YOU REALLY OUGHT TO GIVE IOWA A TRY. You think someone at the Wall Street Journal was rattled?



These things go back and forth, but I took a moment to celebrate.

KICKED THEIR ASS IN '76 TOO. Jonah Goldberg thinks Britain is a PC hellhole. So does Gateway Pundit. So does Stop the ACLU.

But they all think it's simply frightful that Obama gave the Queen presents of which they cannot approve.

Best of all is Stop the ACLU which, upon hearing that in addition to the iPod Obama gave the Queen a rare songbook signed by American musical comedy great Richard Rodgers, responds, "perhaps the songbook gift might have been nice (I’ve never heard of the guy)..." Yeah, this is someone you want dishing out protocol.

The old bitch had probably never seen an iPod and thought it might be a new kind of IUD or something. Fuck her and fuck these people. Guy Fawkes and Harry Perkins had the right idea. The President needn't truckle.

SCIPIO SAYETH THE SOOTH! I don't know whether it's good or bad but I seem to have developed this knack: I go over to the Perfesser's place and I see a short item like this --

HOW WE FELL.

--and somehow I know the link is a gateway to madness.

The Great Gerard Vanderleun*, now traveling under the name The Return of Scipio (clouds of dry ice! Laurence Olivier and Ray Harryhausen!) telleth a tale in which an archaeologist, "rummaging among the ruins of our fallen civilization," encounters a ghost who shows him a blog post, presumably on his iPhone, detailing the dead glories of our once-proud world. The archaeologist makes the mistake of asking what happened.

We traded beauty for ugliness, truth for lies, liberty for comfort, love for indifference, responsibility for frivolity, duty for entertainment, history for sound bites, and children for pleasure.

He left out the mess of pottage, but perhaps in the future copyright will stretch back to the Scriptures.

Also, "We turned men into women and women into men and marveled at our new creative power." The archeologist could have thrown up his hands and gone, "Whoa! TMI, dude!" and they could have high-fived each other and let it go at that. But the archaeologist is not too quick on his feet, and is suffered to hear how we traded God for "hip, cool and slick new" gods, with whom we "made all sorts of merry."

At this stage you may be thinking the shade is talking about "Soul Train" or "Hullabaloo," but then we learn the gods "required that we all get special marks on our bodies" -- tats? chips? Mark of the Beast? To cut to the chase, everybody started going on all fours and it was just a mess. You can go see for yourself -- there's a special surprise ending that I won't spoil for you.

The story is beginning to get around in such circles as are susceptible to this sort of thing. Oh please, please, new gods, let it become the new Going Galt!

Oh, you may enjoy the commenters, too. One has a lovely story of his own:

I feel Cassandra like, and have for 30 years. I’ve been cajolling, extolling, encouraging, speaking out when it was not convenient, and almost totally ignored about honesty in governance, honest in weights and measures (i.e. money), adherence to law and standards… in other words, I was a Libertarian from 1980, then once that group went off the rails re: legalized drug use, I found the US Taxpayer Party which later became the Constitution Party.

Some 1% of Americans belong to 3rd parties, and it simply is not enough to keep our culture alive from the powers that be...

This conjures charming images of Chuck Baldwin and a bunch of wingers holed up in a cave, teaching their boy-children Rhetoric.

*UPDATE. A fan helpfully informs me that it's not Vanderleun who said the sooth, but some other nut; Vanderleun was just an accessory. It's hard to keep the names straight while you're in the middle of a laughing fit.

AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE STRAW. Jonah Goldberg does a nyah-nyah about censorship: you stupid liberals like your porn but what do you think about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission? I can tell him I think it stinks, and I think campaign finance reform, in general and including McCain-Feingold, stinks. I am highly suspicious of anything that trammels the speech rights even of millionaire wingnuts. And I don't see how we're much better off with the current limitations, given that every election shows the system routinely gamed by pressure and interest groups.

I'm well aware that challenges like Goldberg's are meant to confuse the issue, but I'm not confused, except by the longevity of his whole oh-yeah-what-about schtick with unnamed correspondents. I'm guessing that if he addressed it directly to, say, Lisa Derrick, he knows he'd get his ass handed to him -- I disagree with her on this but she clearly could argue for the merits of genocide or the Divine Right of Midgets and still reduce Goldberg to spasms of shirt-tucking and snot bubbles.

I have some unorthodox opinions; for example, I will oppose with my last, hacking breath anti-smoking laws. Yet I never seen to get banned or menaced by those fascist liberal hordes Goldberg often talks about. Maybe I should do it in all caps next time.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. This is a miscellany of some of the week's greatest hits, including the White House Easter Egg Hunt, the Republican alterna-budget, and "Human Achievement Hour," the right's sad and sour we'll-show-those-treehuggers Earth Day counter-demonstration. Nothing says Modern Conservatism like wingnuts running up their electric bills as a protest. I don't recall them rebranding their SUVs as "Freedom Guzzlers," but I can't be everywhere.

I got so carried away that a missed a few things, including the Rush Limbaugh Mud Wrestling Challenge "You're a lowdown, yellow-bellied, lily-livered intellectual coward," writes discourse-raiser Andrew Klavan. "You're terrified of finding out he makes more sense than you do." All of us have heard a little Rush -- how can you help it? -- and I am reminded of what Hemingway said about James Jones and not needing to eat a whole bowl of scabs to know that they are scabs.

I'm also sorry to have missed Andrew Breitbart's declaration that all internet trolls are liberal, particularly after finding my first Voice commenter of the morning: "KISS MY RIGHT-WING ASS EDROSO..." Or is he one of our double agents?

THE GENERAL DONS THE CHICKEN TRACK. Back before the election, MyGodIt'sFullOf-Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters told as many white people as he could reach that if elected, Obama was going to capitulate in (among other places) Afghanistan:

Pandering to his extreme base, Obama has projected an image of being soft on terror. Toss in his promise to abandon Iraq, and you can be sure that al Qaeda will pull out all the stops to kill as many Americans as possible -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and, if they can, here at home -- hoping that America will throw away the victories our troops bought with their blood...

The Pakistanis think Obama would lose Afghanistan - and they believe they can reap the subsequent whirlwind...

Even without nukes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would try the new administration's temper in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf...

When Obama became President, Peters flailed a while for a suitable Afghan talking point, settling briefly on the complaint that Obama wasn't getting enough support in Afghanistan from the Europeans.

Now the President is ordering thousands of troops to Afghanistan, and suddenly the General has become Hanoi Ralph, actually advising Obama to pull troops out of Afghanistan:

Barack Obama? I heard Lyndon Johnson. The only LBJ touch that BHO lacked was the word "escalation"...

Do what makes military sense and reduce our forces in Afghanistan to a level that can be supplied by air. And concentrate on destroying al Qaeda, not on "owning" village X. (Obama's approach just stinks of Vietnam.)

Well, that was after all how Richard Nixon won the Vietnam War. I'm not crazy about Obama's plan, either, but I'm a dirty fucking hippie. What's the General's excuse? Also: Do even people on his own side think he has any principles at all except Destroy All Democrats?

WHAT, AND GIVE UP SHOW BUSINESS? Sometimes I just can't believe what I'm reading. At National Review, David Freddoso gives a long intro to the Republican alternative budget. Its breathless, anticipatory tone --

As we await the details, here is a summary... First, they would end a litany of controversial programs of doubtful value to the public... they appear to be pursuing several market-based solutions they have proposed in the past few years...

-- reminded me of something, at first I couldn't think what, and then I realized: it's like Geraldo Rivera's intro to the opening of Al Capone's vault.

And it ends up the same way:

Update: In fact, we don't know anything more. I was not the only reporter in the room during the delayed press conference who had expected to see some numbers, at least ballpark. Today's press conference did not provide further details.

We'll find out what the Republicans' numbers are sometime next week before they receive a vote.

This caught me off guard. Do some of them actually not know in advance that they're peddling bullshit?

The alterna-budge is a bag of magic Reagan beans. No one on God's green earth believes in them or wants them. Adding numbers to it would be like assigning a horsepower rating to Hot Wheels.

Can't they just get another angry, abused millionaire executive and dance around him? I'm beginning to feel embarrassed for them.

UPDATE. Now Freddoso is sounding hurt and confused. I think National Review ought to toughen up its orientation process. But even the longtime habitues seem dispirited today. Nordlinger is reduced to Gee, Wasn't Reagan Great. I hope Derbyshire will come back from lunch with some ravings about wogs and shirt-lifters.

SHORTER MARK NEWGENT: Our Civil War theme song that "spurns the Northern scum" isn't pro-Confederate! Why would anyone think that? It is, rather, a rebuke to the tyrant Abraham Lincoln.

CRY ME A RIVER. Throughout the rotten economy, ordinary people are being asked to take pay cuts. Things are tough all over; no one gives a shit. An executive vice-president at AIG is asked to become a dollar-a-year man and quits instead, and all the usual suspects bawl their beady eyes out.

Maybe this explains why they have such trouble with the arts. Normal people go to drama for tragic pity and catharsis; rightbloggers find it in the diminution of richness among rich people. Maybe it comes from having been raised in Skinner boxes.

SHORTER IAIN MURRAY: I'm not a nerd. You're a nerd!

(You can read Murray's essay for proof that the man is a nerd. It's TV criticism done in terms of Greek and Roman Comedy, and the only reason to write such a thing is to show that you know the classics and watch a bunch of sitcoms. Evelyn Waugh would have given him a wedgie.)

THE POWERLESSNESS OF SUGGESTION. In zipping through the political nonsense last week I noticed a Victor Davis Hanson article asking, "Why are so many Americans so depressed about things these days?" and providing a long list of reasons -- mostly Obama with a little o-tempora-o-mores thrown in for the seniors.

Depressed? I thought. Who says Americans are depressed? Hanson's article offered no citation, and I could find no concordance among the relevant political and medical news.

Hanson also asked, "Why are Americans hesitant, bewildered after the arrival of the Messiah?" without telling us where he heard about that, either.

Then Power Line's Scott Whatshisname said, "Victor Davis Hanson asks why so many Americans are depressed," and, without questioning the premise, offered reasons why he was depressed ("the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures," "the mullahs love the weakness and stupidity that President Obama transmits," etc).

Bruce Kesler of Maggie's Farm also accepted and even confirmed out of his ass the uncorroborated premise ("Both Johnson and Hanson, in effect, point at frustration at both external events and at our own behaviors. They are correct") but insisted he, perhaps alone among men, was not depressed, because "Forty-eight percent did not vote for Obama" and because "Ordinary Americans" -- though depressed -- "are buckling down in their personal affairs and continuing to achieve for themselves, society, and our futures."

Then the shrinks were brought in. Dr. Sanity agreed with someone else's assertion that polls showed Obama's policies are "showing signs of not going over very well" -- one hell of a qualified statement -- and took from this that "it is not only Republicans and conservative Democrats who are utterly aghast, but a large majority of the population." Also, "Those who innocently voted for him are beginning to sicken on the bitterness of their regret and betrayal." Still no numbers, nor even the testimony of an irate cab-driver.

ShrinkWrapped seconded -- "We now see the spread of despair to the Center and Left" -- and finally offered some anecdotal evidence at least: the demurrers of those tribunes of the common man, Paul Krugman and Thomas P.M. Barnett. (Good ol' Moe Lane was convinced -- but he wasn't depressed, no sir! He liked his odds in 2010!)

And so on. I can't be absolutely sure where they got it from. Maybe Fox News is still putting out the Morning Memo. They might have been channeling the March 13 Peggy Noonan WSJ column, in which the Crazy Jesus Lady, as is her wont, saw the face of America in her drinks tray ("People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures...") and even gave credence to the lunatic ravings of an apocalyptic preacher in support of her vision.

But I can guess at the spirit behind it. These people have been dealt out of the conversation. Day after day they smack their lips and predict the impending downfall of the Democrats. But even if Obama were caught sniffing coke off Bin Laden's ass, they'd still have many hard months left before they could do anything with it. Nor do they have a plan to offer voters they expect to convince except their own moral superiority, tax cuts for the rich, and persecution of homosexuals.

Politics is everything to them, but they don't respond to it like politicians -- they respond like spurned lovers. They have been in stark shock since the November election, and even then could not admit that they had been rejected by the country they thought was theirs for the pandering. One day they'll see, they mutter into their tear-stained pillows. And in their exile they comfort one other with stories that America isn't doing so well, she pines, she sighs -- she is depressed.

I had thought there was some kind of strategic meaning to their Tea Parties, but now I suspect they're just pity parties: ways of huddling together to fill their aching void.

JESUSLAND IN EXILE. I've spent some time looking for actual Galt-Goers, and found mostly talkers. But these folks seem to have given the matter some thought:

Russia intrigues me; it's big enough to get lost in and they could use the infusion of population. And at least their government is pro-Russian...

Yes we have been talking about the possibility of emigrating to Australia where my husband immigrated from as a boy. I never thought I would leave the U.S. but I never thought my government would, in a million years, release Guantanamo prisoners within the United States, either...

Myself, I'm looking to Uganda. I've done charity work there; more stable than most, friendly to Westerners, eager for investment, growing infrastructure, speak English in large part. Others I know are looking to Tanzania as well...

For only $1500, you can set up a Costa Rica corp owned by a trust in the Bahamas. Sounds smart to me....

Absolutely, we have talked about moving to Costa Rica... The difference between the democrats saying they were going to leave the Country was because of their hatred of George Bush. Our reason for thinking about it is because Obama and the Congress are ruining this Country before our very eyes. I truly think that if Republicans do not take Congress back in 2010 and Pelosi is forced out, people will start leaving...

Yes, the followers of Crunchy Rod Dreher (who gets the ball rolling with a coincidental trio of people planning the Costa Rican Option, which is probably in the Book of Revelations or a Robert Ludlum novel at least) are getting ready to build New Jerusalems in countries that will be sitting pretty when America collapses. Among my favorites is a catalogue of "conservative/conservativish" promised lands including Ireland, Malta, Australia, and Singapore: "The Philippines is maybe the nation that's most 'conservative', they preferred McCain to Obama, with Thailand being close in a way." So looked at from a certain perspective it's perfect.

There are some brethren there who don't take it seriously ("I'm planning to build an under-water aqua bubble estate in which to retreat until after the dissolution of all things on the face of this besotted and immoral earth"), but no doubt those truly called by the Lord consider them among those destined to be Left Behind.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, mostly about the Obama-Leno story and its strategic reduction by rightbloggers to nanoseconds of outrage. The operation is typical, but it's a pleasure just to watch these guys work. I also touch on the Tea Parties, and was delighted to find in my diggings the Tea Party neo-gospel fight song ("Now we're not advocating violence/That's what the so-called peace crowd do/We're talkin' peaceful protest/To defend the red, white and blue"). I'm not sure how it will go over with the usual attendees, but I think it gives The Goldwaters a good run for their money.

UPDATE. Comments shifted (who can blame them) to the impending Althouse nuptials, which delight me. The more happiness we can bring into this horrible world, the better. (I mean the blogosphere, but I guess that goes for planet Earth, too.) And the bride leaves a long trail of broken hearts, which is dramatically satisfying.

SPIN CITY. Obviously Obama killed on Leno. Funny, smart, the usual. Let's go see what the blogosphere has to say about it:


Since it was the Tonight Show, let's do a little Karnak the Magnificent: "Over 200 to 1" ("Over 200 to 1." Shoot Ed a look. Open envelope.) "Leno's viewership advantage to Michelle Malkin." Hi-oh!

The Right are very different from you and me; they only watch "Red Eye" and "Medium."

LEFT OUT. Often the controversies that roil the blogosphere are, to those happy souls who have but casual acquaintance with it, inexplicable. I can only imagine what a stranger to this wild frontier would make of the controversy over the "JournoList" online coffee-talks of lefty inside-media types like Paul Krugman and Matthew Yglesias. Some profess outrage that White House apparatchiks like Peter Orzag have deigned to talk to the Journos, which is just rich considering the access Bush gave to conservative media figures. But other rightbloggers are calling for names to prove that, in Patterico's words, "no purportedly objective journalist is a member of this apparently reliably left-wing group."

Apart from the McCarthyite whiff, this is just silly. What would it mean if, say, John F. Burns talked to these guys? Would that invalidate his reporting? And if so, would that include the stories conservatives have approved as well as the stories they have disapproved?

In recent days I've been reading story after story in the liberal media like "Treasury Learned of AIG Bonuses Earlier Than Claimed" (Time), "Dodd: I Was Responsible for Bonus Loophole" (CNN), "Main Street is Speaking Out. But Will Obama Listen?" (Washington Post), etc. With a minimum of effort, I've also heard stories about Obama's problems with the teleprompter and Gordon Brown's DVDs from other alleged socialist enablers of the President. If they're covering for him, they're doing a piss-poor job.

I've talked before about the conservative rage over institutions which they perceive to be beyond their control and hence call biased. But a listserv of writers from the New Yorker and The Nation is puny pickings beside Hollywood, academe, and all the other monoliths at which they daily shake their fists. They seem to be descending into an ever more paranoid state. Maybe if one of them saw Ezra Klein having a smoke with Eric Alterman he'd be unsettled for the rest of the day.

I notice that at the same time they continue to brag on the mighty power of their tea parties and whatnot. Mark Tapscott calls these gatherings "flash crowds," perhaps afraid that using the actual old-school nomenclature to which he evidently refers might subject him and his movement to ridicule. As he is in chest-beating mode, Tapscott betrays no awareness that by admitting the role of Ole Perfesser Instapundit and his immense reach in publicizing these demonstrations, he is obviating his own complaint that the MSM won't cover them -- as well as the complaints of his fellows that the liberal media plots to freeze them out. They've got their bullhorns, they've got their flash mobs, they've got their talk show radio and internet marching societies. I have it on good authority that they've even got Twitter. What's stopping them from taking over?

A DISAPPOINTING EFFORT.

The U.S. is going to sign on to a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality. I don't have a problem with decriminalizing homosexuality, at home or abroad, but isn't there a disconnect somewhere in here?

This brought luster to my tired old eyes. When Jonah Goldberg starts out like this, it either means he thinks he has a devastating and unexpected point, or he's using voice recognition software while he tries to get his sweater on right-side out. Alas, Goldberg never gets out of the warm-up phase:

For the last eight years the neo-realist, reality-based, liberal foreign-policy types have been telling us how crazy it is to impose "western values" on foreign or otherwise non-western societies. So why is it ok to impose this very Western value?

I'm not even going to look for a defense of, say, ritual clitorectomy by whatever people Goldberg is talking about, since he obviously hasn't gone to that trouble himself. I will say that, though he seems to have some pipe-chewing namby-pamby dashiki-wearing liberal strawmen in mind, he could just as easily be talking about Samuel Huntington.

Is decriminalizing homosexuality more important than decriminalizing tyranny?

Oh Jesus Christ.

One response, and a fair one, would be that the U.N. wouldn't be imposing anything. It's just a declaration of principles or some such. Okay, but there are a few problems there.

I'll spare you; you can read the rest if you have a fascination for spoiled conundrums. Eventually he gets to, I'm guessing from context, the Bush abstinence program for Africa.

I wonder if Goldberg ever considers that these arguments are about finding the best way to improve or save people's lives, and that even in countries where same-sex relations have been legalized, ancient prejudices against them can still be violent. I wish someone would get him to do so -- not because it might change his mind, but because it might challenge him to escalate his argument into the sort of 3-D laser light show of bullshit I know he's capable of.

SHORTER SHELBY STEELE: Don't worry, guys -- you'll always have me.

(May also be filed under "The Conservative Comeback, Part 56,993.")

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, taking off from Frank Rich's premise that the culture wars are through. It strikes me that even if the regular press avoids such stories, the blogs will always be full of them. For one thing, they require less expertise to discuss than most political topics. Also, the blogosphere is more or less a petrie dish of outrage, making it a perfect growing medium for culture war -- even better than the mainstream media, really, because the barrier to entry is low and the use of on-message keywords can spread your sob- or scream-story quickly. Thus we get galloping Galtism in the absence of any actual Galts, and the viral promotion of non- and quasi-stories, and of repulsive comments about the weight and sexual proclivities of a former Presidential candidate's daughter. It's the future of journalism!

ATLAS FUGUES. The Ole Perfesser sends readers to an essay in Capitalism magazine, which you may have guessed from the title is a full-on Randian joint (present lead story: "Obama's Plans Will 'Work' -- To Breed Servile Dependence"). The Perfesser-approved author Edward Cline writes "On The Left-Wing Reaction to John Galt, Ayn Rand, and Tea Parties." His essay is mostly based on quotations from "opponents and enemies" who have mocked the Go Galt people, which he answers with mockery of his own, of which I cannot disapprove as it is pretty much my own critical method. He also includes in his attack Megan McArdle's vision of Ayn Rand as beach reading and Whittaker Chambers, which is just delightful.

But Cline isn't trying to be funny -- at least I hope he isn't. He considers the mockers of "the collectivist and altruist elite" to have "truncated" minds, and expects to see them all brought low as "the nation -- indeed, the world -- is waking up to the idea that ideas have consequences." There are many lovely, bilious sections, but this is remarkable:

They are deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming train, but sneer that the train does not exist. They are stuffed animals crammed with the excelsior of worn-out bromides, mulched second-hand sociology, and the sawdust of a failed ideology.

A bromide-stuffed, sneering deer obliterated by the unsubsidized Amtrak of the People! I hope this scene is in the movie.

The Perfesser's pages are increasingly given over to such Galt-talk, and to coverage of mostly miniscule Tea Parties, and survivalist prattle. Once given to grand claims that an Army of Davids would transform the political landscape, he seems now to be in retrenchment mode, hunkering down with the fringe -- or, as they say in the entertainment world, niche.

Speaking of niche entertainment, over at the Perfesser's other hobby-horse, Pajamas Media, a bunch of rightbloggers do radio: Steve Green of Vodkapundit notes that Obama is personally approved by Americans though his policies are less popular, and considers how to capitalize on that. He does not consider that Americans who are dubious about the stimulus would be more motivated to abandon Obama for his opposition if it existed in any meaningful form, rather than as a fantasy camp for crackpot ideologues.

Yet Green is convinced that for Republicans "it's time to be bad guys" because "doing the smart thing didn't do us any good." He points to Rush Limbaugh inspiring people to be "angry -- and I don't mean that in a bad way" after the first Bush's "read my lips" flip-flop on taxes. After that, of course, we got lots more Rush-style Republican anger -- and Bill Clinton. For years these phenomena fed on one another. The powerful got more power, and the disenfranchised got ratings and money.

That seems to be the plan now, too. If these Atlases are shrugging, it's not the rest of us "looters" they're trying to shake off, but the responsibility of meaningful opposition. It seems a great relief to many of them, as it has been to us. Having lost the onerous burden of defending the Bush Administration, they have reverted to an entertainment program based on Ayn Rand, science fiction, Guns & Ammo, and wishful thinking. They portray this party mix as the formula that will bring them back to power, but I grow suspicious that they don't mean it, and are content to recreate their native dances for whatever money tourists may throw them.

MUST-FLEE TV.


Oh no. Oh hell no. Not even in the interests of journalism or clinical psychology. It looks like a cross between The Joe Pyne Show and The Brady Bunch. No way.

UPDATE. I couldn't resist: a full review at Runnin' Scared.