in such a fantastic age as we do?
And I might mutter, "Forty years don't mean much in terms of human evolution. Maybe you also won't read a fortune cookie if it comes to the table too long after the check, because what could someone in the back of the restaurant five minutes ago possibly know about you, your life, your troubles, your fabulous friends, in this amazing NOW?"
Now, I might agree about the cookie in general, but if there's one disease that has this culture in its grasp, it's utter, yawning apathy... and not just apathy about the big game or the big election, but about the human condition. This may be a failing of the school system, or just a failing of our attention spans, but nobody took my generation by the hand and led them to Kurosawa or Pete Seeger... and good, because what could Kurosawa or Pete Seeger or Edith Wharton possibly know about what it's like to be a human being in this so fabulous, super-speedy 2008?
We've finally reached the future! "This is our time!", the dispassionate shout, "and we choose not to notice all the interesting ways humans can be different than each other, in conversation, in art, none of that! 'Satire'? Oh, I'm so sick of satire! Every time I don't like a movie and someone tells me I didn't get it because it was satire, I just want to slap him in his smug face!"
And so back to that list of useless dead people, who have no possible idea about the amazing human adventure of 2008,and could offer no possible comfort from beyond the grave. Everything is miniature, and everything is fast, and if death carried you away before this wonderful age of all-inclusive cultural ignorance (why actually learn about it when they can just install Wikipedia into my phone?), they you lose, sucker!
And they fall away: Buster Keaton, S.J. Perelman, Kafka, Christ... what could those knuckle-draggers ever know about faster and faster, smaller and smaller? What, are they gonna help me figure out what do when my friend Tony does that one thing I don't like? Puh-leeeezze!

*For the sake of limiting the size of this post, I'll put in only one other quote from the other blog. For the record, It's Roger Ebert's Journal, entry This is the Dawning of the Age of Credulity. The quote from Hamlet referenced in the entry is cited by Ebert referencing a NYT review by Adam Buckman:

Let me give another example of credulity. The following paragraph appeared this week in a New York Post review by Adam Buckman of the season premiere of "Heroes."

"This show, which was once so thrilling and fun, has become full of itself, its characters spouting crazy nonsense. Here's one I wish someone would translate for me: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends--rough hew them how we will," spouts the enigmatic industrialist Linderman played by Malcolm McDowell, who should win an Emmy for keeping a straight face while reciting these lines."

I am still having a hard time believing that Buckman could not have known that the quote from Hamlet wasn't something he'd read or seen somewhere, and then I alternate with wondering whether or not he was being ironic. And yet, it's easily demonstrated that any sort of classical allusions in literate discourse are pretty much fossilized, receding with the speed of light......so I don't know why Buckman's apparent opacity when it comes to a famous Shakespeare quote should surprise me.

The Last Lion

Anyone who goes through what used to be a normal K-12 educaton in the United States, and really got caught up in Literature classes, could hardly help becoming something of an Anglophile.....at least of what Britain was. This is long gone, of course, and I had long dismissed the U.K. as merely a museum of the Old Greatness.
However, these things don't go all in a day, and there can still be echoes of the wonder that was Britannia. I was reminded of this in the recent death of George MacDonald Fraser. I reproduce the following excerpt in its entirety, not just because I can, but because it's not so far removed from my own sentiments toward the U.S.

The last testament of Flashman's creator: How Britain has destroyed itself
by GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER

When 30 years ago I resurrected Flashman, the bully in Thomas Hughes's Victorian novel Tom Brown's Schooldays, political correctness hadn't been heard of, and no exception was taken to my adopted hero's character, behaviour, attitude to women and subject races (indeed, any races, including his own) and general awfulness.
On the contrary, it soon became evident that these were his main attractions. He was politically incorrect with a vengeance.
Through the Seventies and Eighties I led him on his disgraceful way, toadying, lying, cheating, running away, treating women as chattels, abusing inferiors of all colours, with only one redeeming virtue - the unsparing honesty with which he admitted to his faults, and even gloried in them..
And no one minded, or if they did, they didn't tell me. In all the many thousands of readers' letters I received, not one objected.
In the Nineties, a change began to take place. Reviewers and interviewers started describing Flashman (and me) as politically incorrect, which we are, though by no means in the same way.
This is fine by me. Flashman is my bread and butter, and if he wasn't an elitist, racist, sexist swine, I'd be selling bootlaces at street corners instead of being a successful popular writer.
But what I notice with amusement is that many commentators now draw attention to Flashy's (and my) political incorrectness in order to make a point of distancing themselves from it.
It's not that they dislike the books. But where once the non-PC thing could pass unremarked, they now feel they must warn readers that some may find Flashman offensive, and that his views are certainly not those of the interviewer or reviewer, God forbid.
I find the disclaimers alarming. They are almost a knee-jerk reaction and often rather a nervous one, as if the writer were saying: "Look, I'm not a racist or sexist. I hold the right views and I'm in line with modern enlightened thought, honestly."
They won't risk saying anything to which the PC lobby could take exception. And it is this that alarms me - the fear evident in so many sincere and honest folk of being thought out of step.
I first came across this in the United States, where the cancer has gone much deeper. As a screenwriter [at which Fraser was almost as successful as he was with the 12 Flashman novels; his best-known work was scripting the Three Musketeers films] I once put forward a script for a film called The Lone Ranger, in which I used a piece of Western history which had never been shown on screen and was as spectacular as it was shocking - and true.
The whisky traders of the American plains used to build little stockades, from which they passed out their ghastly rot-gut liquor through a small hatch to the Indians, who paid by shoving furs back though the hatch.
The result was that frenzied, drunken Indians who had run out of furs were besieging the stockade, while the traders sat snug inside and did not emerge until the Indians had either gone away or passed out.
Political correctness stormed onto the scene, red in tooth and claw. The word came down from on high that the scene would offend "Native Americans".
Their ancestors may have got pieeyed on moonshine but they didn't want to know it, and it must not be shown on screen. Damn history. Let's pretend it didn't happen because we don't like the look of it.
I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like.
My forebears from the Highlands of Scotland were a fairly primitive, treacherous, blood-thirsty bunch and, as Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, would have been none the worse for washing. Fine, let them be so depicted, if any film maker feels like it; better that than insulting, inaccurate drivel like Braveheart.
The philosophy of political correctness is now firmly entrenched over here, too, and at its core is a refusal to look the truth squarely in the face, unpalatable as it may be.
Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.
It comes in many guises, some of them so effective that the PC can be difficult to detect. The silly euphemisms, apparently harmless, but forever dripping to wear away common sense - the naivete of the phrase "a caring force for the future" on Remembrance poppy trays, which suggests that the army is some kind of peace corps, when in fact its true function is killing.
The continual attempt to soften and sanitise the harsh realities of life in the name of liberalism, in an effort to suppress truths unwelcome to the PC mind; the social engineering which plays down Christianity, demanding equal status for alien religions.
The selective distortions of history, so beloved by New Labour, denigrating Britain's past with such propaganda as hopelessly unbalanced accounts of the slave trade, laying all the blame on the white races, but carefully censoring the truth that not a slave could have come out of Africa without the active assistance of black slavers, and that the trade was only finally suppressed by the Royal Navy virtually single-handed.
In schools, the waging of war against examinations as "elitist" exercises which will undermine the confidence of those who fail - what an intelligent way to prepare children for real life in which competition and failure are inevitable, since both are what life, if not liberal lunacy, is about.
PC also demands that "stress", which used to be coped with by less sensitive generations, should now be compensated by huge cash payments lavished on griping incompetents who can't do their jobs, and on policemen and firemen "traumatised" by the normal hazards of work which their predecessors took for granted.
Furthermore, it makes grieving part of the national culture, as it was on such a nauseating scale when large areas were carpeted in rotting vegetation in "mourning" for the Princess of Wales; and it insists that anyone suffering ordinary hardship should be regarded as a "victim" - and, of course, be paid for it.
That PC should have become acceptable in Britain is a glaring symptom of the country's decline.
No generation has seen their country so altered, so turned upside down, as children like me born in the 20 years between the two world wars. In our adult lives Britain's entire national spirit, its philosophy, values and standards, have changed beyond belief.
Probably no country on earth has experienced such a revolution in thought and outlook and behaviour in so short a space.
Other lands have known what seem to be greater upheavals, the result of wars and revolutions, but these do not compare with the experience of a country which passed in less than a lifetime from being the mightiest empire in history, governing a quarter of mankind, to being a feeble little offshore island whose so-called leaders have lost the will and the courage, indeed the ability, to govern at all.
This is not a lament for past imperial glory, though I regret its inevitable passing, nor is it the raging of a die-hard Conservative.
I loathe all political parties, which I regard as inventions of the devil. My favourite prime minister was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not because he was on the Right, but because he spent a year in office without, on his own admission, doing a damned thing.
This would not commend him to New Labour, who count all time lost when they're not wrecking the country.
I am deeply concerned for the United Kingdom and its future. I look at the old country as it was in my youth and as it is today and, to use a fine Scots word, I am scunnered.
I know that some things are wonderfully better than they used to be: the new miracles of surgery, public attitudes to the disabled, the health and well-being of children, intelligent concern for the environment, the massive strides in science and technology.
Yes, there are material blessings and benefits innumerable which were unknown in our youth.
But much has deteriorated. The United Kingdom has begun to look more like a Third World country, shabby, littered, ugly, run down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic.
My generation has seen the decay of ordinary morality, standards of decency, sportsmanship, politeness, respect for the law, family values, politics and education and religion, the very character of the British.
Oh how Blimpish this must sound to modern ears, how out of date, how blind to "the need for change and the novelty of a new age". But don't worry about me. It's the present generation with their permissive society, their anything-goes philosophy, and their generally laid-back, inyerface attitude I feel sorry for.
They regard themselves as a completely liberated society when in fact they are less free than any generation since the Middle Ages.
Indeed, there may never have been such an enslaved generation, in thrall to hang-ups, taboos, restrictions and oppressions unknown to their ancestors (to say nothing of being neck-deep in debt, thanks to a moneylender's economy).
We were freer by far 50 years ago - yes, even with conscription, censorship, direction of labour, rationing, and shortages of everything that nowadays is regarded as essential to enjoyment.
We still had liberty beyond modern understanding because we had other freedoms, the really important ones, that are denied to the youth of today.
We could say what we liked; they can't. We were not subject to the aggressive pressure of specialinterest minority groups; they are. We had no worries about race or sexual orientation; they have.
We could, and did, differ from fashionable opinion with impunity, and would have laughed PC to scorn, had our society been weak and stupid enough to let it exist.
We had available to us an education system, public and private, that was the envy of the world. We had little reason to fear being mugged or raped (killed in war, maybe, but that was an acceptable hazard).
Our children could play in street and country in safety. We had few problems with bullies because society knew how to deal with bullying and was not afraid to punish it in ways that would send today's progressives into hysterics.
We did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment, determined to impose its views, and beginning to resemble George Orwell's Ministry of Truth.
Above all, we knew who we were and we lived in the knowledge that certain values and standards held true, and that our country, with all its faults and need for reforms, was sound at heart.
Not any more. I find it difficult to identify a time when the country was as badly governed as it has been in the past 50 years.
We have had the two worst Prime Ministers in our history - Edward Heath (who dragooned us into the Common Market) and Tony Blair. The harm these two have done to Britain is incalculable and almost certainly irreparable.
Whether the public can be blamed for letting them pursue their ruinous policies is debatable.
Short of assassination there is little people can do when their political masters have forgotten the true meaning of the democracy of which they are forever prating, are determined to have their own way at all costs and hold public opinion in contempt.
I feel I speak not just for myself but for the huge majority of my generation who think as I do but whose voices are so often lost in the clamour.
We are yesterday's people, the over-the-hill gang. (Yes, the old people - not the senior citizens or the time-challenged, but the old people.) Those of ultra-liberal views may take consolation from this - that my kind won't be around much longer, and then they can get on with wrecking civilisation in peace.
But they should beware. There may well be more who think like me than the liberal Left establishment likes to think. When my views were first published in book form in 2002, I was not surprised that almost all the reviewers were unfavourable. I had expected that my old-fashioned views would get a fairly hostile reception, but the bitterness did astonish me.
I had not realised how offensive the plain truth can be to the politically correct, how enraged they can be by its mere expression, and how deeply they detest the values and standards respected 50 years ago and which dinosaurs like me still believe in, God help us.
But the readers' reactions to the book were the exact opposite of critical opinion. I have never received such wholehearted and generous support.
For the first time in 30 years as a professional writer I had to fall back on a printed card thanking readers for writing, apologising because I could not reply personally to them all.
Most of the letters came from the older generation, but by no means all. I was made aware that among the middle-aged and people in their 20s and 30s there is a groundswell of anger and frustration at the damage done to Britain by so-called reformers and dishonest politicians who hardly bother to conceal their contempt for the public's wishes.
Plainly many thought they were alone in some reactionary minority. They had been led to think that they were voices muttering to themselves in the wilderness.
Well, you are not. There are more of you out there than you realise - very many more, perhaps even a majority.

• Edited extract from The Light's On At Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser (published by Harper Collins)

Another one of "those" guys....

Today is the anniversary of the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager. He is another of those members of that generation that is an example to us all. When they were having the ball celebrating the 60th anniversary of the event at Edwards AFB, Gen. Yeager was......breaking the sound barrier overhead, flying an F-16. What else?

Wally Schirra, RIP

I don't concern myself with obits, as a rule, but for someone like this, I'll make an exception. He and his fellow astronauts represent the single greatest human achievment during my lifetime, IMHO. With the great abundance of things that keep us mired in the mud below, we need reminders that there's also a sky above.