Music of the Day: Theo Bishop, Off the Cuff

Some people are spooked in Arizona and Florida because of strange lights in the sky. Folks in both Phoenix and St. Augustine reported seeing lights in the sky that appeared to be in “formation” and this is not the first time in either city, apparently. I didn’t have time to look at the videos posted but because they were shot at night, I imagine they lacked the kind of clarity one sees in military night vision videos. But the possibilities are limitless—some new kind of classified stealth aircraft that has its lights on (not likely), gas balloons let loose from a nearby wedding party (one explanation for the Florida sightings) and the most likely of all, the return of the extra-terrestrial Dennis Kucinich to the Democratic race for president, although the voting in both states is now over.

Speaking of aliens, Ben Stein’s new movie has hit theatres in the more civilized areas of our great nation, which means our little mountain town will get it sometime in July, so I haven’t seen the film. But the film is causing folks to again discuss, in perhaps a different way, the ideas behind the theory of evolution and what is known as “intelligent design,” which sounds nicer and more thoughtful, but less divine, than “creationism.” The discussion includes reference to Francis Crick’s declaration that DNA evidence didn’t really support many aspects of evolutionary theory, so the only other explanation was, you guessed it, aliens. Yep. They brought stuff here to make us grow. That was nice. I’m glad they did that, the aliens, not God. Is this a really wacky idea, or am I seeing this the wrong way?

If they do return, and present themselves to us in some more intelligent and intelligible way other than formations of blurry lights in the night sky, I wish they’d take some of their offspring back with them to whatever distant place they’re from—here’s a partial list of folks I wouldn’t mind seeing whisked off to someplace about 9 billion light years from here: Jimmy Carter (you knew that was coming); Jane Fonda; James Carville; both Clintons (Chelsea can stay—she seems nice); Noam Chomsky; Alex Trebek (Jeopardy needs a new host—Trebek acts as if he knows all the answers, which he does because he’s got the answers right in front of him on those cards!); Shirley MacLaine (it’s time for her to go home now); and. . .oh hell, you know, the usual cast of loony-left characters.

No unexplained blurry lights in our night sky; no aliens up here in the mountains, just a whole bunch of stars and some brisk temperatures. That will do. . . .

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

Music of the Day: Ultrablue, Indiscretions

Earlier this week I saw a column by Dennis Prager that really resonated with me, so I wanted to share some of what he wrote with you and I wanted to comment upon his piece with some personal observations of my own.

The title of the Prager piece is “How Liberals Lost a Liberal” and you can find it on the April 15 issue of Townhall.com; by the way, Townhall.com is one of my favorite links, but I have to warn you that sometimes in the past the site has driven me to distraction with its many ads and the slowness of its availability.

Okay, back to Dennis Prager. One of his fundamental problems with modern-day liberalism, he writes, was its transformation from what might be called “classical” liberalism to what he calls “leftism.” He writes, “In a word, liberalism became leftism. Or to put it another way—since my [Prager’s] frame of reference is moral values—liberalism’s moral compass broke.”

He goes on to write the following: “The issue that began the emotionally difficult task of getting this liberal [Prager] to identify with conservatives and become an active Republican was Communism. I had always identified the Democratic Party and liberalism with anti-Communism. Indeed, the labor movement and the Democratic party actually led American opposition to Communism. . . Then Vietnam occurred, and Democrats and liberals (in academia, labor and the media) abandoned the war and abandoned millions of Asians to totalitarianism and death, defamed America’s military, became anti-war instead of anti-evil, became anti-anti-Communist instead of anti-Communist, and embraced isolationism, a doctrine I and other previously had always associated with conservatives and the Republican party.”

This sounds very familiar to me; as I have noted on this space more than once previously, my own parents were FDR-Democrats, New Deal Democrats, and my father, in particular, was a union organizer and a staunch anti-Communist who thought the war in Vietnam was not only right but that it ought to be prosecuted so violently as to ensure victory and to lessen American casualties—he was, in the parlance of the day, a “bomb ‘em back to the Stone Age hawk.” If my Dad were still around today, he likely would not recognize the current crop of Democrats nor would he be welcome in their party chiefly because he believed that the United States of America was the absolute best place on planet earth, despite the country’s faults, despite the government’s faults, despite the faults of its people. This is the political environment which I grew up in and I remember quite vividly feeling very ill at ease one evening shortly after I came back from Vietnam. Some of us, recently returned Vietnam vets who were still in the military, became enamored with the rhetoric and shenanigans of Vietnam war protestors and one evening I found myself sitting around in someone’s living room, listening to a bunch of card-carrying members of the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) talk about what had to be done. These guys sought to enlist us as members of the group and, further, they sought to enlist us in engaging in anti-military acts such as blowing up aircraft and facilities on the airbase where we were stationed.

Afterwards I remember thinking to myself how nuts that sounded, how it would do absolutely no good, and how bizarre it was for American veterans to suggest that attacking military facilities in this country could somehow bring the war in Vietnam to a close or how that would be beneficial to the South Vietnamese. That was my first, and last, encounter with the Vietnam Veterans of America (although I still have the pin I received that evening). Even though it took me a few more years to sever my affiliation with the Democratic party, I think this was the beginning of the end. In Prager’s words, the men I met that evening had rejected liberalism and instead embraced a radical leftism that I could not understand.

Not long after being discharged from the military, I returned to college and started reading again, but in a serious way, and in particular I started reading the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, specifically The Gulag Archipelago (which, of course, led me to his other writings). Solzhenitsyn directly identified and attacked the evil in Soviet society and by reading about the effects of institutionalized evil on individual human beings, I began to see how degrading and morally bankrupt Communist societies were (and are) regardless of time or place. As Prager writes, “Identifying and confronting evil remains the Achilles’ heel of liberals, progressives, and the rest of the left. . . Nothing quite compares with liberal and progressive abandonment of the war against evil, the most important venture the human race must engage in every generation. I can understand why a leftist would vote for the party not one of whose contenders for the presidency uttered the words ‘Islamic terror’ in a single presidential debate. But I still cannot understand why a true liberal would.”

I left the left a long time ago when the left had left the values I had learned at home; I cannot imagine going back to the Democratic party, which now seems bent on ignoring the current greatest threat to America’s peace and security and future.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

Music of the Day: Kim Waters, Got To Give It Up

Finally, we had a nice spring-like day in our neck of the woods; the temperature was up a bit, the wind wasn't howling, and the sky was clear and blue and, on the way back to the ranch, the air was a little crisp. MLB and I drove over the mountain to one of our favorite little towns and we stomped around for a bit, visitIng various art galleries and shops. But first, lunch in a funky little place on the main drag; for me, a couple of cold beers and the chance to sit across the table from a beautiful woman. We haven't been out much lately, for obvious reasons, so today was pretty special. Walking after lunch, and spending money in a couple of galleries, we had worked up a little more appetite, so we hit a little bakery that advertised cheesecake. Hey, why not?

Inside, we found the house specialty was, and as Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up, cheesecake on a stick. Yep. Frozen cheesecake covered in chocolate and frozen. It was a real tooth-buster, at first, but then it was just really good. Disgusting, but good. And, as everyone knows, everything tastes better on a stick. On the way home we opened the sunroof and listened to jazz and reveled in the sun and cool air and the complete absence of traffic ahead of us. A perfect spring day.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

Music of the Day: Gil Parris, Ibiza

News reports out of the Middle East indicate that the "peace" and "mediation" and "communication" tasks undertaken by the former Peanut-Farmer-In-Chief, Mr. Jimmy Carter, have yielded the usual results for Carter-tasks. Mr. Carter's pals in Hamas have, over the last two days, fired more than 40 rockets into Israel, thereby signaling, I guess, their desire to "communicate," although how this relates to "peace" remains a mystery to me. But, again, it does show Mr. Carter's "skill" at mediation and peace-making. It seems clear to everyone else on the planet, save Mr. Carter, that the boys and girls in Hamas have zero interest in peace with Israel and cannot tolerate even the thought of coexisting with Jews on our tiny little green ball hurtling around in space.

This makes me wonder why Mr. Carter is unable to grasp this simple notion. Is he that divorced from reality? Possibly, but one would hope that is not the case in a former President of the United States. I guess the other possiblity is that Mr. Carter, much like Mr. Clinton, is constantly in the business of legacy-building, although both men could have done much to build their respective legacies during the twelve years they collectively served as President, opportunities squandered and lost forever, especially for Mr. Carter. Perhaps there's something else at work here, too: 'Hey, look at me, I'm trying to achieve "peace," while the war-mongering current president does nothing but invade countries and topple their governments. See how much more humane I am?'

I don't know if that's it or not and, really, it doesn't matter, because Mr. Carter is talking "peace" with people who seem not to be at all interested in the concept and, in fact, may not UNDERSTAND the concept. And, as in 1980, Mr. Carter remains entirely irrelevant to the "peace" process and, more importantly and dangerously, he remains entirely irrelevant to the "victory" process. As I've noted here before, I wish the man would just go back to farming and working for Habitat for Humanity; clearly, that's not going to happen, so we're just going to have to tolerate, and ignore as best we can, these occasional re-surfacings of the former Peanut-Farmer-In-Chief, Mr. Jimmy Carter.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

Music of the Day: Poncho Sanchez, Not Necessarily

First, thanks to Blgostream for being easy to use--setting up my account and actually getting something written and out into the world (or, more accurately I suppose, the ether) was pretty simple and straightforward. Not so other sites for bloggers.

Last night I actually established another blog elsewhere, but now that I have my new blog name on this conservative site, I have discovered that I cannot actually publish anything on the site. This means one of two things: (1) the site doesn't work worth a damn, or (2) it will take me a while to figure out how to make the site do what it says it will do. Blogstream, on the other hand, is very useful and easy to use.

Second, I see that Mr. Jimmy Carter has been "snubbed" by the Israelis. Good. The Israelis are clear on one very important point--Mr. Jimmy Carter does not have the best interests of Israel in mind when he talks about brokering "peace" in the Middle East. The other thing I appreciate about Israel is that they are willing to ignore Mr. Carter. I hope they continue to ignore him.

And that's all for today, other than a brief health report. MLB feels better with each passing day, my cousin is recovering from her knee surgery, and my son is awaiting his knee surgery. Everyone else seems to be okay. There is much to be said for being okay.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.