I know, I know...I say that a lot. But to be honest, it appears to be about a four billion way tie for first.
From the pages of The King Abdullah Gazette:
Friday, September 19, 2014
Min Hyo Rin is the most beautiful girl in the world!
Dr. William Wesley McDonald, Requiescat in pace.
From Lee Cheek [via The Imaginative Conservative] comes this remembrance of a great American you've never heard of...
Remembering W. Wesley McDonald:
On
September 9th, with the passing of Dr. William Wesley McDonald, the
American academy lost a talented teacher and defender of humane
learning. The American conservative movement, or what remains of
authentic conservatism, has also lost a strong advocate for restraint in
social and political life. From a very early age, Wes came to the
realization that politics, properly understood, was the pursuit of the
good the true and beautiful; and, at this early juncture, Wes also
appreciated the imperfectability of humankind, and the necessary limits
of politics. As a great lover and sophisticated student of the limits of
politics, Wes feared the inappropriate and increasingly commonplace
aggrandizement of liberty by the modern state. He spent his life
fighting the usurpation of fundamental liberties.
Wes loved his native Maryland, and
within our federal arrangement, he considered Maryland to be a southern
state in many regards, often referring to the “old Maryland” as a model
of political moderation and civility. Of course, as a realist, Wes
derided the political class in power in Maryland during most of his
lifetime, composed of career politicos and apparatchiks, whose guiding
principles were antithetical to the inherited tradition Wes cherished.
With some regularity, Wes would recollect the role of Maryland in the
Founding and in the evolution of the regime, and pray that all was not
lost if a recovery of principle could take place.
Graduating from
Baltimore’s Towson State University in 1968 with a degree in political
science, Wes pursued graduate study in political science, earning a
Masters of Arts in political science from Bowling Green State University
in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 1969. He considered several options for
graduate school before selecting The Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C. At Catholic, Wes studied with and wrote a dissertation
under tutelage of the eminent conservative scholar, Dr. Claes G. Ryn. He
successfully defended his dissertation, entitled “The Conservative Mind
of Russell Kirk: ‘The Permanent Things’ in an Age of Ideology,” in
1982. The dissertation would eventually be revised into a book, and the
tome would serve as his most important contribution to scholarship.
No tribute to Wes would be appropriate
without some stress upon his importance as a friend and mentor. I first
encountered a mention of Wes on the last page of Kirk’s The Portable Conservative Reader
(Viking Penguin, 1982), in a section entitled “A Note of
Acknowledgment.” At the end of what is still the best single-volume
collection of conservative thought available today, Kirk made the
following comment: “Mr. Wesley McDonald spent months in close
collaboration with me, choosing selections and finding accurate texts,
and editing them.” This rather obscure reference introduced me to Wes,
his work with Kirk, and Kirk’s willingness to take on research
assistants who could benefit from studying with the Duke of Mecosta.
Having spent the final years of my undergraduate years engrossed in
Kirk’s writings, and reading the corpus of the Intercollegiate Review,
I came to view Kirk as a beacon of light amidst my academic darkness.
In 1983, I began my graduate studies at The Divinity School of Duke
University. I was totally unprepared for what was to follow, and instead
of reading the assigned texts, I turned to Kirk and Voegelin. During
the semester, I also attended an Intercollegiate Studies Institute
conference, and in the middle of a banquet event, I recognized Wes at an
adjacent table from his picture in an I.S.I. speakers bureau booklet. I
approached Wes, and he immediately encouraged me to write to Kirk,
telling him of my plight, and Wes also urged me to ask Kirk if he could
use a wayward research assistant. Thanks to the encouragement I received
from Wes, my life was never the same. In fact, I am now one of the more
aged individuals who were blessed with the opportunity to work and
study with Kirk in Mecosta.
The next year my old friend from my undergraduate years, Dr. Al Gilman, a mathematician qua
political theorist, and an acquaintance of Kirk’s, created an academic
entity at Western Carolina University entitled the Center for the Study
of Cultural Decadence, following the insights of Joad and Kirk. Three
decades later the center’s title and organizational focus appears a
little quaint, as we now take such a high level of societal decadence
for granted, and in some quarters we even celebrate decadence as the
“new enlightenment.” Nevertheless, the center was a noble, yet
short-lived pursuit, but not before Gilman held a national conference on
the topic of decadence. Both Wes and I presented papers at the
conference, and Wes’s contribution on Kirk was eventually published in
the Hillsdale Review. Before the conference ended, Wes advised
me to dedicate my year in Mecosta to spending as much time with Kirk and
to read constantly! This was some of the best advice one could receive!
After Mecosta, I returned to graduate
school, and Wes quickly invited me to present a paper at the annual
meeting of the Pennsylvania Political Science Association. In 1987,
under the kind auspices of Wes, I presented my first professional paper,
and this effort would become my first published article. For the remainder of his life, Wes and I remained friends and regular correspondents.
Of much greater importance than my
personal narrative, Wes’s “mission” as a popular faculty member and
student mentor at Elizabethtown College defined his professional life.
The devotion to teaching and mentoring students was Wes’s greatest
gift–and his enduring legacy–and it is this academic witness that
separated Wes from most of his colleagues. In some respects, members of
the professoriate are the last nomads to be found in American today.
Professors often make career moves to enhance their status or salary
with reckless abandonment (and this writer is among the ranks of those
who have followed such paths), and with the shrinking number of
full-time academic positions, not to the mention the influence of the
proprietary, on-line programs, the growth of institutional academic
bureaucracies, and other threats to academic life, a professor with a
lifelong commitment to an institution is hard to find. Wes was a most
honorable exception. Wes taught at Elizabethtown College for nearly
three and a half decades. He was beloved by students and his resiliency
of purpose is a model for us all. He mentored countless students who
would pursue graduate studies, legal studies, and become political
practitioners of one variety or another. When Wes was a candidate for
full professor a decade ago, he asked me to write a letter of
recommendation on his behalf. He thought my status as an academic vice
president, and my strong letter of support, would make his promotion a
certainly. In my letter I simply asked the President and the Trustees of
they could name a more loyal and devoted professor at their college?
Wes was quickly promoted.
Finally, any celebration of Wes’s life should praise the importance of his great study, Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology,
published by the University of Missouri Press in 2004. In essence, the
book is a valuable survey of a leading (nay, seminal) thinker of the
20th century, although Kirk’s contribution has for the most part been
neglected for ideological reasons and assessed by less perceptive
scholars than Wes (There are exceptions, however; see Russello’s The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk [Missouri, 2004], and Brad Birzer’s forthcoming study from the University of Kentucky Press.).
Wes argued that Kirk was a political
thinker, historian, historian of political ideas, journalist, and one
who served in many other capacities. Kirk’s significance was not limited
to the conservative movement. Wes was correct, and he teaches us a
lesson that we should not easily forget.
In the first chapter of his work,
entitled “Kirk and the Rebirth of American Conservatism,” Wes provided
an excellent survey of Kirk’s plea for the return to traditional
concepts of political order and power. The description of Kirk’s
education experiences was alluring, and at my insistence, he included
Kirk’s private reading as an undergraduate at Michigan State, where he
was engrossed in Donald Davidson’s Attack on Leviathan; and the
influence of his two mentors at Duke, Jay Hubbell (English) and Charles
Sydnor (History). Additionally, Wes’s inclusion of Kirk’s own
commentary as contained in his Sword of Imagination made this an exemplary introduction to Kirk’s early intellectual life.
The next two chapters are central to his
book. Wes thoughtfully conveys Kirk’s defense of the moral basis of
social and political life, and the appropriate role of rights and
natural law. Wes depended heavily on Irving Babbitt to explain Kirk, and
the effort to distinguish Kirk explicitly from the Christian tradition
of natural law thinking evoked some criticism. While Wes may have
overemphasized Babbitt’s influence and the insights of the New Humanists
(and their contemporary disciples), he was still prescient in his
understanding of Kirk’s worldview. He was also correct to suggest the
important role of literature and humane letters upon Kirk. For example,
Wes’s analysis of Kirk’s Enemies volume is wonderful and this contribution alone will encourage a new generation of readers to encounter this tome.
Wes’s chapters (four and five) on Kirk’s
contributions to political theory scholarship are the best assessment
of Kirk’s political thought every written. Chapter six delineates the
centrality of community to Kirk’s thought, and is presented with great
accuracy and clarity. Wes’s stress on the role assumed by self-restraint
makes the chapter an important contribution to Kirk scholarship. Kirk
believed that humankind’s primary obligation lies in his or her
community. Self-discipline and love of neighbor begin with the
individual, and spread to the community, and then to society as a whole.
In other words, Kirk’s concept of community serves to define the
limitations of society and politics on hand, while on the other it
presupposes and defends the necessity of a properly constituted
community for securing the moral and ethical results concomitant to
society’s perpetuation.
There remain among us many who knew and
loved Russell Kirk, but very few of us who have devoted our lives to the
exegesis of his boundless wisdom for the rising generation. With the
departing of Wes for the Heavenly Banquet, we defenders of the
“permanent things” should remember one of the finest comrades and
gentlemen to have come our way.
Perfidious Persia Update.
Remember the Iranian kiddies who dared to sin against the mohammedan "god" [AKA fascist state power] by dancing and recording it? The sentence is in and it makes Adrian Peterson look like Father Of The Year.
Iran's 'Happy' dancers sentenced to 91 lashes, jail - FLASHBACK VIDEO: Iranians arrested for dancing
- Fox News
Iran's latest crackdown on freedom includes lashes
and prison for seven young adults who posted a video of themselves
dancing to the American pop hit "Happy" and a death sentence for a
blogger accused of insulting Prophet Muhammad.
Thursday, August 07, 2014
DAY 2918: PLUTO HELD HOSTAGE
Pluto's precise location unknown!
- BigPond News
You bastards! Where have you taken him?
If you have seen Pluto...
...no, not that Pluto...
If you have seen this planet, please call your friendly neighborhood astronomer.
Everyone's favorite "moderate leftist" [which means he's still working out his personal justification for mass murder] urges us to wait before calling Benito Insane Okhrana a dictator.
Jonny boy, you do know the softer lefties were the first ones thrown into the GULAG's maw, don't you?
I'm just sayin'...
The Executive Over-Reach Debate Turns To Immigration
I have received a fair number of emails over the debate last week featuring my views on executive power on the Senate floor. The debate concerned the growing fight over immigration and I have been asked by journalists if I believe that the President is also violating the Separation of Powers with the suggestion of unilateral measures in the area. I am indeed troubled by the suggestion of a new round of unilateral actions by the President. However, the details are still unclear.
The display used in the Senate debate featured a quote from my recent testimony before the House Rules Committee on July 16, 2014:
“The President’s pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming, and what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge. When a president can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger the framers sought to avoid . . .(I am inclined now to give all my future congressional testimony on huge blue boards like this one for emphasis).
What we’re witnessing today is one of the greatest crises that members of this body will face . . . it has reached a constitutional tipping point that threatens a fundamental change in how our country is governed.”
I testified (here and here and here) and wrote a column on President Obama’s increasing circumvention of Congress in negating or suspending U.S. laws. I ran another column listing such incidents of executive over-reach. My prior testimony has discussed unilateral actions in the immigration field that do raise separation issues.
I have also noted that some of these actions probably do fall within the strike zone for the president in using executive power. In areas like environmental law, the president has been given broader authority under statutes like the Clean Air Act.
The problem is that the President has not offered details on the new round of unilateral actions. Some reports indicate that millions might be given new status. Of course, even concluding that the President can act does not mean that he should act without congressional action. Major changes in these areas should not be the result of unilateral action in my view. The Madisonian system is designed to allow different constituencies to come to bear in the bicameral system to take factional disputes and convert them into majoritarian compromises. The result has greater legitimacy as the result of the legislative product and often constitutes a better product after being put through the difficult drafting and amendment process. During times of division, less may get done. Both sides must either compromise or seek to change the balance of power in the next election. If the country and Congress is too divided to reach a compromise, unilateral action will only deepen the questions of legitimacy and over-reach.
Oooooooh! A swing and a miss on that sports analogy.
We will have to wait to see the specific unilateral actions to judge their constitutionality. However, for those of us who are uncomfortable with the rise of the über presidency in the United States, the suggestion of a president dictating a massive change in the status of millions of people raises many of these same concerns.
"Comrade Turley, your black mariah is here for you."
Monday, July 28, 2014
Yes, Italian girls are crazy, but its a good crazy.
See? No hitting...and making up makes the whole thing worthwhile.
Everybody just wear pink, that'll shut 'em up.
Because my ancestors were Italian, I really can't relate to this pansies-beating-on-ladies shit. When my women misbehave, I simply withhold sex and within minutes they come crawling back to me, contrite and chastened.
From NBCSports.com:
NFL VP Adolpho Birch struggles to justify Ray Rice's suspension
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has not yet spoken publicly on the controversial two-game suspension given to Ravens running back Ray Rice for assaulting his wife. But one of Goodell’s top deputies, NFL V.P. of labor policy and government affairs Adolpho Birch, went on the radio this morning in an attempt to explain. It did not go well.
Birch’s appearance on this morning’s Mike & Mike was so bad — so totally incapable of justifying the relatively light punishment handed to Rice — that host Mike Greenberg felt the need after the interview to address the listeners who had contacted the show to express their frustration with Birch’s evasions. Greenberg said he was frustrated by Birch’s evasions, too.“I’m a little taken aback by the conversation, to be honest with you. The reaction is overwhelming and no one seems to think that he did a particularly good job of answering the questions,” Greenberg said minutes after the interview with Birch ended. “I do not feel that most people listening to that discussion feel they got an adequate explanation of how they arrived at two games.”
So how did the NFL arrive at two games for Rice? Well, Birch didn’t really have much of an answer. At one point he said the NFL was “bound in large part by precedent in prior cases.” But Birch said that just moments after insisting that prior cases — particularly the suspension of Ben Roethlisberger after he was accused of (but not criminally charged with) sexual assault — couldn’t be compared to the Rice case.
Birch also refused to answer whether the NFL is aware of information that isn’t available to the general public, such as surveillance camera footage beyond what has been widely distributed showing Rice dragging his unconscious then-fiancee out of an elevator. But Birch insisted that a two-game suspension without pay isn’t a minor punishment.
“It is multiple games and hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think it’s fair to say that doesn’t reflect that you condone the behavior,” Birch said.
But the question isn’t whether the NFL condones a player beating up his wife.
The question is whether the NFL is willing to take severe disciplinary actions against a player who beats up his wife. And the answer to that question is a resounding, “No.” The NFL hands out longer suspensions for everything from getting caught smoking pot repeatedly, to taking Adderall without filling out the necessary paperwork to — in the case of Roethlisberger — being accused of crimes without any arrests or charges. For the NFL to come down harder on pot smokers, Adderall users and players who weren’t evan arrested than it came down on Rice is baffling and requires an explanation.
Birch may have been trying to explain, but he failed. Greenberg said that in the minutes after the interview, the show got thousands of reactions via Twitter and email and that, “I can’t find a single one of them that said, ‘Well, that explained it for me.’ Literally not a single one.”
After Birch’s unsuccessful attempt to to explain the suspension, it’s time for Goodell to step up. NFL fans want to know why Ray Rice got off easy, and they want to hear it from Goodell.
Of course, Screamin' A. Race of ESPN thinks women should shut up and sit down lest they provoke manly men like Ray to punch them in the head...
From NJ.com:
ESPN's Stephen A. Smith found himself in hot water on Friday after what he said on "First Take" offended viewers -- including his own colleague, Michelle Beadle.
In the video above, you'll see Smith's rant after Ravens running back Ray Rice was suspended for two games. Here's what got Beadle and others angry after he said "we know you have no business putting your hands on a woman:" (Here's the full transcript)
"What I've tried to employ the female members of my family, some of who you all met and talked to and what have you, is that again, and this what...I've done this all my life, let’s make sure we don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions. [Emphasis mine. F.G.] Because if I come, or somebody else come, whether it’s law enforcement officials, your brother or the fellas that you know, if we come after somebody has put their hands on you, it doesn't negate the fact that they already put their hands on you. So let’s try to make sure that we can do our part in making sure that that doesn't happen.”
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About Me
- TheChurchMilitant
- First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct. "My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up. What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.