Clipping blog |
- A Pair of Books on a Bleak America and, Perhaps, a Bright Future
- Music Video Goodness: “Layla” Done Dixieland-Style
- Yo’ Intellectual Elite is So Dumb…
| A Pair of Books on a Bleak America and, Perhaps, a Bright Future Posted: 03 Oct 2011 06:30 AM PDT
I'm going to start this month's column with a proposition that will probably seem odd considering this is a book review of sorts: Most political conservative books are junk. Go down to your local bookstore, assuming you still have one, and check out the political book section. Most of what you'll see from conservative writers you can boil down into two categories: 1) "Barack Obama is a Horrible Man", written by a pundit who is either established and wants to make a buck is or is up-and-coming and wants to establish their conservative creds for that eventual spot as a Fox News show guest; and 2) "How I'll Fix America", by a Republican politician who has managed to string together just enough talking points to pad out a 200-page book in the hopes it will land him a few free press appearances so he won't have to shell out quite so much for campaign commercials. Your choices run from pablum to polemic and back again. However, there are some real gems to be found, and I have two of them in front of me right now: Mark Steyn's After America: Get Ready for Armageddon The pair of books from Regnery Publishing are not, I warn you, for the faint of heart. Neither Steyn nor Hicks are out to make themselves look good for a television appearance nor are they running for office. They are not cheap hacks out to score an easy best-seller. They are skilled writers who have delved into the current cultural and political lay of the land and found hard truths. So here's your warning. If you're given to the sort of melancholy that drives you to black nail polish and Morrissey albums, you may not want to tackle both within a month of each other. However, if you can take the hard medicine that Steyn and Hicks serve up, tablespoon by unrelenting tablespoon, you will be better off than when you started. I decided to write about these books together because they tackle, at a different level, the very real malady that has struck our country. While Steyn's book diagnoses, in stark and unflinching detail, the cultural cancer that continues to eat away at the vitals of America, Hicks' book zeroes in on how the left spreads that cancer cell by cell. The premise of Steyn's book is simple: what has befallen Europe over the past several decades is happening to America right now. But unlike Europe, the world can not handle a Fallen America. There is no guarantor of freedom and enterprise to catch us should we fall, as we caught Britain when she fell so quickly into decline after World War II. The good news, woven cleverly through the threads of bad and worse news is that we have the advantage of history. We can see where Britain and France and Spain went awry. We know how Europe became home of the indolent and ungrateful. That knowledge can help us fight back the same problems we have here. We need not become a nation where people believe they are entitled to a never-ending series of handouts from a government that can ill-afford them because he shows us how that's working out in Germany and Greece. We should not take our belief in American Exceptionalism for granted because we know what happened when the British people stopped believing that they lived in the greatest nation in the world. Steyn's book is indeed a Jeremiad, but we can't forget that Jeremiah did not prophesy without a purpose. His message was not "Hope is lost and defeat is unavoidable" — that was Cassandra from the Greek myths — but "If you turn now, the pain will be temporary". That is the essence of After America. Like the Eloi of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, America has declined and Americans have become mewling, dependent, and passive. Our national spirit is weak. We have lost our way. Our culture is shot through with rot and the rot gets worse every day. There is a group of Americans who put their own selfish whims above the greatness of the nation and our best interests and they have a forty-year head start on us. However, the damage is not permanent. It can be reversed. What has been done can be undone. It is not too late.
But, like Steyn, Hicks also shows you how to push back against the stultifying propaganda. She shows you that there is hope, but only if we are willing to work at least as hard as the left has worked. Her message, also, is simple: we are falling, but we have not fallen. We can win back what we have lost if we use the values so despised by the left — entrepreneurship, confidence, independence — to fight now. I am very happy that these two books came out so closely to each other. They work very well together and will be among the very best books you'll read all year. If we are very fortunate, we'll get more work from skilled and fearless authors like Mark Steyn and Marybeth Hicks to counter the pap that fills the political book shelves all year. POSTSCRIPT: I did receive a free copy of each book. Only in the case of Hicks’ book did the publisher ask me to review it and they did not ask for anything but an honest review. I do get a little bit from any books you buy if you click the links in my post. There. Obligatory disclaimer given. Stupid Federal Trade Commission.  |
| Music Video Goodness: “Layla” Done Dixieland-Style Posted: 02 Oct 2011 05:53 PM PDT Eric Clapton and Wynton Marsalis. Dixieland blues. Layla. ‘Nuff said.
 |
| Yo’ Intellectual Elite is So Dumb… Posted: 02 Oct 2011 04:04 PM PDT
Hur hur hur! Chris Christie is fat! He’s also probably ugly! When he sits around the Governor’s Mansion he really sits around the Governor’s Mansion, am I right? He once wore an X-Men t-shirt and a helicopter tried to land on him! Hoo, boy! I just can’t get enough of that intelligent political analysis! Here are your comedians, folks, and be sure to tip your wait staff! Evan Thomas, graduate of Harvard University, holds a law degree. Colbert King graduated from Howard University and spent decades working in the Senate, State Department, Treasury Department, and World Bank. Margaret Carlson holds a law degree and has been a pioneer in opinion journalism. Mark Shields graduated from Notre Dame and became a prominent political consultant with stints on the campaigns of Robert Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, and Sargent Shriver. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it? Two lawyers, a political hack, and a career columnist walk into a television studio, because that’s the only place they can find gainful employment. Except that the joke is on us. Hey, I’ve got one for you. What do you call a guy who worked on two failed Presidential campaigns and a failed Vice-Presidential campaign? I don’t know, but I bet he could get a job at PBS as an “expert”! Okay, that’s not all that funny, but what’s less funny is that part of Mark Shields’ paycheck comes out of your paycheck, so he’s not funny and he’s a professional leech. Oh, I have another one. Did you hear the one about the guy who guaranteed 15 points for the Kerry/Edwards ticket in 2004 and lauded Barack Obama as “sort of a God”? No? Well, how about the one about the guy who drove Newsweek into such disrepute that it was barely worth a dollar when it sold to a Democratic patrol who turned it over to an opportunistic gossip queen who has managed to increase its circulation? That is the recent work record of intellectual elite star Evan Thomas. A real knee-slapper, huh? This is what happens when you put the ideologically-inbred in a closed room and let them flap their gums for a few minutes. Their knowledge has suffered the same debilitating mutations as European royal families who looked down on the commoners, at least until their eyes crossed so badly they couldn’t look down on anyone. By then, though, it was too late and it wasn’t much longer before the pitchfork and torch crowd put them out of business, save for a few ceremonial roles in second-rate declining countries. That’s the problem with declaring yourself as an “elite”. You occasionally have to prove it or become a laughing stock. Thomas, King, and company believe that Chris Christie is the joke, but their continuing descent into twittery and irrelevance is what’s really funny.
 |
(This column originally appeared in the September, 2011 edition of Smart Girl Nation magazine, 
and Marybeth Hicks' 
.
Which brings me to Marybeth Hicks' book. Unlike Steyn, whose book looks at the larger effects of government on our liberty and culture, Hicks narrows the focus to our children and the daily relentless efforts by determined individuals on the left to turn them away from the traditional values that underpin the American identity. The fight against the cultural cancer spread by the malignant left goes on every day in schools and on playgrounds, in the movie theater and on radio stations. These thousands of little battlegrounds are there the left spreads the propaganda that slowly turns strong, independent, entrepreneurial Americans into the Eloi of Steyn's book. She find dozens of examples how this happens and, more importantly, details how the left's propaganda slips past vigilant parents to get into the hands (and minds) of their children. She shows you the artful dodges and clever appeals to our better nature that seem benign but are not.
The next time someone accuses me, as a Tea Partier and conservative, of being “anti-intellectual”, | You are subscribed to email updates from The Sundries Shack To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar