SPANNING THE GLIB. The Perfesser is bummed at the Orange Rev crack-up in the Ukraine, which is almost (note the "almost," moonbat-hunters!) reason enough to approve of it. But one of PubliusPundit's commenters actually has some good perspective on events:

Hold the phone here. What was the Orange Revolution about? Was it about installing a one-party system in Ukraine for years to come? Of course not - it was about democracy - about taking the decision out of the hands of corrupt officials and putting it in the hands of the people, where it belongs...

The Orange Revolution was not about giving Yuschenko a life term. It was about getting a party’s shady and corrupt political system to abide by the rule of law. OSCE and other monitors determined the parliamentary elections to be far and away better than the first two votes in 2004. That’s something we should be happy for Ukraine about. I don’t like Yanukovych at all, but the people did vote for him.

Looked at this way, the current Kiev shenanigans actually seem more democratic than what we've got going in our own Congress.

That gets a finger on something that bugs me about conservatives even when they're on the right side -- that is, when they back popular movements like Yuschenko's. They think of the struggle for democracy as a souped-up Lord of the Rings battle, with lavish sets, outsized personalities, protest babes, and memorable quotes fit for repeating outside the theatre ("Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" Remember that one?). When the show is over, or the Mission Accomplished, they lose interest. No wonder they think we're doing great in Iraq. They've seen the movie a dozen times; who are we to tell them that they don't know how it ends?

And anyway, shouldn't conservatives be happy at the defeat of another George Soros creation?

TECH BALK. Absence of the customary bomb graphic indicates that once again I have neglected to renew the NetSol account on my home domain. If you need to reach me fast, here is the temporary address. A Yahoo! addy! That it should come to this. In my 14 years of computer use I have vacillated between enthusiastic early-adoption and something like Luddism; in our current era of fast connections and iPods, the latter has become my default mode. But even the momentary loss of edroso.com makes me feel like a Republican without a flag pin.

So let us retreat into the cool shade of dead trees. I spent much of the weekend reading my first Robertson Davies novel, The Fifth Business. A lovely book, taking the perspective of a precocious rural Ontarian (special pleasure for me there: my mother's people came from Picton) to alternately slash at and grudgingly approve the first half of the Twentieth Century. In 1908 little Dunny Ramsay, our narrator, dodges a snowball thrown by a jacked-up little shit who grows into a local power; said projectile strikes the Baptist preacher's wife, Mrs. Dempster, in the back of the head, causing her (we are told) to go "simple," give premature birth to a future outcast and magician, and become a fool-saint. This incident informs the destinies of all concerned through to the climax -- an admirable unifying device that supports Dunny's notion (or is it the other way around?) that "the traits that are strong in childhood [never] disappear; they may go underground, or they may be transmuted into something else, but they do not vanish..." (which reminds me of Salinger's Franny and Zooey: "There are no big changes between ten and twenty -- or ten and eighty, for that matter. You still can't love a Jesus as much as you'd like to..."). The young brute becomes a callow world-beater (think Boss Mangan in Shaw's Heartbreak House), the young outcast follows painful byways to occult power and, finally, vengeance, and the narrator becomes an overeducated and self-examining scold, which is to say, the voice of an author of a very fine novel of the upper-middle register -- too obviously special-pleading to completely convince (lacking the utmost Dickensian talent of enlisting a seeming Universe in support of his childhood grievance) but giving a fine account of a certain Anglo-Christian perspective in the late 1960s: reflexively prudish, painfully aware of its limitations, attempting through the generosity of Novel writing to set the world to rights, at least privately. I can't wait to see where Davies went next.

MORE HELPFUL ADVICE FROM YOUR MORTAL ENEMIES. Our current headline, or some variation of it, has been used here before in posts about Republican Routine 23 -- which is: Tell, in a tone more of sorrow than of anger, how your good, good friends the Traitors have err'd, and how they might be savéd by accepting your well-meant counsel.

The current iteration has to do with New York State's judicial decision against same-sex marriage. Several conservatives are telling gay not-quite-citizens that this defeat is really a victory, as it will someday (don't ask how or when) lead to gay marriage.

John Podhoretz acknowledges that, seen in a short-sighted way, the ruling looks like a loss for his pro-homo opponents -- but he insists that for them it's really "A Lucky Loss." Declaring "I am not a supporter of gay marriage," Podhoretz yet maintains that "supporters of gay marriage should hail yesterday's decision by the state Court of Appeals not to legalize same-sex unions - indeed, perhaps those supporters more than anyone else."

Sounds like something out of an old puzzle-book, like "I'm my own grandpaw. Who am I?" Actually it's the usual malarkey whereby conservatarians claim to have nothing against unlimited abortions and open faggotry so long as they are the will of the people as expressed by laws, and not some black-robed tyrants' idea of a so-called Constitutional Right.

Podhoretz tells gay folk that they shouldn't desire short-term rights from a ruling, because legislation is "the only way to ensure that that gay marriage achieves the status its backers desire." And Podhoretz will be fighting you every step of the way -- but don't be mad, it's not like it's about anything important! See you at the after-party!

So pleased is Podhoretz with this sophistry that he decides to go for politically-incorrect broke in the objective correlative:

Gay-marriage advocates often liken their struggle to the civil-rights movement. Well, consider the following contrast. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court nobly ruled that "separate but equal" education was unconstitutional - a view that did the justices enormous credit. But what happened in its wake? Open revolt in the South. Black schoolchildren assaulted. The National Guard mobilized just to ensure kids could enter the school buildings of Little Rock. Riots in Alabama and Mississippi as their universities were forced to open their doors to all.

No doubt anticipating a "Springtime for Hitler, Scene 1" reaction from readers whose minds had not yet been turned into harmless glue, Podhoretz later says some nicer things about Brown vs. Board of Education. But it's not very convincing. Surprisingly, some people find it harder to be charitable when they're winning.

You can see more of this sort of bullshit from alleged gay marriage supporters all over the web. We have an Althouse cheer (it'll stop the DMA!), and a Gay Patriot huzzah (it'll get our people to work on lobbying!). There's something for everyone here, it seems. Why, you wouldn't know there was any downside at all, were it not for all those gay people mourning (or, as Gay Patriot would have it, "reacting in a juvenile manner" to) the latest reminder that America thinks they're less than human.

I sort of love this idea that homosexuals shouldn't want any rights until they are the sort of rights of which their mortal enemies approve. Reminds me of that old Beyond the Fringe bit in which a politician argues with a condemned man about the death penalty:

"Surely you don't want to be cooped up for the rest of your life."

"Yes, I want to be cooped up for the rest of my life!"

"Come, come, now, you're playing with words."

For the most part, the people pretending that this decision is great news for gay marriage don't actually give a shit about gay marriage. It is interesting that they like to pretend otherwise. If I were a little more of a Pollyanna (okay, a fuck of a lot more of one), I might suspect it meant they were capable of shame. Unfortunately for my faith in my fellow man, I know something about marketing, and how much may be gained by interests who can confer on consumers unjustified, inflated feelings of self-worth.

A NEW ONE. I recommend Rick Pearlstein's TNR essay on a topic very familiar to alicublog readers: the habit of conservatives, who run everything, to talk about themselves as if they were a small, beleaguered minority.

At NRO, Mark Bauerlein responds that conservatism and Republicanism are most certainly not the same thing -- a fair point in the abstract, though Bauerline would be more convincing if his own publication were not tirelessly sticking up for the Bush administration most of the time. (It's not like NRO's editors are trying to build a groundswell for Michael Peroutka.)

Bauerlein cites the usual institutions of liberal influence -- but adds one that I can't say as I've heard before:

There are other, smaller [liberal] realms to list (hip-hop, malls, etc). But Perlstein would probably claim that, for instance, malls are a free-market zone entirely in accord with conservative economic freedoms, not recognizing a difference between, on one hand, cultural values and effects, and, on the other, economic behaviors...

Malls are culturally liberal! How so? Bauerlein doesn't say. Maybe he's upset by the mannequins at Victoria's Secret. Or maybe it's those high-end stores, where floorwalkers practically insist that you try the latest fragrance for free -- talk about your creeping socialism! Or bookstores where they lead you read just any old thing...

Or maybe they're not to his taste, so naturally they can't be conservative. That's usually what they mean, even when they don't know it.

UPDATE. Kevin Drum thinks Bauerlein's mall problem reveals tension in the "conservative alliance" between capital cons, who want the free market to rule, and social-cons, who would prefer Jesus:

...After all, successful capitalism requires lots of educated workers, provides those workers with lots of money, and thrives on the notion that corporations should be allowed to produce anything they want to satisfy the needs of consumers.

In other words, give the customer what he wants. But guess what rich, educated customers turn out to want? Something different. And something different is precisely what social conservatives don't want.

I think Kevin rightly perceives the inherent conflict. But when he asks "how much longer" it can persist without turning into a coalition-busting schism, he sounds hopeful, and we can't have that.

Guys like Bauerline, Ross Douthat, Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con Brigade, etc., see the same sort of connections that Kevin sees (without drawing quite the same conclusions, of course). That makes for some lively discussions at the nerd table, no doubt.

But Joe Septuagint and his missus wouldn't know Crunchy Conservatism from Nestle's Crunch. Those God-bothered by boobs, curses, or any such like, will get an amen from their version of major media voices (e.g., the 700 Club, Michael Medved), but it won't be in the form of scholarly critiques of late capitalism -- it will be in the form of jeremiads against Hollyweird and homosexuals.

Not that they're so very propagandized -- human nature has a lot to do with it. Even if Joe and his missus aren't all that into Pat Robertson, or even Bill Bennett, whom do you suppose they picture when they think about the decline in culture or corruption of morals? Businesspeople -- that is, those good folks of their local Rotary, Kiwanis, and B.P.O.E.? Or of those odd creatures they only know from television: gays, actors, and Democrats?

So despite what they're saying at think tanks and niche websites, out there in America the accepted story is that bad liberals and their weirdo pals make smutty-smut and to defeat the smut you must defeat the liberals, through whom you can get at the otherwise insubstantial weirdos. And under this covering arrangement, the hard-working folks who commission sexy cologne ads or sweatpants with JUICY written across the ass need never face the wrath of outraged prudes. In fact, if one should cross their path, "I'm in men's fragrance" or "I'm in women's apparel" will not excite any suspicion -- admiration, perhaps; maybe even envy (hopefully not too much, though, lest one starts to obtain some taint of Otherness).

The only place I can recall where conservative Republicans have in recent years directly intervened on behalf of God against Mammon has been at the FCC. Big fines are a temporary hassle for big business, but the problem is usually resolved with the dismissal of the problematic talent, after which one can regroup and conduct business as usual.

I don't think those boys are worried that their names will replace Michael Moore's as a curse word, do you?

AND IF TEDDY ROOSEVELT WERE ALIVE TODAY, HE'D BEAT YOUR SORRY ASS. This National Review/Heritage Foundation examination of a book on William Jennings Bryan proceeds just as you might expect: the reviewer hates everything about Bryan except the faith-based ignorance the Great Commoner embraced at the Scopes Trial. The critic even suggests that, were Bryan to return from the grave, he "would be supporting intelligent design and non-sectarian prayer in schools; criticizing his party’s embrace of abortion on demand; and favoring the constitutional protection of traditional marriage."

In other words, Bryan would be a typical cracker asshole, all notions of economic justice subsumed by common bigotries. I can understand why conservatives like to believe the worst of people -- the circumstances of their recent electoral successes would make any sensible person into a misanthrope -- but they really go too far when they bring the dead into in.

The critic goes on to say that unkind moden assessments of Bryan's Scopes performance "overlook something important: Bryan’s opposition to Darwinism encompassed a deep concern about the corrupting influence of materialism and modernism on society and intellectual life." He maintains that Scopes Bryan, rather than Cross-of-Gold Bryan, is the model Democrats should be following.

I detect the makings of a pattern. Just a few posts back we saw the boys at The American Scene telling women to fight "the imperialism of economic life" by returning to unsalaried childcaring and housework. Rightwing thinktank types, who never have to repeat their absurdities into the astonished faces of real people, may be test-marketing amongst themselves the idea that by opposing conservatives, liberals are betraying their own true heritage -- i.e., fighting "materialism" and "imperialism" and such like.

We have already examined the Perublican schtick, whereby wingers crocodile-teared-up at the sad state of a Democratic party too weak to save Republicans from their own baser natures. Maybe the poindexterati now feel that, while this routine was fine right after the 2004 election, when everyone was talking about how vestigial the Democratic Party was with its measly 49% of the vote, there is enough evidence of outright popular disgust with the Republican Government that tales of Democratic impotence may no longer convince.

So the New Idea is that the Democrats stand against their own best traditions when they champion reproductive rights, separation of church and state, etc. Presumably, the target voter is meant to feel shocked and appalled, and revert to the Republicans, who cannot betray their principles, having for several decades had none at all.

Will it work? Considering what they're gotten away with in the past, it's certainly worth a try.

SHORTER JOSIAH BUNTING III. On this the anniversary of our Nation's independence, it behooves us to remember that you're all a bunch of pussies.

(I actually rather enjoyed this grumpy essay by the former superintendent of VMI, but am astonished that OpinionJournal put it up for the 4th of July. The gesture reminds me of the planetarium speaker in Rebel Without a Cause, raining visions of cosmic death on the surly delinquents of his audience with obvious satisfaction -- "Thank you all for your attention. Thank you very much." Perhaps the WSJ braintrust is feeling a bit outcast these days, and wants us to feel their displeasure. Soon they'll propose that we farm out the hard labor of patriotism to guest workers or offshore concerns. Anyway: Happy Fourth, you pill-headed, mewling careerists!)

UPDATE. The phenomenon is apparently trans-Anglospheric. Andrew Stuttaford is enraged that Britons were mean to America in a survey, and uses quotes to demonstrate that Britain is, except for some dead soldiers, no damn good.

This time I am reminded of the old Brecht quote about Government leaders, disappointed by popular disapproval of themselves, electing to appoint a new populace.

UPDATE II. In comments, Chuckling notes a possible literary jest in the selection of the article's title. That's the kind of close reading that will get you a job at Crooked Timber, Chuck, and incur the jealous rage of semiomaticians everywhere.

DEAD RABBIT SOCIETY. I see Bloomberg has taken the dishonored name of Bernie Kerik off a jail. I strongly disapprove. First, I don't much like memory-holing. Second, it's not like Kerik committed treason -- his malfeasance may vitiate his accomplishments, but it doesn't contradict them.

Mainly, though, I think that New York pays too little tribute to its great legacy of corruption. To comprehend New York, you cannot limit yourself to its Little Flowers; you must also admit its crooks, swindlers, and con men. If we bamboozle our children into believing that our labyrinthine laws and codes, and our culture of bribery and patronage, were created solely by good men doing right as they saw it, they will grow up with a dangerously limited sense of human capacity. Better they should be made to confront our crookedness than be led to believe this is the best we could do.

Were it in my power, I would name a few high schools after Boss Tweed and George Washington Plunkitt. Donald Manes would get a small park. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. has a Boulevard; can we not spare a small byway for his son, the Congressman from Bimini?

And if we can't get Kerik's name back on the Tombs, Alex "Clubber" Williams might make a fitting substitute.

The legacy of these men and many like them is all around us. It seems ingracious not to acknowledge it. After all, we gave Reagan an airport.

THE STATE OF AMERICAN CONSERVATISM TODAY. John Podhoretz predicts that the Right, currently divided and weakened, will "find renewed unity against the New York Times and the Supreme Court."

Yes, that shows the health of their movement -- brawling amongst themselves until somebody hollers, "Impeach Earl Warren!" and "Revoke Walter Duranty's Pulitzer!" Then ensues a bracing rally of fist-shaking and finger-wagging that attracts all America to their cause.

We know, and I think even Podhoretz knows, that all the conservatives have to do to guarantee Republican success in the next election is what they have done to win elections for years now: scream 9/11! and FAGS GIT MARRIED! Then all their incompetence and depradations will be whisked from the consciousness of the people, who will flock to and beseech the Daddy Party to literally and figuratively save their asses.

Some prominent conservatives hate to admit this seamy reality, and so invent vengeance-movie plots in which the liberals go too far and the American people recoil. (Like in 2004 with that fatty-fat Michael Moore: he made everyone so sick of the Democrats that his movie set attendance records -- I mean, that the electorate stingingly repudiated John Kerry, giving him a mere 49% of the vote.)

I'd be ashamed, too, but I hope I could better avoid the outright self-delusion to which they have succumbed. Why isn't victory enough for these guys? Were I in their shoes, I would just lay low and count the proceeds from my shell game.

If they keep squawking like this, people might actually get suspicious.

THERE'S NOWT WRONG WI' GALA LUNCHEONS! I'VE HAD MORE GALA LUNCHEONS THAN YOU'VE HAD HOT DINNERS! Someone named Linda Hirshman apparently wants more women to work rather than raise children. I'll probably never read her book, as there is a whole lot of Henry James I haven't gotten to yet, but I am amused by the responses she has engendered among the male advocates of women as babymakers.

First prize goes to Reihan Salam at The American Scene, who takes the position that work, even the highly-paid sort, is overrated, in sociomological terms:

When we talk about "flexible work arrangements," you have to wonder if we're forcing corporations to accommodate the demands of family life, or really of human life, or if we're in fact forcing families to accommodate the demands of the corporations, by privileging a very specific, culturally-bound definition of what a working life ought to be.

Promising start, but alas, Salam fails to follow through by advocating as well a four-day workweek, unlimited beer subsidies, and my God-given right to make my living doing this stupid blog and macking on the ladies pursuant to a sociomological paper of great importance on gender relations.

He might have got me on board then. As it is, he seems to think that the ladies should avail the ratrace-exit strategy of breeding and raising young'uns, leaving us menfolk on our own. A rum deal, if you ask me.

Salam takes the issue very personally, too:

My parents would have much preferred that I pursue an academic career, not because it would be particularly lucrative but because they value the life of the mind. Are my parents buffoons? Or traitors to some broader cause? They felt the same way, I should point out, about my sisters, both of whom are completing post-graduate degrees.

There is something hilarious, at least to working stiffs like me, about a New Republic editor using Professor Mom's and Professor Dad's fond hopes that their boy would one day inhabit an ivory tower -- a dream, alas, deferred -- as a stick to beat working women. He is joined in this maudlin tack by his co-lunatic, Ross Douthat:

So, for instance, when I think about my career, I think about it in terms of competition and self-definition - I want to be publicly defined as a success, and ideally as a greater success than others in my peer group - and also in terms of service to my future wife and children, whom I want to provide for to the best of my ability. I think about my duty to society from time to time, too, but it's not something that drives me the way my ego and my desire to support a family do.

That's nice. When I think about my career, I think about food, rent, clothing, etc, and the possibility that I may end up in a cardboard box if I do not propitiate my creditors. I guess liberals really do occupy another universe from conservatives.

P.S. Salam says that "The top earners in America are overwhelmingly Ozzie-and-Harriets, two-earner couples living in the suburbs." I was just a little boy then, but I don't remember Harriet having a job.

UPDATE. Salam also quotes David Gelertner, who suggests that liberals are hypocrites because they looked down their snooty noses at corporations in the days of Vance Packard and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (!), but now champion wymmyn in the workforce.

Gelertner's essay is called "Things the 60s Got Right," but he only mentions this one Thing, perhaps because his editors disallowed blowjobs-for-activism as portrayed in the film of The Strawberry Statement.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT AMERICA. As we head into the Fourth of July weekend, I guess it's a good time for us traitors to think about what might constitute a good American holiday.

LOCATION. Any public place where barbecue is on offer. Up hereabouts it's infernally hard to get good barbecue, so I'm not as interested in the quality of the meat as I am in the quality of the scene. Are the people happy? Does the searing smell of Meat-is-murder increase their happiness? Is the band playing, are hearts light, are men laughing, do children shout?

The residents of the Drug House down the block (magnet for loudly talkative men in oversize basketball jerseys, broken front door, throbbing car stereo) sometimes roll out a Weber and grill chicken parts and dogs on the sidewalk, but I doubt I will be invited. I have other offers cooking, so to speak. But if they fall through, I will be content to see the folks gathered at the north end of McCarren Park, coolers stocked and opened, family-size-paks opened on blankets, grillin' like a villain and enjoying the sunshine and the blessings of liberty.

MOVIES. The 'plexes will be busy. I may choose to enjoy Young Mr. Lincoln alone so that no one can see me cry. It's just about my favorite movie, certainly the best on American themes. It is set in the interval between Lincoln's early political failure and his apotheosis, when the young man was trying to make his way as a country lawyer and thinking about life, and it is riddled with historical foreshadowing of the baldest sort. The plot has Lincoln working on a murder case involving two brothers (whose Maw, a witness, won't finger one or t'other; "it'd be like choosing between 'em"). At one point Lincoln rides along on a mule and plays a new tune on his Jew's-harp that his companion says "kinda makes you feel like marchin'"; the tune is "Dixie." He meets Stephen Douglas ("Mr. Lincoln, I trust I shall never make the mistake of underestimating you again") and Mary Todd ("You said you wanted to dance with me in the worst possible way, and that is exactly what you have done"). And at the end he walks to "the top of that hill" where a storm is beginning to rage.

This is the romantic, Sandburgian Lincoln who regards his fellow countrymen with love but also with a very large grain of salt. He suspiciously bites a coin offered for his services, and foils a lynching by offering violence ("I can lick any man here!") and then eloquence ("Don't want t' put that log down, boys? Ain't it gettin' kinda heavy?"). He stands among but not of them, deliberating loftily but folksily over a country fair bakeoff as he would in the time of Civil War. It is easy to forget that this was not always the settled view of the Railsplitter; The American Mercury had earlier published a very good essay defending Douglas' view of federalism against Lincoln's (I have lost my copy but I believe it was written by Stephen Vincent Benet, who also wrote the 1930 Griffith sound film of Lincoln's life). We know Ford was interested in legends, though (see truth, legend, Liberty Valance); we know, from The Informer (and maybe from The Whole Town's Talking and Judge Priest), what Ford thought about justice; and we know it was 1939. If there was ever a confluence that might encourage a filmmaker to say what he thought America was, that was it.

Or I may watch JFK. It's utterly ridiculous. ("Daddy, are they going to kill us like they killed President Kennedy?") But who but a patriot could have made it?

MUSIC. I wish I had the Bear Records compilation of Uncle Dave Macon. As it is I'll have to make do with some tapes. We played an Uncle Dave tune in an old band of mine: "Go 'long Mule, don't you roll them eyes/y'kin change a fool, but a doggone mule is a mule until he dies." He was the shit. This is from Shelton and Goldblatt's The Country Music Story, a horribly compromised official telling but no less interesting for it:

David Macon was born in Cannon County, Tennessee, in the township of Smart Station on October 7, 1870. He was of a large family of prosperous farmers who moved, when he was still young, to open a hotel on Broad Street in Nashville. It was here that Uncle Dave was bitten by the virus of show business... According to [Judge] Hay, it was not until Macon was forty-eight years old (which would be in 1918) that he left his farm and decided to become a professional musician...

Cousin Minnie Pearl recalled the "Opry" tent shows with Uncle Dave during World War II. "Uncle Dave used to carry a black satchel with him on those tours. In it was a pillow, a nightcap, a bottle of Jack Daniels [Tennessee Sour Mash bourbon] and a checkered bib. He was quite a ladies' man, which proved to me that some men never believe themselves to be irresistible, no matter how old they are..."

And how. Get a load of Uncle Dave. But he had something for the folks and maybe the ladies too: Old Judge Hay said that when Uncle Dave came onstage, "we moved the microphone back so he had plenty of room to kick." He certainly sounds like he was kicking. In the stuff I've got, he croons/gargles the verses, but when the choruses come in (usually accompanied by what sounds like an old Confederate regiment), he roars and wails like there was no such thing as electricity.

You may wonder what a city boy like me loves about country music. It's simple... oh, were you waiting for an answer? Because that was it. Of course, being a stuck-up type, I prefer old men hollering into gramophone horns to the new breed, but improvements in technology and costuming don't necessarily mean that nobody feels what Uncle Dave felt anymore. When Anna Nalick sings "Breathe," for example, I think she has it: under that awful Mariah Carey melisma I hear that old Patsy Cline plaint. It's a pissy modern recording, but I don't care: she's there. At this moment there are hundreds of singers, most of them playing in the most bought-off formats you can imagine, in a bar or a wedding band, opening up and letting something out. If that ain't country, Tejano, blues, rock 'n' roll, dancehall, emo, etc., etc., etc., I'll kiss your ass.

I might also find time for Neil Young's Hawks and Doves, which just sounds better and better every year: "Got people here down on their knees and prayin'/Hawks and doves are circlin' in the rain/Got rock 'n' roll, got country music playin'/If you hate us, you just don't know what you're sayin'/Ready to go, willin' to stay and pay/ (big, fat minor chord) Yew-ess-AAAAY! Yew-ess-AAAAY!..."

READING. "The delusion into which the X. Y. Z. plot shewed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro' the U. S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man..." -- T.J.

On our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, dudes: rock over London, rock on Chicago. Thy banners make tyranny tremble when borne by the red, hot, and blue.

UPDATE. Tad Gallagher has a lovely and deeper reading than mine of Young Mr. Lincoln. His is also a more manichean reading of Lincoln's morality. But if Abe is "not above a bit of dissimulation, cheating or force to get things done," as Gallagher says, I can't see that his visual connections to the infinite (mainly via the river) are as binding as Gallagher makes them. Ford's Lincoln is certainly attuned to the elements (like the new moon that reveals Jack Cass' lie), but that doesn't make him Nature Boy: it just makes him a more complete human being than his adversaries, who are mainly about social connections. Ford, like countless authors before him, created a balanced hero who could upend his unbalanced adversaries. He was not about destiny (though he was equipped, at the end, to face it) but about common sense.

TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME, SCARY WEB LADY! "Democrats do tend to be less patriotic than Republicans. There, I've said it out loud," writes veteran right-wing harpy Mona Charen. Her conclusion is based on an American Enterprise Institute aggregation of polls which asked, "If you had the opportunity to leave the United States and live permanently in another country, would you take it?" and got more yesses from Dems than from Reps.

Charen probably missed the second part of the report, in which several American corporations were asked, "If you had the opportunity to take your plants out of the United States and put them permanently in another country, would you take it?" The answers might surprise her!

But I understand the relocation-friendly Democrats' responses. For one thing, Democrats tend to be aware that countries such as France offer their residents months of vacation time, great food and wine, and a functional civic life. As long as we're being hypothetical, what sensible person would not be tempted into exile by that? If it's good enough for Tom Paine, it's good enough for us. (Now if only we could get such a paternalistic government to adopt us! Yet these Londonistaners have surprisingly rigorous standards. Maybe if I walked around Heathrow screaming for jihad, Ken Livingstone would eventually invite me round for a pint.)

Republicans, on the other hand, by and large believe that everywhere outside America is a vast Islamofascist darkness where beer is served warm, and people go to plays that do not contain music by The Beach Boys and The Four Seasons. Also, they probably wouldn't dare say out loud that they'd ever move out of the good old U.S. of A. Who knows who that pollster really works for? Mawmaw din't raise no fool!

Fear and stupidity are often confused with patriotism. I assert that there is a difference. But why should you believe me? I have watched many a subtitled film, and drunk many a Dago Red. I am obviously soft on self-emigration, and one to watch.

WHO NEEDS CENSORS? WE'LL DO IT OURSELVES! The latest rightwing fashion trend is slurring liberals by saying they're just like conservatives -- dead conservatives, that is, whose other uses are past. As seen here previously, Miles Gloriosus compared "netroots" liberals to the John Birch Society, and today the Wall Street Journal compares Bill Keller to Colonel McCormack of the Chicago Tribune. How I look forward to a long National Review essay on the new Joe McCarthy, John Conyers.

The editorial, which targets the New York Times for treasonous reporting, is revealing in other ways:

According to Tony Fratto, Treasury's Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, he first contacted the Times some two months ago. He had heard Times reporters were asking questions about the highly classified program involving Swift, an international banking consortium that has cooperated with the U.S. to follow the money making its way to the likes of al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Mr. Fratto went on to ask the Times not to publish such a story on grounds that it would damage this useful terror-tracking method.

Sometime later, Secretary John Snow invited Times Executive Editor Bill Keller to his Treasury office to deliver the same message. Later still, Mr. Fratto says, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the leaders of the 9/11 Commission, made the same request of Mr. Keller. Democratic Congressman John Murtha and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte also urged the newspaper not to publish the story.

The Times decided to publish anyway, letting Mr. Fratto know about its decision a week ago Wednesday. The Times agreed to delay publishing by a day to give Mr. Fratto a chance to bring the appropriate Treasury official home from overseas...

Seems like the Administration had a pretty good heads-up on the story. So if its publication was going to be so very dangerous to national interests, why didn't the Feds get a judge to issue a restaining order against the Times? It's not unprecedented.

Failing that, they could have firebombed the printing presses. This is war, people!

The editorial defends the Journal's own reporting of the story, not on the but-Mom-they-did-it-first basis already floated by other wingers, but on the grounds that WSJ's version of the story was fed to them by Bush's people as a way of getting, if not ahead, at least abreast of the Times' coverage. John Peter Zenger may not be proud, but Lee Atwater certainly must be.

Perhaps, contra Dr. Johnson, patriotism is actually the last refuge of a hack.

JOSH, YOU WERE SAYING ABOUT THE NEW BIRCHERS? "In fact, we may have just witnessed the SCOTUS overreach that loses us the war... after Kelo and Raich and McCain-Feingold, I’m not even sure the Constitution much matters anymore... I don’t wish to sound too conspiratorial here, but it seems to me that a case can be made that under Lederman’s reading of this decision, we’ve now effectively empowered an alliance between the intelligence community and the press to determine our national security posture by setting up the conditions where leaks will be even more effective and more coveted by partisans who disagree with a given administration." -- Jeff Goldstein on the Hamdan decision, or the boogey-man -- hard to tell which.

Of course I'm not being fair. Just because Goldstein is constantly praised to skies by the Perfesser and many other significant figures in the right-blogosphere doesn't mean he's a mainstream conservative. There are other explanations. But they're very unflattering to a large number of people.

SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY. The doctor says I'm not crazy after all -- (proudly) I'm a contrarian!

UPDATE. I can't leave mad enough alone. This rat's nest is full of choice pellets, but this one just has to be noted:

Voters know it's hard to do a risky thing like define marriage as a legal entity that can take place only between an adult human male and an adult human female. That actually would take some guts.

When I read that, I almost ran out into the street screaming "WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS PEGGY NOONAN?" so powerful was my need for an explanation. I got over it by imagining her thought processes at this stage of the composition: Wait, what if someone brings up FMA? Why is that better than the flag-burning amendment? Well, because it's... it's... glug, glug, glug, glug. Because it's hard! It's not just between a man and a woman -- it's an adult man and an adult woman. And they have to be human!

Best Moment of Ngnyyyaah: "Bush the Younger would breastfeed the military if he could."

DAMNED IF THEY "I DO"... World Magazine:

One would think that homosexual or lesbian "marriage" would stop at just that: the union of a same-sex duo. Now, however, some gay Muslims are seeking lesbian wives in order to satisfy family pressure without "coming out of the closet." But is this 'heterosexual' union, devoid of any commitment beyond "friendship" and intramarital celibacy, really marriage?

Wait a minute. So homosexuals can't even marry members of the opposite sex? Maybe the author is convinced that gay citizens are rolling in "special rights," and should give up rights of the more mundane sort in compensation.

But what am I saying? It's liberals who are the real homo-haters. Zip, flop, slap!

UPDATE. Per Josh Trevino, liberals are becoming John Birchers, too. (Hilariously, JT's very first commenter, a RedState legacy pledge, argues that there were so Commies overrunning the State Department, and the New Deal was alien statism.) This argument assumes that Bill Buckley came out of the wilderness and cleaned all the Welchade off the movement, and American conservatives thereafter proceeded in powdered wigs and tricorners to let freedom ring. An alternative description of their methods is summarized here

LIBERALS QUOTING JEFFERSON! WHO'DA THUNK IT? Tim Graham:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there anything more oddly self-negating than generally statist liberals arguing for the New York Times by citing Jefferson saying he'd rather have newspapers without government than a government without newspapers? As if they'd ever pick newspapers and libertarian utopia?

First reaction: Huh?

Second reaction: Fancy Tim Graham, who wants the FCC to regulate according to Jesus, calling anyone else "statist."

Third reaction: Oh, I'll just stop being such an old fuddy-duddy, and play too! Isn't it oddly self-negating that people who are very stupid, such as Graham, should criticize anyone whose IQ runs to positive integers?

UPDATE. Changed the link to Graham's nonsense. Original was a secondhand source and not work-safe, which is a first for this site.

SHORTER BRIAN CARNEY: Compared to the gulags, slavery really wasn't so bad.

HE HAS SLIPPED THE SURLY BONDS OF REASON. More and more, the blogosphere strikes me as a high-tech care facility for nuts and retards. In today's Grand Rounds I consider the case of James Pinkerton, who turns from playing Culture War to playing Spaceman. He posits a "space-ark" to save some human specimens (presumably including James Pinkerton and a ratio of ten females to each male) from the inevitable destruction of the earth.

Space exploration is of course Nerdvana for rightwing poindexters, perhaps because they are aware that the environmental policies they are successfully promoting are dangerous to planetary life (of course this assumes that they are evil instead of stupid, which is in no way a settled issue). Pinkerton manages in this article to cite "global warming" as a credible threat to the planet -- though one month ago, when Al Gore was making that same point, Pinkerton was laughing it off. That's how serious he is about getting a seat on that rocket ship -- he's even willing to alter his usual line of bullshit for a ticket.

Bonus fun -- Pinkerton blames our abandonment of the space race on dirty hippies:

It's no coincidence that back in the 60s, as support for the space program was falling, the desire to get high was, well, rising. That is, as technological forms of tripping faded away, trips of the pharmaceutical kind took off. And in the wake of psychedelic drugs came the efflorescence of New Age religion and, yes, one must also say, the explosion of the Internet. To put it another way, stargazing gave way to acid-dropping, and then to navel-gazing, and then to web-surfing. What a long strange trip it's been, indeed.

To recover America from its drug/God/web addiction, Pinkerton volunteers to be shot into space. I say any excuse is a good excuse. He can leave tomorrow, and take his nutty buddies (including the Transhumanist robot laywer) with him.

AND IF THE FACTS AREN'T ON YOUR SIDE, POUND THE TABLE. Bill Keller is a bit of a blowhard, but even he deserves better than this:

A deeper error is Keller's characterization of freedom of the press as an institutional privilege, an error that is a manifestation of the hubris that has marked the NYT of late. Keller writes: "It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. . . . The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly."

The founders gave freedom of the press to the people, they didn't give freedom to the press. Keller positions himself as some sort of Constitutional High Priest, when in fact the "freedom of the press" the Framers described was also called "freedom in the use of the press." It's the freedom to publish, a freedom that belongs to everyone in equal portions, not a special privilege for the media industry. (A bit more on this topic can be found here.)

Not being an academic myself (except in some dark, steamy minds), I may just be missing whatever point the Perfesser's trying to make. Is he trying to say that reporters are not in fact "people"? Or maybe he thinks newsmen have fewer, or less inclusive, First Amendment rights than reg'lar folks.

Because, otherwise, it doesn't matter if Bill Keller and all the Times staff walk around in ermine capes and call each other Majesty. They and we either have the right or they/we don't. There are no shitty-attitude exemptions in the Bill of Rights.

This guy is a law professor. Think about that.

Bonus Laff: Austin Bay:

Some of us –- the majority of Keller’s critics -– are American soldiers and citizens who recognize dangerous, arrogant stupidity when we read it printed on his front page.

I'm no majoritarian, but that sounds like such an impossibly small group, I don't see why we should bother about them.

UPDATE. Perhaps attempting to make himself look smart by comparison, the Perfesser reproduces some comments on the subject that are even stupider than his own. Top prize goes to Andrew McCarthy: "The Times prattles on about what it claims is a dearth of checks and balances, but what are the checks and balances on Bill Keller?" Thank God the Founders in their wisdom foresaw the terrible danger represented by Bill Keller, leading, more or less directly, to the National Security Act of 1947.

For more fun, read McCarthy's whole second-person bilge noir -- "No, you have only one defense: Intelligence. Superpower power is useless..." -- then, the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist! McCarthy adds that "national-security secrets" are "the public treasure that keeps us alive." It is not surprising to learn that these people literally worship ignorance.

UPDATE II. More traitors call on the Bush Administration reveal its secrets!

MORE MEXICAN HIJINX WITH A TUPPENNY ASCHENBACH. At night on the byways of the resort where I serve as camera monkey, I see gaggles of drunk children. Well, they may be over 18. They may even be over 21. But they exude a mist of callowness and AXE Body Wash. They're well-behaved, not stumbling or vomiting. I puzzled over this and finally decided: any young people here will be from well-off families. It flashed me back to high school, when I had rich friends who would serve weed and booze in the east wing while the parents were dozing in the west. Flaming Youth -- same habits, worse clothes and music. (Or maybe these "teenagers" are all 30 years old -- like in the original Halloween! -- and I need new contact lenses.)

The Ugly Americans are less ugly than I expected. I had anticipated that the people who would come to such a place would look like old Ralph Steadman caricatures of vacationers at Disneyland -- fat, sullen, and stupefied. But the face of bourgeois privilege has undergone a makeover. Even folks from the fruited plain are going to health clubs now, and many of our new sybarites are toned, or at least can walk more a half-mile without getting winded. In fact, I notice that my own attitude has changed since childhood: once I thought fat, shambling Americans were a disgrace to our country and its Council on Physical Fitness; now I admire them for bucking a tide.

I got briefly to Playa de Carmen and witnessed its reduction of the Mexican national character to drunken frogs and their ancient Mayan sidekicks renting scuba equipment to white people. Hawkers, ugly t-shirts, McDonald's, Ben y Jerry's, and mercenary local characters/photo models: it reminded me St. Mark's Place with better set decoration.

More antes, I mean despues. Caramba.