WTF.

And I thought the last video was creepily reminiscent of Hitler Youth / Young Pioneers / Youth League. (via Wally Conger)

This is insanity, people. He's not a hero. He's not a savior. He's not even honest. He's a fucking POLITICIAN. An especially silver-tongued politician, sure, but a politician nonetheless - and as such he keeps company with the very scum of the Earth.

This kind of political idolatry turns my stomach, especially when it's infecting children. Give them a real role model. If that role model has to be black, choose an honorable figure like Benjamin Banneker, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, or Martin Luther King, Jr. (flawed as he was). But even for them, this kind of sickening display is inappropriate. None of them are bringing the Word to you from Heaven. The greatest thing you could learn from any of them is to be a strong individual and think for yourself.

Edit: The original video was removed, so I've replaced it with a backup.

Tags: cult of personality, culture, politics, videos
Current Mood: nauseated

via anarchists:

All hail the messiah on Earth, Lord God Obama.

Some parents need a reminder.

Tags: cult of personality, culture, politics, videos
Current Mood: nauseated
Current Music: The screeching of the new Reichsjugend

Girls Who Said 'Vagina' During Monologues Suspended

Damn!  If I was one of those girls' parents, I would be proud as hell.  Go tell 'em what they can do with their ruttin' "orders."

I've never seen "The Vagina Monologues."  I have no idea if I'd like it or not.  Nevertheless, I admire the bravery of these girls in standing up against brainless censorship.  I love the double-speak in the article, too - "When a student is told by faculty members not to present specified material because of the composition of the audience and they agree to do so..."  How much agreement do you really think was going on?  How much choice do you imagine they supposed they had?

Respect for authority figures (in action, if not thought) is reasonable to a certain extent to ensure social harmony.  Even, occasionally, against unreasonable requirements.  So I wouldn't encourage many public school students to engage in confrontational behavior of this sort as a matter of course; at least in the current climate, it's better to stick it out until it's over.  But occasional challenges to authority by individuals let them know we're not just sheep.  As long as there is respect for the rebel, this nation of individualists will not fall wholly into collectivism.  And that does give me some small hope.

Potentially unrelated observation: It is ironic to me that conservatives seem to be the biggest champions of social collectivism in the US these days.  That's a topic to think on.

Tags: culture, feminism, politics, rant, vagina
Current Mood: impressed

For this Independence Day, I'd like to take a page from Roderick Long and point you all to Voltairine de Cleyre's insightful thoughts on the revolution.  Think about the prophetic words of Thomas Jefferson, which she quotes:

"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."

Does the spirit of '76 live on in the United States on this, its 230th birthday?  Or have Americans lost their stomache for liberty entirely?

The 4th is not a celebration of fireworks, or of flags, or of wars, or of men.  It is fundamentally a celebration of ideals.  On this day, our founders pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" on the gamble that they might see freedom from England - and establish a nation on the principles of the Enlightenment.  The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were "self-evident truths," not merely nice goals, to be tossed aside when we are too lazy, afraid, or power-mad to keep them.

A microcosm of the perverse nature of our current Congress is the closeness of the flag burning amendment to passing the Congress last week.  By one vote!  A vote to destroy the very ideals for which the flag stands, in honor of the flag!  How hypocritical, or how misguided, for men whose bread and butter are platitudes built on the fathers of the Revolution?  Those men cared not for flags, but for liberty.  A flag is a symbol, and for Americans it is the symbol of that liberty - but it is the liberty also to destroy one's own property, no matter what its symbolism to others.  Yet the people do not know this.  They do not think about it, even; they merely get upset at the burning of their symbol, and cry out for the American judicial system to satisfy their anger.  Not because of principle, not because of the ideals of the flag, but merely because they are angry.  It is this that the Constitution tried to prevent, which it has failed to do.

Realize today that the federal government is merely another group of men, just like yourselves.  That it does not have the power to heal all wrongs, and that granting it more power will inevitably corrupt it further.  Those radicals in 1781 and 1789 had the right idea in attempting to chain Leviathan.  But it is up to us, not the Supreme Court or anyone else, to ensure that those chains remain strong.  In that duty, Americans have been derelict.

It is not too late, but it is a hard road back.  And I fear there are few men or women left in this country.

Jefferson said, also:

"God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion...What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Tags: culture, events, history, holidays, politics, rant
Current Mood: contemplative

From the New Yorker (5/22/06), via Radley Balko:

Tags: culture, humor
Current Mood: amused