Clueless Emma

Ironically timely email from Amazon in my mailbox this morning: The Vision of Hell

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by Dante Alighieri, you might like to know that The Vision of Hell. by Dante Alighieri. Translated by Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M.a. and With the Seventy-Five Designs of Gustave Doré. is now available.  You can order yours for just $20.77 by following the link below.

The Vision of Hell. by Dante Alighieri. Translated by Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M.a. and With the Seventy-Five Designs of Gustave Doré. Dante Alighieri Price: $20.77

Jane Austen Converts to Islam and Rewrites Her Novels

Awww, the article I wish I would have written--wonderful!

60 Years of 1984

 

Interestingly enough, celebrating the icon of dystopia in the midst of this Doublespeak era...

Ayn Rand's Anthem speaks of the grave danger the USA faces by selling our souls, at the hands of Marxists, for the collective "good"

11.9	Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.
11.10	I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!
11.11	I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
11.12	I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.
11.13	I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.
11.14	I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold.
11.15	For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.
11.16	The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.
11.17	What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?
11.18	But I am done with this creed of corruption.
11.19	I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. 12.15 These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. 12.16 At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of the freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. 12.17[*] But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower than his savage beginning. 12.18 What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word "We." 12.19 When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come from the thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages, from the depth of some one spirit, such spirit as existed but for its own sake. Those men who survived -- those eager to obey, eager to live for one another, since they had nothing else to vindicate them -- those men could neither carry on, nor preserve what they had received. Thus did all thought, all science, all wisdom perish on earth. Thus did men -- men with nothing to offer save their great numbers -- lose the steel towers, the flying ships, the power wires, all the things they had not created and could never keep. Perhaps, later, some men had been born with the mind and the courage to recover these things which were lost; perhaps these men came before the Councils of Scholars. They were answered as I have been answered -- and for the same reasons. 12.20 But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them. 12.21 Perhaps, in those days, there were a few among men, a few of clear sight and clean soul, who refused to surrender that word. What agony must have been theirs before that which they saw coming and could not stop! Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no heed to their warning. And they, these few, fought a hopeless battle, and they perished with their banners smeared by their own blood. And they chose to perish, for they knew. To them, I send my salute across the centuries, and my pity. 12.22 Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men. 12.23 Here, on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build our new land and our fort. And it will become as the heart of the earth, lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating louder each day. And word of it will reach every corner of the earth. And the roads of the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world's blood to my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me. And the day will come when I shall break all the chains of the earth, and raze the cities of the enslaved, and my home will become the capital of a world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake. 12.24 For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his honor. 12.25 And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. 12.26 The sacred word:   EGO Anthem by Ayn Rand

FUNDING FATHERS--WINNING LIT

Money changes everything, especially in politics. Politicians, think tanks, and political parties would not be where they are without monetary gifts. Yet, when it comes to celebrating donors, the media often praise liberals for their selfless giving and criticize conservatives for their selfish hoarding. But Ron Robinson and Nicole Hoplin, leaders of Young America's Foundation, set the record straight in Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement. Part historical account of the conservative movement and part exposé about political philanthropy, Funding Fathers busts the myth that conservatives donate less money than democrats and exposes how the media, liberal organizations, and even conservatives perpetuate this lie. In Funding Fathers, Robinson and Hoplin reveal:

* How conservative donors have had as much influence on the conservative movement as people like Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr.
* Why anonymous donations can do more harm than good to the conservative movement
* How donations benefiting conservative ideas are often misappropriated at universities across the U.S.
* How conservative politicians and organizations use donations more efficiently than liberals

Money matters. But it is not the size of the donation that counts, it is the impact it makes.

Funding Fathers shows how the unsung heroes of the conservative movement have not only influenced the past, but also how they continue to shape the future.

The Heroes Behind the Conservative Movement

We all know about Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, but who knows about Holmes Tuttle, Henry Regnery, and Antony Fisher? Yet it was devoted conservatives like Tuttle, Regnery, and dozens of others, who paved the way for leaders like Goldwater and Reagan by financing and helping to create a conservative movement of ideas and people. In Funding Fathers, authors Ron Robinson and Nicole Hoplin tell the untold, behind-the-scenes stories of the men and women who made the conservative movement the giant force it is today. In Funding Fathers, you'll learn:

* How a chicken egg smuggler created one of the most influential economic institutes in the world
* How three California businessmen propelled Ronald Reagan into America's political consciousness
* How William F. Buckley Jr. turned a book deal and a $100,000 investment into one of the most influential publications of our time
* How "Spike" Hennessy helped resurrect Hillsdale College
* Why Clarence Manion was the father of The Conscience of a Conservative

Funding Fathers is essential reading for those who want to know the inside story of the conservative movement and learn about its largely unheralded heroes.

JUDGMENT DAY: ISLAM, ISRAEL, AND THE NATIONS

JUDGMENT DAY: ISLAM, ISRAEL, AND THE NATIONS
Dave Hunt   

The following excerpts are from chapter 4: Palestine?
 
Under the assertion that they are descended from the "original Palestinians" who lived in the land of "Palestine" before the Israelites...invaded and conquered it, the Arab refugees claim the entire land as theirs. The Jews, they insist, are unlawfully occupying their hereditary land and must leave....

On October 11, 1949, Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Muhammad Saleh el-Din, declared that "the Arabs intend that they [refugees] shall return as masters....The Arab people will not be embarrassed to declare: 'We shall not be satisfied except by the final obliteration of Israel.'" ...And the world blames Israel for not making peace with such enemies!...

[T]he land into which God brought Abraham some 4,000 years ago, which He promised by everlasting covenant to him and to his heirs, and in which he and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob lived for centuries, was not a nonexistent place called "Palestine." It was the historic land of Canaan (1 Chr 9:15-18)....

Around A.D. 132, the Romans, who had decimated Jerusalem in A.D. 70, began to rebuild it for Roman Emperor Hadrian.... They started construction of a temple to Jupiter on Temple Mount at the site of the ancient Jewish temples. Understandably, there was an uprising of the Jews to prevent such desecration. It was led by Simon Bar Kochba, whom many at that time considered to be the Messiah.

At first the revolt was remarkably successful, but...the Romans eventually destroyed nearly 1,000 villages, killed about 500,000 Jews, and sold thousands into slavery. When the revolt was finally crushed in A.D. 135, the Roman conquerors angrily renamed the land of Israel, Provincia Syria-Palestina, after Israel's ancient enemies, the Philistines. From that time forward, all those living there were known as "Palestinians."

Who lived in the newly designated Palestine and were thus known as "Palestinians"? Jews, of course! Chase them out and they return to the land God gave to their forebears. At that time, Arabs hadn't even dreamed that "Palestine" was their land. That ambition would not take hold for another 500 years until the advent of Islam--and even then Arabs would not call themselves Palestinians.

In World War II, Britain had a volunteer brigade known as "The Palestinian Brigade." It was made up entirely of Jews. The Arabs were fighting on Hitler's side. ...There was the Palestinian Symphony Orchestra (a Jewish orchestra) and the Palestinian Post (a Jewish newspaper). As late as the 1950s, Arabs refused to be called Palestinians and declared that if there were such a people, they were Jews.

To the British Peel Commission in 1937, a local Arab leader testified, "There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented...." Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian, testified to an Anglo-American Committee of inquiry in 1946, "There is no such thing as Palestine in history--absolutely not!" To the UN Security Council on May 31, 1956, Ahmed Shukairy declared, "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." Eight years later, in 1964, Shukairy became the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and coined the infamous slogan, "[W]e'll drive the Jews into the sea." And he wasn't even a "Palestinian"! Like Arafat, he was born in Cairo. The Palestine Liberation Organization was not founded by Palestinians but has been used to exploit these abused people in Islam's war against Israel.

Today's Arab "Palestinians" are close relatives of the Arabs living in neighboring countries, from which most of them--or their immediate ancestors--came.... Arabs claim that they are descended from Ishmael, Abraham's first son, and that they are therefore the legitimate heirs to the land that God gave to Abraham. They do have much Ishmaelite blood in them, but there is no direct genealogy tracing today's Arabs back to Ishmael. They are a mixed race.

We've already seen that Isaac was the son of promise. Even if the Arabs were 100 percent Ishmaelites, they would still not be descended from the land's original inhabitants. God promised the land to Abraham before Ishmael was born. It already had many inhabitants. So how could Arab descendants of Ishmael (born to immigrants centuries after Canaan had been settled) be at the same time descendants of the "original inhabitants" of the Promised Land? Impossible!...

It would not be until the seventh century A.D., through the Islamic jihad invasions, that Arabs would come in any significant numbers into the land of Israel, which by that time was erroneously called Palestine....

Yet the world accepts these fantasies as the basis of a settlement they intend to impose upon Israel, whose legitimate ancestral claims to the land go back 4,000 years!

If "Palestine" is so important to the Arabs, why is it not mentioned once in their holy book, the Qur'an? The word is used four times in the Bible but never refers either to the land of Canaan or to Israel. The Hebrew word from which it is translated is pelensheth. It referred to a small region also known as Philistia, the land of the Pelishtee, or Philistines. Philistia was in the same location but a bit larger than the Gaza Strip of today, named after the Philistine city of Gaza....This is the true history, of which the Qur'an knows nothing.

The Philistines were not a Semitic people like the Arabs but had invaded Canaan by sea from across the Mediterranean and occupied that particular area before the Israelites arrived. They were not the "original inhabitants of the land" (as today's "Palestinians" claim their ancestors were) but displaced certain Canaanites just as they were themselves eventually displaced by Israel. Arab "Palestinians" (who are Semites living there today) can claim neither ethnic, linguistic, nor historical relationship to the Philistines, nor can they justify...calling themselves Palestinians....

Jerusalem was established as the capital of Israel by King David 3,000 years ago. It is not mentioned once in the Qur'an. Even when Muslim empires controlled all of the Middle East, Jerusalem...was largely neglected. In the late 1800s, out of a population in Jerusalem of about 40,000, most were Jews, the rest Christians of various shades, and only a few were Arabs.

Nor is there any reference to Jerusalem in the Palestine National Covenant of 1964. It was a...complete turnabout when the Muslim world began to insist that the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem itself had always belonged to "Palestinians."

The Islamic terrorist organization Hizballah (Party of Allah), headquartered in Syria, displays the Dome of the Rock on its promotional materials to inflame its followers against Israel. Arafat declared that "Al-Quds [Jerusalem] is in the innermost of our feeling, the feeling of our people and the feeling of all Arabs, Muslims, and Christians in the world." Not surprisingly, he left out the Jews, to whom Jerusalem means more than to anyone!...

The current Muslim attempt to claim Jerusalem as an Islamic holy city would shock Muslims from centuries past. It is simply one more lie and one more ploy in the propaganda campaign to oust Israel. Its remarkable success will continue until Israelis are desperate enough to cry out as one voice for the Messiah to rescue them--and He will do so.

My heavens! Abuse of Jane Austen's literature

A US publisher is releasing a new bone-crunching comedy version of Pride and Prejudice in which Elizabeth must face off the dubious social manners of the ravenous undead...

Mystic Mystified

New Ager Walsch "Mystified" By His Own Plagiarism

Mystic occultist, Neale Donald Walsch, made his cash and his fame by claiming to have had mystical encounters with a voice he calls "God." His Conversations with God series was wildly popular for years, and he still travels the world claiming that there is no hell, that even Hitler is in heaven, because all, in the end is love...except, that is, if you are a fundamentalist. They, you see, go straight to hell.

Now Walsch is making headlines as a plagiarist after ripping off an essay this Christmas about, what else, "love." The cool thing about being a mystical New Ager is that you can always claim you are "mystified" as to how it happened. The words just somehow drifted into your mind, you see. It was a supernatural thing. You didn't deliberately lift the incident described, because perhaps, in an earlier life, the very same incident happened to you. Who's to say?

The plagiarized author isn't so kind and seems unimpressed with Walsch's New Age ethics: "Speaking of Mr. Walsch, she asked: 'Has the man who writes best-selling books about his "Conversations With God" also heard God's commandments? 'Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not lie, and thou shalt not covet another author's property'?"

Horowitz on Ann Coulter's new book

Ann Coulter's new book is one that everyone concerned with the left's assault on reason should get ahold of and read. Coulter is often compared to Senate-seat-thief Al Franken, but there is really no comparison and not only because Coulter is funny and also witty. If you read a Franken book, what you learn is that conservatives are liars -- in other words what you learn is a lie. Reading Coulter's new offering Guilty: Liberal Victims And Their Assault on America you will get a serious look into the strategy of the left which has been consistent since Rousseau and Marx and is summed up by Coulter in this pithy phrase: "Speak loudly and carry a small victim."

Ann Coulter on Red Eye, discussing her appearance on The View

WATCH HERE

THIS IS THE DOWNER WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!

from Ann Coulter

After NBC canceled me "for life" on Monday -- until seven or eight hours later when the ban was splashed across the top of The Drudge Report, forcing a red-faced NBC to withdraw the ban -- an NBC insider told The Drudge Report: "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," explaining that "it's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
 
In point of fact, I'm not particularly critical of Obama in my new book. I'm critical of the media for behaving like a protection racket for Obama rather than the constitutionally protected guardians of our liberty that they claim to be. So I think what the NBC insider meant to say is that NBC is not interested in anyone so highly critical of NBC right now. It's such a downer, it's just not the time, and it's not what their audience wants right now, either.
 
In fact, I think my book is the downer America has been waiting for! So herewith, I present an excerpt from the smash new book out this week, "Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America":
 
When the Obama family materialized, the media was seized by a mass psychosis that hadn't been witnessed since Beatlemania. OK! magazine raved that the Obamas "are such an all-American family that they almost make the Brady Bunch look dysfunctional." Yes, who can forget the madcap episode when the Bradys' wacky preacher tells them the government created AIDS to kill blacks!
 
Still gushing, OK! magazine's crack journalists reported: "Mom goes to bake sales, dad balances the checkbook, and the girls love Harry Potter" -- and then the whole family goes to a racist huckster who shouts, "God damn America!"
 
Months before network anchors were interrogating vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the intricacies of foreign policy, here is how NBC's Brian Williams mercilessly grilled presidential candidate Barack Obama: "What was it like for you last night, the part we couldn't see, the flight to St. Paul with your wife, knowing what was awaiting?"
 
Twisting the knife he had just plunged into Obama, Williams followed up with what has come to be known as a "gotcha" question: "And you had to be thinking of your mother and your father." Sarah Palin was memorizing the last six kings of Swaziland for her media interviews, but Obama only needed to say something nice about his parents to be considered presidential material.
 
The media's fawning over Obama knew no bounds, and yet, in the midst of the most incredible media conspiracy to turn this jug-eared clodhopper into some combination of Winston Churchill and a young Elvis, you were being a bore if you mentioned the liberal media. Oh surely we've exploded that old chestnut. ... Look! Look, Obama just lit up another Marlboro! Geez, does smoking make you look cool, or what! Yeah, Obama!.
 
The claim that there's no such thing as a left wing press is a patent lie said to enrage conservatives. Newspapers read like the press under Kim Jung Il, which, outside of a police state, looks foolish. The prose is straight out of The Daily Worker, full of triumphal rhetoric with implicit exclamation points. Still, their chanted slogans fill your brain, like one of those bad songs you can't stop humming.
 
There is no other explanation for the embarrassing paeans to Obama's "eloquence." His speeches were a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark card bromides. It seemed only a matter of time before Obama would slip and tell a crowd what a special Dad it had always been to him.
 
The major theme of Obama's campaign was the audacity of his running for president. He titled his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, "The Audacity of Hope" –- named after a sermon given by his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, whom we were not allowed to mention without being accused of playing dirty tricks. (Rejected speech titles from sermons by Rev. Wright included "God Damn America!," "The U.S. of K.K.A." and "The Racist United States of America.")
 
What is so audacious about announcing that you're running for president? Every U.S. Senator has run for president or is currently thinking about running for president. Dennis Kucinich ran for president. Lyndon LaRouche used to run for president constantly.
 
But the media were giddy over their latest crush. Even when Obama broke a pledge and rejected public financing for his campaign -- an issue more dear to The New York Times than even gay marriage -- the Times led the article on Obama's broken pledge with his excuse. "Citing the specter of attacks from independent groups on the right," the Times article began, "Sen. Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would opt out of the public financing system for the general election."
 
So he had to break his pledge because he was a victim of the Republican Attack Machine.
 
When Obama broke his word and voted for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill (FISA), the Times' editorial began: We are shocked and dismayed by Sen. Obama's vote on ... oh, who are we kidding? We can't stay mad at this guy! Isn't he just adorable? Couldn't you just eat him up with a spoon? Is he looking at me? Ohmigod, I think he's looking at me!!!! Couldn't you just die?
 
It has ever been thus.

Buy it, read it, laugh out loud!

In her most controversial and fiercely argued book yet, Ann Coulter calls out liberals for always playing the victim-–when in fact, as she sees it, they are the victimizers. In GUILTY, Coulter explodes this myth to reveal that when it comes to bullying, no one outdoes the Left.

GUILTY is a mordantly witty and shockingly specific catalog of offenses which Coulter presents from A to Z. And as with each of her past books, all of which were NYT bestsellers, Coulter is fearless in her penchant for saying what needs saying about politics and culture today.

Burt Folsom: New Deal or Raw Deal?

As we slide down the inevitable slippery slope...

...Truth must go too.  Nazis embraced the "Big Lie."  Soviets denied that honesty, per se, mattered.  In Orwell's Oceania, the Inner Party members learn to even lie to themselves and to hold utterly contradictory beliefs at the same time.  Truth and honesty have little meaning to Orwell's Children in our world.  All truth is relative, all honesty a sham. 
Language must be brought to heel.  The Nazis did this by inventing meaningless words like "Aryan science."  Marxism foisted upon us words like "capitalism," which means nothing at all but which has so infected our minds that we reflexively use this silly nonsense word instead of freedom. Politically correct language is rampant.  We come to view words like "discriminate" as inherently evil, and other words like "viable fetal mass" have replaced the reality of murdered babies.

Image and symbols replace words.  Hitler, whose disciples seldom recalled what Hitler said, always recalled the raw imagery of their leader.  Stalin's portrait was as inescapable in the Soviet Union as the portrait of Big Brother in Oceania.  We live in a word of symbols and images.  Conservatives succeed in books and talk radio, media that deal in words.  Orwell's Children live in the realm of symbols and images. 

The books of the Nazis and Soviets were unreadable tomes like Mein Kampf, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (the two Nazi "masterpieces") or vast empty volumes of Marxist-Leninism.   Is it an accident that the giant who most resisted this evil, Solzhenitsyn, was a devout Christian who mastered the written word better than any stooge of Hitler or the Politburo ever could? 
 
Immutable oppressors are the final nasty element in dystopia.  Hitler blamed Jews for everything.  Stalin blamed kulaks and his enemies in the party for everything.   Subjects of Orwell's Oceania saw Emmanuel Goldstein as the eternal, immutable enemy of the party. Today there is a drearily predictable list of oppressors.   Christians, men, white people, the "rich" (whatever that is supposed to mean), America, and Israel are oppressors and nothing can ever change that.

Orwell even told us, by name, the professionals who would lead us into the nightmare of 1984:  "sociologists," "teachers," "bureaucrats," "journalists," "professional politicians," "scientists," "trade union organizers," "publicity experts," and "technicians."  (The term "community organizer" was unknown to him.)  Those who enslave were those who taught students, who created the news, who sat in the halls of government power, and who defined official "truth" (at least truth de jour.)

Orwell's Children live among us now, not in tiny numbers in weird Marxist cults like Jim Jones' People Temple, but as leaders of Congress, as the establishment of academia, as the producers of news and entertainment, as the administrators of public schools, as the "experts" in a thousand myriad and odd fields of putative "expertise."   They infatuate our bored children with the only reality and the only diversion that many can find.  They wait for the rest of us to grow older and to die.

From American Thinker: Orwell's Children 

WORDS OF THE WISE: George Orwell

David Forsmark's review of Makers and Takers

In every major scientific social survey, conservatives know more, care more, give more, love more, and lie less, are less materialistic and self centered than liberals. Schweizer gives a simple and logical reason as to why liberals claim the public moral high ground, but seem to care less about private virtue: "(M)odern liberalism simply absolves its adherents of many difficult and inconvenient responsibilities…. Because liberal believe it is the role of the state to care for the needy, liberalism fosters an 'I gave at the office' mentality. Simply espousing liberal values and voting for liberal candidates is enough. No other action is required. That is why liberalism is so seductive. It allows one to claim the moral high ground on just about any issue, while, in effect, 'outsourcing' your personal responsibility for doing something about it to the government." What's worse is that modern liberals are more likely – generally by a factor of at least two – to be guilty of the sins they are most likely to condemn conservatives for. Schweizer breaks down the supposed Seven Deadliest Sins s of conservatives: Selfishness: It's considered a given that Adam Smith's intellectual descendants are all about self-interest. But liberals are far more likely to admit in surveys to putting themselves first and being less willing to sacrifice for others. Stinginess: It's not only liberal presidential candidates who are far less likely than conservatives — of every income level — to give to charity. While the media argues that "compassionate conservatism" is a contradiction in terms, Schweizer shows that the term is redundant in practice. Materialism: Liberals are far more likely report money as their top priority and less likely to part with it willingly than the capitalist hogs they scorn. Lying liars who tell lies: The party of relativism is far less honest from tax cheating to personal business affairs to marital affairs than the "neocons who lied us into war." Angry (white). men:  Liberalism has placed such a premium on grievance collecting that loving one's country and being satisfied with one's life is a betrayal of conscience if one is a member of the "minority" groups that make up about 70% of the country. In nearly every measure, liberals report less satisfaction with their lives than conservatives do. Stupidity: The mind-numbed robots who get their marching orders from talk radio's Rush Limbaugh somehow answer pollsters' questions about government, economics and world affairs far more accurately than the enlightened souls who want their NPR. Tools of Big Tobacco . When conservatives protest government's overreach in persecuting smokers, it is statistically more likely they are defending a liberal's rights. It is also statistically far more likely that the children of conservatives will get hugs and not drugs. Makers and Takers is chock full of data from surveys that tear down every character-based stereotype the cultural elites have assigned to liberals and conservatives. Along the way, Schweizer can't resist throwing in some delicious Do As I Say (and Not as I Do) tidbits along the way—from uber-libs like Gore Vidal and Al Sharpton cheating on their taxes to the extreme narcissism of ex-President Clinton, who wrote a book called Giving. Unconsciously, liberals themselves endorse Schweizer's point every time they take up scandalmongering. When they make Gary Studds a hero for doing something Tom Foley only sent emails about or when they chuckle over Bill Clinton's serial womanizing and are shocked by Newt Gingrich's divorce. You can scream "hypocrisy" only at people with moral standards. From: Makers and Takers: How Conservatives Do All the Work While Liberals Whine and Complain By Peter Schweizer Doubleday, $24.95, 272 pp.

WILLFUL BLINDNESS

CHECK IT OUT HERE

Andrew C. McCarthy takes readers back to the real beginning of the war on terror--not the atrocities of September 11, but the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993 when radical Islamists effectively declared war on the United States. From his perch as a government prosecutor of the blind sheik and other jihadists responsible for the bombing, Andrew McCarthy takes readers inside the twisted world of Islamic terror.

THE PARTY OF DEFEAT

CHECK IT OUT HERE

The object of war is to break an enemy’s will and destroy his capacity to fight. Therefore, a nation divided in wartime is a nation that invites its own defeat. Yet that is precisely how Americans are facing the global war that radical Islamists have declared on them.

The enemies who confront us are religious barbarians, armed with the technologies of modern warfare but guided by morals that are medieval and grotesque. Their stated goal is the obliteration of America and the conquest of the West. They have assembled a coalition that includes sovereign states such as and Iran and Syria, Muslim armies such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and terrorist cells that are globally dispersed and beyond counting.

 

OMG. I'D QUIT MY JOB BEFORE BRINGING THIS INTO MY ENGLISH CLASSROOM!

CHECK IT OUT HERE: NOTHING LESS THAN GAY PORN

WHO NAMES A CHILD'S BED AFTER A NASTY PORNOGRAPHIC NOVEL? AND WHO CLAIMS NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF IT?

LONDON — Woolworths stores in Britain have stopped selling "Lolita" beds for young girls after a parents' organization complained because of the name's association with the famous novel about a pedophile.

   

Woolworths said staff members who administered the retail chain's Web site that sold the beds had been unaware of the name's connection with Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel "Lolita" and two film adaptations, including one in 1997 starring Jeremy Irons.

 

The novel centers on protagonist Humbert Humbert's obsession with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Humbert essentially kidnaps her, traveling across the country and holding her sexually captive.

[SPARK NOTES gives a much more complete synopsis. This is a disgusting book by any standards.ce]

 

Woolworths canceled its sale of the Lolita Midsleeper Combi bedroom set Wednesday, the same day the Raisingkids parents' group had called to complain about the name, Woolworths spokeswoman Lisa Lim said by telephone Sunday. The set, made and delivered by an outside supplier, costs 395 pounds (US$775, euro525).

 

"There aren't many people in the company, in the whole world, who know about the `Lolita' book or films," Lim said. "There might be a few people in the country who have a problem with it, but it's just a name.

[Excuse me? Who is this store spokesman to declare that not many people in the whole world know about "the Lolita book?" What a stupid statement! ce]

     

PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION

FROM WWW.THEPEOPLESCUBE.COM

JUST IN TIME TO SAVE US FROM THE PORK, THE UK'S GOV'T AGENCY, BECTA, CALLS 3 LITTLE PIGS INFIDELS

It seems that Becta, in all its public education glory, is trying to save Muslim children from understanding that there may actually be living pork. And, as we know, whatever offends Muslims must be infidels! And infidels, as we know, must be eradicated!


Only this particular pork isn't living, it's a fairy tale. About construction workers, really--you know, the ones who build buildings. And this story might offend the builders of the world since, after all, in the story they are pigs! So to avoid hurting Muslim and builders' feelings, the story of The Three Little Cowboy Builders will not win a Bett award.

I kid you not. I wish I were. The profound naysayers said they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

Oh, yes, there's more:

The feedback from the judges explaining why they had rejected the CD-Rom highlighted that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community".

They also warned that the story might "alienate parts of the workforce (building trade)".

 

The judges criticised the stereotyping in the story of the unfortunate pigs: "Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?"

I so worry about the world in which my children will raise my grandchildren.

 

 

 

YES, HONEY, ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN MARRIED FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME UNDERSTANDS THE SITUATION. BUT YOU'RE AN IGNORAMUS IF YOU REALLY THINK HE WON'T LEAVE. SELFISH. EPITOME OF FEMINAZISM. I SUGGEST DR. LAURA'S BOOK: THE PROPER CARE AND FEEDING OF HUSBANDS

Carrie Jones hasn't had sex with her husband Hal, a City banker, for the past four years. Nor does she want to. Sex is something she can no longer summon the effort to endure - with the man she married, at least.

She admits she stays in her sexless relationship for the sake of her children, aged nine and 11, and will remain celibate until the day they are grown up and she feels able to leave. At which point, she confesses, she will probably abandon her husband and begin a sexual odyssey to find the satisfaction that eludes her.

An unusual case? A sorry lack of libido? She insists not. "If I thought I was unique in my sexual disappointment I'd probably be suicidal," muses Carrie, 45, a publishing executive, who lives in North London with Hal and their children.

"I remember the first time my girlfriends and I admitted that we all felt the same about married sex as parents: we couldn't be bothered with it and felt guilty for not wanting to sleep with our husbands. It was a revelation. I remember thinking: 'Thank God! It's not just me!'

...So convinced is Carrie that her experience of sex in marriage - initially pleasant, dwindling to nothing at all after having children - is a universal one that she has just written a book, under an assumed name, highlighting the disappointment of her sex life.

"It's a sort of 'Frigid Jones' Diary'," she laughs, though she is not joking. "I want to break the taboo. Sex frequently isn't the chandelier-swinging experience that certain authors would have us believe is every woman's rite of passage.

...So what of her sexual history? It seems that Carrie wasn't always this uninterested in sex. She admits to having 23 lovers before she married.

"Ten were proper boyfriends," she recalls. "I regretted having sex with six of them, loved three of them but only one of the 23 ever gave me an orgasm.

"As I entered my thirties, it was obvious my sex life had a recurring, rather depressing pattern: intense desire to begin with followed, if the relationship survived long enough, by a slow winding down into indifference.

Aha. Carrie, dear, the problem is within YOU. Don't punish your children and the good man you promised to stay with forever. 1 of 23? My, oh, my.ce

16 YEAR OLD ENJOYS NIGHT AS A PLAYBOY

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A teenager who posed as a wealthy playboy and went on an extravagant spending spree at a nightclub has been arrested after trying to skip out on his bill, police said Saturday.

The 16-year-old boy entered a hostess bar in Niiza City near Tokyo on Wednesday night and -- over the course of six hours -- ordered two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne as well as 60 glasses of whiskey, beer and cocktails, said local police officer Hitoshi Morohashi.

The boy also sang karaoke songs with several hostesses, Morohashi said.

When it was time to pay the bill, which had ballooned to $3,490, the boy told the staff he had no money, Morohashi said.

This story immediately reminds me of Willa Cather's short story, "Paul's Case."

LINKS TO MORE JANE AUSTEN JUST FOR FUN--I'LL ADD MORE AS THE DAY PROGRESSES

"Live" blogging the PBS series of adaptations of Jane Austen's novels, etc.

ALL NEWS AND VIDEOS

AUSTEN PROSE

THE AUSTEN ESTATE

Becoming Jane Fansite

PBS dvd collection

Videos

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN I STUMBLED UPON THE PBS COMPLETE COLLECTION OF JANE AUSTEN! WOO-HOO! ALL MY SUNDAY EVENINGS ARE TAKEN THE NEXT COUPLE MONTHS!

So what if the Boston Globe isn't a great fan of "Persuasion," the first broadcast tonight--fans of Austen's novels will relish seeing her characters brought alive, will compare them to the novels, and either approve or not. At least we've got the enviable opportunity:

As if to squash viewer fears about the alterations in the series, PBS is introducing the "Masterpiece" rebranding with "The Complete Jane Austen," a months-long string of new and old adaptations of Austen novels. Austen is like a beloved rock star on PBS. And the Austen series will include an all-time favorite, the 1995 "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, as well as an Austen biopic called "Miss Austen Regrets." The series begins tomorrow night at 9 on Channel 2 with a new take on "Persuasion," Austen's last completed novel.

A fan of "Masterpiece" and its efforts to endure in the changing TV landscape, I wish I had been more enchanted with this "Persuasion." Not only does it pale in comparison with the extraordinary 1995 version, but it fails to deliver in its own right. The pace is too fast and, by the end, choppy; the writing, by Simon Burke, is reductive; and the casting is misguided. Certainly the sets and costumes are gorgeous, and the more satirical comedy involving Sir Walter Elliot's desperate snobbery has its moments, but on the whole the movie is hurried and forgettable.

Ah, well. One must needs remember that everyone believes oneself to be a critic.

From the New Yorker:
PBS’s Austen promotion is part of a rebranding campaign to raise the worn-down profile of “Masterpiece Theatre,” which is thirty-seven years old and no longer attracts corporate support. Lashing itself even more tightly to the word “masterpiece,” the network is now using the word alone as a rubric under which it will present “Masterpiece Classic” (what used to be called “Masterpiece Theatre” and, as of this season, is hosted by Gillian Anderson, late of “The X Files”), “Masterpiece Mystery!” (formerly known as “Mystery!”), and, to show that there is room at the PBS inn for programs that are set in the years since the telephone was invented, a new category called “Masterpiece Contemporary.” There’s something a little sad about the Austen hoopla, though; two of the six offerings—the Beckinsale “Emma” and the Ehle-Firth “Pride and Prejudice”—were on A&E more than a decade ago, and both have been available for sale or rent for many years. (They, and two of the four new adaptations, were by Andrew Davies.) Still, the Austen logjam has many pleasing aspects—as well as aspects that will vex Austen maniacs, but, as far as I can tell from the various Web sites devoted to the author, being vexed is part of the joy of being an Austen maniac.

Exactly my sentiment!

From The San Jose Mercury News:

Over the next three months, "Masterpiece Theatre" will offer what it's calling "The Complete Jane Austen" - made-for-television versions of all six of the author's works airing at 9 p.m. Sundays (Ch. 9). There will also be a new dramatization of her life and loves.

   A quick rundown:

   • "Persuasion" (tonight): Sally Hawkins ("Little Britain") plays Anne Elliot to the Capt. Wentworth of Rupert Penry-Jones ("MI-5"). While Hawkins is terrific, Anthony Head ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") just about steals the film as Elliot's father.

   • "Northanger Abbey" (next Sunday): Among Austen's novels, "Northanger Abbey" is a relative novelty: a witty parody of Gothic fiction. Felicity Jones ("Meadowlands") plays Catherine Morland, who is addicted to the genre.

   • "Mansfield Park" (Jan. 27): The complex novel gets a fresh makeover with pop singer-turned-actress Billie Piper ("Doctor Who") as Fanny Price, a young woman trying to navigate the social mores of the time.

   • "Miss Austen Regrets" (Feb. 3): "Masterpiece" is billing this as the "real" story of Jane Austen - as opposed to last summer's theatrical film "Becoming Jane" with Anne Hathaway. This time around, Olivia Williams ("Rushmore") portrays the author.

   • "Pride and Prejudice" (Feb. 10, 17 and 24): This 1995 TV miniseries is considered the defining film version of the novel by many Austen-ophiles. That may be, in part, because of the heat generated by Colin Firth ("Bridget Jones' Diary") as Darcy.

   • "Emma" (March 23): A highly regarded 1997 take on the novel with Kate Beckinsale ("The Aviator") as matchmaker Emma Woodhouse.

   • "Sense and Sensibility" (March 30 and April 6): Hattie Morahan ("The Golden Compass") and Charity Wakefield ("Jane Eyre") play sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood - one level-headed, one impulsive. The marvelous David Morrissey ("Viva Blackpool") turns up as the dashing Col. Brandon.

  - Charlie McCollum, Mercury News

Detroit Free Press:

I think it only appropriate, nay necessary, that we do Ms. Austen and PBS the honor of watching the rest of her repertoire. PBS's press release promises that four of the seven programs are new productions -- including some new never-imagined thing called "Miss Austen Regrets," which is not one of her novels but something about her real life.

We owe her so large. She gave us Darcy. But she also gave us Captain Wentworth from "Persuasion" (the first movie that PBS will air), he of all that flash and dash. She gave us a peek into 19th-Century British life as lived by the wealthy and charming, the sort-of-wealthy and their kin, and the land-poor and levelheaded. She gave us proof, before anyone really could believe such a thing, that a woman could write and do it well. She gave us our first blush of literary desire. She gave us women with spunk and brains and hormones. She gave us time away from our teenage reality, and it was time well spent.

Amen! And, may I add, she also gives us time away from our grown up reality.

.Here's to finding our Mr. Darcy, girls!

THE MEN OF AUSTEN

Andrew Davies on his screenplay adaptations

 

 

 

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NEED A BOOK TO COZY UP WITH? GRAB DAVID HOROWITZ' RADICAL SON.

(Clueless Emma's shameless name-dropping pic)

From TheWeekly Standard's Holiday Favorite Reading List

Claudia Anderson:

The best book I read this year was Radical Son, David Horowitz's gripping memoir of his conversion from a Marxist world view to a conservative one. It's already ten years old, but I predict it will still be read a century from now--and not just by historians of the 1960s or of the American left. It is a deeply moving, acutely observed account of an inner transformation touching every dimension of one man's life--political, intellectual, moral, personal. And the fact that it's also a murder mystery doesn't hurt a bit.  

CHECK OUT KENNETH TIMMERMAN'S BOOK, SHADOW WARRIORS

What inspired you to write this book?

Timmerman: In the beginning were the leaks. I was curious how highly-classified intelligence information was winding up on the front pages of the NY Times and in other leftist media. Two stories, in particular, caught my attention initially: the leak of the CIA “secret prisons,” and the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi, to which I will return below.

I knew quite a bit about both stories, and knew that the way they were being reported was incredibly selective and politically motivated. I wanted to track them back to the source.

What I discovered was a vast, underground network of government officials, former intelligence officers, members of Congress and their staffs, who were in bed with a complacent, anti-Bush media. They were eager to publish anything that did damage to this president, even if it put the lives of our intelligence officers or of our front-line troops in jeopardy.

Jane Austen quote of the day

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
Jane Austen