ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS. Culture warriors are having a hard time churning up some actual culture of their own. Take a look at Liberty Island, an arty online pub with Ben Shapiro on the masthead. Back in August Ole Perfesser Instapundit pimped its "call for submissions." Yet four months later the project remains rather thin on content -- among the few contributions is a short story by Shapiro himself, of which we will not speak. This week the Perfesser pimped a new "call for submissions" for the thing. The fundraising ain't going so hot either.

They're probably better off claiming long-dead artists; hell, look how it worked with Orwell. At Pajamas Media, one R.J. Moeller instructs us on the proper way to read Dostoyevsky. I'll give you a hint -- it has something to do with American politics!

In the course of a number of his books – The Devils (aka The Possessed) and The Brothers Karamazov for example – he foretold of the coming socioeconomic and geopolitical nightmares that awaited 20th century societies who would adopt progressivism, nihilism, and socialism as their guiding principles... 

Dostoevsky held that the inherent weakness of the Utopian visions of socialism was a rejection of God and the institution of the family. He saw that for the Left, their politics became their religion. The members of the progressive-Left were demanding standards of Judeo-Christian morality be replaced with new (arbitrary) standards handed down from central councils and planning committees...

But this is my favorite part:

From Walter E. Williams’ August 8th column "Liberals, Progressives, and Socialists":

Well, as long as it keeps them from writing any fiction themselves, I suppose we'll all be happy.

FIGHTING WORDS. Before approving the protest of Erik Loomis' treatment, I went back to my Gabby Giffords rightbloggers column to see if I'd accused Sarah Palin of inciting murder. To my relief, I found I had not.

Maybe it means little more than that the liquor store closed early that night, but I flatter myself that in the main, though I am silly and snarky and snide, and sometimes come dangerously close to willful misapprehension of my targets (and by dangerously close, I mean I do it all the time, waving my Satirist's Immunity card), at least you can say for me that I don't gin up fake outrage over transparently bogus offenses and try to get people fired for them, as have the people who've come after Loomis for saying after Newtown he'd like to see the NRA President's head on a stick. (Hell, I didn't even agree with the drive to fire Rush Limbaugh.)

But enough about what a swell guy I am. There are real differences between the factions which, for want of better terms, I will describe as Us and Them. Though it is meaningful that we are right and they are wrong about nearly everything, how we go about defending our righteous beliefs is at least as meaningful. I suspect there are practical political benefits to not demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole, but the main reason for not demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole is that demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole makes you a butthurt asshole.

FROM THEIR WARM, STICKY HANDS. I trawl other blogs' comments sections but rarely, and almost never to approve. Others are less selective. Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds, who has reached the throw-the-gun-at-the-pursuer stage in the current gun control debate but can't bear to part with his weapon, holds this Althouse comment up for commendation:

In the olden days, when leftists wished to argue against gun owners, they claimed that guns were phallic symbols and that the excessive love of guns demonstrated latent homosexuality. Keep oiling and loading that pisstool, big boy. We know what you’re really doing….Can we not now claim that excessive fear of gun ownership indicates a streak of homophobia. They don’t want to ban guns. We know what they really want to ban.

To which the Perfesser adds:

Well, phallophobia, anyway. Which seems about right.

Looks like these guys are taking that "man card" thing a mite serious. Don't worry, fellas; as a person of the "gun" myself, I will defend to the death your right to bear that thang.

UPDATE. The Althouse post to which the comment is attached is ridiculous, too, but it does raise the fascinating possibility that Justice Scalia and Matt K. Lewis are only kidding which, if I could only believe it, would greatly elevate my faith in humanity.

NEW ON THE BLOGROLL. My old friend Joe Mackin had this idea: Write about stuff -- yeah I know, like everyone else -- but limit yourself to two grafs at a time. Thus, 2 Paragraphs. It's much better than it should be, and still better in daily doses. (Here's a prime example.)

My old boss Tony Ortega has left the Voice but continues harrying the derps of Scientology at his own scoop shack, The Underground Bunker. Tony asks the hard questions, like "How'd you like to spend New Year's Eve with Scientologists?" (Short answer: You wouldn't.)  Tony is a realer sort of journalist, and his forthcoming book on everyone's favorite nut-cult should be prime.

GO AHEAD, TRY IT THAT WAY. I'm always eager to learn what it is we liberals are really up to when we pretend to be interested in, say, preventing schoolroom shoot-'em-ups. Daniel Greenfield, "Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a contributing editor at Family Security Matters," explains our philosophy in "Gun Control, Thought Control, and People Control":

The individual cannot be held accountable for shooting someone if there are guns for sale. Individuals have no role to play because they are not moral actors, only members of a mob responding to stimuli... 

You wouldn't blame a dog for overeating; you blame the owners for overfeeding him. Nor do you blame a dog for biting a neighbor. You might punish him, but the punishment is training, not a recognition of authentic responsibility on the part of the canine. And the way that you think of a dog, is the way that the left thinks of you. When you misbehave, the left looks around for your owner.

That's from John Rawls, right?

Individual behavior is a symptom of a social problem. Identify the social problem and you fix the behavior. The individual is nothing, the crowd is everything. Control the mass and you control the individual.

Or maybe it's from James Q. "Broken Windows" Wilson. It's hard to tell; Greenfield seems to think any attempt to change circumstances to influence behavior is a form of mass hypnosis. (I wonder if a woman ever had him over to her apartment, turned down the lights and put on some soft music. That must have really freaked him out.)

Of course I'm being unfair. Though most of the article consists of enraged, outlandish metaphors -- "You train monkeys to fetch bananas for you. That is how the enlightened elites of the left see the workers whose taxes they harvest," "The Nazis believed that they were the master race because they were genetically superior. Liberals believe that they are the master race..." etc. -- Greenfield does have one real-life example to buttress his argument:

That is how the left approached this election. Instead of appealing to individual interests, they went after identity groups. They targeted low information voters and used behavioral science to find ways to manipulate people. The right treated voters like human beings. The left treated them like lab monkeys. And the lab monkey approach is triumphantly toted by progressives as proof that the left is more intelligent than the right. And what better proof of intelligence can there be than treating half the country like buttons of unthinking responses that you can push to get them to do what you want.

Greenfield's argument is perfect in its way. Have anti-pollution laws made our air and water less foul? Proof of liberal contempt for the individualism of the polluter! Do blacks rise to heretofore unrealized positions of respect and even prominence in society? Liberal mind control techniques at work!

So if the kind of gun control people are calling for now (and which, by the way, is Greenfield's ostensible theme) were actually tried and shown to reduce gun violence in this country,  that would make it even more of an outrage.

This is the sort of conservatism I look forward to seeing more of: One where they gibber and spit over our successes.

UPDATE. In another post, Greenfield asks:

And yet would Thomas Jefferson, the abiding figurehead of the Democratic Party, who famously wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants", really have shuddered at the idea of peasants with assault rifles, or would he have grinned at the playing field being leveled some more?

I think he would have swum to England to tell King George he'd made a terrible mistake.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the brethren's reaction to Newtown and how guns don't kill people, [fill in the blank] kills people.

CULTURE COPS, OUTREACH DIVISION. Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds offers his services as culture-war consultant to the GOP:

Which is why I think that rich people wanting to support the Republican Party might want to direct their money somewhere besides TV ads that copy, poorly, what Lee Atwater did decades ago. 

My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites... 

...those magazines and Web sites see themselves, pretty consciously, as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. So while nine out of 10 articles may be the usual stuff on sex, diet and shopping, the 10th will always be either soft p.r. for the Democrats or soft — or sometimes not-so-soft — hits on Republicans.

Two things: 1.) What is it with Republicans and women? I guess the New York Post editorial board figures their readership in 90% misogynist, so they didn't have to worry about alienating female voters by implying they're idiots. 2.) The magic of the free market -- which suggests that gal mags prosper by feeding their readers what they know they'll like, rather than indoctrinating them against their will -- always seems to disappear from the conservative theology whenever they strap on the Goebbels revolver.

For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.

Go ahead, guys, try it that way. But I know them -- they'll never let well enough alone, and soon you'll have this:

UPDATE. This is officially confirmed as a bad idea: Jonah Goldberg approves!

WELL, YOU TRIED, PART II. Ace of Spades, whom we discovered trying to engage the "culture" yesterday, is still at it: He read an interview in the Washington Post with the Pajamas Media nut Roger Simon about Simon's new play, which tells the story of, get this, Walter Duranty. The interview is conducted by Jennifer Rubin, whom Ace normally derides as a RINO wet, but all is forgiven because Ace has his beret on and is trying to look at the arts  -- let's see, how did he put it -- "simply because they're interesting, without any direct or indirect implication on our politics." Which means of course --

[Simon] says it's neither conservative nor liberal, and I believe him, but there is hardly any question that no liberal would explore the question of what happens when a large group of people begin subverting the truth for political purposes. Well, they wouldn't explore this going on in a liberal institution. I'm sure they'd explore it in, say, the conservative movement. 

And that's part of the problem right there, isn't? Liberals style themselves truth-tellers and truth-seekers, but as we're seeing yesterday and today, they embargo truths that aren't helpful to the Great Patriotic Cause of Progressivism/Marxism.

-- it's still more argh blargh liberalz blocked mah big hit play.

Ace's attempt to break into the liberal arts by sitting sullenly in the corner of a Modern Drama class and drawing superheroes in his notebook is extremely disappointing to me. I don't know why, but I keep hoping against hope that he'll live up to his putative expectations of himself, and he never does.

I guess I'm just tired of all the rightwing gabble about "culture" being such stupid bullshit. In the Ace post previously treated, he referred to an old Rod Dreher whither-culture bleat that, expectedly, is worse than useless -- Dreher too seems to intuit that if you can't drop politics long enough to actually engage your imagination, you're not going to make any art, but he also seems to believe the acceptable alternative is endless pseudo-philosophical gassing along the lines of "conservatives have names like Lenny and liberals have names like Carl." (And if you are foolish enough to follow Dreher's links, I warn you, you will be punished by Dreher and Will Wilkinson talking about country music. You'll need about a half-hour of Uncle Dave Macon to wash that out of your head.)

I have a theory about why this is all coming up now. These guys recently lost something they'd been living on for years -- the illusion that they are America, all by themselves, with no bleeding-hearts allowed. It's an illusion we liberals learned to give up on long ago, of course. But it may be hard for conservatives to learn that most voters are okay with the man they're convinced is a Maoist Black Power Chicago thug -- or at least that voters like him better than them. In their dejection they wander the streets, and finally enter the libraries and music shops, pick up the books and instruments there, and, peering at them like curious apes, wonder: Maybe pretty thing faggots like am powerful? Maybe if Ace use them him feel good?

I think they're less interested in art than in art therapy.

WELL, YOU TRIED. Hey guess what -- Ace of Spades is getting into the conservative-culture thing!

A film is usually about something a little bit more complicated and a little more human than a seven-word bumper-sticker sentiment. A good film always is, a good novel always is. This sort of reductivist approach just isn't interesting or worthy. At least not to me. 

Don't we do some things just for fun? Or read some things simply because they're interesting, without any direct or indirect implication on our politics?

This is so promising -- not profound, just unusually thoughtful for Ace -- that I began to think he was serious. I'm such a naïf! Some paragraphs later:

I suppose I'm suggesting a sort of Invisible Hand in imagination or intellectual inquiry -- a free market in ideas should wind up producing the best ideas, and if it doesn't, the market is rigged to guarantee bad results. 

I think the market is so currently rigged -- first, by a venal monopoly which uses its market position in one market (the media, culture, the academy) to leverage a dominant position in another (the political realm)...

Back to the bitch-bunker, boys! George Clooney can rest easy.

MISTER, I MET A MAN ONCE. At National Review, David French tells us how Big Gummint done in his ole buddy Rob (not his real name) in Tennessee, who "supported himself and made his child-support payments on time" until the Obama Recession of '09:

In early 2009, Rob was laid off from his latest job and immediately began receiving unemployment benefits... He looked for work, but he looked less and less diligently with each passing week. Benefits were extended — then extended again. While unemployed, he lived a far more sedate lifestyle and quickly began gaining weight — eating foods purchased with government assistance — and as he gained weight, his health deteriorated. His joints ached, his blood pressure rose, and he became extremely anxious. 

Knowing friends on disability — and realizing that the benefits were roughly equal to the pay he received at his last job — he applied, claiming that his muscular-skeletal problems combined with his anxiety prevented him from working. Within months, he was approved, and he stopped any effort to look for work, knowing that if he found a job his benefits would cease. His sedate lifestyle continued, his health deteriorated even further, and — soon enough — he was truly "disabled" by any objective medical measure.

In other words, we safety-netted Rob into chronic illness and long-term dependency.

In the old America, Rob might have starved, but he'd have starved proudly and wouldn't be having no fat-people problems. And if Rob should get the diabeetus, I bet Big Gummint'll give him medicine for it, thus denying him a dignified early death.

As a liberal, I'd say Rob's sad case calls for federal Bowflex subsidies.

THUMBS DOWN. I hate to get on Glenn Greenwald's bad side but his claim that he isn't really reviewing-without-having-seen Zero Dark Thirty, when his hostile non-review contains phrases like this --

That this film would depict CIA interrogation programs as crucial in capturing America's most hated public enemy, and uncritically herald CIA officials as dramatic heroes, is anything but surprising.

--and--

...the film's glorifying claims about torture are demonstrably, factually false.

--and--

What this film does, then, is uncritically presents as fact the highly self-serving, and factually false, claims by the CIA...

-- is extremely disingenuous. Greenwald's points about some of the journalism surrounding the film are valid, but his characterizations of the film itself are ridiculous. Zero Dark Thirty isn't a shadowy political figure whose hidden movements you track by eyewitness reports. It's a fucking movie. Have your editor buy you a ticket.

This is still more proof -- as if more were needed -- that you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art. It is both more personally edifying and more pleasing to the Muses to approach a work of art as a work of art, however obnoxious it may be to you on other grounds, than to approach it as a political phenomenon. Because when you do the latter, you get into company you really don't want to be keeping.

If the thing you've actually seen, heard, or read is a piece of shit, then fire away.

I would explain further, yet again, why this is so, but I'm busy and I assume adults already know this.

UPDATE. Lotta pushback in comments. Like I said, what people are saying about the movie may be stupid, but the movie itself will make or not make its own case. Right now the whole thing's reminding me that once upon a time the big issue with Citizen Kane was supposed to be whether or not Welles had been fair to William Randolph Hearst.

CLOSET CASE. Ace of Spades:

Conservatives who live in liberal areas, or move in liberal circles, on the other hand, tend to either be pretty quiet about politics or, if trying to suss someone else out, employ shibboleths to see if the other party is a member of the tribe. 

I don't have a go-to shibboleth for this purpose. I suppose that something noncomittal and sneaky, like "Are you a fan of David Mamet?," might work. Hey, you might just mean his movies and plays. Alternatively, you might mean his recent political conversion to conservatism. A member of the tribe might pick up on that last bit and say something like, "I've become a bigger fan lately."

Maybe they should just go with a hanky code.

(There's a whole Vince Vaughn section at the link, for those of you who like it rough.)

THE TRUTH REVEALED! You heard that Obama has to take the Second Inaugural Oath on January 20, but it's Sunday this year so he's doing a private oath then and a public oath on Monday, right? OK then --  Alana Goodman, Commentary:

Politico reports that Obama’s second inaugural oath for the “most transparent administration in history” might be administered privately, without any media present... 

...Obama hasn’t exactly followed through on his vow to run a more transparent administration. It’s about time the press finally started calling him out on it. Maybe now that he’s won reelection the media will actually do its job and report critically on his presidency. At the very least this is a sign he’s not going to get the kid-gloves treatment he had during the election season.

Would you be surprised to learn Goodman's not the only nutcake making a thing out of this?

Andrew Malcolm, IBD: "So Obama, who promised once to have the most open administration in history, will take the presidential oath in private on Sunday, Jan. 20."

Michael Fletcher, Bearing Drift: "Conspiracy or not, it’s quite odd that the 'most transparent administration in history (TM)' doesn’t want the country to see the second term begin."

Rick Moran, American Thinker: "Maybe Obama wants it private because he wants to be sworn in using the Koran. Perhaps he's changed the oath, taking out 'faithfully' ('execute the office') and that last bit about preserving the Constitution... "

Dammit, Moran stole my joke! But thanks to my connections in the Administration I can at least show you the planned staging for the event:

It's just a rough; in the actual performance, Obama will trample the Constitution Gangnam Style.  And if you really want to see it, of course, they'll be showing it later on BET.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the GOP's new attitudes toward John Boehner and Jim DeMint. Boehner, formerly their enforcer, is now a horrible RINO tyrant, and DeMint, (soon to be) formerly a U.S. Senator, is now more powerful and relevant than ever as a think tank hack. It's all part of the New Way.

A fun sidelight is the brethren's excitement that Nikki Haley might name black conservative Tim Scott to replace DeMint. Matthew Vadum at FrontPageMag makes the case:

Unlike President Obama, Scott has an inspiring life story that happens to be true. Unlike Obama he was not a “red diaper baby” surrounded by Marxists from his first breath. Scott was actually born poor and unlike the president embraced the American Dream, running a business and achieving upward mobility before entering politics.

In the quest for power, racism can be tabled but slander and bullshit never sleep. At least Vadum doesn't mind he's black; check out the commenters at American Renaissance -- they get really mad at Republicans when they're not supplying them with white candidates.

UPDATE. My favorite part of the whole thing is the Reasonoids telling us what a libertarian DeMint secretly is, but they have been outdone by Timothy P. Carney at the Washington Examiner, who headlines, I swear to God, "Jim DeMint was the libertarian hero of the Senate."

For libertarians, Christian conservative pro-lifer Jim DeMint was the best thing to come through the Senate in decades. DeMint, quitting early to run the conservative Heritage Foundation, embodied an underappreciated fact of life in Washington: The politicians who most consistently defend economic liberty are the cultural conservatives.

Other prime quotes: "the big-government side in today's abortion battles is the 'pro-choicers'"; "DeMint opposes gay marriage, but again, the U.S. Senate hasn't had much to say on the issue"; and "Traditional morality and limited government aren't enemies. They're friends." Your chucklehead buddy who thinks he's kind of a libertarian because he wants to free the weed and misses the Drew Carey Show is going to be disappointed to hear that it was really all about tax breaks for the wealthy.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. At Zero Hedge we hear from Brandon Martin, who believes the Republicans and the Democrats are colluding to make America socialist; that there is a secret "Liberty Movement" majority afoot which would have swept the polls in 2012 if only Ron Paul had run (then why didn't he, one wonders), but because he didn't they contented themselves instead with ousting RINOs like Allen West; etc. Key passage:

Second, if you subscribe to the well documented idea that elections, at least at the federal level, are entirely staged (which I do)...

At PJ Media one Vik Rubenfeld weighs the traditional reasons conservatives give for Obama's victory (including "dependency on big government handouts on the part of some pro-Obama voters" and "mainstream media bias") and, while he finds much merit in these, cottons to this one:

For decades, adults have been told, and more importantly our children are now taught, that America owes penance due to a past history of racism. It is inevitable that this would play a key part in the reelection of the nation’s first black president.

Rubenfeld concludes that "some percentage of pro-Obama voters decided that putting racism in America’s past would be a deciding factor in their vote," referring perhaps to the voter survey that took place in his mind when he saw a white girl reading a Toni Morrison book.

Over at the Wall Street Journal we get the high-class version of this from James Taranto, who tells us once again about "the increasingly open hostility toward whites from mainstream left-liberals." (Does that mean that if race riots come back, I get to loot? Sweet.)

At Glenn Beck's The Blaze, we get a Kulturkampf kvetch from one Richard Mgrdechian, who tells us "HOW SHORT-SIGHTED LEADERSHIP HAS SABOTAGED CONSERVATIVE POP CULTURE," whatever that is. In 2012 "Republicans once again missed the boat on popular culture," he says. His solution (besides the customary hundreds of words about the need to "leverage the power of popular culture"):

The way I do this is through music. You might have heard of the band I manage – it’s called Madison Rising. We’re somewhat of an anomaly in the music industry, being a pro-American rock band and all.

That's just one example. There's also... well, that's the only example he gives, actually. Did he mention he manages a band called Madison Rising?

Meanwhile Joel Kotkin asks, What's the Matter with Connecticut? Don't you blue states realize it was in your economic best interest to vote for Mitt Romney and the Republicans, who were "the ones most likely to fall on their swords to maintain lower rates for the the mass affluent class in the bluest states and metros"? Yet you voted for Obama! You guys'll be sorry! (Kotkin has been lecturing on the imminent death of the blue states for years; he's basically the guy who expects you to fail and, when you succeed, concludes that you must secretly be miserable about it.)

The bad news is these lunatics live among us. The good news is that Republicans ain't getting their thumbs out of their asses anytime soon.

STILL ON MOOCHER PATROL. Remember when Virginia wanted to test its welfare recipients for drugs, then found out it would be an outrageous money-loser for the state and backed off? Well, another election has come and gone and Republican members are reviving the idea, because they've found a way to lose less money on it:

"We got hung up last year on the cost, and it seems that we determined the costs aren't as great as we were told last year," said Del. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, the bill's sponsor. "There are new methods of screening and testing used other places, and some are practical and could be applied here"...

The [original] legislation failed... after the state estimated it would cost $1.5 million to administer the tests, compared with the estimated $229,000 that would be saved by stripping benefits from those who test positive...

Republicans believe a statewide testing system is necessary to prevent taxpayer money from going to drug users.

"You're going to have some abuse no matter what you do, but you can curtail it to where it's minimal," said Del. Riley Ingram, R-Hopewell.

You don't learn till way far into the Washington Examiner story that "before Florida's [similar] law was suspended by the courts, officials found that only 2 percent of welfare recipients tested positive for drugs." Heritage Foundation wonks have been pushing the alternate line that drug testing keeps people out of the welfare system, which they describe as a savings, however speculative.

But saving money is the least of it; what they really want to do is grind their heels a little harder in the faces of the indigent. Their main argument is that welfare is not part of our common obligations to one another, but the property of Them That Gots, to be grudgingly dispensed with ever-more-onerous conditions to those creatures whose subhumanity is proven by their bad luck.

Whether they're commanding the poor to pee in a cup or demanding that the childless procreate to fulfill the will of Heaven, always remember that these people are not animated by a desire to realize a common good, but by the need to assert their superiority against all evidence.

GOIN' UP THE COUNTRY. I am indebted to Travis Gettys for pointing this out to me, and wondering how I missed it: a wingnut separatist housing project!

Patriots understand that an epic storm is coming to America.

Economic collapse is imminent. Disruptions of Just-in-Time supply lines will lead America into chaos. Violence along racial, ethnic, religious and economic class lines will bring forth famine, disease and a fundamental reset of life in America. 

A group of Patriots have decided to build a community off the most likely lines of peril, a bastion of Jefferson's Rightful Liberty where we may remain safe, warm, healthy and comfortable while American society suffers the inevitable destruction that must accompany the decades of degenerating morality of our Countrymen... 

The Citadel will have between 3,500 and 5,000 households within the walls, with a single gate permitting access. The Citadel is not to be a closed society, instead a refuge for genuine Patriots who wish to live without neighbors who are Liberals and Establishment political ideologues, open for tourists who will be welcomed into our town to visit our planned Firearms Museum, shop in our Town Center, stay in a B&B or hotel while vacationing and exploring the wonderful skiing, hunting and fishing opportunities in the area, and many other attractions we will offer.

 Takers (excuse me, makers) will have their choice of "a house, townhome or condo," located in the "mountains of Idaho." If you get involved now, you can help them design their coat of arms.

Cost? Aside from the blood of patriots, not mentioned. Nor have they claimed to own the land on which to build the project yet. The Citadel is being launched in part by proceeds from assault weapon sales, and by membership fees ("Your credit card will be billed monthly by PayPal"), but we're sure if you're interested they'll tell you how much gold bullion a place in the promised land will cost.

Also, how hardcore is this: The scheme wasn't inspired by the recent election. The site has a blog which suggests that they've been at it since September at least. Among the authors' musings:

The post below discusses the very real liklihood of refugee children who will come to our gates. Of course we will give as many sanctuary as possible. What of their adults? Perhaps Liberals who did not prepare and only in the Hell of civil war truly understand that their values are stupid? Do we accept their children and tell the parents to walk back toward Hell? I have no intention of sharing my bread with a stupid Liberal who is dying because of his/her stupidity. But his kid may be a different story...

'specially if she's good breeding stock for future patriot families. Now, what will social life be like at the Citadel?

We'll have some great pubs with local brews, walking and bicycle paths, a firing range you don't have to drive a half hour or more to get to. Maybe a hill with a rope tow for sliding down on inner tubes in the winter time. Militia training will also have a unifying social aspect to it.

Sounds kinda like a cross between Schlitterbahn and a jihad training camp.

Also, the proprietors will be outfitting only the exterior of the development, "so that each Citadel resident can control each and every detail of their home," raising the fascinating possibility of a Bauhaus survivalist compound. And while they "are NOT attempting to replace existing government or existing laws," their version of co-op board rules, The Patriot Agreement, is rather grand, described as a "plan to survive" that will "improve our chances of survival and minimize our need to involve 'outside authority' in our affairs." And their lobby security is a militia.

There's plenty more: One of the Citadel's founding fathers appears to be someone called Kerodin,  who is involved in a beef with a guy at Sipsey Street Irregulars, another lunatic group, and others. Internecine quarrels seem to be an indispensable part of such enterprises, and so far even survivalist board posters can't be counted on to support the project. In short, it's kind of like Bill Whittle's Wingnut Sky World, but with a much higher chance of a hostage situation. Clusterfuck fans and federal law enforcement agents, this is one to watch!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the news that the U.S. birth rate is way down and how rightbloggers have reacted to it. Short version: This is Obama's fault, and Republicans will cure it with morality lectures.

HERE COMES A REGULAR. Having been interested in conservatives who appear to have been driven mad by the election, I haven't spent enough time on conservatives who were quite mad beforehand. So I went and looked at The Anchoress. Here's what she thinks happened November 6:

Faced with a challenger whose most daring political strategy was to cultivate vagueness in his relentless pursuit of all things beige, and an incumbent gleefully willing to launch a daily barrage of splattering, oozing color bombs heedless of what or whom they hit–or whether their tints were environmentally toxic or even true–the voters chose “sound and fury” over “nothing.”

I think by "color bombs" she means Obama attacked beige Romney with his toxic coloredness. Actually I don't know what the fuck she's saying. Nor did I have much luck with this:

For many, and for me, the election signaled the crossing of a Rubicon of sorts: twin-towering notions of Exceptionalism and Indispensability toppled for less conspicuous walk-ups of Isolationism and Nanny Statism; the running out of a clock, all illusions lain aside.

My best guess is: Once America was butch and ruled, but now it's self-involved and doesn't want to engage the world at all, sort of like Ferdinand the Bull. Also, twin-toweredly, 9/11 Changed Everything, slightly used and yours for 90% off. (She said something similar shortly after the election, too -- that "for young adults and the generations coming up the backbone of conservative theory—rugged individualism, privacy, minimal government—is a complete non-sequitur"; now we were no longer right with Reagan, and so must reap the whirlwind.)

We begin, I think, by giving simple thanks to God for the election—without conditions or sly assumptions that we know anything or are somehow colluding with Providence. 

Here I was on firmer ground. From experience I knew that whenever our Mean Fake Nun puts on the wimple of piety, as surely as Gomorrah follows Sodom there will follow some viciousness. Sure enough, in the very next line --

That sounds counterintuitive, I know, but whenever I think a circumstance precludes gratitude, I remember the story of two sisters offering prayerful thanks for the fleas that infested their barracks in a Nazi concentration camp...

One of the benefits of well-drawn villains is that they spur us to examine ourselves for their flaws; when I am mindful enough, and I catch myself being passive-aggressive, I take the example of The Anchoress to warn me off it. Next I'll try taping a picture of Jonah Goldberg to my fridge.

A PLEASANT SURPRISE. Here's a further development on the "Alinsky! I'll show you Alinsky" theme, taken up by conservatives who realize they have an image problem and will accept any crazy explanation for it except their own actions. It's from J.R. Dunn at American Thinker. He thinks conservatives don't know how to do "the dark arts of image manipulation" (Bob Haldeman chuckles in Hell) and don't fight back when mocked by liberals. Also, traitors like Peggy Noonan and David Brooks sell them out, etc. That's all SOP, but this bit is, so far as I have noticed, an innovation:

...the third major class of response, that of embracing the stereotype, of taking it on as a kind of costume, and even pushing it farther than the left themselves. I knew a noted spokesman for one of the major conservative media organizations who used to appear at public lectures with two heavy-set young men standing at either side of the lectern wearing camo fatigues and sunglasses, thus turning himself from conservative spokesman into Benito Mussolini. This same kind of behavior can be found at all levels of the movement from comment threads all the way to the top. Rush indulges in it all too often. Ann Coulter has made a career of it. While definitely a crowd-pleaser, it is, in the end, self-defeating. These stereotypes were constructed by the left for a reason -- to manipulate the public at large, ignorant of political subtleties and unfamiliar with doctrine, into certain visceral reactions to conservatives and their ideas. They were created to destroy conservatives. Why play along with them?

Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are playing into liberals' hands by feeding conservatives red meat on a daily basis and making millions of dollars off it. I like to imagine Coulter and Limbaugh reading this, becoming guilt-wracked, and returning to the sober, Cambridge Union Society mode of discourse they used to do, back when it was all about the music.

Mainly I want to know who the Mussolini guy was. I'm guessing Michael Fumento.

Oh, give Dunn credit for offering the brethren practical Alinksy-fu lessons:

Calling Sandra Fluke a "slut" merely generated sympathy for her. Turning her into a clown uncertain what to do with a condom if one was handed to her would have shut the whole campaign down in short order. (How about the Facebook "Sandra Fluke Condom Support Group"?)

The next four years are going to be awesome.