And Now For Someone Completely Different

Bill Buckley may have started my genesis to the right, but it was P.J. O'Rourke who nailed the coffin lid shut on what leftism I had left. Hence it was a pleasure to stumble upon his Atlantic Column. If all of the right were as laid-back as P.J., we might be doing better in the polls than running 50-50. Oh, well.

Moore, On

I haven't seen any of M. Moore's films, and don't plan on starting now. Swallowing the rage at seeing just the commercials to "Fahrenheit 9/11" is about all I'm up to right now (indigestion: the Ideologues Complaint). But I've heard a bit, here and there, about his premise, and it seems to center on Saudi Arabia as the true home of terrorists (and doubtless, WMD's). If I'm wrong, you all know where my email address is.


But If I'm right, then riddle me this: if Saudi Arabia is the real enemy, then would Moore support war on that country, in retaliation for 9/11 and as deterrent for future 9/11's? Would he support this war even if George W. Bush were the Commander-in-Chief? Or are these allegations merely a distraction for the fact that he can't stand Bush and can't stand the thought of the U.S. being in a victorious war?


But I fear I am treading old ground again, and with a bit of research, I am right. Here's Christopher Hitchens, sounding off.

What the...?

I have become, in the middle of the summer, a frightfully busy man.


To begin with, I went on vacation for ten days, to Florida. Took my girl down to see the Magic Kingdom and whatnot.


Secondarily, I have to deal with certain family emergencies that will keep me from the home computer.


Thirdly, I have a week-long class later this month, in Bel Air. The things we do for raises...


Fourthly, I have ambitions: a novel that needs revision, songs to record and publish, a side project for my local Shakespeare group, on top of the time requirements involved in maintaining a household and trying to lose some weight.


In short, I've been a bad, bad blogger, and am beginning to wonder if I am determined to remain so. How much effort do I really want to devote to this space? What's the payoff for me? I'm reaching a point in my life where unprofitable time is starting to annoy me. As much as I like and sometimes need this stump to shout from, the time and muse it requires is a drain on my daytime.


So the future of the Notion is in serious doubt. Weep or cheer or shrug, as pleases you.

As We Wind Down...

Work ends today, which means more time to blog shall I have. But for today, it's cleaning, packing, cleaning, and more cleaning. So I will simply add a new blog, Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite, to the linksheet. Is it the height of intellectual arrogance to link to a blog denouncing a guy you haven't read? Yes, yes it is. I'll hit the library, I swear.

Reagan

The earliest memory I have of No. 40 was social studies class in 3rd grade. We used to get those Kidz Pages papers with lots of graphics and very little information, but I read it thoroughly enough to know that the President was Ronald Reagan and his Vice-President was George Bush, and they were Republicans, and they were seeking re-election. Opposing them was former Vice-President Walter Mondale, the Democrat, with his running mate Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be so nominated. Later that week we had an "election" in our school. We were lined up in front of a computer of the Apple II/Commodore 64 variety and invited to press a single letter to record our vote: "R" for Reagan or "M" for Mondale. Or it might have been "R" for Republican and "D" for Democrat; I don't remember, because I pushed "R".


As my third-grade brain reasoned, Reagan already was President, and the country seemed fine to me. We weren't at war, we weren't all poor, things were okay. Why change?

I got home from school that afternoon and told my parents about the election. My mother wanted to know who I'd voted for. I told her, breezily, not thinking much of the matter.


You'd have thought I'd said that I voted for Beelzebub. Furiously she demanded to know why I had done such a thing. Too late I realized that I'd failed to take into account my parent's opinion on the matter. Too late I discovered that they were both Democrats, and they had a profoundly low opinion of Reagan. For the first time I experienced the mania of a liberal scorned. My father, a far more died-in-the-wool Democrat that mother, calmed the situation down and asked to hear my reasons. I gave them, somewhat tearfully. Mother relaxed and they sat me down and told me about all the horrible things Reagan had done and why they were voting for Mondale. I apologized for my ignorant decision, and we let it go and later laughed about it.


That opinion of the man now eulogized in the press as the Great Communicator was ubiquitous in my house and in the media when I was growing up. Reagan wasn't the Great Communicator then, he was the Vile Halfwit, a man too heartless to accept the obvious morality of the liberal outlook, and too stupid to realize it. He was old, he was out of touch, he believed in (gasp) capitalism, he was a (double gasp) Cold Warrior, who didn't care if the German Green Party didn't like him. He'd won two terms in the White House by tapping into the ignorant opinions of farmers and union guys and southerners and other people who were too provincial to live in New York or California. He didn't leap to the forefront and demand that we socialize medecine when a bizarre new disease popped up among the gay community. He was the beginning of the American Reich. This was self-evident.


One of the great surprises when I was in college was discovering how highly historians rated Dwight Eisenhower amont our Presidents. He was at No. 9 or thereabouts, the last I heard of him. This is in spite of the fact that Ike spent the 50's being mocked by the intelligensia as a golf-playing do-nothing brinkmanshipper. My political science professor informed our class that Presidents always look better in hindsight, and that history will judge them better than their contemporaries. He informed us that this was already becoming true of Reagan, and that it would become true, despite what we might wish to the contrary, of Clinton.


Extrapolate this how you will.

Newsies

I raise now the question I've mentioned in recent weeks: What is News?


As far as I can determine, there are 3 definitions available, one utopian and two cynical:


1. News is information about the wider world that the public ought to be aware of so that they may respond appropriately.


2. News is the propaganda of the ruling classes, of which only a brave few manage to break free.


3. News is the useless drivel of a chattering class of professional ignoramuses (ignorami?), who prune information to suit the worldview they possessed in their sophomore year of college, thus presenting a world favorable to the ideas and people they like.




Which definition you prefer will probably depend on your place on the ideological spectrum, but I think the most insidious of all is 1. (this is undoubtedley the result of my fear of the utopian). Who shall determine what information the public "ought" to know, or what is an "appropriate response"? By what standards shall they make this decision?


You may of course say that it's easy for me to tear apart this strawman. But here's how Webter's defines "news" (via Dictionary.com):

A report of recent occurences; information of something that has lately taken place, or of something before unknown; fresh tindings; recent intelligence.

Inherent in this definition is that this is fresh, recent, or hitherto unknown information is something worth my while to know. But is it? What assurance do I have that the event or "trent" you're telling me about is actually worth the mental space you wish me to devote to it? What perspective informs your decision to inform me of these facts? How can I know that you aren't just wasting my time?


If I've made it sound like spreading news has almost become a hostile act, I am beginning to feel that way. I recognize the perversity of such a position. When someone tells me something, it's bordering on rudeness and paranoia to suspect that information. But it's a function of the omnipotence of NEWS. There it is, every second, every day, saying the same thing until it can find a new thing to say until that gets beaten into the ground. Saying things and saying things and suggesting things and mentioning things and leaving a thousand and one things out. What good is knowing what happened today if I don't know what happened in the same spot fifty years ago? What value has information without perspective?


Ah, but whose perspective? Welcome to the Mobius strip.

This Business of Teaching

I often muse, especially as Final Exams give me the time to, on how wasteful it is for us to attempt to foster education on those that have no wish to attain it. The labor and sweat that one person expends to apply facts and figures that most of them will stubbornly refuse to accept or take seriously, because they aren't there by choice. It seems counter-productive, this expectation that everyone must be made a scholar when so few of them are destined for that role.


All of which might seem to be an argument for Education as the Creation of Enduring Knowledge, but that itself seems but synonymous with Learnin' Fer Dummies. In my fondest hopes, I would like to save learning for those that want it, and let those that want it not make their own way in the world. But to suggest such has merely become a cue for gasps. Why, condemn them to a life of ignorance and poverty? It Can Not Be!


But it is, whether we will it or not. I teach at a private school that sends a substantial number of its graduates to a glorified community college, some because they want to slum off the cost of college for a few years, many because they're too provincial to want anything else and hence deliberately too ignorant to get it. Is it a greater travesty to mark them as the dullards they wish to be, with appropriate consequences in life, or to gussy them up in robes and hand them diplomas earned more by the sleight-of-hand of faculty than their own academic achievement?


I myself and bored with seeing uncouth morons passed off as fine young Christian men and women. The hypocrisy sickens me. I play the game for one week more, and then I come back cruel. Next year will be the Season of the F.

And the New Linksheet additions go to...

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller, together with IMAO. Both sights good for plucking up the spirits of us chickenhawks, and providing good fodder for mocking lefties.


What? Just 'cause I'm gonna do other things, doesn't mean everyone else is.

La Nouveaux Ennemi?

Last night I watched part of "Ike: Countdown to D-Day" on A&E. Tom Selleck played the title role, and seemed to do a good job of capturing the cold, hard commanding core that lay behind that million-dollar smile (of course, the purpose of the smile was to hide the core, so I can't be positive that Ike was really like that). But one scene caught my attention: one of numerous conferences between Eisenhower and Churchill, tying down last details for Overlord, in which Churchill bad-mouths Charles de Gaulle: "the man acts as though Vichy doesn't exist, ignores the fact that Jews are being rounded up and put in boxcars. But he guards French priveleges zealously."


How low our ally has fallen in our eyes.


Instapundit linked this denunciation of France by Gerard Henderson in the Australian Sunday Morning Herald. It is harsh indeed, covering the ignominous history of the 20th Century French military (WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Algeria), and makes the charge that the French (and German) economy is actually detrimental to European growth as a whole.


I could actually go farther, and say that, as a military ally, the French have been useless for much of the last 200 years. In point of fact, the last time the French army was up to the task of defending France by itself was the 1790's (if you recall, even Napoleon suffered invasion and defeat). France has never been strong enough for the role she assigned herself, as grand arbiter and Master of Europe. She has tried militarily, culturally, and now economically, to take this role, and every time has come up short of success, and every failure has invited rot, chaos, and collapse. French history is a predictable swing of phoenix and ash.


How Olympian I sound, damning these poor people whom I claim to know from the tales of their ancestors, seeing Clotaire I in Jacques Chirac. Yet it has become a habit for we Americans, especially of late. Our seeming mutual cultural dissonance has since 9/11 and Iraq exploded into mutual contempt. They hate us for our arrogance, our willingness to disregard international opinion, our addiction to great crusades, our inwardness/ignorance, and most of all for our power. We hate them for their arrogance, their blindness to the threat of the age, their inability to escape the worn and usless paths of negotiation with devils, their corruption/cynicism, and most of all for their weakness. It is difficult, without a historian's eye, to tell which of us has the right of it. Are we too naive or are they too jaded, we without enough historical experience or they with too much of it? And are we, with our Girls Gone Wild and our shows about nothing, so far from them as we would like to think?


I cannot say. Even the historian of the future will likely see the question through a glass, and darkly. I can only fall back to the dictum of Machiavelli, who postulated that states begin to die when they cease to grow, to fight.


Whether the one product of la belle payee that I've that the great pleasure to meet over the course of my life would agree with me, I do not know.