CULTURE – Page 4 – Ramparts of Civilization

January 7, 2017January 8, 2017

A Good Bye to Good Morning

Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly – “Singing in the Rain” 1952

2017 is upon us, and it will be a year of some momentously momentous moments requiring serious introspection that will likely fill the Ramparts blog with much of interest to the defenders of civilization. For those of you who like that sort of thing, stay tuned – we love you checking in. Ramparts can not say goodbye to 2016, however, without a brief and wistful homage to the memory of Debbie Reynolds, who passed away a mere day after her own daughter Carrie Fischer died of the sequelae of a cardiac arrest.

Ms. Reynolds death was not the tragic part, nor its proximity to her daughter’s death – certainly sad, but not tragedy. Debbie Reynolds lived a long, eventful and fulfilling life, and though any passing is sad, it is not the pinnacle reason for homage. It is with Debbie Reynolds passing that a particularly glorious form of American culture, the golden age of the movie musical, passes into memory as well. Debbie Reynolds, at the very initiation of her adult life, managed somehow to find herself participating in a central role on what has become one of the enduring classics of the American Musical, 1952’s “Singing in the Rain”. The stars that connected us to the great American Songbook through song and dance, in a larger than life projection on the movie screen from 1930 to 1960 – Astaire, Kelly, O’Connor, Sinatra, Crosby, Mary Martin, and …briefly, Debbie Reynolds- are now all gone. The very unique cinematic expression of American can do spirit, essential goodness, vitality and optimism that these musicals projected, is seemingly old and jaded to our modern society. Debbie Reynolds was perhaps the last living link to that different America, that looked up on the silver screen, saw themselves, and felt nothing but good vibes.

Singing in the Rain sits at the pinnacle of the American musical not because of a brilliant story line, perfect lyrics, original songs, or magical acting. It was actually a story laid upon a series of songs by composer Arthur Freed that had seen performance in other musicals. The basic plot was a Hollywood inside joke. With the advent of talkies in Hollywood, it was discovered, not every star actor or actress – could talk. At least not in a compelling way that made those watching believe in the illusion projected on the screen. Gary Lockwood, played by Gene Kelly, is a silent movie star, who realizes that the time of long stares into the screen are over, and he will have to change, or say good bye to his career. He is unfortunately saddled with his silent screen leading lady, Lina Lamont, played by Jean Hagan, who as it turns out, has the voice of a parakeet crossed with a New York cabbie. The audience that loves Lockwood and Lamont are not going to buy anyone being romantic on the screen with the dialogue sounding like an argument at a fish market. And so, as you might imagine in typical Hollywood fashion, Gene Kelly is rescued from the brink of star disaster from a complete unknown everygirl, played by 19 year old Debbie Reynolds.

It turns out 19 year old Debbie Reynolds was exactly who she played, a very young effervescent all American spirit who came from absolutely nowhere to hold her own with two of the greatest dancer showman in history, Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly. She was real live nobody, with a story you couldn’t make up, if you tried to make it up. She was born and raised in El Paso Texas into the poorest of circumstances, to a ditch digger father and a mother who did other people’s laundry to make ends meet. Poor but decent and virtuous, straight out of Horatio Alger, Debbie moved with her family to try their luck in paradise – California. She was fortuitously plucked out of obscurity in a local beauty contest when she, still in high school, won the title of Ms. Burbank, and was “discovered” by talent scouts from Warner Brothers and MGM, who were looking for an everyday girl who might be able to emote that special American perkiness. No kidding. That’s really how it happened.

A year and a half later, she was selected by the MGM studio to bring that “perky” American can do spirit to the screen and was positioned to work with Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly, two huge stars and professional dancer/performers. The problem was Debbie Reynolds, all of 19 years old, was not trained to sing or dance. Gene Kelly, a workaholic perfectionist, one of cinema’s biggest stars having performed in Pal Joey, On the Town, and his oscar winning performance in American in Paris, was not amused. He was the director of the movie and not at all comfortable with the studio forcing this young girl with no training onto his movie set, much less plunking her in the lead role. He was very severe toward her, and looked to break her down and get her to leave. But that wouldn’t be a very good end to our story, would it? It turns out that a more sympathetic soul, Fred Astaire, who remembered people had been harsh to him when he started, saw something in Debbie Reynolds and helped her learn the complicated routines, persuading Kelly to give her a second chance. And with that, a better Hollywood ending to our story.

The trained up 19 year old Debbie Reynolds – not the most beautiful or graceful girl in movies- but with a special, unique, and magical ‘perky American’ screen presence that made those talent scouts look like geniuses — helped Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly pull off maybe the best 4 minutes in cinematic musical history. Singing in the Rain will always be remembered for Gene Kelly’s magnetic solo performance on the streets performing the title number in a downpour, but the central ensemble brilliance of the American musical is encapsulated in Debbie Reynolds star turn with the two men in “Good Morning”.

Debbie Reynolds was a star of stars thereafter, but like so many who found early perfection, never quite did anything so wonderful and so perfect, again. Then again, the American movie musical, though it didn’t know it at the time, was coming into its waning moments, under the audiences’ inevitable turn toward the smaller screen of television for its entertainment.

Debbie Reynolds’s death closes the book on a long ago time, but the composition of her American story, from humble roots to the heights of personal accomplishment, based on her on energy, willingness to work, and concentration and confidence on her individual talents to see her through the difficult times, is a story we could certainly benefit from today. Good Bye Debbie Reynolds. Thanks for reminding us, we can do great things when we believe in ourselves and don’t dwell on our circumstances. Maybe our Good Morning may yet be in our future, if we remember how just good it can feel — to live out a dream.

December 11, 2016

The Season of Anticipation

Advent calendars are special things. The season of Advent is a season of anticipation of what is to come, with signs and events that suggest, the mysterious, far flung, but ultimately inevitable occurrence of something majestic and wonderful. The calendar counts out, with the simple act of opening of each day’s window, the building sense of expectation and celebration that in the Christian tradition was brought to flesh in the moment of the Christ’s nativity. Something majestic, something wonderful.

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them; fear not. for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which will be to all people

for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” the gospel of St.Luke 2:8-11

With each passing day, hints of a better world. We are living in the season of Advent now, and after what seems like years in the wilderness, we are beginning to see ourselves in a new light. Following a protracted era of prostration, self absorption, and apology for our humanness, there seems to be momentum towards a new found truth. Not that the world is perfect, or should be perfect, but that its acknowledged imperfections is an order of truth that brings some hope for a better world. We are no longer viewing ourselves as problems, but bringing the problems themselves into the light of truth, and a potential road to solution.

The truths can be painful when first illuminated. But just as Newton’s laws of physics imply an equal and opposite reaction for every action, so do I painful truths hold the kernels of salvation. Helping oneself first positions others to be able to be helpful. The world can be harsh and unjust, but there is the overwhelming call to love and justice that is core of our humanity. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, but evil only exists as a stimulant for good people to rise together and stamp out its existence.

With each passing day it seems the world is opening the windows to the truth again, being willing to say things that need to be said, to set the table to do things that need to be done. Thought leaders are being to debate the means for solutions for problems, not apologizing for problems. Recognizing the human dignity that comes with having a purpose in life. Seeing the progress that comes with coalescing behind a challenge, rather than exploiting divisions. Improving the real world, rather than holding all accountable for a world that doesn’t exist. With each window on the calendar, more insight, more clues, more anticipation of the opening of the next window.

At the end of the advent calendar, all the disparate events that led up to the final window come to fruition, and joy becomes total. And yet, there is always the recognition, that the work does not end in the realization of a dream, but only the continued hard work perpetually required in defeating the forces of chaos that seek to deinnervate the miracle.

“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” Isaiah 53:3

There are glimmers of hope among the sorrows. We need to hold our heads up, open each window, and bravely see through to the other side.

Enjoy this season of Advent. Good things are coming.

November 26, 2016November 27, 2016

The Individual vs the Collective

The Revolutionary Icon of the Collective – Fidel Castro 1959

Fidel Castro, the scourge of the United States and the people of Cuba for nearly sixty years left the stage of history last night at age 90. The response of the world was predictable. Those that saw him as a romantic revolutionary figure who “stood up” to the oligarchs and brought “equality” to Cuba eulogized him as a unique and transformative leader. Those that saw him as a dictator who sought singular power and nearly brought the world to nuclear war, saw his death as overdue and good riddance. For the Cubans who had suffered under his oppressive rule and managed to escape his grasp the emotions were more direct and less philosophical – it was spontaneous celebration in the streets of Miami’s Little Havana.

The twentieth century was full of despots whose propagandistic manipulation of mass media brought them impressive cover for their dark and vicious suppression of those who might obstruct their total control. The slaughter of innocents and opponents was often sublimated by a press enthralled with the trappings of revolutionary rhetoric. The New York Times, consumed with the energy and zeal of rallies they observed in Germany, on November 22. 1922 reported on an emerging radical named Adolph Hitler :

“Several reliable, well informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism is not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.”

The use of mass rallies, uniforms, poster art, and movies to express the enthusiasm of the collective, caught left leaning investigative reporters into reporting the narrative, rather than totality of the cost of such collective impulses upon individuals. The violence and enforced directives regardless of the human toll were looked upon as a necessary side product of any desired collective societal change to overcome the obstruction of the “less enlightened”. The Berkeley Daily Gazette January 1, 1931, caught in the glow of Stalin’s ruthless but, in their mind, necessary transformation of Russia into a Soviet State, reported:

“The Soviet Union can look upon a year of enormous achievements in the direction of industrial expansion and collectivization. Translated into human terms, it means that the economic ways for the 160,000,000 were fundamentally changed. At the same time it was a year of costly sacrifices, sharpened internal conflict, food shortages, and political pressure.”

Fidel Castro had learned all the appropriate lessons of the tyrants before him. Socialism, to succeed in attaining complete power, must always have a youthful, revolutionary, and collective face that implies an inspirational and idealistic message of equality that will mask the reality of stolen freedom and failed collective economic production. He rode into Havana in 1959 a uniformed revolutionary, armed to defend the revolution, and never took his uniform costume off in public for decades. Parades and armies followed, patterned after the “citizen” brigades of the the French Revolution’s Jacobins and later the Directive, exporting Cuba’s revolutionary zealotry eventually into Latin America and southern Africa. Offspring like Sandinista Brigades of Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega and the beret wearing soldier for socialism Venezuelan Hugo Chavez attempted to export the Castro melding of militarism for the cause and distracting pageantry with some propagandistic success but similar economic destruction.

For all these despots, the literal truth for their people of economic collapse and massive oppression of individual freedoms in the name of collectivist victories of so called “universal” healthcare and education. The result each and every time was the accumulation of massive quantities of wealth in the hands of a very few, and the economic calamity to the masses, hidden behind a ruthless “protection” of the revolution behind a military and secret police domination. The socialist heroes Castro and Chavez became billionaires, their generals millionaires, living in exclusive enclaves, while their people struggled for existence. In each case, “liberal” celebrities jockeyed to have their picture taken with the dictators, to connect with the “juice” of revolution and laud the “equality”, only to retreat to their own mansions and private planes supported by their own success in their own “unjust” society.

And always, the crushing of individual incentive, personal liberties and freedoms, the destruction of families, the starvation of the culture beneath the artificial global message of “social justice”. Despite the clamp down by left leaning media sublimating objectivity for the “truth” as they wanted to believe present, the real truth always managed to bleed out. In Castro’s case, it was the non-stop incredibly dangerous whatever the odds exodus of his people across the Florida Straits to the beacon of individual freedom they perceived the United States to be.

Cubans flee Castro's Cuba across the Florida Straits — Cubans flee Castro’s Cuba across the Florida Straits

The collectivists will always be enthralled with those who are willing to be ruthless for the “greater good”. Socialism hates the individual, who keeps getting in the way of the equality of the greater good, sold in propagandistic and pseudo-religious overtones, such as ‘global warming’ and ‘social justice’. Individual expression is a dangerous weapon for “other”, that exists to reinforce the inequality of innovation, creativity, and success that are seen as non-progressive.

The finality of death is unfortunately often the only weapon to remove these dictators from the money and idolatry that supports their nonsensical economics and totalitarian hold on their people.Mortality offers the one universal weapon of the oppressed that sometimes gives them the crack of weakness necessary to overthrow the rickety dictatorial structures of the overlords and restore a nation’s humanity.As so often in the past, there is nothing about these dictator’s staying on history’s stage way past their welcome that is worth celebrating in the least.

The President elect put it most succinctly for all of humanity that has suffered under the Castros of the world. Fidel Castro is dead!

If only we could believe the collective oppression that has stood in the way of humanity for the past 110 years might be on the way across the River Styx with Fidel. Good riddance indeed.

Postscript: To understand what Castro and his ilk created in Cuba, read City Journal reporter Michael Totten’s “The Last Communist City”. Its worth your time to the last word.

October 23, 2016

Ophelia’s Flowers

Ophelia John Everett Millais 1851-2 — Ophelia
John Everett Millais
1851-2

In a large rectangular room in the Tate Britain Museum, a modestly sized painting draws the eye among all others. A beautiful young woman floats in a stream surrounded by a dense, fecund growth, drifting silently down a quiet stream, surrounded by flowers of florid color and variety. But this is not a scene of serenity. A pall lights her features, her eyes see nothing but madness and impending death. Her hands are held in a pose of complete surrender, grasping but not feeling a bouquet of violets, nettles and daisies, which cascade into a floating pool of withered stems on her shimmering waterlogged gown. She is Ophelia, Hamlet’s scorned love, driven to madness and suicide by the dark Prince of Denmark. And Ophelia is the signature painting of John Everett Millais, that announced the arrival of a brotherhood of British artists known as the Pre-Raphaelites, heralding a full blown romantic movement in 19th century art.

In 1848, a group of young artists determined to shake the art world through a conviction that art had become statuary, overblown, and disconnected from the natural aesthetic of the world of creation. The group of seven – John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, Frederick Stephens, Thomas Woolner, and James Collinson – declared their disdain for the accumulated artifice of contemporary art, and harkened back to a time prior to the revolution of art propelled by Raphael and his acolytes. For inspiration, they left the subject matter of fawning portraiture of royalty and idolatry, and defined a list they referred to as the “Immortals,” a disparate list of historical figures such as Jesus and King Arthur, diverse literary scions such as Shakespeare, Browning, Poe and Shelley. They set four basic rules for the Brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelite. 1) To have genuine ideas to express 2) To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them 3) To hold sympathy with what was direct, serious and heartfelt in art prior to the Raphaelite school and, most importantly, 4) produce throughly good and beautiful paintings and statues. The sentinel evocation was Millais’ masterpiece of Ophelia, and the art world was stunned and even disturbed with what they saw. Prior romanticism was held privately between the pages of a book. Ophelia pulled the viewer into a world of intense feelings of pathos, pity, the world of mental derangement, and an intimate voyeurism that left many uncomfortable. In the age of Victoria, the public acknowledgement of baser human feelings and passions were not a socially acceptable norm. The popularity of what propelled from the seven artists suggests however, that the contemporary norms veiled a simmering intensity that had found a vehicle for expression.

The pre-Raphaelites formally cooperated only until 1854, then broke apart into various art directions. The intense romanticism of the paintings inspired a whole school of art and literature focused on the simple aesthetic of beauty as found in both human form and nature. In literature, the Aesthetic Movement emulated the artistic strokes through writers such as Oscar Wilde and stylized through physical crafts such as furniture and pottery, the so called “art for art’s sake” of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The painters Rossetti and Waterhouse expanded the art form into overarching portraiture of idealized human beauty that bordered on sensual in a time of contracted public emotional expressions. John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs extends the flower symbolism into the realm of the human sensual, with the pure water lily painted along side nymphs that symmetrically reflect the lily’s youthful beauty and purity,. They are colorized by the artist as a reflection of the lily in human form, peerlessly white skin, languid lines, but with a hint of danger as they, like the lily, float above a dark murk and intend a dangerous attraction for Hylas, who is mesmerized by their ethereal beauty. The flower allegory pulls the intense power of nature and its primordial instincts through the painting that prevent it from becoming a vehicle that could suggest leering without the balance.

Hylas and the Nymphs John William Waterhouse — Hylas and the Nymphs
John William Waterhouse

The focus on beauty as an artistic expression pushed into the twentieth century but became mired in excess and repetition that left the world ready for the bound away from realism through the light show of Impressionism and inevitably the distortion and evocativeness of the genius that was Picasso. Beauty, like flowers in bloom , appropriately is transient and comes against the harsh realities of life. Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet, presented an anti-hero to the world and evoked the pitiful fragility of beauty and innocence through the brief but unstable vision of Ophelia. John Everett Millais achieved the core of Shakespeare’s expression through his alliteration on canvas of Ophelia in a stirringly poetic and faithful representation of the tragedy of Ophelia, so masterfully evoked by Shakespeare through Queen Gertrude’s beautiful eulogistic soliloquy:

There is a willow that grows askant the brook, that shows his (hoar) leaves in the glassy stream. There with fantastic garlands did she make Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepards call a grosser name, but our maids do “dead man fingers” call them. There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clam’ring to hang, an envious silver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the sleeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid like awhile they bore her up, which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, as on incapable of her own distress. Or like a creature native and endued unto that element. But long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.

There is a willow that grows askant the brook, that shows his leaves in the glassy stream. There with fantastic garlands did she make. John Everett Millais captured the moment for us all to glory in, the majesty and beauty of life, so fragile and so capable of madness and sorrow that comprise humanity.

One can see Ophelia and the many other masterpieces of the Pre-Raphaelites at the Tate Britain Museum.

September 11, 2016

15 Years

September 11, 2011 abcnews.go.com — September 11, 2001
abcnews.go.com

We are 15 years removed from one of those seminal events in history when a shared recollection is seared into our consciousness for all time. The shock of the first impact on the North tower on one of the most serenely beautiful September mornings. The confusion as to how such an accident could happen, only to be followed shortly later by subsequent second strike to the South tower, with the agonizing realization of the premeditation. Then a brutal morning of accelerating chaos and death. A third plane strikes the Pentagon in Washington DC. The immolated south tower of the World Trade Center collapses. A hijacked fourth plane headed to destroy the nation’s capitol is driven to the ground by brave passengers in a field in Pennsylvania. The North tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

It has been 102 minutes since the onset. Thousands are dead. The nation is paralyzed. Air traffic is grounded. The President of the most powerful country in the history of the world, is sequestered in Armageddon mode.

Fifteen years has not been long enough to remove fully the memory of the raw emotions of helplessness as one watched in real time the unfolding horror. The confusion, the fear of potentially more events, and the slowly building outrage that over the next weeks fused the nation’s will to act are equally memorable.

The great sacrifices of that morning, the indescribable courage, and the subsequent responses are known more intensely and personally to the families of those directly involved. The passenger brigade that selflessly chose communal suicide to stop the terrorists who planned to use Flight 93 for further horrible destruction. The police and firemen who went into the burning towers to rescue as many as they could before the sequential collapse took many of their own lives. The pilots of unarmed fighter jets preparing to take down through impact any plane that remained in the air as a potential terrorist weapon against Americans.

All are remembered as the indications of the national character. What is less remembered because it does not fit for some the political narrative for some is the performance of the nation’s government to identify the ringleaders and hunt them down, eliminate the terror cells at their source in Afghanistan, and most impressively, for eight years prevent any further terror events on the nation’s soil.

The great coming together through national calamity has been clouded over the distance of fifteen years by a progressive sense of detachment, despite multiple events of recent revealing the ongoing and very real present danger that has percolated from the death cults of radical Islam. We are somehow anesthetized to the concept of struggle and what is at stake. We accept “events” as workplace violence or mental illness, when the perpetrators clearly announce their motivations. We stand in long security lines to travel, to attend public events, losing our own freedoms to pretend to protect us against ourselves, when the evil is before for all to see. We have been hacked, Snowdened, even bullied by our own government to reveal our most personal information as a side effect of the death cult piggybacking itself upon modern technology. Most devastatingly, we have begun to reject actual history for made up narratives that impugn the leaders who responded that day, and the decisions that led to enormous sacrifice of treasure and our nation’s finest people in conflicts borne from the violence.

In New York City this morning, at a remembrance ceremony, two candidates desiring to lead this nation through future challenges, two candidates who are commissioned to help this great nation stay the course in a sea of danger and threat, were present to attempt to suggest they were up to the job. Two old, tired, and reactionary candidates. One could not even get through the entire event without having to be helped from the public stage. Our full history is not yet written from the calamity of 09/11/2001, and the reality of sclerotic leaders must make America look to her enemies as a very vulnerable and wounded prey.
Fifteen years is a long time, but in the tides of history an eye-blink. We must try to hold on through our time of inwardness and sclerosis to remember what it is that they hate about us, and what is at stake. Ideas that are eternal, and eternally young. Freedom. Liberty. Opportunity. Civility. Justice.

A world that remembers such things, and treasures such things, will ultimately triumph. No death cult can long weather the illumination of ideals of such innate human power. We shall be strong.

August 7, 2016August 7, 2016

The Dog Days of August

The blessed gift of summer, warm, long days and star filled nights, with the nature’s bounty in full bloom, is brief but treasured paradise for every midwesterner. August then arrives, and the buildup of heat begins to linger, with more muggy humidity and flying bugs, more substantial thunderstorms, and the first hint of the etherial nature of warm pleasantries in a northern clime. These are the dog days, and even the dogs know it. The energy lags. The baseball team is going nowhere. The world is skittish about the number of unhinged people with grievances looking for a violent moment in the sun. The political scene is an unadulterated mess. The Olympics are sliding into the politically correct abyss. Maybe its best to just curl up in a ball, and sleep it off.

Historian Andrew Roberts in the UK Telegraph reminds us August, named for the most dominant of Roman Caesars, has been notorious for being the month of great upheaval. The calamity known as World War I was triggered in August 2014 when massive mobilizations across Europe triggered the inevitable initiation of direct conflict between million man armies. World War II was seared to a close in the dropping of the two atomic bombs on August 6th, and August 9th 1945 in a fitting close to the Armageddon of World War II, launched on August 31st, 1939 by the Nazi dictator who fondly dreamed about Gotterdammerung. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein decided August 2nd 1990, was an appropriate time to attempt to take over a third of the world’s oil with an invasion of Kuwait and in all probability the Arab Gulf States, until the United States and its allies determined to upset his fantasy of untold wealth and power over the next 6 months. Caesar Augustus would likely have been offended that the violent month would be associated with the man who brought the world Pax Romana. Not so much the violent part, just the fact that leaders were unable to instill the iron discipline that prevented upstarts from starting conflagrations threatening the order of things.

The world is drifting into muggy somnolence this August. Polls have suggested a waning interest, particularly among youth, for the engagement, hard work, and need for compromise, that sustains democratic rule. Despite the abysmal records of socialist top down governments, there is a growing comfort with the idea of a “strong” leader to go above the heads of legislatures where nasty differences in opinion have to be worked out, and have the efficiencies of decisions that are determined to be in our “best interest”. The United States, with almost a perfect process of checks and balances to prevent the development of a supreme leader, finds that its current President has used extra-legal means to secure his agenda, and nothing is done about it. To secure a treaty with the arch enemy Iranian mullahs, Obama made an agreement that didn’t require Senate approval as demanded in the Constitution, and flaunted the laws placed to prevent paying ransom for hostages, making Americans everywhere at risk for the long arm of terrorists. So much for the checks and balances. Its current candidates for the executive office, Hillary Clinton, the felonious sieve of our nation’s security, continues in a pattern typical for her entire public life, to lie and deceive with the intent to exhaust ear, and eventually the rectitude of the voter. The water canon Donald Trump, spews out conflicted concepts unburdened by circumspect thought, suggesting only The Donald is capable of solving an infinity of national problems. Not with solutions, mind you, simply the power of extra-constitutional will. Sounds pretty “strong man” to me. The two party system that propelled these two anti-democratic poseurs has made a shambles of the idea of principled democracy. It will not be enough to simply roll up in a ball. We are going to need a significant shower to wash off the rhetorical dung.

Out there exists more of the same. A disconnected populous takes selfies to record their own existence, not their society’s accomplishment. People carelessly give up their unique identity more and more to nefarious software parasites that steal identity like they used to steal jewels, destroying the trust in the marketplace, the concept of citizenry, and the power of the vote. Athletic contests are tainted with doping and men are running as women to defeat women running as women, to alter artificially the concept of competition, and more fundamentally the idea of envisioning the accomplishment of an outcome based on the concept of effort, dedication, and equal opportunity. Judges seek to actively overrule laws that offend their political senses, not their training, regarding the process of law and the importance of rule of law in a democracy. The somnolence extends to the “governmentalizing” of health care, where life prolonging decisions will be made on politically correct behaviors, not by practitioners and patients objectively dealing in a private way with disease and mortality.

Oh, the dog days. Its hard to look at them as anything other than something to be tolerated rather than overcome. A nice secure place to roll up in a ball and sleep it off seems to definitely have its merits. Of course, at some point, we are going to have to wake up, stretch, look around, and get to work and start fixing this mess.

Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

July 10, 2016

The Rule of Law on the Endangered List

When the Constitutional Convention met between May and September 1787, the delegates hoped to codify substantial improvements in the previously governing Articles of Confederation that would create a national consensus of governance. The weaker Articles had led to poor decision making and conflict resolution structure, and lack of vision and resources to face the future. A carefully debated and perfected set of checks and balances were devised to provide limitations to the power of centralized government, so recently faced at great peril and barely overcome with so much blood and treasure. The delegates wanted to make sure the aristocratic impulses that are promulgated in the coalescence of power were blocked by a division of capabilities. The Legislature elected by the People would propose laws of the land and secure their passage, and provide the means for their investment. The Executive would use his office to faithfully execute those laws. The Judiciary would adjudicate and secure that both the intent of the laws and their execution would be consistent with delineated and limited capabilities of government specified in the Constitution. Balanced between democracy and forbearance, the document known as the Constitution of the United States was a miracle of its time, and of all time.

The classical liberals of the time of the revolution were, however, not satisfied with the extent of the document to protect the hard won liberties for individuals that had been the causal impulse of the revolution itself. In order to secure the passage of the Constitution by the states required for its entry as the new government of the land, amendments codifying the Unalienable Rights of individual citizens were insisted upon as a price for constitutional support. The passage of ten amendments to the Constitution ratified by the states in 1791, collectively known as the Bill of Rights when passed through the newly formed House of Representatives, secured the rights of the people to liberty,freedom of expression, assembly and worship, self defense, due process and equal protection under the law, and to the states any rights and duties not reserved specifically for the national government.

And there the two pillars of the concept of law have stood since the beginning of the nation, buffeted and strained by events, the bizarre duality of the existence of slavery in a land where all men were created equal and the expunging of that stain by the calamity of civil war, the dangers of unfettered capitalism creating oligarchies, the risk to republican concepts in the dark days of depression, and the existential risks created by world war. Through all, the incredible strength provided by such documents prevented the dissolution of the country, and the unrivaled opportunity for all who came to her shores. Here was a land where the entitled and the indigent, the strong and the weak, the native and the immigrant, the old and the newly born all could assure themselves of their codified protection and rights secured in a rule of law and equal justice that resisted the emotions of the time.

Now we are at a time of similar danger to the concept of the rule of law, but unlike other times, the number of people who understand what is at stake appear to be a rapidly diminishing herd. The nation that used to see as its cornerstone, the education of its youth and newly arrived immigrants in the study of civics, setting this country uniquely among others, now faces an utter ignorance from its own citizens and an arrogant disdain from its governing officials that puts rule of law on the endangered list.

The past weeks, with overt abominations, equivalences, and violent, deadly altercations suggest potentially fatal wounds to the country’s psyche and institutional confidence.

Though the examples are diverse, the threat to the rule of law as the honest arbiter of conflicts and eliminator of corruption is the underlying meme. Exhibit number one is the email security scandal of the former Secretary of State of the United States. The Congress, in order to protect the people of the United States against enemies of the country gaining access to information that put the nation or individuals at risk, passed laws to guard against such damage being done, either willfully or through deceit or negligence. The rule of law secures both the protections of the people and uniform compliance of the law for all that would come under it:

Title 18 Section 793 (F) of the US Code of Law :Chapter 37 Espionage and Censorship (f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

The clarity of the language is not oblique as to the responsibilities of any individual entrusted with such information, from the lowliest clerk at the Pentagon to the President of the United States. Equality under the law secures both the rights and responsibilities that guarantee both the freedoms and potential penalties prescribed by law are independent of a person’s station in life. Without such guarantees, the nation is helpless against the corrupting influence of the powerful to set one standard for themselves, and one for all others. President Nixon was not impeached for ordering a break in or even creating the incitement for it. He was positioned for impeachment for using the tools of government to obstruct the achievement of equal justice under the law, and the Constitutional principles he had sworn to protect. Secretary of State Clinton took a similar oath of office to faithfully execute the laws of the land and the duties of her office. She had reached the cabinet position after a lifetime of interactions with the concept of law and its role in society. She was a lawyer who had in fact participated on the house Judiciary Committee Congressional Council staff that was charged with investigating President Nixon’s possible crimes, was the lawyerly wife of a President Clinton who was himself impeached for perjuring himself under oath, and had been a Senator involved in committees that vetted sensitive information. Such intimate association with ethics stained events and forty years of law had certainly prepared her for the importance of understanding the rule of law and the role it plays in securing the rights for all in society.

Positioned at one of the most powerful and most sensitive positions in government, and having lived a lifetime of intimate interactions with those who had run afoul of their sworn responsibilities, there was probably no one individual in the entire government who should have been more aware of the importance of fealty to the law. It is therefore a travesty of justice, when the implication was made this week that although her actions regarding maintaining a private unsecured server for all her governmental communications outside of accepted security was clearly from her specific direction, the exposure of multiple secrets and sensitive information represented only “careless” activity, not the gross negligence specified in the law as felonious.

The FBI investigation into Clinton’s server insanity identified lies and actions that would have prevented any other individual from receiving any job in the federal government, most companies, and given the realities of the damage done, an indictment and likely trial for crimes against the United States.

She lied when she said she did not send or receive any classified emails. She lied when she said she turned over all pertinent work related emails. She knowingly routed sensitive and secret government information through a private server she knowingly set up against all policy, servers that did not have, as expressed by the director of the FBI, even the simplest level of security to hackers offered by G-Mail. She lied when she stated her E-mails were reviewed by her team of personal lawyers to assure all pertinent information be turned over to the investigating authorities and brazenly ordered the scrubbing of any potential evidence of her servers to guarantee no one could ever gain access to the actual undoctored information.

When the extent of the negligence is so appalling, and the evidence of willful intent to manipulate both evidence and the appropriate investigation of her actions so clear, how is it possible that the Director of the FBI could make the ludicrous statement that no “reasonable” prosecutor would find reason for indictment? It is because we are becoming comfortable with the idea that people who represent our views are to be forgiven their infidelities, regardless of the damage it does to objective justice and the protection of rights through the rule of law. The FBI Director was more concerned that the determination of guilt be adjudicated by an election, not a court of law. Doing so, he flouted the role that the legislature plays in determining our laws, the executive plays in faithfully executing those laws, and the judiciary’s role in securing justice for all, regardless of position of influence. This careful system of checks and balances assures the objective removal of corrupt processes, before they can do damage to the principles that secure the country as a functioning republic. He brought to risk all individuals responsibility for being faithful to, and respecting law. He provided precedence that laws are contextual only, and that our highest officials may provide their own interpretations, different from those the commoner must face.

It was such context and arrogance toward law that led the nobles of England to secure from King John the delineated principles of the Magna Carta in 1215, assuring that the rule of law be common to the rulers and their subjects. Hillary Clinton has led a life that at almost every turn suggested the rules of society are for the little people, and our establishment has grown impotent to do anything about the single minded destruction she brings to our most basic principles. From flaunting the privacy considerations of the Watergate committee in order to insert her political views into the investigation, colluding to hide documents from investigators from her revealing her billing actions with the Rose Law Firm, assuring the destruction of Whitewater fellow investors in order to protect her involvement with savings and loan shenanigans, and devastating attacks upon the character of women who were harmed by her husband, Clinton has used her position of power to protect and enrich herself at the expense of any who unfortunately touched upon her sordid moral compass. It has been a lifetime built on the altar of lies, amorality, and personal gain. Now the FBI Director, to avoid being accused of denying her what unfettered democracy may yet provide her, ultimate power, has stained himself and a lifetime of work serving justice, joining the many others who have been thrown under the Clinton bus.

A society that would put her in such an ultimate position of power has a dead soul, and the hard won miracle of a classless society based on equality under the law, collaterally damaged perhaps beyond recognition. Our choice this fall is the fool’s bargain.

July 3, 2016

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee…

The most disconcerting realization for elites that had assumed the outcome in the Brexit vote to be inevitable and a ringing confirmation of the globalist view of the modern world, was the fervor of such a large segment of the British public to the quant notion of country. The idea that people would be willing to risk the security of being part of a supranational economic superpower for vague notions of freedom and self determination based on cultural roots, seemed absurd on its face. After all, the modern world had done all it could to blur cultural distinctions, remove historical uniqueness, and equalize outcomes for all. What possible residual value could be discerned for the concept of country to any modern person other than a few “bitter clingers”?

It turns out that the concept of history and country has not yet died the pauper’s death. As the Fourth of July approaches for America, the Brexit push back against subordination to a world determined by others, has brought a little renewed shine to a holiday that celebrates the epitome of “just say No”. A country is still an ideal as well as a geography, as much as the elites have attempted to eliminate the education of the cultural codes that bind us, and differentiate us.

On July 4th, 1776, a declaration of independence was announced by thirteen former colonies of Great Britain, forming spontaneously a country of United States of America. The geography and people had not changed; the cultural roots were determined to be sufficiently unique to require the untethering of two similar cultures destinies, by force if necessary. The declaration stated the ideals of nationhood that required this devolvement:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

On July 3rd, 1863, two great armies met upon an open field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, sharing the same hereditary and cultural roots, but variant concepts of country. Both saw themselves as representing freedom and self determination, but both felt the need to express themselves as to country to the point of self sacrifice for the larger concept. To the confederate, country required an acceptance of an individual’s rights to commerce and property, and a state’s representation of the circumstances of society without an overbearing federal enforcing power determining their destiny without their consent. The Unionist saw secession as an unlawful rebuke to the shared sacrifices of the original union and an attempt to distort the ideal that all men are created equal and protected under constitutional law that bound them together. Both were willing to travel hundreds miles from their home, and if necessary, die upon an arbitrary field of battle, to defend their concept of country. For one brief moment, all notions of country fell to General Lewis Armistead’s 57th Virginia Infantry who clashed against Winfield Hancock’s Second Corps 69th and 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry at the Angle. Having driven as part of Pickett’s Charge across a deathly blizzard of artillery and musket fire by the mass of the Union army, Armistead’s men had managed through incredible courage and will to reach the angled stone wall, beyond which lay the vulnerable rear of the Union position and the probable destruction of the Union cause. In a moment of time, the Union line was briefly breached, but Confederate destiny was forever quieted by direct blows from the last of two residual Union canon, commanded by Wisconsin native Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing, and the Union line held. The breach led to Armistead’s and Cushing’s simultaneous death, in mutual sacrifice to the concept of country in which they held no particular personal advantage in either outcome. Armistead died a hero to a lost cause. Cushing, sustaining an extremity injury, kept his battery firing through the torrent. He received a second injury to his abdomen and groin, but refused to leave the field of battle, and propped up by fellow soldiers ordered his battery to continue to fire into the maelstrom until a third bullet silenced him through the mouth and out his head killing him instantly. Cushing received his country’s belated recognition 151 years later, when he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions, on November 6,2014.

On July 4th, 1976, 100 Israeli commandos reminded the world that the concept of country, and the importance and willingness to defend a cultural identity, transcended geography. An Air France Jet with 248 passengers and 12 crew, traveling from Tel Aviv to Paris, was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists after leaving a stopover in Athens, flown to Benghazi, then Entebbe, Uganda, where they were welcomed into hostage status by the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. The real purpose of the hijacking, the Israeli Jews on board, became apparent when the hijackers separated the jewish passengers, and allowed the other passengers to leave. The brave Air France crew determined to stay with the residual hostages despite the obvious dire risks. With additional guards provided by the Amin’s military, the hostages were threatened with death unless a list of terrorists in Israeli and other jails were immediately released. Four years after the death of Israeli hostages at the Munich Olympics, the ominous destiny of the hostages was only too clear to the Israeli government. But what could possibly be done when hostages were being held under Ugandan military protection, 2200 miles from Israel? On July 4th, 1976, the bicentennial of the American expression of the rights of man and country, the world awoke to the incredible news that an Israeli commando team had traveled the 2200 miles, eliminated the reaction capacity of the Ugandan military, killed the terrorists, extricated safely all but four of the hostages, and returned safely to Israel. The amazing raid on Entebbe has taken special historical poignancy as the only special forces commando killed in the raid was its commanding officer, Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had shown the world that citizens of its country were the nonnegotiable reflections of its very existence, and the country would defend to the death regardless of risk or difficulty, threats to its citizenry, no less than the land itself.

On July 4th, 2016, we will celebrate this country’s 240th anniversary of its independence. Of no small coincidence to the Captain of the Ramparts of Civilization, this July 4th will also celebrate the sixth anniversary of this little blog, dedicated to the defense of those ramparts. In our own humble way, the willingness through the power of free expression to stand up for the great concepts that define the western ideal is a small but distinct contribution to those who through the years have accomplished so much more through their genius and sacrifice. To all the worldwide defenders of the Ramparts, from the distant past to the most recent Brexiters, we salute you. To Ramparts of Civilization, Happy Birthday. To the United States of America, Happy Independence Day. To this great country and the ideals it represents, many many more bountiful and freedom filled years…

My country, tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers die
Land of the pilgrims pride
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring.

June 26, 2016June 29, 2016

Sunrise After Brexit

Sunrise attrib Wikipedia Commons — Sunrise
*attrib Wikipedia Commons*

The morning after the Brexit vote, one imagines Britons awakening with a similar sense of bewilderment, and a diametrically opposed sense of outcome. Those who voted Leave, woke up with a tentative sense of blissful relief, as if a migrainous pressure behind their eyes had been lifted with the rising sun, and they could safely view the rays for the first time in a long time without averting their sight. The Remainers awoke also bewildered, but adjusting to a massive hangover painfully focusing the reality of a resultant wakeup from a decades long bender. Both likely thought, “What just happened?”. What just happened will take some time to sort out, but the makings of something very significant for people in Britain, and beyond, has clearly and irreversibly occurred.

The outcome of the momentous vote in Great Britain on June 23rd to leave formal membership in the European Union spared no one’s worldview. In the stunning bullseye of the outcome stood the Prime Minister of Great Britain himself, David Cameron. Completely misinterpreting his constituents fundamental concerns with an ever more encompassing elitist need to control their lives, Cameron felt he could use fear tactics regarding a world after Leave without elitists’ guarantees of stability for all would be enough to impel the great undereducated to support an establishment who would look after them. He was so wrong, that it appears his political mandate so recently secured in the parliamentary elections of 2015, has been scuttled. He has announced his intent to resign. The British people spoke in 2015, and thus they spoke again. Like most leaders who, upon retaining power, assume it is all about them, Cameron found out that both his comprehensive victory in 2015 and his crashing defeat in 2016, were decidedly not about him. Likewise, the American President Obama, who likes to declare in profound elitist egocentrism every time an opposing opinion to his worldview gains traction, “This is not the America we want,” discovered that the people of Great Britain didn’t find his preening intervention in the issue helpful in the least. It turns out British citizens wanted to let Obama know, “This is not the Britain we want.”

What has transpired I suspect, is a very natural human reaction to excess. When the Industrial Revolution brought for the first time a means by which individuals could achieve the position of kings without a hereditary portfolio and in the interval of a single lifetime, the benefits were profound, but so were the excesses. As wealth spilled out from the exclusive domain of royalty and clergy, millions of people attained the benefits of a meaningful life filled with both security and bounty. Lives progressively became less the fight for survival then the search for personal worth and meaning. The elites were progressively shunted aside to directional forces determined by the proletariat and burgeoning middle class. Transportation became universal. Food became plentiful. A life now stable became increasingly worthwhile to maintain one’s health. All good things. However, the darker impulses were also apparent. The individualism left other important communal outcomes wanting. The environment sustained critical damage. Morality became a relic, with diminished roles for family, increasing pleasure absorption, and an increasingly bitter sense of being left out, once the reality of opportunities for success was progressively available to all. The most aggressively destructive forces in the twentieth century were not led by the elites, but rather the out of control proletariat that coopted nations into tools of domination. Common men led the most egregious – the journalist Mussolini Fascist Italy, the failed painter Hitler Germany, the would be priest Stalin, the pseudo intellectual Mao. Worse than their own perverted sense of progress was their willingness and ability to draw millions like them into armies of mass destruction.

The world that barely survived this excess turned to elitists to save them. Post war communal arrangements were designed to soften the worst traits of nearly destroyed world of the out of control individualism and national primitivism. The new meme of the elites was “globalism”. Individuals, and the nations they personified would subvert their baser tendencies to a global sharing through the guidance of elites. Companies in competition would consolidate into global corporations in sync with shared values. Nations in competition would align with others to redistribute resources, regulate excesses, and degenerate their uniqueness. Shared money, shared language shared aspirations, shared outcomes would remove the calamitous instincts of individuals to ‘get ahead’, and the world would forever grow beyond the need for violence, greed, and flag waving that got us into all this trouble in the first place. The new wars would be against other – climate, division, asymmetry, and sexuality. Sure there would be some unbalanced aspects. Elites would preserve their world and flourish. The rest would see the benefits of the elites beneficence – just like in the olden times.

The Elites – the Harvard trained Obama and the Eton and Oxford prepared Cameron – could not comprehend that the average individual might want to bring some meaning to their lives by living their lives differently. The Elites had extended their altruism to the point where they demanded to provide solutions for aspects of life where there were no identified problems to solve. Brexit was not so much a negation of all that came before but a democratic break to the undemocratic impulses of those who would determine that the future is a settled science of vast bureacracies, infinite regulations, removal of moral constraints, and destruction of free will and individual opportunity.

The morning sunrise after Brexit brings the faintly uncomfortable sense of a world less predictable. As Groucho Marx cogently once said, he would be uncomfortable belonging to any club that would have him as a member. As a result of Brexit, older forces may have to be monitored for and deftly dealt with. Germany’s natural inclination to dominate the continent and to gaze toward the East. Great Britain’s tenuous hold on its own unified sovereignity with such a close but divergent opinion as to the best course for its future. America’s isolationist tendencies and longing for a simplier world when it could self gaze safely behind a moat of surrounding oceans.

The better option is likely a form of compromise that preserves the best of what both elites and proliterians have to offer, without allowing the worst characteristics of each to see a world better off without each doing its part. Thanks to a bunch of conflicted but resolute Britons who trusted themselves, the world has a chance again to take a breath, and breathe the beautiful air of freedom. This particular sunrise, for those of us who still man the Ramparts of Civilization, is one moment worthy of the sentiments of Rule Britainnia :

The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
“Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
“Britons never will be slaves.”

June 19, 2016

Newspeak

The horrendous event of the past weekend in Orlando deserves a special capability of expression that is beyond my ability. Murder, as always, senseless and evil, in the instantaneous elimination of innocents whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, to be unwitting participant actors in some twisted individual’s immorality play. We are living through example after example of a particular kind of hate, that hates us for what we are, our willingness to express the truth about our selves, our need to be individuals. It is a malign virus that continues to infect, because we struggle to understand its etiology, and refuse to initiate and follow through on the means of its eradication. In the simple clarity brought by the battle for survival when facing devastating infection, we will either eliminate it, or it will eliminate us. It is our choice, and our burden.

Unfortunately, what is following as we distance ourselves from this event, as has been our want for some time, is our willingness to allow the subversion of free thought and free speech by those in authority to bend the truth to their predestined conclusions. George Orwell, the nom de plume of English essayist and novelist Eric Blair, achieved his greatest fame sadly at the very end of his life, in creating a literary dystopian world in 1984. His masterpiece best described the potential epilogue of the very real dangers Elliot saw in the world he lived in, from the clashes of idealism and gross manipulation of the Spanish civil war, the show trials of Stalinist Russia, to the calamity of Fascism and the destruction of truth it created. Orwell was one of those unique individuals who lived in the transitional zone between the world of oppression and the means of oppressors, and still was able to recognize the tools required to defeat both. The primary tool to defeat oppression, that of free expression, he presciently saw under dangerous assault, and battled his rapidly deteriorating health to give us the ability to discern through the novel the dystopian future we needed to be on guard against.

Orwell brought special clarity to the tools of authoritarian control and its need to rewrite and subvert history to fit the authority’s ever changing narrative, destroy truth, and reduce expression that does not fit the excepted narrative. Orwell’s everyman anti-hero Winston Smith, works at the Ministry or Truth, whose job is to constantly to constantly rewrite previous history, so that it fits with current thought. The weapon of destruction is Orwell’s Newspeak:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we will make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. ” George Orwell 1984

Our current process is to effect our narrative by making thought expressions a crime, a thoughtcrime, thereby distorting the truth. For our current story, it is the unwillingness to identify radical Islam, to avoid saying it and therefore avoid recognizing its existence. If it is not said, it does not exist, and its elimination is unnecessary. Clarity of understanding of last weekend’s slaughter, requires recognizing the truth, as it did with the slaughter at San Bernardino, the slaughter in Belgium, the slaughter in Paris, and the innumerable clarifying events before. Instead we focus our narrative on the gun as apparently an active participant, willing an otherwise conflicted individual with undefined motives to kill for the sake of killing and applying the opportunity the gun provides. We block our minds to the true linking theme to each horrible event, the nihilist philosophy that this unique religion underwrites, and do not connect our events to the pressure cooker bomb of Boston, the throwing of bound homosexuals off buildings in Syria, the burning alive of Yasidi women who refuse to be raped slaves in Iraq, and the stabbing of Israelis in Jerusalem. The weapon is immaterial, the truth is the philosophy of dominance and death. The authorities seek through doublethink to criminalize those who obey the law and wish to defend themselves, decriminalize those who break the law but are seen as a protected class, and ostracize those who are willing to speak openly. The narrative replaces truth, the ‘science’ becomes settled, and the willingness to ignore objective facts that don’t fit the desired narrative ingrained. All refugees are deserving. All moralities are equal. All crimes are suffered upon a society that has created a state of victimhood, and therefore a narrative of justification to every appalling event, large and small.

Orwell saw his world becoming progressively immune to great horrors, acceptant of an ‘arc’ of history that makes sacrifice of individuals an unpleasant but accepted consequence of those unwilling to accept the arc. Our society is progressively becoming an ugly reproduction of Orwell’s vision, and the sacrifice of our freedoms on the altar of accepted correctness of thought a very real impediment to actually solving any of our societal ills, much less defending ourselves against the unwavering malignity of our sworn civilizational enemies.

If you need a reminder of how close to Orwell’s dystopia we are evolving and the extent to which our civilization’s values are cratering, look not to our leaders like Obama who will not speak the truth. Look to how our society has educated those into Newspeak on our campuses, the sources of our future leaders. Watch the recent event at Yale University below in its entirety, and understand that the thoughtcrime committed by a dormitory leader was that he made the mistake of defending the right of individuals to self express and wear Halloween costumes on campus. Watch it to the end, and realize we are close to the world of Oceania.