Edmund Burke - the father of modern conservatism

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) served as a Whig Member of Parliament for many years. He was regarded as a "liberal" because of his support for the American Revolution but he then became known as a "conservative" because of his condemnation of the coercive egalitarianism of the French Revolution. Burke is now regarded as the father of "modern conservatism."

Here are some quotes from Burke's writings:

But the age of chivalry is gone. - That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.

The quote "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" is often attributed to Burke, but does not appear in his works or recorded speeches.

Karl Marx of course detested Burke. In Das Kapital, he wrote:

The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois.

But Winston Churchill regarded Burke as one of the greatest British political thinkers:

On the one hand [Burke] is revealed as a foremost apostle of Liberty, on the other as the redoubtable champion of Authority. But a charge of political inconsistency applied to this life appears a mean and petty thing. History easily discerns the reasons and forces which actuated him, and the immense changes in the problems he was facing which evoked from the same profound mind and sincere spirit these entirely contrary manifestations. His soul revolted against tyranny, whether it appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch and a corrupt Court and Parliamentary system, or whether, mouthing the watch-words of a non-existent liberty, it towered up against him in the dictation of a brutal mob and wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.

Lenin's "useful idiots"

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born on this date in 1870. On November 8, 1917. He became the first leader of the first communist state when he was elected as the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by the Russian Soviet Congress.

I've known plenty of starry-eyed communists in South Africa, London and San Francisco who believe that Lenin was a great and good "liberator of the proletariat." These same idealists claim that Russia under Lenin was a true "democratic socialist" state dedicated to justice and the upliftment of the workers and that it was Stalin who destroyed the peoples' democratic revolution by becoming a tyrannical dictator. Lenin, in the eyes of these starry-eyed communists, was a real "democratic socialist." It was Stalin who crushed democratic communism. These poor deluded souls claim that "pure communism" was never really given a chance because Stalin destroyed Lenin's "democratic socialism." The "true believers" claim that it was Stalin's tyranny that besmirched the ideals of pure socialism and that it was Stalin's excesses which destroyed all hope of "real democratic communism" spreading around the world and liberating the masses.

Many times starry-eyed commies have told me: "You say you despise communism but you don't even know what real communism is. Real communism hasn't even really been tried. Now if only Stalin had not crushed true democratic socialism and if only pure Marxism/Leninism had been given a real chance then you would see what a wonderful communist proletarian Utopia really looked like."

Not so.

From Wiki:

From early 1918, Lenin campaigned for a single, democratically accountable individual to be put in charge of each enterprise, contrary to most conceptions of workers' self-management, but absolutely essential for efficiency and expertise. As S.A. Smith wrote: "By the end of the civil war, not much was left of the democratic forms of industrial administration promoted by the factory committees in 1917, but the government argued that this did not matter since industry had passed into the ownership of a workers' state."

[...]

To protect the newly-established Bolshevik government from counterrevolutionaries and other political opponents, the Bolsheviks created a secret police, the Cheka.

Censorship was quickly imposed, and it was up to the Cheka to confiscate the literature of dissident workers: "[O]n 17 November the Central Executive Committee passed a decree giving the bolsheviks control over all newsprint and wide powers of closing down newspapers critical of the regime..." (Leonard Shapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union). Workers were re-forming independent soviets; the Cheka broke them up. Independent newspapers criticized Lenin's government; the Cheka closed them down, until the Bolshevik-controlled Pravda and Izvestia had a monopoly on the supply of news. As Shapiro notes, "The refusal to come to terms with the socialists and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly led to the logical result that revolutionary terror would now be directed not only against traditional enemies, such as the bourgeoisie or right-wing opponents, but against anyone, be he socialist, worker or peasant, who opposed bolshevik rule."

[...]

On August 30, 1918, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, approached Lenin after he had spoken at a meeting and was on the way to his car. He had his foot on the running board. She called out to Lenin, who turned to answer. She immediately fired three shots: one, relatively harmless, lodged in the arm; the second, potentially fatal, at the juncture of the jaw and neck, the third striking a woman who was talking with Lenin when the shots were fired.

Following the assassination attempt on Lenin, and the successful assassination of Petrograd chief of secret police Moisei Uritsky, Stalin, in a telegram to Lenin, argued that a policy of "open and systematic mass terror" be instigated against "those responsible". Lenin and the other Bolsheviks agreed, and instructed Felix Dzerzhinsky, whom Lenin had appointed to head the Cheka in 1917, to commence a "Red Terror", which was officially announced to the public on September 1, 1918, by the Bolshevik newspaper, Krasnaya Gazeta. Scholars estimate that between 1918-21 up to 200,000 were executed.

[...]

According to the Black Book of Communism, in May 1919 there were 16,000 people in labor camps based on the old Tsarist katorga labor camps, and in September 1921 there were more than 70,000. This system was later transformed into the Gulags.

Lenin's Hanging Order documents that Lenin himself ordered terror:[24] The text is as follows:

Send to Penza To Comrades Kuraev, Send to Penza To Comrades Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost's must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the kulaks." We need to set an example. 1) You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers. 2) Publish their names. 3) Take away all of their grain. 4) Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram. This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks. Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this. Yours, Lenin P.S. Use your toughest people for this.

Of course most of our current crop of starry-eyed communists don't know (or chose not to know) this about Lenin and seem to think that Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was a dreamer like John Lennon.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that
I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

Lenin of course would have thought of Lennon as a "useful idiot." Lenin did not coin that actual phrase and never used it in his writings but it is clear that he thought of western liberals who endorsed the Soviet Union and its policies as "useful idiots" or "deaf-mutes." (The actual phrase "useful idiots" was first used in 1948 by western anti-communists.)

In a February 10, 1922 letter to the Soviet Foreign Affairs Commissar Chicherin in relation to the Genoa Conference, Lenin wrote: Henderson [the British Socialist] is as stupid as Kerensky,[the Russian revolutionary whom Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew] and for this reason he is helping us....

From Lenin's book, Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder:

The so-called cultural element of Western Europe and America are incapable of comprehending the present state of affairs and the actual balance of forces; these elements must be regarded as deaf-mutes and treated accordingly.

[...]

We must:
(a) In order to placate the deaf-mutes, proclaim the fictional separation of our government ... from the Comintern, declaring this agency to be an independent political group. The deaf-mutes will believe it.

(b) Express a desire for the immediate resumption of diplomatic relations with capitalist countries on the basis of complete non-interference in their internal affairs. Again, the deaf-mutes will believe it. They will even be delighted and fling wide-open their doors through which the emissaries of the Comintern and Party Intelligence agencies will quickly infiltrate into these countries disguised as our diplomatic, cultural, and trade representatives.

Capitalists the world over and their governments will, in their desire to win Soviet market, shut their eyes to the above-mentioned activities and thus be turned into blind deaf-mutes. They will furnish credits, which will serve as a means of supporting the Communist parties in their countries, and, by supplying us, will rebuild our war industry, which is essential for our future attacks on our suppliers. In other words, they will be laboring to prepare their own suicide.

[...]

The Communists must exert every effort to direct the working-class movement and social development in general along the straightest and shortest road to the victory of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world-wide scale.

[...]

World revolution has been powerfully stimulated and accelerated by the horrors, vileness and abominations of the world imperialist war and the hopelessness of the situation created by it, this revolution is developing in width and depth with such rapidity, with such a wonderful wealth of changing forms, with such an edifying refutation of all doctrinairism, that there is every reason to hope for a rapid and complete recovery of the international communist movement from the infantile disorder of "left-wing" communism.

John Lennon would have ended up in Gulag if he'd lived in Lenin's workers paradise. So would most of today's communists. That's why I call most of our starry-eyed western commies Marxist/Lennonists. Sure there are a few real communists but the Cindy Sheehans and Peace Moonbeams of this world are "useful idiots" to them.

Talking about fruits, nuts and vegetables reminds me that I'm going to do some gardening today.

"The Good Terrorist"

Doris Lessing published "The Good Terrorist" in 1985. All her previous books had been acclaimed but this one bombed. Why?

Till then Lessing had been the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia. She had been married to the German political activist Gottfried Lessing who had immigrated to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where Lessing grew up on her father's farm. (He later became the German ambassador to Uganda and was accidentally killed in the 1979 revolt against Idi Amin.) Her husband had convinced her to join the Communist Party and she became a pariah in Rhodesia. She divorced him and went to live in England in 1948.

Her first book, "The Grass Is Singing," was published in 1949 and was immediately banned in South Africa because it dealt with inter-racial sex between a white farmer's wife and her black male servant. Years later when I was a teen I managed to get hold of a contraband copy and then read all six books in her "Children of Violence" African series which were published between 1952 and 1969.

In 1962 "The Golden Notebook" was published and she was hailed as the greatest feminist author since Simone de Beauvoir, the French communist and Sartre's lover. Lessing continued writing novels (many with feminist themes) but she had become disillusioned with communism and feminism. Lessing later said about her canonization by the feminists:

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, "Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more." Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion.

In 1974 "Memoirs of a Survivor" was published. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, this was Lessing's first foray into the fantasy/sci-fi genre. (It was later made into a movie starring Julie Christie.) In 1979 she turned almost exclusively to writing fantasy and science fiction in the "Canopus in Argos" series. These five novels were based on her new religion, Sufism, and, though I tried hard to read them, I found them boring, pretentious and tedious.

Then she returned to writing about politics and in 1985 "The Good Terrorist" was published. Her fans were excited, thinking that it was sympathetic to "progressivism" but it actually turned out to be a very unflattering look at leftist "activists."

It's the story of a group of communists who set up a "squat" in London. For me, reading it was like was reading a chapter out of my own life. I had lived in a "squat" in London in the early 1970s. The commune that I was involved with were "flower children" much given to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll but the commune in the "squat" next-door were hard-core Marxist/Maoists who regarded us as decadent. They believed that we should postpone our life of pleasure until after the Revolution. Years later, after I had moved on from hippiedom, I found out that many members of the Maoist "squat" had been caught plotting acts of terrorism and had been imprisoned.

From "The Good Terrorist:"

...skilled people watched, and waited, judging when people...were ripe, could be really useful. Unsuspected by the petit bourgeois who were in the thrall of the mental superstructure of fascist-imperialistic Britain, the poor slaves of propaganda, were these watchers, the observers, the poor people who held all the strings in their hands. In factories, in big industries...in the civil service...in the B.B.C., in the big newspapers - everywhere in fact was this network, and even in little unimportant places like these two houses, Nos 43 and 45, just ordinary squats and communes. Nothing was too small to be overlooked, everyone with any sort of potential was noticed, observed, treasured...

The protagonist, Alice Mellings, is "The Good Terrorist" who sees herself as a committed revolutionary but is really just another hippie chick. She thinks that she's a smart activist because she knows how to confront officials, spray paint slogans and march in protests but she is completely naive when it comes to understanding her communist companions in the squat. Alice is the ultimate "useful idiot" and of course is shocked when her companions turn out to be real terrorists who are responsible for bomb attacks.

I knew many "Alices" in my hippie days - they all grew up to be Cindy Sheehan clones. I also knew quite a few real communists in South Africa, London and San Francisco. I don't mean "useful idiot" communists. The real communists are not even the angry hateful misanthropes who use bombs. Even the eco-terrorists are "useful idiots." The real communists don't do the heavy lifting. They just manipulate the "useful idiots" from behind the scenes and provide the funding. They are the people who "watch and wait." One day I will write about them.

The "Rhododendron Coast"

The "Rhododendron Coast" stretches from the redwood forests on the north coast of California all the way to Vancouver and right now is peak flowering season.

Most of the rhododendrons that we commonly grow in gardens are from Nepal and Sikkim in the Himalayas or from the mountainous regions of Yunnan and Sichuan, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. There are also number of tropical rhododendron species from Borneo, New Guinea and northern Australia which we cannot grow here. There are very few species in North America and Europe and there are no rhododendrons in South America or Africa.

The first three pics are of our native Pacific rhododendron which is pale lavender. The rest are Asian species which mostly come in shades of pink, lavender, red and purple. There are also are a few yellow and blue species. Some of the white flowers have a perfume.

Evil

I watched the videos that Cho sent to NBC. I also watched the talking heads yak on and on about what motivated him. There's no doubt that Cho was psycho but, as I said to Gayle and Richard in a comment below, maybe I shouldn't call people like him psychos because I don't really believe in psychology. To me insanity is all a form of evil.

Let me explain why I don't believe in psychology. Since Freud there has been this whole industry attempting to analyze why people do what they do. I call it blame-ology and it has evolved into modern psychobabble which is basically a way to shirk responsibility and accountability. Complexes, neuroses, paranoia, delusions are all euphemisms for a lack of honesty about who you are and a lack of humility about where you fit into the scheme of things.

I've known quite a few insane people. Yes, most of them lived in San Francisco. They came there from small towns all over the West and Midwest to escape being labelled as nuts in their home-towns. They fit right into SF and often rose to prominence just as the Nazi psychos rose to the top in the SS. They all had one thing in common - they were pathological liars.

I'm not religious and don't believe in creeds and scriptures but I do believe in wisdom and the Bible is full of wisdom and one of the Biblical adages that I do believe in is that the "sin against the Holy Spirit" is the only unforgivable sin. Committing this sin leads to total insanity or pure evil.

To me the "sin against the Holy Spirit" is when you turn your back on your creator. We all know that we were created. We can all see that whatever created us is wonderful beyond words; that the creation is more beautiful than we could ever describe and more amazing than anything that we could ever imagine. Our creator is obviously benevolent, loving and joyful.

To me the "sin against the Holy Spirit" is when you turn your back on that truth. Turning your back on the truth can start out as simply as starting to tell lies instead of being honest. I've watched people start by telling small lies. Then the lies get bigger and bigger till the person can no longer tell fantasy from reality. I've known two people who decided to pretend that they were nuts so that they could collect Social Security. Guess what? Yep, they ended up becoming really nuts.

Being insane simply means being a liar just as evil simply means turning your back on the obvious truth that our creator is loving and good. That's why I don't believe in psychology. It's just a whole bunch of nonsense based on analyzing how many different kinds of lies, fantasies and delusions people can come up with.

Not being religious, I don't believe in Satan or heaven or hell (but that's another subject) however I do believe in evil. Evil is not having trust in our benevolent creator, becoming fearful and defensive. The moment you turn your back on goodness, you turn your back on truth and start living a lie and lies are the slippery slope to evil.

I don't know why Cho stopped trusting or when he started telling lies. All I know is that he ended up telling himself so many lies that he became deluded. I don't need to know what motivated him or what "triggered" his insanity. To me he was just plain evil.

We live in an age when it is not PC to use the word "evil" and you can't just come right out and say "that guy is evil" even when it's pretty obvious (as it was to numerous people that Cho was crazy years ago.) The writing was on the wall a long time ago, glowing like "Mene, mene, tekel upharsin."

I don't know about you but I can smell evil people a mile away. They smell like a mad dogs. It's a pity we can't treat them the same way. And that's my final word on that subject.

PS Jason H. Bowden also wrote about the unfashionable topic of evil.

The wussification of our youth

Gayle (of Dragon Lady's "My Republican Blog") and I were having this conversation in a thread below:

Regarding your question, Patrick: "Why didn't some of these students fight back?" I've been doing a lot of thinking about that in an effort to try to figure it out. All I can come up with is this:

The kids of America today have been so spoiled by their parents they simply aren't living in reality. I believe that the reality of the situation sent them into shock. They couldn't believe it was happening and were unable to react to it.

Old Soldier mentioned the same thing in my post on this yesterday. He wondered why they didn't fight back. There were so many of them lined up against a wall. Old Soldier fought in Vietnam. I grew up in rough neighborhoods, very rarely got my way, and had to learn how to fight to survive. These kids probably never have confronted violence. Perhaps having experienced some tough reality is sometimes helpful when confronted with horrible situations such as this.

Gayle, that's it. I fought for survival all my youth too. These kids have been over-protected. Of course nowadays they have to have counselling every time they're bullied - and the latest study includes cyber-stalking and "being excluded" as bullying. In my days bullying meant that you were beaten up. Thank goodness my dad made me learn boxing because I got beat up regularly for being a sissy.

Yep, I really do believe I've hit on it. For example, the professor who survived the holocaust went through terrible ordeals. He absolutely knew how bad reality could be. He sacrificed his life and saved nine of his students. He acted where they could not. Parents don't do children any favor by over-protecting them.

Another thing that may be at play here is that violence for many middle and upper class kids today is only a make-believe thing that happens on video games and in the movies. It just isn't real!

Bullies... I detested them in school. Perhaps now I should be grateful for them; they taught me how to fight back.

These kids must have been shocked into inaction. I probably wouldn't have had the courage to charge the killer either but I would definitely have thrown something at him - a book, a backpack, a chair - out of an instinctive reaction due to fear. What a pity there were not just two brave linebackers in the classroom to tackle the killer; okay maybe four if Cho was shooting with both guns at the same time. Anyway, it's too late to play "what if?" And anyway there were a lot of very brave kids acting heroically yesterday.

This article is about the study on bullying that I mentioned: School Bullying Affects Majority Of Elementary Students.

I quote: "The survey explored two forms of bullying: direct, such as threatening physical harm, and indirect, such as excluding someone or spreading rumors."

Sorry but "spreading rumors" and "excluding someone" are not bullying. This is all part of the wussification of our youth.

I can already hear some people say that I am cruel and hard and why shouldn't our kids grow up in a safe and nurturing environment? Sure, they should - up to a point but do we really want to lull our kids into thinking that this world is a safe and nurturing place when it obviously isn't.

Growing up in Africa, I was made aware of danger at a very early age - not only from criminals but from man-killing animals and deadly poisonous snakes. If you grew up on a farm, you learned to use a gun at a very early age and were not allowed to stray far from the house without carrying at least a .22 rifle.

Then I went to live in England and I found a very different story. There are no dangerous wild beasts and, in those days - the Sixties, there was very little crime. The country was like one large pretty park and the cities, towns and villages were as cozy and comfy as living-rooms. The British were like big babies to me, sweet, silly and totally unserious about anything. They said I was "too heavy" and should "cool it."

Well, you can read in South African newspapers at least once a month about these same sweet babies being killed by wild African animals because they think nature is like a petting zoo. They are also often mugged and murdered because they assume that the black shanty towns are as safe as their own living-rooms.

This infantilization of Europeans is a direct result of socialism. The USA is not quite as socialist as Europe - yet - but our public school teachers are definitely socialists and our kids are being pushed in the same direction as the Euroweenies.

Some will say, "So what? Don't you want your kids to be safe and happy?" Yes, I do but we don't live in a cozy comfy safe world. Maybe one day there will be no criminals or terrorists and we can all relax and "cool it" but as long as their are killers and predators and barbaric jihadists in this world, we cannot stop being vigilant, tough and defensive.

Meanwhile I read on my buddy Chas' blog that the peacenik Democrats' are floating a legislative proposal to create a "Department of Peace and Nonviolence." Why does that remind me of George Orwell's "Ministry of Peace?"

BTW Chas also posted an interesting article today: Gun Control & antidepressant drugs = Massacres. After talking about how more guncontrol is not the answer, he asks:

Was shooter Cho Seung Hui pushed over the edge by powerful anti-depressant drugs?

Also not being mentioned enough by the media, is that in all the school shootings we hear about, the shooters had been on anti-depressant drugs, including the shooter yesterday. Our citizens have had guns for the past 200 years. It's only in more modern times that school shootings have become increasingly common. And a common factor in those shootings in anti-depressant drugs. Does anyone think that is a mere coincidence? Instead of banning guns from the hands of law abiding citizens, shouldn't we be looking at the rampant prescribing of dangerous psychiatric drugs?

Chas provides a link to this article: Prescription drugs are connected to school shootings and other violence, yet more drugs are touted as the solution.

The United States is gaining a reputation around the world for raising children who go on school shooting rampages. Earlier this year, we had another one with 16-year-old Jeff Weiss, who went into his school on an Indian reservation and blew away 10 friends. And guess what? He was taking the antidepressant Prozac.

Once again we see the link between antidepressants and violent behavior. I was raising the alarm about this in 1999 following the Columbine schools shootings. At that time we knew that those students were on antidepressant drugs, but the rest of the world didn't take any notice of it.

Dancing with my dogs

I just need to write some silly nonsense because I need a break from yesterday's horrors.

I like to think about Chas, Andy and me as the merry men of Robin's Wood but most of our friends and neighbors think of us as monks and make jokes about our "monastery" because we lead such boring routine lives: up at the crack of dawn to feed the livestock; spend the day working either on the farm (fixing fences, clearing the forest) or in the business (repairing and maintaining the rentals, tedious old book-keeping, dealing with the tenants) then dinner on the dot every night at 6.30 pm after which we feed the dogs, wash the dishes, watch an hour or so of a video and off to bed at 9pm.

In fact our friends have stopped inviting us for "a night out on the town." A few months ago an old friend of mine thought that he would "surprise" us with a night out. He and his wife are professional singers. They bought tickets to a show by Seals and Croft at the Indian casino in the biggest town about 20 miles away from us and made dinner reservations at the fanciest restaurant in town. I asked what time dinner and the show was and had to say, "Thanks but no thanks" when I found out that dinner was at eight and the show was at nine.

Nine is bedtime for me. Well, it's when I "retire" to my own room, spend an hour or so reading or writing and go to bed at 10 pm. Our friends, being musicians, seldom go to bed before 2 am and could not comprehend that we would turn down their invitation. I explained that I start yawning at ten minutes to nine every night. (Being a polite fellow, I didn't tell them that I may have made the effort if Placido Domingo were coming to town but that I found Seals and Croft so boring that "Summer Breeze" would put me to sleep at 9am let alone 9 pm.) Needless to say, they haven't invited us out again.

I lead such a boring, routine life that, if I blogged about it, I could make a fortune curing insomnia. That's why I write about big bold world events. Who wants to read a blog that consists of the minutiae of my life?

"On Sunday I gave myself my monthly clean-up, buzzed the three remaining hairs on my head, trimmed as much gray out of my beard as I could, cut my toe-nails and went to bed a whole half an hour later because I couldn't find the wire-cutters to cut off the ugly old yellow gnarly nail on my broken left big toe. Woke up on Monday morning, yawned, stretched, blinked three times, scratched my armpits, got dressed, fed the chickens, let the dogs out for their morning run in the forest, had a toasted muffin and a cup of tea for breakfast, went to work, came home, had dinner, watched the first half of the new "Charlotte's Web" on DVD, started yawning and went to bed."

No, that just wouldn't do.

Of course there are occasional breaks in my routine like last night. When I got home from work, I did my usual thing: took a shower; had my gin and tonic (it's medicinal - I need the quinine in the tonic water for my "restless leg syndrome" and the gin makes it palatable) and then turned on the TV to watch the weather forecast on the local NBC channel. The news was still all about the VA Tech massacre. (Dinner was steak and kidney pie made from Sunday's leftover roast beef and a nice fresh calf's kidney all washed down with a glass of bag-in-the-box merlot.) In between bites of food, the three of us chatted about politics and world affairs as usual - only it wasn't that usual because of the massacre. We each shared what info we had gathered about it and, before we knew it, it was 8 pm.

Because the TV is already set to NBC, I usually watch reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond" (I hate Raymond but I love Patricia Heaton) after dinner while Chas and Andy wash dishes and feed the dogs (hey, my buddies are 20 years younger than me and I've paid my dish-washing/dog-feeding dues a long time ago.) But last night, because it was later than usual, the unbelievably crass and disgusting "Let's Make a Deal" was on the NBC channel so I switched to ABC which was airing "Dancing with the Stars."

Now I'm not a complete country bumpkin and I had heard of this show before. In fact I even saw clips of Heather Mills McCartney doing the back-flip on her peg-leg and thought she was wonderful. Of course I'm on her side because I can't stand that superannuated hippie, Sir Paul the Beatle. My hunch is that she left him because he got drunk and/or stoned and beat her up. I wouldn't put it past him. Just because he's rich doesn't mean he isn't still a narcissistic peacenik solipsist.

Where was I? Oh yes, "Dancing with the Stars." I sat with my mouth agape watching Heather dancing a rumba backwards on her peg-leg. Apolo, the Olympic gold medal speed skater did a dynamite samba. Billy Ray Cyrus, the rather stiff and wooden (probably a prim and proper Baptist) country singer tried bravely to wiggle his fanny in a sensuous samba. John Ratzenberger - yep the mailman from "Cheers" - danced the rumba like a spring chicken rather than the old rooster that he is and Laila Ali, the boxing champ daughter of the former Cassius Clay, "oiled her way across the floor oozing charm from every pore" in a smoldering samba. I was hooked. It went on till 9.30 pm - way past my bedtime. I'll have to record it if I want to watch it in future.

The thing about "ballroom dancing" is that my dad taught me when I was just a nipper and I've loved it ever since. Dad taught me the waltz, foxtrot, quickstep and Charleston. He was a real fancy dancer and could spend the whole night dancing with my mom while my granny played the piano. Later, before my prom night, my then girlfriend and I took lessons in Latin dancing and I learned to enjoy doing the cha-cha, samba, rumba, tango and paso doble. I still enjoy dancing but nowadays the only partners I manage to get to do the tango with me are my dogs and sadly none of them have any sense of rhythm.

Here are some pics of Laila Ali in case you don't know what she looks like. I hope she stops boxing before she gets a broken nose and cauliflower ears - as I got from boxing. She is so beautiful that she could make an easier living in Hollywood just posing and looking pretty. Maybe it's because I was a boxer (or maybe it's just because I'm an old coot) but I must say that the idea of women boxers gives me the creeps - especially when you're as drop-dead gorgeous as this.

Putting the fun back into GOP fundamentals

I'm sure you've all heard the theory that Americans tend vote for optimistic presidential candidates. I won't go too far back in history but will just take a look at the presidential elections that have happened in my life-time.

Gloomy Adlai Stevenson lost twice, in 1952 and 1956, to up-beat Eisenhower. In 1960 optimistic JFK beat ponderous Nixon. But it's not quite so simplistic. After JFK's assassination the USA was pretty demoralized and voted for Johnson against Goldwater in 1964 probably because Johnson was safe and not controversial like Goldwater. The doom and gloom of JFK's death still hung over the country when Nixon ran in 1968 and 1972. Nixon wasn't exactly Mr Cheerful but he was at least more up-beat about America than his really gloomy opponents, Humphrey and McGovern.

Then Nixon's disgrace smacked down an already depressed nation and turned people against the GOP. In 1976 Mr Smiley Face Jimmy Carter seemed like a more cheerful choice than Gerald Ford who was tainted by his association with Nixon and was not able to really hold his head up high. But people soon saw through Carter's phony smile and realized that he was really a prophet of doom and Reagan won easily in 1980. In 1984 Mondale ran against Reagan and, let's face it, Mondale was probably the gloomiest and most pessimistic man to ever run for the WH.

Bush Sr was not as cheerful as Reagan but some of Reagan's optimism had rubbed off on him and his opponent in 1988, Dukakis, was only one degree less gloomy than Mondale. But then Bush Sr lost to the really cheerful Clinton in 1992. Clinton had perfected his beaming grin and did give the impression that he was optimistic and positive. In 1996 dreary Bob Dole didn't stand a chance against Bill "Mr Bubbly" Clinton. You also have to take into account that both times that Clinton ran, Perot drew votes away from the GOP candidate. In 2000 Bush Jr beat Al Gore partly because Gore is a bore but probably mostly because Nader sucked Democrat votes away from Gore. However Nader didn't run in 2004 and W beat Kerry for the obvious reason that Kerry not only looked like Lurch but sounded even gloomier than a grave-digger.

Yep, in 2008 we need to field an up-beat candidate and propagate an optimistic and positive message.

I take most polls with a pinch of salt but the more reliable ones are indicators of which way the wind is blowing.

The latest Rasmussen poll reports that 45% of American voters say they would currently vote for the Democrat in their district, 35% would pull the voting lever for a Republican, 6% favor a third-party option and 15% are not sure. Democrats lead by 5% among men and by 14% among women and 30% among voters under 30.

This confirms the study released last month by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press which analyzed "Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007."[PDF] Pew's conclusion was that the "political landscape is more favorable to Democrats." The Pew study is so huge and examines so many different trends over the past 20 years that I still haven't finished reading it 3 weeks after it was published but the gist of it is the same as the Rasmussen poll.

So there's a big possibility that the GOP won't win a majority in Congress or the Presidency in 2008. Do we just roll over and play dead? Obviously not. In the short-term we should play to win the 2008 election but at the same time we need to make some long-term plans. Karl Rove's strategy for GOP victory worked in 2000 and 2004 but it also cost us in the long-run. Rove used "wedge issues" (like gays and abortion) to fire up the conservative base but emphasizing what the GOP is against rather than what we are for drove away the non-partisan people who had earlier been drawn to the GOP by Reagan's optimism. And we need to attract independents and swing-voters to win.

Americans do not like pessimists and party-poopers and we need to start emphasizing what the GOP can give them not what we want to take away from them. Like Reagan, we need to remind people that America is still "a shining city on a hill." We need to get back to Reagan's ideas of smaller, less intrusive government, lower taxes, patriotism and an optimistic "we can win" foreign policy. Reagan didn't constantly nag and moralize the way many current GOP leaders do. He kept telling us what we could do not what we can't do. Leave the scolding to the Democrats.

Sure, we may still lose because Americans are war-weary. How could they not be given that the MSM only reports the bad stuff and is against the war and against Bush? But the MSM was pushing the same doom and gloom message in Reagan's presidency and always will do so and we just have to tune out their noise and stick with what we know is right for America in the long-run. Still, I'm sure we can win if we get back to pushing an optimistic message instead of constantly harping on how the country is going to hell in a hand-basket. Leave the doom and gloom to the Democrats.

Let's pick a positive, optimistic candidate and start putting the fun back into GOP fundamentals.

P. J. O'Rourke - Republican Party Reptile

In 1987, when Reagan was still in the White House and all was well with the world, P. J. O'Rourke published "Republican Party Reptile." I read it in one sitting, chuckling and sometimes guffawing throughout. Till then, I had read only grave and earnest Republican writers like William Buckley.


O'Rourke was the first Republican writer to tickle my funny bone. Maybe that was because, like me, he had been a leftist hippie during his student days but had seen through the left's lies and stupidity in the 1970s and had become a Republican. He went on to become a political observer and humorist and wrote 13 books with definite libertarian, sometimes conservative, but always anti-leftist viewpoints.

His most recent book is On The Wealth of Nations, a commentary on Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations."

This is from P J O'Rourke Online:

First Chapter: On "The Wealth of Nations"

THE WEALTH OF NATIONS IS, without doubt, a book that changed the world. But it has been taking its time. Two hundred thirty-one years after publication, Adam Smith's practical truths are only beginning to be absorbed in full. And where practical truths are most important-amid counsels of the European Union, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, British Parliament, and American Congress-the lessons of Adam Smith end up as often sunk as sinking in.

Adam Smith's Simple Principles. Smith illuminated the mystery of economics in one flash: "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." There is no mystery. Smith took the meta out of the physics. Economics is our livelihood and just that.

The Wealth of Nations argues three basic principles and, by plain thinking and plentiful examples, proves them. Even intellectuals should have no trouble understanding Smith's ideas. Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade.

That's O'Rourke being scholarly. Now here are some quotes from his other more humorous (but no less astute) books.

* I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck.

* In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe.

* Something is happening to America, not something dangerous but something all too safe. I see it in my lifelong friends. I am a child of the "baby boom", a generation not known for its sane or cautious approach to things. Yet suddenly my peers are giving up drinking, giving up smoking, cutting down on coffee, sugar, and salt. They will not eat red meat and go now to restaurants whose menus have caused me to stand on a chair yelling, "Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, dinner is served!" This from the generation of LSD, Weather Underground, and Altamont Rock Festival! And all in the name of safety! Our nation has withstood many divisions — North and South, black and white, labor and management — but I do not know if the country can survive division into smoking and non-smoking sections.

* The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy— a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind.

* The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.

* You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination; if you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.

* Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.

* Biotechnology is a worry. What if they take genetic material from wet noodles and blowfish and splice it into politician chromosomes and create a Clinton administration?

* Crowded as the country is, is overcrowding even its main problem? Hong Kong and Singapore both have greater population densities (14.315 and 12.347 per square mile, respectively) than Bangladesh, and they're called success stories. The same goes for Monaco. In fact, the whole Riviera is packed in August, and neither Malthus nor Ehrlich have complained about the topless beaches of St. Tropez.

* Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don't know much. Say it's ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn't ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids' families? And what is tonight's pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system.

* Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes.

* Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free — indeed, sanctimonious — way for "progressives" to be racists.

* If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.

* Remember, FDA employees are serious about fear. We pay these people to panic about an iota of rodent hair in our chili, even when the recipe calls for it. FDA employees are first-class agonizers, world champions at losing sleep. When Meryl Streep got hysterical about Alar, they actually checked the apples instead of Meryl's head.

* The observers had a logbook recording the assaults, bombings, and artillery attacks on the area. Each page was ruled in vertical columns: DATE, TIME, LOCATION, DAMAGE, CASUALTIES. The columns headed ACTION TAKEN BY THE UN were completely empty.

* The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements. On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself." In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card. And civilization has always been able to destroy itself. The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy them fine.

* A little government and a little luck are necessary in life; but only a fool trusts either of them.

* America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please.

* Anyone who has studied psychology, sociology, anthropology, or any of the other wacko-and-wog disciplines knows the three great rules of the social sciences: Folks do lots of things. We don't know why. Test on Friday.

* Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.

* At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosphy of sniveling brats.

* Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

* I don't understand the balanced budget amendment. Isn't it like trying to stop smoking by hiding cigarettes from yourself?

* I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.

* If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

* People ask me if I've ever been called a Nazi. I answer that no one has ever had dreams of being tied down and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.

* The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors — psychology, sociology, women's studies — to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view.

* There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.

* There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he is willing to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he will do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head.

* Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

* When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

* You can't get good chinese takeout in China and cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism.

* Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking.

O'Rourke is my kind of old-fashioned, live-and let-live, traditional, cheerful, happy Republican - like Reagan. He's not one of these modern angst-ridden, moralizing, interfering, nosy-parker, busybody Republicans. He's a no-nonsense, down-to-earth guy who enjoys life and is having a lot of fun in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Let's leave the angst, fretting, worrying and interfering to the lefties. They're better at it. In fact, didn't Alarmist Gore invent angst at the same time that he invented the Internet?

Definition of "conservative"

Glen Dean posted this yesterday: Conservatism Defined By Glen

I have always considered myself to be a conservative. As early as I can remember, I was interested in politics. I was ten years old when Ronald Reagan was elected in a landslide. During my teen years, I was probably the only kid in my school that had a subscription to National Review. I became a huge fan of William F. Buckley and my favorite show was Crossfire, which featured Patrick Buchanan.

So what is my definition of the word conservative?

My definition of the word conservative is almost synonymous with the classical definition of the word liberal. As much as a I criticize people today who call themselves liberal, I actually consider myself to be one. Not only that, but I consider modern liberals to really not be that liberal at all. By calling myself conservative or libertarian (more on that word later), I am simply giving in to the fact that over the last century, certain words have taken on different meanings.

I couldn't agree more. Reading Glen's essay, you see that he is a libertarian conservative (in fact he used to call his blog "Christian Libertarian") not a paleocon, neocon or theocon. Glen ended his essay by inviting some bloggers to give our definitions of "conservative" to which I responded: "Can I publish your post and pretend that it's mine? :)" Glen didn't give me permission to steal his essay so I guess I'll just have to write my own.

Like Glen, I believe that real conservatives are actually "classical liberals" like our Founders who were inspired by John Locke and Adam Smith but I also know that "conservatism" has other connotations nowadays some of which I don't agree with. I only use the word "conservative" to describe myself when I need to state my position quickly; as short-hand to let lefties know that I detest socialism and that I'm an old-fashioned flag-waving patriot and a gun-toting defender of the Second Amendment. But, other than that, I'm not really a true "conservative."

For as long as I have been aware of politics "conservative" (especially since Nixon) has meant "social conservative" more than Lockean small-government conservatism and Smithian free-market economics. I know plenty of "conservatives" who don't have any problem with big intrusive government and don't give a fig about free-market economics. Glen wrote, "In fact, many people who call themselves social conservatives share very little in common with me. I do not believe that government should enforce morality and pass laws that protect people from themselves." I agree with Glen but many "social conservatives" would disagree.

For instance "social conservatives" want a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. I understand their concern but don't like amending the Constitution in such a way that it tells people what they cannot do so I definitely cannot call myself a "social conservative." My main objection to gay marriage (and a lot of other modern self-indulgent nonsense) is because it is a break with tradition. Maybe I should call myself a "traditionalist" rather than a "conservative."

First and foremost I am a Republican in the tradition of Jefferson's and Madison's "Republican Party" as well as the modern "Republican Party" of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. None of these former presidents would pass muster with the current crop of "conservatives" who dominate the right-wing blogosphere. They despise Bush for being soft on illegal immigration and now talk of boycotting the 2008 election if Fred Thompson does not get the nomination because, in their minds, Giuliani, McCain and Romney are RINOS.

Over the past year I've stopped reading dozens of so-called conservative blogs not only because they are boring Bush-bashing echo-chambers, but because they are radical extremists and definitely not traditional Republicans. Many of these "social conservatives" were formerly Democrats until Reagan and they haven't got a clue about the history and culture of the GOP. Unfortunately, starting with Reagan, the GOP has pandered to them and has almost ruined the party just in order to win elections. Sure we have to win but not at the cost of real GOP traditions. As far as I am concerned, our three front-runners (and Fred Thompson) are all traditional Republicans and I'll gladly vote for whomever wins the nomination even if I don't agree with them on everything.

So I guess, by today's definition of "conservative," I am not one.

The jet stream

I wanted to use pictures to illustrate my post about troughs and ridges last night but it was late and I was too tired to look for any. I will integrate these maps with that post before I archive it.

In the first map you can see how the jet stream dipped down bringing cold air from Canada which resulted in snow east of the Great Lakes and even as far south as Texas.

In the second map the trough moves east and Texas gets back to its usual weather on Monday but the whole of the East Coast as far south as Georgia will still be cool.

The third map shows the trough moving east leaving cold air only over New England while the rest of the country enjoys spring weather.

You can see that we're "high and dry" in the West. It's a beautiful day so I'm off to do some gardening.

Waves - troughs and ridges

I know meteorological lingo because I enjoy weather-watching but I always end up translating it into plain language in my head. I think about weather mostly when I'm sitting in my rocking chair on the front verandah almost fully exposed to the elements. Sometimes the ocean is so wild and rough that it seems that the waves are breaking at my feet eventhough they're nearly mile away. (Well, sound carries much further in empty air - you can hear the neighbors' guns miles away plinking on Sunday afternoons.)

I can sit in my rocking chair in winds up to 40 mph before it becomes uncomfortable. I can also sit out there in temps as low as 28F as long as there is no wind. Once it gets below 40F then the "wind-chill factor" kicks in and 40F combined with a wind of 30mph (which is the norm on the Pacific shoreline) feels like it's below freezing point. 28F with a wind feels arctic.

Weather comes in waves off the Pacific. Waves are a series of troughs and ridges. The troughs and ridges are the result of the combined forces of the earth's rotation and the impact of the sun on any given point on the earth. The earth's rotation carries the warm "lightweight" air above the equator eastward. The eastward motion of the equatorial air triggers off a westward motion of the slightly cooler and therefore relatively "heavier" and less "fluid" air in the tropics to the north (or south) of the equator. The westerly wind on either side of the equator is known as the tropical jet-stream.

These tropical westerly winds set off an opposite motion of the air above (or below) the tropics in the even cooler and more sluggish colder air above. This easterly turbulence in turn then "rubs" against the frigid, heavy and almost "solid" polar air. The resulting westerly wind is known as the polar jet stream. The "jet-stream" blows west over ridges of high pressure and under troughs of low pressure and you get waves.

Think of it in terms of bands of temperature which result from the sun's varying impact on different areas of the earth going from the hot equator and cooling till it hits the poles. Add in the earth's rotation and the effects that it has on the different "consistencies" (or atmospheric pressures) of the bands of air and you can see how "weather waves" occur. All of our weather is caused by the sun's varying impact on the planet and the earth's rotation around it's own axis but oceans and mountains and vast plains absorb the sun's impact differently and complicate the equation.

In winter the sun is in the south where it warms the tropical air. Warm air is light (has a low atmospheric pressure) and rises. This sucks in cold denser "heavier" air from the north and the polar jet-stream dips south bringing cool Alaskan air and sometimes frigid Canadian air into the US. In summer the sun "moves" north warming the air and the tropical jet-stream shifts northward. In spring and fall these "waves" are vying with each other.

Add in the earth's rotation and you get "turbulence" between the waves of alternating hot and cold air. Hot air rises (it's light and has a low atmospheric pressure) and cold air (dense and high-pressured) rushes in to replace it. That's what makes weather move in waves - troughs and ridges - from west to east.

US weather is further complicated by waves of warmer tropical air swelling up from the Gulf which are usually quite "juicy" and bring as much rain and are just as powerful as the waves of weather from the Pacific. In winter most of the weather comes from the west. In summer most of it comes from the south. In spring and fall you have a battle between the two influences; between the tropical and polar jet-streams.

I haven't explained north Atlantic hurricanes to myself satisfactorily yet. All I know is that they start in the jungles of equatorial and tropical Africa. But I do understand tornadoes - as most inquisitive people do. In the spring (from February on) cool air from the Pacific or cold air from the pole clashes with warm air from the Gulf. Fall is not as turbulent as spring because cold waves of air sinking south are "heavier" and "suppress" the turbulent tropical air.

Simple animists worshipped the sun because, to them, the sun was the mightiest thing in their universe. All they were conscious of was the physical universe. Maybe they had inklings of their own consciousness but it took plenty of food, security, safety and leisure to give humans enough time to contemplate the mystery not of what they were seeing but of what was seeing it and so began mankind's "spiritual journey." (Shudder - that's a clunky cliche but I'm stumped for other words and can't find a neat phrase to describe what it means to become conscious of being conscious and realize that there is more to life than what you see and smell and hear and taste and feel and begin to wonder what or who is watching.)

I really can't talk about the sort of stuff that gets lumped under the category of "religion" or "metaphysics" or a bunch of other names. After I posted Tintoretto's Last Supper, I got an email asking me about my "religion." The emailer said that he (or she - "Robbie" could be a male or a female) had found my blog by searching for "born again Christian." Here's a paraphrase of what he (or she) wrote:

I found your web site when I googled "born again Christian." I liked your politics but then I saw that you say that you are not a Christian and I wondered why. You sound like a Christian or at least you sound like you know what it means to be Christian but don't have enough faith. Are you saying that you are not a Christian because you don't believe in the miracles or the resurrection?

"Robbie" then explained to me what it means to be "born again" and accept the risen Jesus as my living God. I replied:

No, Robbie, it's not because I don't believe in the miracles or the resurrection. It's probably because I took one thing that Jesus said to heart when I was very young and I even tried to live up to it but found that I couldn't do it. Ever since then I have felt like a hypocrite to pretend to be a Christian. I know other people can live with the contradiction and I've heard all the justifications for not obeying Jesus' commandment to "sell all, give it to the poor and come follow me."

It's not the selling and the giving away that is hard - I've done that. It's the following humbly and single-mindedly that's so hard. I know that surrender, obedience and humility are the keys to salvation but I'm too self-centered to do that. Maybe it's a lack of faith or hedging my bets. I don't know. All I know is that I can't do it. I've tried but, in the end, I always feel like I'm faking it and that I am being just as egotistical trying to be obedient, humble, selfless and devoted. So I might as well accept my shortcomings and just be a selfish heathen.

Happy Easter to my Christian friends.

PS I hope I got all the "easterlies" and "westerlies" right or I will look like a fool.

Sharia is as barbaric as apartheid....

....so why aren't the professional protestors protesting?

I was just re-reading the article by Tawfik Hamid that I posted below and saw quite clearly that what is missing is universal opposition to and denunciation of something which is obviously inhuman - Sharia. Western Marxisant Lennonists have been hoodwinked by skin-color once again.

They are torn apart with guilt for being "privileged" white people and atone by kowtowing to people with brown skins. That's why they are on the side of the Muslims in spite of the fact that Sharia is as bad if not worse than apartheid. They're "reverse racists."

The left condemned apartheid but they don't condemn the killings of whites that is happening in South Africa right now. Most of these killings are classified as crime but why must a mugging (or home invasion which is increasing) nearly always end up as a murder? Because a lot of the killings are motivated by hatred and revenge. Shouldn't the protestors be protesting these hate crimes. Unfortunately the people being killed are the wrong color.

In the USA we talk about "racism." In South Africa when I was growing up, we talked about being "color-conscious." It was a polite but derogatory term meaning snobby and racist. The left in the West is racist - ahem, I mean - color-conscious.

For the real Marxists who are the engine driving the wheels (which are the hippie peacenik Marxisant Lennonists) a brown skin equals poor suffering victims for them to sink their crazed power-hungry communist claws into and manipulate into the anarchy which always precedes and is needed to establish a totalitarian reign of terror.

For the dippy hippies and bleeding hearts a brown skin equals poor, suffering victims for them to help using money which they have confiscated from the evil rich capitalist pigs. In either case they are color-conscious snobs or as the West calls them - racists. It's time to call them that.

To this end I am going to work with any organization that exists that opposes Sharia and works to outlaw it and make it disgusting in the eyes of civilized society. If such organizations do not exist, I'll start an anti-sharia movement dedicated to destroy this barbaric practice.

This is a chance for conservatives to be on the side of the angels as they are in the abortion battle. Our troops can fight the military battles but I think it's the civilians' job to fight the war of ideas. It's time to treat Western leftist apologists for radical Islam like we used to treat the apologists for National Socialism, Communism and apartheid. They're indubitably on the wrong side.

We have every right to be disgusted by Sharia just as we were disgusted by National Socialism, Communism and apartheid. And our disgust and disapproval may prod Muslims to get their act together. Like Iraq, it's a gamble. I'm betting on the side of the angels in righteous condemnation of Sharia.

From Tawfik Hamid's article, The Trouble With Islam:

Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom.

[...]

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days."

[...]

The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah.

[...]

Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."

[...]

Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.

Azaleas, new potatoes and spring lamb

It's mid-spring here which means lots of spring lamb that is so tender it melts in your mouth. It also means lots of new potatoes and azaleas. I just had lamb chops for dinner grilled with a sprig of fresh rosemary from the garden and new potatoes with butter and parsley and we'll be having roast leg of lamb on the weekend - followed by the leftovers cooked in a lamb vindaloo.

Azaleas belong to the rhododendron family. This part of the West Coast is nicknamed the "Rhododendron Coast." Azaleas are the first rhodies to bloom in spring followed in April by the real rhodies (although our native rhodies are already in bloom but they are a bit spindly and not that spectacular.) Right now the local parks and gardens are ablaze with azalea blooms.