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Saturday, February 12, 2005from The Garden of ProserpineAlgernon Charles Swinburne From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. 
posted by gbarto at 10:37 PM Friday, February 11, 2005Instantman notes the departure of Eason Jordan from CNN.It's a shame that it's come to this. It's also a shame that Dan Rather went down, instead of confessing he blew it and moving forward. But part of being in the journalism game is being credible, and both these guys had serious problems in the credibility department. But, then again, the real shame is that every time the press gangs up on the military, our people's mission is made that much harder and more dangerous, and yet, until a few weeks ago, journalists labeling our guys as the really murderous thugs were given applause, not raspberries.
posted by gbarto at 11:14 PM Hearts-Ease Walter Savage Landor There is a flower I wish to wear, But not until first worne by you... Hearts-ease... of all Earth's flowers most rare; Bring it; and bring enough for two.
posted by gbarto at 12:19 AM Our poetry here seems to be a bit death focused. But what can you do? The great Romantic poets were all weary of life, and especially of a world that failed to hail them as the almighty geniuses they felt they were. Tonight's was another Thomas Lovell Beddoes poem, Beddoes being one of the stranger poets of the period but also one of the most interesting. Verse wise. I know nothing about the man otherwise, but he's popped up three or four times now in my selections here. Cicero took note of last night's entry, Tithonus, by the mighty Tennyson, and gave a short summary. Here's another summation, though, that I ran across tonight: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever. - Miss Alabama 1994Sounds like she's been taking lessons from Pangloss. Cicero also has your vocabulary word for the day, adelphopoiesis. Better look it up. There'll be a quiz tomorrow.
posted by gbarto at 12:08 AM Thursday, February 10, 2005from DirgeThomas Lovell Beddoes We do lie beneath the grass In the moonlight, in the shade Of the yew-tree. They that pass Hear us not. We are afraid They would envy our delight, In our graves by glow-worm night. Come follow us, and smile as we; We sail to the rocks in the ancient waves, Where the snow falls, by thousands into the sea, And the drowned and the shipwrecked have happy graves.
posted by gbarto at 11:48 PM There's a nice Friedman column today on the need for Democrats to grow up and figure out how to govern in the world we live in, not just whine about Bush. He makes this point, which ought resonate with Democrats: Here's the truth: There is no single action we could undertake anywhere in the world to reduce the threat of terrorism that would have a bigger impact today than a decent outcome in Iraq. It is that important. And precisely because it is so important, it should not be left to Donald Rumsfeld.I came across this bit at Instapundit. However, when I read the column in the West Coast edition this morning, that last sentence read: And precisely because it's so important, it should not be left to this administration.I wonder why they changed it. Read the column, by the way. It's pretty good stuff, whichever version the NYT (Sorry, Lying Bastard Sheet) is posting at the moment.
posted by gbarto at 6:35 PM Wednesday, February 09, 2005from TithonusAlfred, Lord Tennyson I asked thee, “Give me immortality.” Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile, Like wealthy men who care not how they give. But thy strong Hours indignant worked their wills, And beat me down and marred and wasted me, And though they could not end me, left me maimed To dwell in presence of immortal youth, And all I was ashes. Can thy love, Thy beauty, make amends, though even now, Close over us, the silver star, thy guide, Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears, To hear me? Let me go; take back thy gift. Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men, Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
posted by gbarto at 11:22 PM Good question Notes LGF, the radical anti-war left has certainly taken a turn for the worse with its anything-against-Bush mentality: The radical left’s position on nuclear weapons has evolved over the years from unilateral disarmament/nobody should have nukes to who are we to tell Iran they can’t have nukes?Indeed. Of course, since their ultimate goal is to "contain" the U.S., it would make perfect sense to arm Iran even as we reduced our weapons stores. And why not? After those people we got killed in the WTC we need containing. That is the storyline, right?
posted by gbarto at 11:06 PM There's a proud uncle at Vodkapundit. (Not Stephen. He's proud of the puppy.)
posted by gbarto at 6:13 PM Tuesday, February 08, 2005Be sure to stay tuned to Kaus for all the latest on CNN exec Eason Jordan's accusing U.S. troops of murdering journalists and the MSM's failure to cover it seriously. Shades of the Swift Boats story here - if it hinders, not advances, the mindset of the NYT, it's not newsworthy.The usual suspects like Instapundit have also been covering this nicely (you can find 'em all on the left bar), but Kaus has grabbed the most important angle of the story, which is not what Jordan said but how little curiosity media commentators, starting with Howie Kurtz, have shown for finding out. We knew that Jordan was an airhead already. We didn't know how willing his supposed competitors would be to give him a pass. Forget about ownership, the media has been consolidated by mindset for at least thirty or forty years.
posted by gbarto at 11:37 PM from Death's Jest-Book: Song by Isbrand Thomas Lovell Beddoes Squats on a toad-stool under a tree A bodiless childfull of life in the gloom, Crying with frog-voice, 'What shall I be? Poor unborn ghost, for my mother killed me Scarcely alive in her wicked womb. What shall I be, shall I creep to the egg That's cracking asunder by Nile, And with eighteen toes, And snuff-taking nose, Make an Egyptian crocodile?'
posted by gbarto at 11:36 PM Monday, February 07, 2005CrossLangston Hughes My old man's a white old man And my old mother's black. If ever I cursed my white old man I take my curses back. If ever I cursed my black old mother And wished she were in hell, I'm sorry for that evil wish And now I wish her well My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder were I'm going to die, Being neither white nor black?
posted by gbarto at 10:36 PM Beware Professors Sending Forwards Thanks to Instantman, I've gotten a chance to find out that David Corn is not, in fact, a Bush mole. Whew! I'd been laying awake nights worrying about this one. Actually, it's an interesting picture of how the loony left works. A flake who thinks that Corn's CIA - and that Alan Greenspan tried to poison a buddy of his - asserted that Corn is a Bush mole in the progressive movement. Nobody gave a damn till an NYU prof sent it to his mailing list, though. If Corn is a Bush plant, he's a good one. But how'd he know to become a left-wing flake so many years before anybody had even heard of W? Actually, Corn is a fairly reputable leftist crank, slightly off-center from reality but aware it's there. This distinguishes him from an out and out flake, but hardly makes him a Bush mole. The real scandal here, though, is not the libel on Corn. It's that people like Mark Crispin Miller are allowed to trade on their degrees and university affiliations to push sludge like this. We on the right don't have a problem here. If we read that a professor from NYU had something to say, we put it in the same pile as the handwritten sheet the homeless guy gave us about invading Martians. However, on the left they take academics seriously, so in that sense, Corn got burned. But so did everybody on the prof's mailing list who thought that tenure equalled intelligence. The second thought that occurs to me in all this is that Mark Crispin Miller is more likely a Bush mole than David Corn. After all, though David is near sane, he doesn't miss a chance to throw a punch at Bush if he thinks it will stick. Because he dismisses the men in tinfoil hats, however, he comes off as sane for a progressive. If I were Karl Rove, I'd be delighted to get an NYU prof slamming Corn and undermining his credibility. But getting a few nice words from Corn? Is that really going to fire up the red-state base? I think not. Bottom line: If a professor sends you a political e-mail, read carefully. If it's too far to the left, it's probably just a Rove plant dragging the left further to the left and isolating it from the mainstream a little more.
posted by gbarto at 1:02 PM Sunday, February 06, 2005The Red WheelbarrowWilliam Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens
posted by gbarto at 3:56 PM A Dog's Life was really unimpressed by the newest staging of The Magic Flute.
posted by gbarto at 3:54 PM Several days old, but still worth noting: Cicero took another run at the utility of democracy question, asking why we bother to vote, giving the unlikeliness that our vote will make the difference. It seems pertinent, given my post below on Iraqi democracy, so I'll restate what constitutional democracy is and isn't for. It isn't to give full voice to the people. It is to create a relatively stable structure in which natural or God-given rights can be protected. The particular appeal of democracy is not that the people can vote, nor that they have power. Its appeal is that it screws up all the old power equations enough that tyranny becomes very tricky to manage. The old bit about "some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time..." applies. Individuals may not shape society by voting, but the mass of men can make the pendulum swing hard and fast enough back and forth that those who would "lead" are given strong incentive not to rustle too many feathers. Which means that if you start out with a system with some fundamental rights enshrined, they're unlikely to erode. Furthermore, they're likely to expand as leaders seek to curry favor. Once expanded, it's tough to put the genie back in the bottle, so democracy, if sustained, becomes a tool for ensuring that people are given a framework in which to become who they truly are so long as they don't infringe this right among others in the process. (And lo, the major arguments in our society today, from gay marriage to abortion to greater aid to the poor center less on what we, as individuals, can or must do, but on how we want other people to be or act.) The value of an Iraqi democracy, likewise, would not be that it gave the mass of the people authority to rule Iraq, but that it would break down the sort of monolithic authority that has made it and other Middle East states such a mess, and turn submission to Allah into a matter of conscience in which the state has no business. All hail democracy, with its messiness, its inefficiencies and its tangles of competing interests. The value of a good constitutional democracy is not that it gives the people power, but that it keeps anyone and everyone from gaining the kind of power most any other system allows, which leaves greater room for individual freedom and growth.
posted by gbarto at 3:33 PM Sistani turns "insurgents" on heads! Iraq Shiite leaders demand Islam be the source of law (found at the mighty LGF) Apparently the demand is that Islam be the source of all legislation and the Koran the reference point for all laws. It's Sistani issuing the demand. The President said that newly free countries would have to find their own ways of doing things, compatible with their cultures and civil institutions. It looks like that will be the case in Iraq. Not surprising. The news is, of course, grounds for nervousness. But Sistani is a sharp player. And he has hinted in this direction all along. This is not a ripping off of the mask to reveal the theocrat beneath. Sistani has been a quasi-theocrat from the beginning and looks likely to remain one. And why not? It's where his power comes from. However, Sistani has not called for anyone - including himself - to be named Caliph. Has not called for abandonment of the democracy project in favor of a struggle to see which mullahs emerge on top. He has said that Islam and the Koran should be the basis for an Islamic democracy. We hear similar rumblings about Judeo-Christian values and the Bible over here, and though they usually get rejected on the surface, at a deeper level they hold. That is, after thousands of years, our literature, culture and philosophy are so permeated by the Judeo-Christian ethos that everything from Shakespeare to the Beatles is plugged in to it at one level or another. The Koran, like any religious text, is sufficiently convoluted and internally contradictory that there's a fair measure of decent ideas in there. In a healthy culture, the passages that seem to work get remembered; the ones that don't get glossed over. Just like only a handful of idiots still want to stone unruly children, even among those who think the teaching of evolution an abomination because God made the world in six days. Likewise, the hope for Iraq is that halfway decent people will look in all earnestness at a central text in their culture as a reference point to figure out who they are and what they believe in before drafting laws. This is, after all, exactly what our founding fathers did - even the atheists and agnostics among them knew the Bible and valued its lessons for the most part. Contrariwise, the French tried to build a new mankind, rejecting a core element of their history and culture and promising to start completely fresh. That didn't turn out so well. I bite my nails at the thought of a religious figure calling for the Koran to be the basis of law in Iraq, because, well, Iran is supposed to be an Islamic republic and I'd hate to see Iraq go the same way. On the other hand, our own founding documents indicate that the purpose of government, and specifically of our constitutional republic, is not to give voice to the will of the people, per se, but to create a sound mechanism for the protection of God-given rights. If the purpose of Iraq's democracy turns out to be to find a fairer, more just and more effective model for an Islamic society to keep its bearings, that ain't all bad. If, on the other hand, leading Iraqi voices were calling for a purely secular state, it would scare the bejeezus out of me. I've studied the French Revolutions. Plural. The French effort to eschew man as he was and try to make something for which the raw materials did not exist was a disaster. Telling long suppressed Shia that their glorious liberation meant they would no longer be troubled for being Shiite, but only for being Muslim, wouldn't fly. The Real Scoop In many ways, we are in an ideal place. Three weeks ago, Iraqi voters were to be murdered as Infidels. Now the leading religious voice in Iraq has identified the new, democratically-elected government as an instrument of Islam. Talk about a thumb in the eye for the Zawahiri (sp?) contingent. So long as the result of events is that the people decide how to implement an Islamic republic and who is going to do the implementing, I think we're okay. The more control they realize they have, the more the people will find and support candidates who help them become the kind of Muslims they want to be, not the kind the intimidators would like them to be. We are, disturbingly enough, on exactly the course the President has been setting. The Iraqi people were told that voting was un-Islamic. They voted. Not because they rejected Islam, but because they rejected that message. That was the very first act in the creation of an Islamic republic where the people decide what an Islamic republic is all about, not self-appointed authorities. In time, I believe, Bush's notion of universal aspirations kicks in. Islam, we're told, is a religion of submission. Right now, a prime feature of that is submission to earthly spokesman for Islam. Big deal. Christ called on us to submit to earthly authority too ("Render unto Ceasar..."). In time, we gave it up. Sistani carries weight. And why not? Religious figures are supposed to be transcendantal, and that attracts followers. But the followers are there by choice, not by force, and can leave the same way. Contrast this with the era when kings ruled Europe by divine right with the blessing of the pope. Iraq is in the modern era, if only in that when we call Sistani a kingmaker it's only figurative. Already, Iraqis have enough freedom of conscience to vote for who is going to make their Islamic republic. They can follow and ignore the religious figures of their choosing. The emergence of multiple authorities almost always leads to a breakdown of authority: Once there are enough authorities, people first shop around for a mullah to their tastes, then appoint one if none is to be found. Then another when that one fails to lead the way some want to be lead. This explains the existence of small towns with one gas station and six Baptist churches. It also explains how an Islamic republic can be the foundation for very good things. Islam is, of course, the religion of submission. Submission to God. When Mohammed lived, that meant submission to God's representative on earth. But they only made it through two or three caliphates before Islam split into Sunni and Shia branches, with murder allegations at the center of the split. There has not been a single, universally acknowledged leader of Islam for around 1300 years. Still, thanks to force of arms, culture and, finally, colonial kingmaking, a lot of large regions have had supreme religious authorities. As this breaks down, though, Islam becomes what it ought to be in the first place: submission to God alone. Mediated through individual conscience. And then you get yourself a place not unlike the good old U.S. of A. A place where a lot of people are firm believers, but in so many different things that the result is not, pace Frank Rich, a theocracy, but a government secular enough that all those people with all those different beliefs can coexist under it. In short (too late), Sistani's calls contain a bit of good news and a bit of bad news. The bad news is he may be setting things up for some short- to mid-term hassles, some potentially bloody. The good news, though, is that if it involves the popularly elected government, the stage is already set for the emergence of an individualized Islam that will lead to a religious people with secular governance. Exactly what the Middle East needs.
posted by gbarto at 1:34 PM  It's not the nipple, stupid...Mickey Kaus and Glenn Reyonolds are commenting on Nipplegate as we head into the next Super Bowl. I'm pretty much in agreement with Kaus, but thought I'd throw in my two cents worth. Red-State and Blue-State America are welcome to their own takes on this thing, but I was most interested in Timberlake's take. Not, mind you, anything he had to say afterward. His immediate take. We are told by some that this is a case of prudery, that simplistic bluenoses went overboard about a breast. Mickey says the problem is that men shouldn't go around ripping off women's clothes. What does Justin think? Look at the picture. Do you see a Dionysian celebrating the joys of sexual expression? I see a shoplifter mumbling, "Umm, I was going to pay for that..." to the store security guard. Forget about nipples. The most revealing sights from the Superbowl festivities were Jackson's rush to cover herself and the horror in Timberlake's eyes as he realized he had just made an ass of himself before an audience of millions. Sexual Revolution you say? Then why did the hedonistic Hollywood types get all shy when they remembered where they were? Sophisticates can mutter all they want about how we should be beyond this. If it were just about nipples, they may have something. But looking at Jackson and Timberlake tells us that even if the thing was stage-managed, in the world of appearances, he done wrong and she was violated. And that's not a healthy thing. Btw: Having actually lived in the belly of the beast of anti-prudery, France, I have my doubts about European sophistication. Yes, they show a lot more breasts. And yes, people are a lot more blasé about it. But that doesn't change the fact that every time a celeb is caught at a topless beach or does her first nude scene, the tabloids go ga-ga. And the blasé French buy them, just as surely as Americans dialed up the Jackson images on the internet. So long as there are men and there are women, sexual sophistication among humans will have its limits.
posted by gbarto at 1:07 PM |
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