What would Reagan say about the dilemmas facing us today? Actually, we kinda know what Reagan would say, because he kinda said it already.
I was listening for the first time to a well-known speech Reagan gave back in Goldwater times (to a particularly bookish group, or was this before contact lenses became popular? Note how many people in the audience are wearing glasses as compared to today. And of course, they’re all white! Racist Tea Partiers!!!)
The following quotes from Reagan’s speech have only become more relevant with the passage of over fifty years:
“The more the plans fail the more the planners plan.”
“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
And note also, starting around 13:35, his remarks on opposition claims about Social Security—very familiar to those who’ve followed the shifting “It’s a tax! No, it’s a fine!” argument about the individual HCR mandate.
Thomas Lifson at American Thinkerreflects on Juan Williams and the ideological journey he might be beginning as a result of his NPR firing.
A great deal of this is familiar to me; political change, especially from left to right, is one of the themes of this blog, and the reason I started writing it in the first place. As a changer himself (boy, there are a lot of us), Lifson has some cogent thoughts to add. He also coins a phrase I hadn’t heard before, but which I think is especially apt: the liberal trance.
Juan Williams has been delivered the sort of shock which can cause him to reevaluate the lifelong assumptions of a comfortable liberal. Last night, guest-hosting “The O’Reilly Factor,” he admitted that his assumption that the left was the home of open-mindedness had been wrong.
Having made the journey from liberalism to full-throated conservatism myself, I recognize the importance of this particular revelation. It is the key to opening a mind to rethinking other assumptions about politics. It breaks the trance, so to speak, which keeps many otherwise thoughtful, intelligent, caring people enmeshed in the delusions of modern American liberalism. To these liberals, membership in the cadre of caring, enlightened, public-spirited Americans defines what it means to be a good and responsible member of the civic community.
The overwhelming focus on caricaturing and demonizing conservatives as racist ignoramuses is based on a pragmatic understanding of the importance of maintaining this trance. Because liberal ideas manifestly fail when implemented, the liberal trance is the only way to maintain the allegiance of intelligent liberals to the cause. This is why academia, media, and other liberal hotbeds are so intolerant of conservatives. They fear that real and prolonged exposure to the vibrancy and humanity of modern American conservatism will bleed away the most thoughtful liberals from the cause.
Fascinating stuff. But I disagree with Lifson on that last point; I don’t think they fear it at all. They can barely even conceive of it, and their contempt for those apostates who manage to stop dancing in the liberal circle is very real and not feigned. They don’t consider them the most thoughtful ones; they consider them the most evil ones.
Also, I had a very different experience than Williams in terms of this type of disillusionment. I had gone through most of my transition over a period of about two years, in privacy—through reading and thinking and not discussing it with much of anyone. It was only later that I thought to voice any of my ideas to friends, and the angry and intolerant reaction of many profoundly shocked me. But that wasn’t the beginning for me; it was near the end of the transition—the poisoned icing on the cake, as it were.
But did you know it is estimated that in this country twenty million pounds of the classic treat (invented in the 1880s) are sold every year? I personally might be responsible for approximately a ton of that if I gave in to my worst impulses. However, I try to keep my addiction in tightly-controlled check.
It is part of my penance to confess here that I really like the stuff and always have. Once I even went to a Halloween party dressed as a piece of candy corn, and I was already a grownup.
Apparently I am not the only adult who has done so. And no, I didn’t look like this—more’s the pity (although to be technical, isn’t she dressed as two pieces of candy corn, the body and the hat?):
I am not alone in my shameful liking for the tricolored tooth-destroyer. I heard on Fox News (can’t give a link here because I was unable to find the information online) that candy corn is the Halloween treat most often stolen by parents from their kids’ Halloween stash. The craving is a guilty, shameful secret for most, but I am glad this affliction is finally seeing the light of day.
Even some fanatically health-consciously vegans seem to crave candy corn although alas, the treat is off-limits to them because of its animal-related ingredients. Animal ingredients? If you doubt my words, just take a look:
Gelatin and honey must be the big no-nos. But happily, a thoughtful vegan (are there any other kind?) mother has come to the rescue with a recipe for candy corn so complex and labor-intensive that it undoubtedly reflects a devotion to the stuff even more intense than mine. Try it if you dare—and if you are insane.
There are various gourmet variations on candy corn, and I’ve sampled quite a few in my day. To my mind they can’t compare to good old Brach’s. But after watching the following highly informative video, I may just try some Goelitz:
And here’s a burning question I was reminded of on watching the video: do you eat your candy corn in sections? And, if so, do you consider the top to be the yellow part or the white part? I’ve always seen the little white triangle as the “foot” of the candy corn, but I learned when I designed my costume years ago that most people see it the other way. For those who might be inclined to disagree with me and join my critics, I offer the following exhibit from the realm of science:
Happy eating. And oh—I’m done with candy corn this year. I think.
LOPEZ: You wrote, “When I began my post-campaign research for this book, my inclination was to downplay or dismiss evidence of explicit socialism in Obama’s background. I thought the socialism issue was an unprovable and unnecessary distraction from the broader question of Obama’s ultra-liberal inclinations. I was wrong. Evidence that suggests Obama is a socialist, I am now convinced, is real, important, and profoundly relevant to the present.” Explain.
KURTZ: It takes a whole book to explicate that statement. But to be brief, when I first found programs from the Socialist Scholars Conferences Obama attended in New York in the 1980s, I saw a number of people who were later part of his political circle. I was particularly struck by the name James Cone, who was Jeremiah Wright’s theological mentor and the founder of black liberation theology. There were other talks on black liberation theology at those conferences as well. That meant Obama would very likely have known about Wright’s theology even before he met Wright, and would have recognized its socialist content. Following this trail, I discovered that many of Obama’s organizing mentors and colleagues in Chicago were prominent socialists, with ties to the group that had sponsored those early socialist conferences. The policy preferences, tactics, and strategies of these socialist organizers are recognizable in the administration’s conduct today. In fact, the Obama administration continues to coordinate its grassroots support through many of the same socialist organizers he worked with in previous years.
One of the points that comes out quite strongly in the article is that Obama, in concealing his socialist past and present, has purposely deceived the American people.
Is Kurtz correct? I haven’t read the book. But from the evidence I have pieced together myself, I believe it is very likely to be true—and I’ve never been much of a conspiracist.
If Democrats lose control of the House of Representatives next week, as most political observers expect, there is a good chance that the House Speaker will opt to spend time with her eight grandchildren rather than toil in the relative obscurity of the minority.
A consummation devoutly to be wished, a side effect of Republican victory that would be especially sweet. I, for one, would welcome not having Nancy Pelosi to kick around anymore.
Many others are also speculated to be contemplating retirement if Democrats become the minority (see the article for the whole list). Louise Slaughter, she of the infamous Slaughter solution, is one.
In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who “sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.’ “…
This from a president who won’t even use “enemies” to describe an Iranian regime that is helping kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This from a man who rose to prominence thunderously declaring that we were not blue states or red states, not black America or white America or Latino America – but the United States of America.
This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends – not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.
Oops! A letter to Obama from Harvard Law professor Larry Tribe, written while the president was mulling over Justice Souter’s replacement, has surfaced. In it, he urged the president to nominate Kagan, and wrote the following about Sotomayor:
Bluntly put, she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is…
Bluntly put, it occurs to me that much the same could be said of Obama.
But I’m not sure that anyone could be as smart as Obama seems to think he is.
President Obama decided to appear on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, the better to fire up his youthful but enervated base. Almost immediately, Obama displayed a well-known characteristic of his—or rather, two—complaining and historical ignorance:
“We’ve gone through the two toughest years of any time since The Great Depression.”
Oh yeah, the combined recession/inflation of the Carter 70s and the Iran hostage crisis was a piece of cake. And I recall the Vietnam War and the late 60s—with demonstrations, assassinations, and the inner cities burning—as a veritable breeze, not to mention a couple of more recent years that included 9/11, the Afghan War, and the invasion of Iraq. Oh, and I hear tell that WWII wasn’t nearly as bad as the hype we’ve heard all these years. Blah blah blah; bunch of old folks carping.
Obama’s usual grandiose and ahistorical narcissism was on display again when he spoke of the HCR bill:
“I think most people would say this is the most significant piece of legislation in this country’s history.
Perhaps by “most people,” Obama means most people who surround him and know how to stroke his ego. Or perhaps he only means most people who listen to the Stewart show.
Obama suggested that his administration did so much that “we have done things that some folks don’t even know about.”
The comment seemed to catch Stewart by surprise.
“What have you done that we don’t know about?” he asked. “Are you planning a surprise party for us, filled with jobs and health care?”
Stewart’s joke somewhat obscures how surpassingly strange Obama’s comment was. I’m getting tired of saying it, but it’s true: I’ve never heard this sort of thing from any previous president, left or right, good or bad, like him or not. It’s another expression of an attitude Obama displays fairly often: the idea that people are not paying attention to him and not appreciating him enough, whether through laziness or distraction or stupidity he doesn’t say.
It reminds me of one of his wife Michelle’s most shockingly arrogant pre-election utterances, offered before she started censoring herself more effectively:
Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics,” his wife said a few weeks ago, adding that Americans will get only one chance to elect him.
To have gone into the presidential race with such an attitude, and to now be faced with the ungratefulness of the not-nearly-as-smart-as-Obama American people—ouch, how that must rankle.
[NOTE: That “two toughest years since the Great Depression” quote was so out of line that I kept thinking that Obama had qualified it in some way. But then I saw the tape (it occurs towards the very beginning of the Stewart interview), and he did not:
Susan Estrich writes that the people of Nevada should re-elect Harry Reid because of his ability to bring home the bacon. And that’s about the only reason. A more crass and cynical political column I don’t think I’ve ever read.
And in other not-so-great media moments, the WaPo’sDavid Broder doesn’t believe the projected resounding Republican victory would mean that the country is turning to the right. After all, the House will probably only gain a bare Republican majority, and the Senate is likely to stay in Democratic hands.
Many people predict a greater House turnover than even that, however, which would be of hugely historic proportions. And on the issue of a Senate turnover, Broder seems to conveniently forget that only a third of the Senate is up for re-election in any one year. In 2010, by my admittedly quick calculations, if every single Republican incumbent won re-election (a feat in and of itself), and every single previously and currently Democrat-held seat turned over into Republican hands (a virtually impossible one, even in a tsunami year), the largest number of seats the Republicans could possibly gain would be 19. So gaining even eight or perhaps more, as they are projected to do, would be huge.
Also—have you noticed a lull in the news for the past couple of days? It’s almost as though the nation and even much of the world is holding its collective breath to see what will happen on Tuesday.
Sometimes I need a break from all this politics (like right now!), and one of the things I turn to is dance. Most often ballet. Specifically, certain dancers of my youth, who now, to my joy, are readily available for the watching on YouTube.
I’ve written about Maya Plisetskaya many times before. One of my all-time favorites, she was distinguished in her heyday by her tremendous vitality, an enormous springy jump, great strength, flexible arms, sexiness, joy, drama, and a fluidity of movement that seemed remarkably free, despite her long confinement to the USSR by Soviets who were afraid she would defect if they allowed her to leave.
The lady is now well into her eighties and she looks marvelous. Here’s a videotape from a few years ago; I believe Plisetskaya was then a bright young thing of 74. She is rehearsing a French dancer named Marie-Agnes Gillot, who was about 24 years old at the time.
I am transfixed by Plisetskaya’s high heels, among other things. I’m significantly younger than she, but I’d have trouble even standing in them for more than a few minutes, and here she’s practically dancing in them. As I watched the video, despite Gillot’s approaching the prime of her dance life and technique, my eyes were riveted on Plisetskaya instead.
This is how major dance roles are generally transmitted, by a sort of spirit transfer. The older dancer tries to infuse the younger with the sense of the thing as it was first taught to her, adding all she’s learned about the subtleties of dance in the interim. Such teaching doesn’t always really take, except in bits and pieces; dance has changed too much.
You can see that Gillot’s technique is exponentially more spectacular than Plisetskaya’s ever was: in particular her huge extensions, the arched articulation of her feet, and the secure plumb line of her turns. But to my taste, Plisetskaya is above and beyond her in everything else that makes for dancing. Even here, when she had lost the ability to dance on the stage, so much remains (be patient; she doesn’t really get going till about midway through the clip).
[NOTE: I’m aware the Gillot is learning the role and not dancing full-out. But Plisetskaya certainly isn’t dancing full-out either; she can’t.
For those of you unfamiliar with the variation they are rehearsing, it is part of the third act of Swan Lake: the role of Odile, an evil temptress come to impersonate the heroine and make the Prince forget his vows to his true love. You will note that, towards the end of the tape, Plisetskaya mimes a whole series of moments: where Odile laughs in manic triumph at her success when she gets the Prince to swear falsely (around 4:42), and then in turn some of the reactions of the assembled court, including his swooning mother.]
