Jared points to the painfully hilarious concept of Jon Arbuckle’s life without Garfield. Help us.
Safe in harbor once again
Late and short tonight, for I have fared through perils and straits that have left me a shadow of my Former’s elf. (I don’t know what that means, but it’s a pun, which counts as humor in some quarters.)
I told you recently about my trip to my tax preparer’s new location, and my problems finding the place in the trackless wilderness of Maple Grove, Minnesota. Tonight I went to pick up the forms (and incidentally to pay for them), and I found the place just fine. Tonight, the problem was the weather.
We got about an inch of snow today. That’s not a big deal, especially for hardy arctic types like we’ve all become by now. But the snow fell at just that temperature, right around freezing, where it does the most effective possible job of turning the road surfaces to Teflon.
I was about half way there when I admitted to myself that it would have been better to wait till tomorrow night. But by then I was (to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Macbeth), in snow stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.
So I made the full trip, carefully making allowances for the limitations of my car (which are many), and I got home safe and sound.
So how shall I think about this? Shall I consider myself a brilliant driver, because I made it home without a fender-bender? Or shall I consider myself an idiot for making the trip at all on a night like this?
Yeah, like I have a choice about that.
Mark Steyn Threatened by Liberals
Liberalism undermines the freedoms which enable it by opposing those truths which should be self-evident. Case in point: Mark Steyn is being challenged before The Canadian Human Rights Commission for an excerpt from his book, America Alone, printed in the Canadian magazine Maclean’s. The Canadian Islamic Congress didn’t like Steyn’s arguments against Islam and have charged him with hate speech.
Here’s the excerpt. Steyn points out that many other publications have reprinted portions of his book, labeling them “alarmist.” In response, Steyn asks, “So what would it take to alarm you?” If what Steyn has written is over the top, cultural changes or specific acts should rational people be alarmed by?
It’s hard to deliver a wake-up call for a civilization so determined to smother the alarm clock in the soft fluffy pillow of multiculturalism and sleep in for another 10 years. The folks who call my book “alarmist” accept that the Western world is growing more Muslim (Canada’s Muslim population has doubled in the last 10 years), but they deny that this population trend has any significant societal consequences. Sharia mortgages? Sure. Polygamy? Whatever. Honour killings? Well, okay, but only a few.
(via Cranach)
Handel’s Messiah Adapted for Ballet
The Pennsylvania Ballet will be performing The Messiah in dance March 5-9. The ballet has been well-received for several years. “Weiss says Carolina’s performances were sold out for five years running, and a 2003 concert in Hungary played to overwhelmingly enthusiastic crowds,” reports Susan Lewis.
Incredible
Roger Kimball asks why anyone believes the NY Times about anything. He quotes fellow blogger Bob Owens to summarize:
[T]he bizarre emphasis of the New York Times upon veteran violence without the provision of context can be understood by remembering that Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the Times, once said during the Vietnam War that if a North Vietnamese soldier ran into an American soldier, he’d rather see the American soldier shot.
William F. Buckley and me
Dale Nelson sent me this link to a London Telegraph list of “50 Crime Writers You Should Read Before You Die.” It’s been linked at other blogs, but I think it belongs here too. Without doing the actual math (which would tire out my brain muscle), I think I’ve read something by about half these authors. I’m not sure I’m all that keen to check out most of the remainder. They seem rather dark and nihilistic and “significant” to me.
In regard to the title of this post, OK, I never actually met William F. Buckley. Or corresponded with him. Or with anybody who ever met him, as far as I know.
I can’t even say he brought me into conservatism. To be honest, although I’ve ready many of his essays, the only books of his I’ve read have been some of his novels. (Which are very good.)
But he was part of my pilgrimage.
I first became aware of him in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one evening around 1970 when I was making a brief visit to the home of a friend. As is my wont, I was checking out the bookshelves, and I saw a book entitled Up From Liberalism, by William F. Buckley.
What a great title, I thought.* So I pulled it off the shelf.
You must understand that I was a Democrat in those days. My dad had always been a Democrat, and a few years of college had managed to convince me that if you were a serious Christian, you had to be a Democrat, because the Democratic Party was the party of compassion (this was before they nudged all the pro-lifers out). So sneaking a peak at a politically conservative book had something of the same shameful thrill as sneaking a look at a copy of Playboy.
I was amazed by the back of the book jacket. You know how most books have a series of quotations from favorable reviews on the back?
For this book, Buckley chose to list a selection of the nastiest things that had been written about his previous books by liberal reviewers.
I realized that I was looking at sheer, unalloyed brilliance.
In a conservative. There was a little cognitive dissonance there.
But that impression and that memory remained with me over the succeeding years, as I slowly realized that the Democratic Party was no longer tolerating my beliefs, and that some of my political beliefs were fatheaded anyway.
Rest in peace, Mr. Buckley.
*For those of you who suffer from a contemporary education, and therefore know nothing of American history, Up From Liberalism was a take-off on Up From Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, whom you probably heard about during Black History Month.
More on and by Buckley
Commentary is publishing one of Buckley’s last essays, “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me.” Here’s the start of it:
In the early months of l962, there was restiveness in certain political quarters of the Right. The concern was primarily the growing strength of the Soviet Union, and the reiteration by its leaders of their designs on the free world. Some of the actors keenly concerned felt that Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was a natural leader in the days ahead.
But it seemed inconceivable that an anti-establishment gadfly like Goldwater could be nominated as the spokesman-head of a political party. And it was embarrassing that the only political organization in town that dared suggest this radical proposal—the GOP’s nominating Goldwater for President—was the John Birch Society.
The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America could have conceived. His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the government of the United States was “under operational control of the Communist party.” It was, he said in the summer of 1961, “50-70 percent” Communist-controlled.
Welch refused to divulge the size of the society’s membership, though he suggested it was as high as 100,000 and could reach a million. His method of organization caused general alarm. The society comprised a series of cells, no more than twenty people per cell. It was said that its members were directed to run in secret for local offices and to harass school boards and librarians on the matter of the Communist nature of the textbooks and other materials they used.
The society became a national cause célèbre—so much so, that a few of those anxious to universalize a draft-Goldwater movement aiming at a nomination for President in 1964 thought it best to do a little conspiratorial organizing of their own against it.
Several writers on Commentary’s blog, Contentions, are paying tribute to Buckley. Max Boot says, “He managed on a number of occasions to keep the conservative movement as a whole from lurching into loony-land.” The above essay is a case in point, I believe.
On Good, Tight Writing
Elizabeth Brown reviews and anecdotes on Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Good Writing. I agree with the rule using “said” over any other dialogue verb. There’s not much point to using any other word. We say things far more than we affirm, allege, argue, assert, asseverate, aver, avouch, avow, claim, contend, declare, hold, maintain, state, voice, or vocalize.
Dude, what does asseverate mean? “To declare seriously or positively.”
William F. Buckley Jr. Has Died
William F. Buckley Jr. died last night. May his tribe continue to increase.
“Happy to pay for a recession in Minnesota”
I’m getting another cold. This winter has been essentially wall-to-wall colds. I don’t recall such a bad string since I was a kid, and had adenoids.
For some reason I woke up this morning when my renter got up (about 5:00 a.m.). I never do that.
Then I checked my alarm clock. In the dark, instead of hitting the light bar, I knocked the thing clear off the bedside table. When I found it again, I discovered that it had decided that the year was 1997 (it’s one of those atomic clocks, with a brain of sorts), and that I wanted to get up at 2:00 a.m. I spent about fifteen minutes getting the thing re-set.
And then I forget to turn the alarm on.
When I got to work (I made it on time), I found that the atomic clock I keep on my desk (love those things. What could be better than having an Unseen Servant automatically re-set your clock every night?) had suddenly decided that it was in a different time zone.
And the cash register neglected to figure sales tax on a purchase.
I think my machines are conspiring against me.
Speaking of the sales tax, our honorable state legislators just voted to raise ours. The governor vetoed it, but they overrode him.
In the last election they regained control of both houses, running on the promise that they’d “give a break to the middle class. Make those rich folks pay their fair share.”
So they raised the sales tax. Because—you know. The middle class doesn’t buy—you know… stuff.
And they raised our vehicle registration fees. Because the middle class doesn’t own cars.
And they raised the gas tax. Because those middle class folks never buy gas.
This will be a wonderful opportunity for the Republicans in Minnesota this fall, if they have any brains.
Which, this being Minnesota, is problematic.