A man in the arena

No one is allowed to mock my vocabulary, if John "Pop Culture is Filth" Derbyshire uses the words "pagan life force."

Is he off his meds, or has he recently begun taking them?

A few posts ago I ended with the line "This is the age we live in." There were a few thinkers in the last century who would agree that an age has past, and that something new is arriving. I am not thinking of the fatalistic Teutons: Spengler, Hegel, etc. I am thinking of men like the reactionnary historian John Luckas and chronicler of decadence Jacques Barzun.

The question I am wondering about is more narrow that the above paragraph would imply. Has the U.S. entered a new age? The liberal reaction to the War in Iraq and the elite indifference to military service are new fashions in our history. And yes they are fashionable, disgustingly so.

Specifically, I have in the back of my mind a thought that this is our Augustan Age and it will be brief. That we have the power to massively influence the world, but our will is failing. In 20 years, the American people will just not be up for sending troops into the Sudan. But we could do it now, and we should. As time progresses, prosperity and the easy life will push us to the European mindset.

Therefore, now we need to push for democracy in the Middle East. We need to undermine the Mullahs and the Chi-Coms. Because we need to have middle-class democracies surrounding us when we go soft.

Any thoughts?

"Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone."

- Rushmore

My last few comments remind me of the unseen bad guys in Ghostbusters. You must remember the ones who tried to bring about the end of the world because society was too sick to survive.

I think I have poor impulse control. No, I know I have poor impulse control. That is why I link to CNN headlines titled "Sex doctors in the basement?" And I suffer for this failing.

Why would anyone want to read the memoirs of a 26 year old? A failed writer babbles on about her difficult life while attacking her celebrity family friends, and weak-minded people will buy it because it has the name Jung on the cover.

This is the age we live in.

This brings a whole new meaning to Tom Wolfe's "boys with breasts" line.

"Overall, up to about 5 percent of high school girls and 7 percent of middle-school girls admit trying anabolic steroids at least once"

I am not sure I know how to comment on this. How weird is this country going to get?

No....again and again and again...........

Hat Tip: Winds of Change

I love this article about making ultrasounds illegal in Illinois unless ordered by a doctor. I do not love it because it describes what is probably an attempt to limit the influence of anti-abortion medical clinics. I love it for this line from the pro-abortion state rep:

"We should be concerned about the long term health of the fetus,"

What is a fetus in the "long term" anyway?

Hat Tip: The Corner

I am not by any stretch of the imagination Catholic. But I reserve the right to have an obnoxious opinion about everything.

An article in the New York Times describes the not too subtle attempts to ensure that the next Pope is Italian. That would be a huge step backwards. If the Cardinals choose an Italian, the entire world would see that as a political move by Italian priests trying to define the Vatican as an Italian ghetto. This would be an assault on the original definition of the word catholic, which is universal.

But then again, not being Catholic, I'm not sweating it.

Is Russia about to flip? Has Putin gone too far? Orange Revolution seems to think so, and so does Dick Morris.

I'll withhold judgement until I dig down a little deeper into this. But I will say that this is not the sort of global revolution Marx had in mind.

There are two great things about the nominee for Ambassador to the UN.

First, the Dems are fighting a guy who says that the UN doesn't reflect the values of the U.S. That's debatable? The Dems want to be on the opposite side of this one? Delay schmelay, the Republicans are going to destroy them in 2006.

Second, I support any Ambassador to the UN who looks like Mark Twain, but meaner.

At least Nixon caused some real trouble: plumbers, wire-tapping, bringing G. Gordon Liddy into the public arena. These are good reasons for a constitutional crisis. Clinton knew about an illegal loan, had a thing for fat chicks, and lied about all of it. And we wasted how much time on this?

John Taranto, writing in OpinionJournal.com, reminds us that it has been 71 days since Sen. Kerry promised to release his military records. If the Swift Boat guys were lying, his military records should have helped Kerry somewhat. So why did he never release them?

There are good odds that they would have helped him, but something else is there. Something such as he got caught with 3 Vietnamese chicks and a pile of reefer on base or that he spent hours imitating the Kennedy accent (guess which I think is worse.) And then we'll have another situation where a Democratic politician creates a big scandal by covering up a minor one. Can we please keep these guys* away from any real power?

*Don't even get me started about that prissy-lawyer boy Edwards.