I’m reading Stephen Hunter’s Point of Impact right now. I picked it up because I’d heard Hunter interviewed on the radio, and he described himself as “libertarian/conservative.” So far I’m enjoying it quite a lot. I’ll probably review it when I’m done. That’s not what I want to talk about tonight, though. I want to talk about the movie they made from the book. A movie I haven’t seen, and have no plans to see.

The main character in the book is Bob Lee Swagger, a grizzled, taciturn, moderately crippled Vietnam veteran. In the war he was the second top U.S. sniper. Now he lives alone in a shack in the western Arkansas hills, subsisting on his military pension, maintaining a precarious sobriety, tuning his guns and keeping his shooting skills sharp. There are three people in the world he talks to (plus his dog), and he keeps out of the way of the rest of mankind.

So when Hollywood decided to turn this book into a movie, whom did they cast to carry this interesting character role?

Mark Wahlberg.

Think about that for a moment. Ponder the genius of the mind that made such decision.

Isn’t obvious to the meanest intelligence (which, needless to say, puts it beyond the reach of most of Hollywood) that a role like that simply screams for Sam Elliot?

Sam Elliot can’t carry a major motion picture, you say? He’s too old to play a lead, you say?

I say that kind of thinking is what’s wrong with America today.

I say that if Hollywood had a lick of sense, they’d be turning out a string of big Sam Elliot movies. These movies would be like the films John Wayne made at the end—improbable action flicks about big old men (Elliot even has the advantage of not having gotten fat) who buffalo the young punks and charm the ladies, who never lie or say die, and by thunder they get the job done.

If they added a little jingoistic Americanism that wouldn’t hurt either. (I don’t know what Elliot’s politics are, but if he knew his best interests he’d do the lines and take the money.)

That would get me back into the theaters.

But will anyone listen? Ha!

I try to help. I really try.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassion’d stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness.

America! America!

God mend thine ev’ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law.

That’s the verse we should be singing today, though the first verse is good too.

Here’s Red Skelton’s tribute to our country and the Pledge of Allegiance.

I’m in no position to tell you what to do, but I’d like to go on record as saying I’m flying my flag today. And if you’re an American, I urge you to do the same. Dennis Prager’s column on the need for an “American seder” pretty much sums up my views.

Someone recently sent me a quotation I’ve read before, and like very much. It’s attributed to a scholar named Sir Alex Fraser, and it goes like this:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

An excellent sentiment and (I think) indisputably true. Unfortunately, according to both Snopes.com and truthorfiction.com, the statement cannot be found in any of Sir Alexander Fraser (Tyler)’s writings.

Which is very odd. It would appear that somebody came up with this extremely perceptive statement, and instead of taking credit for it himself, distributed it under the name of a long-dead scholar. Which shows admirable humility, but doesn’t really do much to promote his purposes, since once the false attribution is known, the whole thing loses credibility.

Or maybe somebody just remembered wrong.

I’ll leave that puzzle in its knot, and close with one of my favorite quotations from John Adams, our second president and one of our most brilliant and amusing, if not the most likeable:

“We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” (Address to the military, Oct. 11, 1798)

Which is essentially the same point, I think.

How to Fend Off a Shark, from the guys who wrote the guide to surviving worst case scenarios. In short, hit the shark back.

Yesterday, my wife and I saw Pixar’s Ratatouille on a digital screen at the Rave Theater in East Ridge. It was fantastic, hilarious, and heartening. The director describes it as a story about achieving impossible dreams, and maybe that’s the idea I was smiling so much about afterward, but I worded it differently. A food critic says that though everyone cannot be a great artist, a great artist can come from anywhere. As the story’s featured cookbook claims, “Anyone can cook.” That means you, especially if you see our society or select industries against you.

Dream your impossible dream. Work on it no matter what the chances of success, and do it all to the glory of your Lord and Savior. You may be a great artist–no matter who you are. You won’t find out unless you try.

Just about a perfect day today. The temperature was precisely right for my personal comfort—which means it would probably be a little warm for most people. I’m a cold-blooded beast. The thermometer usually reads about 98.2 when the nurse pulls it from my mouth and reads it. I blame this condition for my inability to endure cold. When my brothers are thumping their chests and saying, “Isn’t this great? It’s so bracing!” I’m cupping my hands over my ears to keep them warm (cupping them very carefully, though. Touching them too forcefully might shatter them like cheap plastic cups from a convenience store pop machine).

We could use some rain, but if it were raining it wouldn’t be a perfect day, would it? “Seek not contrary pleasures,” said Dr. Johnson.

One disappointment I’ve suffered during my afternoon walks down to Crystal Lake and back has been the lack of girls in bikinis sunning themselves along the shore. Crystal Lake has been sorely deficient in the sunbathing girls department. More often the shore has been encircled by an unbroken ring of Hmong people, all of them with fishing poles, pulling sunfish 2 centimeters long out of the water for supper.

But today that was remedied. I didn’t get an ideal look at the girl (no doubt that was her intention) as she was lying on a fairly steep slope that runs down from the street to the water’s edge, but she seemed to be not ugly, and she was in a bikini.

Maybe it’ll be a good weekend.

There was another form of beauty too—butterflies. I suppose it’s unmanly of me, but I love butterflies. They seem to me an entirely useless addition to the environment. I’m sure their ecological niche could have been filled by something brown that looked like one of the more undistinguished moths. But God gave us flowers that flew, just as a treat.

That’s how I think of butterflies. They’re a gift. A grace note. A cherry on top of the sundae of summer.

Have a good weekend.

Roy Jacobsen, over at Dispatches from Outland, Dispatches from Outland, Dispatches from Outland (I repeat it three times in penance for getting it wrong last night) succumbed to my passive-aggressive hint and posted the pictures of me this morning, here.

He mentioned it in the comments on my last post, but I’m saying it out here in the sunlight to make sure YOU NOTICE IT.

Man, I love attention. That might surprise some people, because I make a fetish of not calling attention to myself or promoting myself, but all the time I’m trying to find oblique ways to get that notice, either by some achievement or other, or by passive aggression.

So thanks, Roy, for being my enabler.

(The blog is called Dispatches from Outland.)

So, the immigration bill went down in flames.

I never knew what to think about that issue. Most of the talk shows are against it, but when Michael Medved came on to defend it, I thought he made a lot of sense too. So I was utterly at sea, and not sure enough of any position to badger my senator.

But here’s what I do think.

I think there’s a movement (not a conspiracy. No council of plutocrats is strategizing in a secret room. It’s more of a state of mind abroad in the land) that wants America to be anything but what it has been in the past.

The people who hold this view love America, but they love it in their own way. They love America the way parents love a drug-addicted teenager—“You’ll always be our son and we’ll always love you, but you have to clean up your act.”

These people don’t love America’s origins. They don’t love its history. They don’t love its traditions (especially its religion).

What they love about America is what they see as its potential to become something they could be proud of.

Because they hate America’s history and traditions, they see no reason why anyone should be expected to go through a regularized naturalization process, to learn about America. Why learn about something we’re going to erase anyway?

Because they hate America’s culture, they don’t want immigrants to assimilate. They want to see Balcanization—a country built up of thousands of ethnic enclaves, peopled by folks who can’t communicate with one another, because there’s no common language.

Because they’re ashamed of America’s history, they want to enable (not cause, but open the door to) the partition of America, so that the Old Southwest either goes back to Mexico or becomes an independent Hispanic nation.

I think they lost a fight today, but they win a little by carrying on the status quo too. So I’m not celebrating.

You know what I see for the future (putting on my prophet’s hat here)? I see—certainly in Europe and very possibly in America—ethnic conflict on a scale never before seen in history. Bloodbaths, deportations, genocide and terrorism.

Until somebody charismatic and ruthless rides in on a white horse to impose order.

And I don’t like the thought of him either.

I’m really milking this weekend for material. It wasn’t spectacularly eventful, but it was more memorable than my mental activity has been in the days since. So I’ll squeeze out a few more notes, because I know how you all live vicariously through me.

I made a marvelous discovery during my (roughly) eight hours of driving. Or I think I did. It appears (I haven’t proved it to the level of scientific demonstration, but it looks promising) that my vehicle is one of those that actually get better mileage with the windows shut and the air conditioning on, than with the A/C off and the windows open. This is wonderful. Not only is it more comfortable to drive that way, but I can actually hear my Sissel CDs.

I had a visit in the Viking encampment from Roy Jacobsen of Writing, Clear and Simple and Dispatches from Outland. He took a picture, but so far it hasn’t appeared on either of his blogs.

On the other hand, when I see it I may be sorry I brought it up. I keep forgetting I’m old and fat now.

A woman who’d bought a couple of my books the last time I was at the Hjemkomst Festival came by to tell me she’d enjoyed them very much, and she wants me to speak at a Scandinavian cultural conference in Wisconsin next winter. She said they’d pay me and everything.

Almost the most beautiful words in the English language.

Here’s an interesting article. It appears they’ve found an Incan skeleton in a Norwegian grave dated to 1,000 AD (that’s Erling Skjalgsson’s period). (Hat tip: Mirabilis)

If that’s not a mistake, it’s earthshaking. The Incans lived in Peru, which is on the whole other side of South America. Man, there’s a novel in that. I wrote an (unpublished) book about Erling in which he went to Vinland, but I didn’t have the nerve to send him further south than somewhere around Connecticut.

Update: I have corrected the name of Roy Jacobsen’s 2nd blog, “Dispatches From Outland.” The error was due to a brain charleyhorse, an increasingly common problem for me. ljw