Archive for the ‘Cultural Issues’ Category
by Thomas E. Brewton
An enduring society is not a random assemblage of people drawn together, like pigs around the feed trough, waiting for welfare-state handouts.
The liberal paradigm recognizes no spiritual dimension to human nature or to human society. In the liberals' atheistic and materialistic world, humans are merely animals a notch along the evolutionary scale from the apes and, like them, motivated only by material factors: water, food, sex, and shelter.
Societies, in that paradigm, are held together by whatever may be the currently reigning regulations governing those material wants. A political society theoretically is a lump of clay that intellectuals are capable of shaping anyway they wish.
by Thomas E. Brewton
Liberals' head-in-the-sand urge to pull troops out of Iraq is nothing new. Western democracies, entranced with liberal Progressivism, have failed repeatedly to preserve social and political stability.
In words that apply to public opinion today, Walter Lippmann, in The Public Philosophy (1954), described his dismay in the summer of 1938, when war in Europe seemed inevitable.
….there was no sure prospect that France and Great Britain would be able to withstand the [German] onslaught that was coming. They were unprepared, their people were divided and demoralized. The Americans were far away, were determined to be neutral, and were unarmed….. I began writing, impelled by the need to make more intelligible to myself the alarming failure of the Western liberal democracies to cope with the realities of [the 20th] century.
by Erik Rush
When Joseph Smith kidnapped 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in front of a Florida mall (and a closed circuit video security monitor) in February of 2004, raped her, killed her and discarded her body like a used condom, I responded with a column entitled "Give Him Death", in which I outlined my ambivalence regarding the death penalty, among other things.
"Officially" I am against the death penalty, because, as I said in the column: "I am personally against the death penalty for one reason: I don’t trust the state not to execute innocent people. I believe that if one innocent individual is executed, that’s one too many."
While I believe that most police and prosecutors take their duties in appropriately solemn fashion, we all know that there are those without conscience, those more devoted to career advancement than law and justice, and who reason that certain individuals "have it coming" whether or not they happen to be guilty of the crime at hand. Thus, I am in favor of life without parole for certain crimes, although I do worry about how legislatures, the judiciary and prison overcrowding can throw a wrench in that one.
My aforementioned ambivalence, and that for which I would make exception, are those crimes (like the Brucia killing) in which there was unequivocal guilt. Sadly, although there many cases of evident unequivocal guilt, there are very few methods by which the state can prove unequivocal guilt, particularly after a suspect "lawyers-up."
Which bring us to Michael Devlin, Missouri’s 41-year-old corpulent pizzeria pedophile accused of kidnapping Shawn Hornbeck 4 ½ years ago, and then 13-year-old Ben Ownby on January 8 in Beaufort, Missouri. A tip led authorities to Devlin's suburban St. Louis apartment, where on January 12 they found Hornbeck and Ownby. Devlin, now lawyered-up, has pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping Ben Ownby, which I am sure is a major surprise to the reader. He is also charged with kidnapping Shawn in 2002 but has not yet entered a plea.
If one reads newspapers or watches television news at all, it is obvious that there are all manner of irregularities concerning these cases, from Devlin’s ability to maintain a double life to questions of why Shawn Hornbeck made no attempts to escape despite having contacts in the community, contacts with police, to his parents willingness to parade him in front of Oprah Winfrey’s audience less than a week after his rescue.
Although I do have some of the same voyeuristic, morbid curiosity as the rest of us, I’m not going to get into all that. My greater interest lies in our attitude as a society toward such events and our manifest lack of outrage. I say "manifest" because despite strong verbiage being thrown around, that’s about all that’s being thrown around – rather than, say, Michael Devlin being thrown from a window with a good strong chain around his fat neck.
Oh, yes, we have a system of (deteriorating) jurisprudence, and there’s the presumption of innocence and all that. Again though, as in the case of Carlie Brucia, we have unequivocal guilt. Devlin abducted the boys. No doubt. In all probability, Hornbeck was his sex slave, and Devlin planned the same fate for Ownby. An angry mob won’t have the opportunity to drag him from the jail and summarily execute him, but I’m here to tell you that wistfully regretting that fact doesn’t make you a bad person.
In a way, it was a week of happy endings in the realm of child abductions. In addition to the Missouri rescues, there was the case of Marissa Marie Graham, who, after being abducted in Oklahoma, leaped from the back of her kidnapper’s car and found aid in New Mexico after he stopped at a convenience store for gas. Leave it to a 10-year-old girl to save the day by her own wits, God bless her…
On a completely different (but, trust me, relevant) tack: Back in the ‘Sixties, my father, who was an absolute computer systems pulsing brain, worked for this little company called International Business Machines (IBM). The company, which was known for stringency and, of course, mega-success, had a motto: "think". My dad even brought home a plaque he got from work emblazoned with it. This motto became so popular, in fact, that marketers got a hold of it; plaques and posters began to appear in novelty shops bearing the spoofed legend: "think".
Whatever else IBM subsequently became, at the time, they reflected the epitome of American innovation and excellence. What did they need to do better than anyone else in order to succeed in their increasingly-competitive industry? "think".
Which is what Americans need to start doing, not only respecting existing domestic political and geopolitical issues – but right at home. While I realize that Nancy Pelosi and her posse are in all likelihood working on a bill right now to criminalize this controversial activity, I would admonish the reader to increase their regular participation in this particular activity. Not to be condescending, but it’s clear that Hollywood, advertisers, pervert activists, and socialist radicals (who now control Congress) are dedicated to the early sexualization of children – and have been, I maintain, since I was a child.
Between this and the subversion of the American family they’ve foisted upon us during the same period, it’s no wonder we have dead-eyed freaks like Smith, Devlin, and the increasing number of similarly infamous characters who’ve practically became household names.
Our PC lawmakers are never going to go for immolation of pedophiles, implementing castration via oxyacetylene torch, or hurling them from windows with good strong chains around their necks. So it’s up to us to do what we can – for the moment, figuratively speaking.
My kids are a tad perturbed at me right now because I installed a really cool parental control software package on their computer. In addition to filtering, monitoring and reporting, it even reports places my kids are thinking of visiting online.
"Dad – why can’t I get on this page?"
"Because I blocked it."
"How come?"
"Because it’s bristling with spirit poison."
"Oh…"
They get over it. They’re not savvy enough yet to know that this is happening by design – but when my seven-year-old can get from Postopia.com to a clip of buck-naked Alyssa Milano having her breasts lasciviously fondled in three clicks or less, it takes a fool not to at least suspect there’s something decidedly sinister going on.
As an aside: I’ve got a big beef (no pun intended) with Alyssa Milano. This Hollywood-raised brat is a boob (pun intended) of the highest (or is it lowest?) order, and was the operative who, during the 2004 general election campaign visited our fair city with the mission of enlightening us folks as to how evil the Republicans are and which deviant-supporting socialist-progressives for whom we should cast our votes.
Give it a try! After all, it could mean one of your kids avoiding sex slavery or a gruesome death someday. Go on – I know you want to… "think!"
Erik Rush is a New York-born columnist and author who writes a weekly column of political fare. He is also Acting Associate Editor and Publisher for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. An archive containing links to his writing is at www.ErikRush.com.. His new book, "It's the Devil, Stupid!" is available through most major outlets. His new book, Annexing Mexico, is scheduled for release shortly.
by Sher Zieve
After pursuing an almost year long Don Quixote-like quest against three Duke University Lacrosse team players (a quest that had none of the honor associated with the mythical knight and included only the chasing of windmills), Durham, NC District Attorney Mile Nifong is kicking himself to the curb and throwing in his towel. He has finally, after requests from two North Carolina attorney associations (and an ethics’ complaint filed against him by one), asked to recuse himself from the case—a case that appears to have been fabricated at its beginning; first by the accuser and then by Nifong.
The stripper-accuser, Crystal Mangum, changed her story—again—last week. I think this is either the 12th or 13th time the woman has altered her account of what happened, the night she screamed that the Duke players had raped her. Read the rest of this entry »
by Erik Rush
You wouldn't attempt to go for an hour without breathing, a week without taking fluid, or a year without eating, would you? Of course not. You would languish and die. Highly undesirable, unless you were a zealot, fanatic or hunger striker. It's also highly unlikely you'd decide a straight lifetime diet of peppermint patties, malt balls and beer was a good idea.
A person or society that completely eschewed mental development wouldn't do very well either. Most people wouldn't advocate a system in which children weren't required to attend school, where education and learning were actively discouraged. Every day we see the results of such practice in the form of individuals and subcultures who have essentially lived on that basis, knowingly or not.
So we know that in order to flourish as entities and as societies (nations), we must nurture ourselves physically and mentally. Thousands of years of history and the medical breakthroughs of the last hundred years have shed light on the former in particular.
by Erik Rush
Are you familiar with the Channel Channel? Depending on the type of television service you have it varies, with the digital variety being the most state-of-the-art. It's the channel that shows the schedule of television shows being offered on the other channels to which you subscribe (and to quite a few you probably don't, or wouldn't with a gun to your head).
Anyway, I came inside after shoveling lots of snow recently (contrary to what some of the troglodytes who flame me think, I don't have "people" for that) and the Channel Channel was on. Now, on a lot of systems the Channel Channel functions as follows: Only the bottom half (or three-fifths) of the screen is occupied by (scrolling or viewer-scrollable) programming. The top half (or two-fifths) is reserved for distracting advertisements, short pop-culture features and celebrity news. Very highbrow…
"Methane Man" was a minute or so clip of a guy dressed as a superhero (tights, mask and so forth) who performed – in front of an audience and cameras – various "stunts" using his own flatulence.
On the Channel Channel. In the middle of the day. For my kids to see. As if the periodic mini-deprogramming sessions in which my wife and I have to engage as a result of our children attending public school isn't enough of a pain in the rear.
by Erik Rush
Recently someone asked me what sort of people "qualified" as "white trash" given what passes for conventional wisdom in America. My response included such things as lower-income, undereducated whites with a preference for colloquial speech and occasionally, a proclivity toward racking up misdemeanor offenses. A healthy dose of low self-esteem generally helps, too. Indeed, as may seem obvious, it's much more about attitude and mindset than ethnic or genotypic qualities.
Inamsuch as the above gives rise to subcultural niches, I don't have any problem admitting that I occasionally use the "n-word." That we've come to a point where I have to be concerned that using the word in a column might be edited down to "the n-word" is pretty absurd, in my view. I also don't have any problem admitting that I occasionally use the w, g, d, s, h and k-words (have fun figuring those out) when I find myself frustrated with the behavior of individuals who insist upon adhering to societally counter-productive, self-destructive and often offensive, irksome stereotypes.
by Carey Roberts
Alas, masculinity has come under siege. All manner of unpleasant things that happen to women are blamed on those linear-thinking, knuckle-dragging males. Even young lads are viewed with suspicion – earlier this month a 4-year-old boy in Waco, Texas was placed on in-school suspension following an unwelcome hug of a teacher’s aide.
We shouldn’t pretend to be surprised. Six years ago Christina Hoff Sommers warned us about the feminist-inspired War Against Boys, and a year later Paul Craig Roberts wrote a column with the startling title, "Criminalizing Masculinity."
Finally in 2006, people came to realize the assault wasn’t going to let up just because of the preposterous nature of the claims about the patriarchal conspiracy. Indeed, people began to wonder if the opposite was true – that men had willingly carried the most dangerous and onerous roles in society to the primary benefit of women.
Even corporate America saluted the return of the macho. This year Burger King, Miller Lite, and Haggar pants all unveiled ads that put the kibosh on effeminate metrosexuals in favor of the rough-and-tumble he-guy.
So this year’s Award for Political Incorrectness is made to an individual who made an enduring public statement about masculinity during the past 12 months.
by Erik Rush
"I'll go so far as to say that someone who is not keeping an eye on a group of six imams chanting in an airport waiting area and then spreading out on a plane and behaving in a disruptive manner, well that person is swimming so far upstream against the basic human wiring of common sense and survival instincts that if one could just capture the contrary energy, the synaptic maelstrom going on inside their feverish, brainwashed, nonjudgmental little skull you could power the massive turbines of the very 757 you're flying on."
(Comedian, actor and social commentator Dennis Miller, on Fox News.)
It just keeps getting worser and worser…
I included the Dennis Miller quote simply because I think it's brilliant. The ungrammatical statement I made that follows reflects the percentage of Americans who I believe wouldn't have been keeping an eye on a group of six imams acting suspiciously on an aircraft. Whether the men were making a dry run (as did the 9/11 hijackers), looking to cash in on a civil suit, seeking to stir up the ire of the politically-correct, or simply being troublesome for hate's sake, the reaction of the passengers who did take notice and the subsequent actions of the crew and the airline were most assuredly called-for.
But no. We have now the idiots who would have ignored the imams supporting the contention that they were being persecuted, profiled, singled out. The passengers on that plane should have taken no more notice of them than a group of flight attendants. That there is serious debate (let alone probable litigation) taking place as to the propriety of US Airways' actions in Minnesota is manifestly insane.
By Thomas E. Brewton
The socialistic welfare state is extolled by liberal-socialistic- progressives as more Christian then Christianity, because the welfare state purports to help the needy. So did Hitler's National Socialism.
Traditional Christmas spirit, depicted in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, was the warmth of family gatherings, friendship, and loving kindness to everyone.
Today, however, many people insist that socialism IS Christianity.
It's certainly true that the early churches established by the Apostle Paul grew rapidly, because people found there the Christian love and fellowship, as well as support for the poor, sick, elderly, and disabled, that was available nowhere else.
The socialist political state, however, is expressly atheistic and materialistic. There can therefore be no identity between Christianity and socialism, simply on the superficial basis that they nominally espouse some of the same objectives.
The collectivized compulsion of the socialistic state is exemplified by bureaucratic rules mandating certain conduct, described in tens of millions of regulations.
The spirit of Christmas is written in every individual human heart.