Why I stopped writing fiction

I started writing fiction at the age of 14. My first work was a novel entitled "The Paths of Glory Lead but to the Grave" - a line borrowed from Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard. It was all about doom and gloom and unrequited love. (I burned it and everything else I'd ever written when I became a Buddhist and "renounced the world" at the age of 22.)

But I still dreamed of being a writer like Thomas Hardy. I loved Hardy's novels - full of passion and longing that is always thwarted by ignorance, deceit or malevolence; just the sort of stuff that an introverted melancholy faggy youth could relate to. And, for decades after that, I deliberately sought out drama - because I was a "writer."

Tonight Chas and Andy and I watched the latest Masterpiece Theater version of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. We sat around talking about it afterwards; thinking that maybe we should re-watch the 1979 Roman Polanski version. That got us talking about the Polanski scandal and how he destroyed a young girl's life just as Tess' life was destroyed by a perverted narcissist in the Hardy novel. (You could write a novel about that - if you could stomach delving into the toxic depths of Polanki's soul.)

That in turn got me thinking about why I stopped writing fiction. The last fiction that I wrote was my South African Stories, which took me five years to write and rewrite - and which made me sick, literally. It gave me stomach ulcers. That was because the stories were very autobiographical; about my life in apartheid South Africa; full of the horror of living in an oppressive paranoid police state.

Once I had forced myself to finish writing it, I had to deal with the fact that I was physically sick for the first time in my life. I went to dozens of doctors and none of them could cure me. I began to wonder if there was some deep-rooted illness in my soul that was making my body sick. I looked deep and found that yes, there was. I was sick because I was full of anger, fear and hatred and blamed others for my woes.

I started digging out these noxious weeds that had taken root in my mind without my even being aware of them being sown. That was 25 years ago and it took me years to become physically and mentally healthy. By the time that I was cured, I could no longer write fiction.

Why? Mostly because fiction is based on the muddle that is human life: like Hardy's novels - "full of passion and longing that is always thwarted by ignorance, deceit or malevolence." And, once I had cleaned up my own mind, there was no longer any muddle, ignorance, deceit or malevolence in my life and I no longer wished to dwell on that aspect of others' lives - even if they were fictional characters.

Without those negative elements, there's not much of a story to tell. Living a cheerful, simple life is very boring and not the stuff of drama or novels. Can you imagine how boring a novel would be if all it was about was contentment? And that's what my life is and I don't like to dwell on the uglier aspects of life.

It suits me fine to live a boring life. It's wonderful to wake up in the morning and know that the day will be fairly routine. (Not always - there are some circumstances beyond my control that may be nasty. The only way to avoid other peoples' dramas would be to live in a cave in the Himalayas.)

But nobody wants to read about a boring old middle-class fart: "I took the dogs for a walk at dawn and then let the chickens out of the coop so that I could collect their eggs, had breakfast, checked my email, read some news (avoiding the nastiest stuff), blogged a bit, had a second breakfast as all true Hobbits do, went to the office, dealt with the tenants problems, had leftovers for lunch, paid bills, came home, had dinner and conversation with Chas and Andy, watched some TV and went to bed."

Actually - come to think of it - I'd like to read a novel like that. Maybe I should write one. It sounds lovely and peaceful - just like my life in fact.

I'm an apathetic middle-class, middle-brow, middle-of-the-road Republican

Ever since the GOP lost it's majority in Congress in 2006, I have posted a lot of the analysis, criticism and debate that is taking place in the GOP. And, since November, I have often agreed with the dissenting voices in the GOP but never 100%. I post excerpts from articles such as the two below to stimulate thought and discussion.

This blog is not an echo chamber. (There are plenty of blogs which are.) My blog can never be an echo chamber because I've never been very good at toeing any party line. Probably because I was born and raised in a society which not only discouraged dissent but punished it, I just don't get any sort of "group-think." For me, the Bill of Rights is an expression of individual sovereignty and personal liberty not "group rights." If I wanted group rights or wanted to toe the politically correct party line, I'd join the Democratic Party.

The thing is: I'm quite content with the GOP. It sure isn't perfect. It's simply the lesser of two evils in a fallen world. I may criticize certain aspects of the GOP but that's in order to stimulate debate and strengthen our arguments not to purge the party. I'm quite happy co-existing with libertarians and the little blue-haired ladies who are the backbone of local party politics; the religious right and the Chamber of Commerce types. We all have one thing in common: we all love America just the way it is.

Or at least that's what I used to think. I always associated discontent with the status quo with the Left but it seems that many on the right also think America needs to be changed and improved. Whereas the Left wants to advance the clock ahead of it's current setting, it seems that some on the Right want to turn back the clock to an imaginary Golden Age. I'm quite content with having the clock set at it's actual time - which is right now as messy as it is.

Right now isn't perfect. The world of human beings never has been and never will be perfect. Hamlet set out to bring justice but only succeeded in creating more misery. I don't feel oppressed or outraged or disenfranchised or victimized. I've got exactly as much wealth, power and influence as I want, deserve and need. And I think a lot of ordinary middle-class Americans feel the same way. For me, activism is not something the middle-class does.

Yes, I'm an apathetic middle-class, middle-brow, middle-of-the-road Republican who is quite happy with the muddled and messy GOP but do you feel dumbed down by my blog or exorted to think? I prefer to be intellectually stimulated.

Americans are emotional, excitable and romantic

After living in both the UK and the USA, I have come to the conclusion that Americans are more emotional (and romantic) than their British cousins. The settlers in New England were a pretty phlegmatic lot but those who settled further south seemed to be more excitable. And many of our Founding Fathers were Virginians.

The French believe that heat excites the emotions and Parisians regard their fellow countrymen in Provence as excitable hicks. Even New England has more extreme summer heat than anywhere in Britain and the Southern summers are even hotter. So maybe the "heat theory" holds some water and our extreme climate (relative to Britain's mild maritime climate) is responsible for our less phlegmatic approach to life - and politics.

How else to explain some of the decisions that Americans voters have made - such as electing Obama? Emotions? Excitability? Romanticism?

I'm not one of those snobs who thinks that Americans are "sheep" as Boortz, Limbaugh and the rest of the nattering radio nabobs call them. In fact I think they're pretty smart. We could sit around like a bunch of policy wonks and carefully make logical decisions and end up being woefully wrong. Or we can go with our feelings and hunches and end up being woefully wrong - or sometimes right as the election of Reagan showed. Let's face it Reagan appealed to ordinary "normal" (as Two Dogs would say) Americans on an (emotional?) and personal level beyond policies or politics.

In the end Americans don't vote en masse. They follow their own lights and the en masse result really is the luck of the draw. How many people voted for Obama because it felt good to vote for the first black President? And how many of them believed (and hoped) that they would be out-voted?

It's a funny old world.

Blame this odd post on the delicious oysters, asparagus and chardonnay that I had for dinner.

Get rid of corporate taxes

Obama today promised that he will cut the deficit in half within the next four years.

And he has just signed the nearly trillion dollar "Stimulus" Bill. He also promises to increase government provided health-care - obviously an incremental introduction of socialized medicine.

So, where will the money come from? Tax increases. And, guess what? Bush gave the Democrats the excuse to argue for tax increases. Bush's tax cuts were not balanced by spending cuts and in fact were accompanied by huge increases in spending - which is why McCain sensibly argued against them.

The Democrats are obviously not going to balance the budget by cutting spending and equally obviously are itching to raise taxes and drive us into dependence on government and ultimately socialism.

They will increase taxes on everyone earning over $30,000 a year - in other words anyone who actually pays taxes. Most of those who earn less than that, do not pay income taxes and, under Obama's tax plans, will no longer pay SS and Medicare taxes either.

The Democrats will re-introduce steeply progressive taxes until millionaires (and above) will probably be paying 50% (or more) of their incomes in taxes. They will also increase capital gains taxes, death taxes and corporate taxes. And they will "means test" SS and Medicare to the point where only those who have no private retirement plans will receive them.

I can live with increased capital gains taxes because you only pay taxes on the capital gains that you are withdrawing from investment and that will not affect re-investment, capitalization and job creation. (Capital gains taxes can be avoided if the gains are re-invested.)

I can live with death taxes. Actually I should say "I can die with them" because I'll be dead anyway and cannot expect to have much control over my money from beyond the grave.

I can even live with "means testing" on SS and Medicare. It's not fair or right but maybe it's time to start thinking of them as insurance (like unemployment insurance) rather than entitlements. If you're fortunate, you don't need them. If you fall on hard times, they're there as a safety net.

But the one thing I will fight against till I am blue in the face is raising corporate taxes. In fact there should be NO corporate taxes. None, nada, zilch.

I run my business as an LLC (Limited Liability Company) and pay no corporate taxes. All profits are treated as income for the menbers of the LLC and the only tax paid is individal income tax. Why can't corporations be treated the same way?

I have no problem with taxes on individual income (even a progressive income tax.) After all you are simply helping to run the country which provided you with the opportunity to become wealthy in the first place.

Corporation don't really pay the taxes anyway. They simply pass it on to the comnsumer in the form of higher prices for goods. Getting rid of corporate taxes will attract investment from all over the world. Investment means jobs.

Isaiah Berlin: the penguin who wrote "The Hedgehog and the Fox"

David Brooks:

The correct position is the one held by self-loathing intellectuals, like Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott and others. These were pointy heads who understood the limits of what pointy heads can know. The phrase for this outlook is epistemological modesty, which would make a fine vanity license plate.

The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.

Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott are also my favorite conservative philosophers. I've done profiles of Edmund Burke ("The Father of Modern Conservatism"), James Madison ("The Father of the Constitution") and Michael Oakeshott ("Margaret Thatcher's philosopher") but not Isaiah Berlin.

Berlin was once asked what animal he would want to be, and he replied: "A penguin. Because when the penguin remains alone, he dies."

Isaiah Berlin:

Sir Isaiah Berlin, OM (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal [that is "classical liberal" like Locke, Burke and Madison not "Left liberal" like modern "Social Democrats"] thinkers of the twentieth century.

[...]

Born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first person of Jewish descent to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.

[...]

The family moved to Britain in 1921, when Berlin was twelve [to escape the Communists.]

[...]

Berlin is best known for his essay "Two Concepts of Liberty", delivered in 1958 as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints on, or interference with, agents' possible action. Greater "negative freedom" meant fewer restrictions on possible action. Berlin associated positive liberty with the idea of self-mastery, or the capacity to determine oneself, to be in control of one's destiny. While Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, as a matter of history the positive concept of liberty has proven particularly susceptible to political abuse.

Berlin contended that under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel (all committed to the positive concept of liberty), European political thinkers often equated liberty with forms of political discipline or constraint. This became politically dangerous when notions of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, self-determination and the Communist idea of collective rational control over human destiny. Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom paradoxically become demands for forms of collective control and discipline – those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or self-determination of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty and political totalitarianism.

Conversely, negative liberty represents a different, perhaps safer, understanding of the concept of liberty. Its proponents (such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of liberty and so were (and are) less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the manner of the philosophical harbingers of modern totalitarianism.

[...]

Berlin's essay "Historical Inevitability" (1954) focused on a controversy in the philosophy of history. In Berlin's words, the choice is whether one believes that "the lives of entire peoples and societies have been decisively influenced by exceptional individuals" or, conversely, that whatever happens occurs as a result of impersonal forces oblivious to human intentions.

[...]

Berlin's writings on the Enlightenment and its critics – for whom Berlin used the term "the Counter-Enlightenment" – and particularly Romanticism, contributed to his advocacy of an ethical theory now usually termed value pluralism. For Berlin, values are creations of mankind, rather than products of nature waiting to be discovered, though he also argued that the nature of mankind is such that certain values – for example, the importance of individual liberty – will hold true across cultures, which is part of what he meant when he called his position "objective pluralism". With his account of value pluralism, he proposed the view that moral values may be equally, or rather incommensurably, valid and yet incompatible, and may therefore come into conflict with one another in a way that admits of no resolution without reference to particular contexts of decision. When values clash, it may not be that one is more important than the other. Keeping a promise may conflict with the pursuit of truth; liberty may clash with social justice. Moral conflicts are "an intrinsic, irremovable element in human life". "These collisions of values are of the essence of what they are and what we are."

[...]

"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is the title of an essay by Isaiah Berlin, regarding the Russian author Leo Tolstoy's theory of history.

The title is a reference to a fragment attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: πόλλ' οἶδ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"). In Erasmus Rotterdamus's Adagia from 1500, the expression is recorded as Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum.)

Berlin expands upon this idea to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Plato, Lucretius, Dante, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust) and foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Herodotus, Aristotle, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce, Anderson).

Turning to Tolstoy, Berlin contends that at first glance, Tolstoy escapes definition into one of these two groups. He postulates, rather, that while Tolstoy's talents are those of a fox, his beliefs are that one ought to be a hedgehog, and thus Tolstoy's own voluminous assessments of his own work are misleading. Berlin goes on to use this idea of Tolstoy as a basis for an analysis of the theory of history that Tolstoy presents in his novel War and Peace.

Some quotes:

“There exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision... and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory... The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes.”

“Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.”

“The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.”

“Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.”

“Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.”

“The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.”

“All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.”

“Ideally, what we are calling for is a relationship of good neighbors, but given the number of bigoted terrorist chauvinists on both sides, this is impracticable. The solution must lie somewhat along the lines of reluctant toleration.”

"All central beliefs on human matters spring from a personal predicament."

"Those, no doubt, are in some way fortunate who have brought themselves, or have been brought by others, to obey some ultimate principle before the bar of which all problems can be brought. Single-minded monists, ruthless fanatics, men possessed by an all-embracing coherent vision do not know the doubts and agonies of those who cannot wholly blind themselves to reality."

"The notion that there must exist final objective answers to normative questions, truths that can be demonstrated or directly intuited, that it is in principle possible to discover a harmonious pattern in which all values are reconciled, and that it is towards this unique goal that we must make; that we can uncover some single central principle that shapes this vision, a principle which, once found, will govern our lives – this ancient and almost universal belief, on which so much traditional thought and action and philosophical doctrine rests, seems to me invalid, and at times to have led (and still to lead) to absurdities in theory and barbarous consequences in practice."

"Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience."

"It may be that the ideal of freedom to choose ends without claiming eternal validity for them, and the pluralism of values connected with this, is only the late fruit of our declining capitalist civilisation: an ideal which remote ages and primitive societies have not recognised, and one which posterity will regard with curiosity, even sympathy, but little comprehension. This may be so; but no sceptical conclusions seem to me to follow. Principles are not less sacred because their duration cannot be guaranteed. Indeed, the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past. ‘To realise the relative validity of one’s convictions’, said an admirable writer of our time, ‘and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian.’ To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow such a need to determine one’s practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity."

"Cosmopolitanism is the shedding of all that makes one most human, most oneself. "

"It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right: have a magical eye which sees the truth: & that others cannot be right if they disagree."

"[T]hose who know there is only one true answer to all questions and have metaphysical a priori guarantees of it are always wrong and often dangerous."

"Happy are those who live under a discipline which they accept without question, who freely obey the orders of leaders, spiritual or temporal, whose word is fully accepted as unbreakable law; or those who have, by their own methods, arrived at clear and unshakeable convictions about what to do and what to be that brook no possible doubt. I can only say that those who rest on such comfortable beds of dogma are victims of forms of self-induced myopia, blinkers that may make for contentment, but not for understanding of what it is to be human. "

"[Y]ou must realise that if you use violent methods the result will almost invariably be totally different from what you intend. Why? Because too much is unknown – not because you are wrong. The abuses are abuses, the tyranny is a tyranny, it should be stopped, it can be stopped; but if the measures are too violent – that’s to say, if you believe in the possibility of a total or even three-quarters transformation of society by organised means, if need be by violence – you will find that you’ve heaved up forces of whose existence you were probably not aware, which will in some way frustrate your designs and produce something maybe better than there was before, but not what you wanted. "

"Rousseau is the greatest militant lowbrow of history, a kind of guttersnipe of genius."

Yep, Rousseau was the father of the nonsensical "romanticism" and egalitarianism of the French Revolution and therefore of socialism, communism and modern "liberalism."

Related post: The difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. (Ever since I wrote that last July, it has been the most read of all my posts.)

Death of an invisible hero

My favorite tenant died yesterday. Bob was only 68, six years older than me. Last Wednesday he phoned me and said he was in the local hospital. He had been feeling sick that morning and had driven himself to the ER. I told him that I would come see him the next day but, by that time, he had deteriorated and had been transferred to a bigger hospital in Eugene, over a hundred miles away.

When Bob first moved into the trailer park some years ago, he told me some of his story. He'd been in the army for 30 years and had an ex-wife and kids from whom he was estranged. He had been born and raised in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and had married young before joining the army and later volunteering for service in Vietnam but he seldom talked about himself or his family.

Over the years I grew to trust him enough to give him the keys to my office and pay him to do the mail distribution on the days I was not there. He was respected and liked by all the other tenants most of whom hate each other. Unlike them, Bob was a complete gentleman.

On Monday the cops phoned me and asked if I knew who his next of kin was as he was not expected to live much longer. I told them that he was estranged from his family. Somehow they managed to contact one of Bob's distant cousins and yesterday the cousin turned up at the park to tell me that Bob had died.

I learned something more about Bob from his cousin. His family were moonshiners and Bob was expected to join the family business. He married and fathered a couple of kids but hated the life. When he enlisted in the army his family disowned him. He volunteered to go to Vietnam where he flew a medivac helicopter from 1963 until the end of the war.

Spring snow

You can't see the peaks of the Coastal Range (which are called the Umpqua mountains in our neck of the woods) from the farm because we are on the western slopes of the foothills near the ocean. But yesterday, when I drove down to the trailer park, I saw them from the highway. They were covered in snow. We've had snow flurries on and off this past week but none of it has stuck here at the coast because the daily highs have risen into the high 30s and low 40s.

I know you all think I'm nuts when I say that our Spring starts in the first week of February. And yes, our Springs can be cold and we can have snow as late as April but it really is Spring for nature and critters. Not only has the sap started rising and swelling the buds in the fruit trees; not only have the acacias exploded with blooms and not only have the treefrogs started singing but the hens have started laying again - with a vengeance. They know it's Spring.

I've posted this graph many times to show what I mean. The sun is farthest north on December 21st (mid-winter) and then it starts heading south again. Spring begins February 6th and mid-spring is March 21st etc etc etc.















And here's the snow on the Coastal Range.

The ongoing debate - secular conservatives vs religious conservatives

Today one of my blogger buddies, Andrew, left this comment on my post about Tony Perkins:

Hey Pat, been reading but not commenting lately because I wanted to try and understand before I responded to your recent, shall we say, disagreement with social conservatives. Yeah, Tony Perkin's comments are pretty disgusting, and, in my view naive. But I worry that by spending so much time complaining about these extremists, you risk further inflaming intra-party relations-and pushing Perkins out of the party may not be so bad, but think of those he may take with him!

As a "blowhard" who agrees with you more than disagrees and a libertarian first and conservative second, I humbly offer my commentary on your commentary.

If I have made any severe errors in my understanding of your beliefs, I apologize, and will promptly correct them, but mainly I just want to be reassured that we can all still get along-its the only shot the Republican party has got. I'm personally very happy with the Michael Steele pick, but he seems to me just as much an intellectual purist as any "blowhard" or "RINO" or anything else (and I'm going to stick with your old blog name because I never really cared about the "connotations" but the content.)

Here're a few snippets (but please read the rest) from Andrew's post, Sigh-Trying really hard not to be offended:

I’m really trying to convince myself that Born Again Redneck’s recent vitriol against the religious right doesn’t apply to me. I’m not super religious, and I personally am more concerned with economic issues than social ones. But I consider myself to as “far right” as one can possibly be without being some kind of theo-anarchist. And then there’s this"

“I’m not sure if pure secular/libertarian fiscal and defense conservatism can ever win over the youngsters; unfortunately they seem to want nanny state socialism. But I definitely know that they don’t want any preachy nosy-parker busy-body politicians telling them what they can and cannot do. If you haven’t realized that then a) you don’t have any adult children as I do or b) you’re living in some sort of moralistic Victorian cocoon.”

[...]

Sorry, Pat, but I am a youngster and yes, I don’t want people telling me how to live, but that is not what social conservatism (real social conservatism) is about, and I really hope you understand that. It’s not about religion, either, as I have said before.

[...]

Make no mistake, there are RINOs, and by letting them speak for all of us we risk surrendering to liberalism on every issue-we should respect them, and applaud the things they do which we agree with, but also remind everyone of where they go wrong. And, incidentally, Pat, you aren’t one. You may call me a blowhard if you wish-I might even be one. But I think we both know that neither of us wants to alienate the other-we share more common beliefs than differences (that’s why I linked you) and also more in common with one another than extremists on either end.

So starting with us, what’s say we each extend the hand of friendship to prevent our “factions” from splitting apart?

I responded:

Andrew, I read your post.

I've spent the last 5 years, since I started my blog, defending the religious right because I know that they are my best allies but the last election has shown me that they really are in denial about the demographic changes that have occurred.

I admit I have applied a rather broad brush recently but that's because it's new territory for me. I'm thinking out loud and that entails making mistakes. My views will moderate as I start thinking about things quietly when the dust settles.

I will definitely follow up on this discussion in the future. The point of my introducing the topic was not to be divisive but to stimulate discussion among us. You don't get civil disagreements too much on the Left but we on the Right do know how to debate which is exactly why we still have all the freshest ideas.

I won't go into detail now because it is late at night but I do want to say up front that most of what I have written about the "social conservatives" and "religious right" does not apply to those who read my blog regularly. But it definitely does apply to quite a few conservative bloggers, including some on my "Reciprocal Links" blogroll many of whom were first attracted to my blog by the "born again" moniker - which is why I finally got rid of it.

For instance here's an email that I got yesterday:

It's time for Christians to take back this country from the secular progressive movement (pro-gay “rights”, pro-abortion, anti-religious freedoms, etc) and return to Biblical truths.

[...]

If you’ll add us to your blogroll we’ll gladly add you to ours.

It goes on and on about how America is damned. I won't mention the blog. No doubt this person believes that the earth was created 5,000 years ago and that dinosaurs still roam the earth. (They do. He's a dinosaur.) Hopefully he doesn't believe that the sun revolves around the earth but I would not be surprised.

Read some of these religious bloggers and tell me if they are not in denial about the demographic changes - not to mention science. Listen to some of the radio talk show blowhards and tell me that they don't want to turn back the clock to an imaginary perfect Golden Age of Ozzie and Harriet. Even I have been a blowhard right here on this blog many times and even I would like to turn the clock back to that time and live in Mayberry once again but it's not going to happen.

Why do you think I posted all that stuff about Burke, the father of modern conservatism? It's because he showed how traditionalists adapt to change - just the way we have to now.

PS I originally raised this topic not in order to create divisiveness in the GOP or drive the religious right out of it - not that I could do that. It was because I'm convinced that the conservative religious message is not what will win votes today considering the new demographics. I would simply like to see us return to Reagan's pro-America anti-Left message and stop using Karl Rove's wedge issues.

Bertie Wooster RIP

Bertie Wooster the rooster is dead. I murdered him by mistake yesterday. That's him in my photo in the sidebar.

Bertie was quite a character. He was our first rooster. We then got another rooster, Cecil Rhodes, a Rhode Island Red. We had to keep them in separate quarters each with their own harem of hens because Cecil was a killer thug, as most Rhode Island Red roosters are. Soon after we got Cecil, Bertie somehow managed to get into Cecil's harem and was nearly killed by Cecil. We brought Bertie into the house and spent two weeks nursing him back to life.

Cecil then began to attack Chas and Andy and one day killed one of his own hens. I condemned him to death, executed him and roasted him. Unfortunately Cecil was a tough old bird and ended up as dog food.

Bertie then had all the hens to himself and the following Spring fathered 23 cockerels and 16 pullets. 20 of the cockerels were "processed" into food and I gave one of them to a neighbor who needed a rooster. The remaining two cockerels grew up to be beautiful roosters, even bigger than their father, and they suffered from an Oedipus complex and were constantly trying to assassinate Bertie.

The next two Springs we decided to limit the amount of eggs that the hens were allowed to hatch but several of the hens turned out to be compulsive mothers (just like the octuplets' mom) and hid nests of eggs in the forest. So each Spring, the stealth moms would suddenly turn up with a batch of babies. We "processed" all but two of the cockerels which we spared because they were so pretty, with black and white instead of red feathers like Bertie. Last year one of the hens arrived in the barnyard one morning with octuplets. Five of them were cockerels which obviously had to be "processed."

None of Bertie's male offspring turned out to be as brave as their father. Bertie was the only rooster who would rush to the defense of the hens when they were attacked by chicken-hawks and one day a chicken-hawk grabbed Bertie in its talons and was just about to kill him when Chas intervened and saved Bertie. We also had to save Bertie from being assassinated by his own own Oedipal sons and grandsons several times. Poor old Bertie began to look very bedraggled as they had plucked out so many of his feathers.

Now, Bertie was a pain in the gizzard. He would attack us whenever we went anywhere near his hens. The standard method for stopping Bertie from tearing up our legs with his mighty spurs was to give him a swift kick. I once kicked him and he landed in the duck-pond and nearly drowned. We saved him again and started thinking he had nine lives. Well, Bertie finally ran out of lives yesterday.

I was in the barnyard feeding the chickens when Bertie attacked me as usual and I kicked him as usual but a freak accident occurred. Bertie ricocheted off the side of a wall and ended up head first in a planter box. His Oedipal grandsons immediately sensed his vulnerability and began to attack him while he was upside-down in the planter box but he managed to right himself and flap out of the box. That was when I realized that his neck was broken as it was hanging sideways.

By now blood and feathers were flying everywhere as his Oedipal grandsons went in for the kill. I felt so sorry for the old man that I picked him up and wrang his neck. But, boy, did he put up a fight. Eventually I had to swing him around like a propeller to snap his neck and put him out of his misery.

That's when I realized than Bertie was mere skin and bones. His drumsticks were like match-sticks and his breast was shrunken to the bone. Later Chas told me that the other roosters had been preventing Bertie from eating for weeks. Because Bertie was so meatless and because he was so old and tough, it was not worth "processing" him. So, I dug a grave under the cottonwood tree and gave him dignified burial.

Blowhards vs RINOs

I have had to mention twice now that I was being sarcastic when I used the term RINO to describe both myself and Michael Steele. Of course neither Steele nor I are RINOs. I don't even believe in the term. It's one of those cheap and easy weasel-words.

The problem with the written word is that it needs context. I assume (wrongly of course as all assumptions tend to be) that anyone who has read this blog long enough knows when I'm being ironical, sarcastic or satirical - which is often. However blogging has changed the rules of writing. Everythings is instantaneous. Total strangers stumble in and read stuff out of context. Maybe I should use emotikons but that kind of defeats the purpose of irony, sarcasm or satire. The only solution seems to be to be long-winded, repetitive and risk becoming boring. So here goes once again.

RINO is one of those words that the blowhards, like Malkin, use all the time. I don't like the term not only because its stupid (union-sympathizer Lincoln would nowadays be called a RINO as would Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Ford and I've even seen some conservatives call Bush Sr a RINO) but because it is totally counter-productive. It's a divisive term. What good is divisiveness going to achieve? We need every Republican (liberal, moderate and conservative) if we want to continue to have any relevance.

RINO is one of those terms invented by the "all or nothing" crowd; the "I want my way and I want it now" folks. Sorry, that's not how politcs works. How many times have you heard the blowhards, like Rush, saying things like this? Whenever a Republican politician compromises somewhat, he'll say: "We're not meant to co-operate with Democrats. They are our enemies and we are meant to defeat them."

Excuse me but they are not our enemies. They are fellow Americans no matter how much we disagree with them. Of course we are meant to defeat them IN ELECTIONS but, once they're in Congress, they can only achieve their goals incrementally. It's a two-party democracy not a one-party dictatorship. The practical realities of Congress demand a lot of give and take. Of course none of the blowhards have ever run for office let alone worked with 700 other people to keep the ball rolling.

I know some people need the blowhards. They keep them fired up and inspired. I however have never needed anyone to inspire me, lead me, coax me or cajole me. I'm self-motivated so I really don't need the blowhards and I believe that they are a two-edged sword. Sure they can motivate those who are not able to inspire themselves but they can be divisive as their term RINO and their litmus tests for ideological purity show only too clearly.

So let them bloviate but serious adults will always take them with a large pinch of salt. They can spout their abstract ideological theories all they like but they are not going to help us win elections. They haven't got a clue about the nitty-gritty of politics in the real world.

RINOs

Six years ago, before I left San Francisco, I used to think Limbaugh, Malkin, Coulter etc were cool. That's because I lived right in the belly of the leftist beast. I started this blog a year after I left San Fran and moved back to the USA and, at that time, I was still in a reactionary mode which is why I called this blog "Born Again Redneck." That was meant as a spit in the eye of the leftist elites. I so loathed the left that I could have called this blog "Just Another Right-wing Blowhard Blogger."

I still loathe the left but something has happened to me since moving back to the USA: I've seen that the world seems to be divided into blowhards and adults. The adults realize that we cannot all agree and they agree to disagree in a civilized manner. The blowhards - well, just listen to the right-wing radio shows or read the right-wing bloggers and you'll soon find out...

I used the term RINO to describe myself and Steele sarcastically because that is what the blowhards call anyone who does not pass their litmus test. Maybe it's because I lived in a one party city, San Fran, for so long but I'm allergic to being told how and what to think; to toe the party line. It's not only me who has changed. I think the conservative purists have too. They've become even more preachy, dogmatic and rigid. And I'm not only talking about the religious right. Right-wing secular libertarians (especially the atheist, Objectivist, Randians) have also become more pompous and authoritarian.

Maybe they haven't really changed at all. Maybe it's just that, since moving back to the USA, where most adults get along fine and don't boss each other around all the time, I've just grown up and mellowed. This is why I have lately started calling myself a moderate. Politics is not my religion. It's simply politics and I don't expect ideological purity from anyone.