Bootstraps and conservatism

And I say unto you again: Rush Limbaugh is on an intellectual race to the bottom, and he's determined to win that race.

If within the ranks of these conservatives, the common denominator gets any lower, we're going to have an improper fraction.

I think you are mistating Limbaugh in the last paragraph. What he is attacking is the "end of growth" type of clap-trap that Jimmy Carter trafficked in and what environmentalists still spread today. Specifically on energy, there are two conflicting ideas. The first is the conservationist position: we are running out of resources, therefore we must cut back. Use less energy, have less children, consume less (i.e. produce less). The opposite opinion is the growth position: we need more energy. If we are running out of one source, we need to find more sources and create new kinds of energy. Conservation makes sense only if it saves money. You can figure out what side you are on if you either hope for or are horrified by a world with "unlimited" energy which allows humans to transform the entire planet.

One side wants limits imposed by man and stasis. The other wants no limits (other than those imposed by nature) and growth.

Mr. Cramer,

Amway, Mary Kay, Discovery Toys, Pampered Chef and all the other fly by night businesses are very popular in my area. I've never met a person who got rich from them. Actually I have met very few people who have actually sustained a profit by doing them. Work from home using the Internet is for the most part just a scam. The service businesses, which is what most people talk about, are pretty ruthless. I think the statistic is still that 70% of small businesses fail within 5 years. Yes there are success stories, and there are phenomenal success stories. But let's not kid ourselves either. New York's present prosperity wasn't driven by Pampered Chef or anything like it.

I am no Rush fan, so I am not familiar with these specific statements, but your characterization does not comport at all with my understanding of what I have heard him say over the years.

In general, I have not seen him as an advocate for consumerism as such, but for free market decision making and consequences. People should be allowed to make decisions about consumption so long as it is legal and they suffer or enjoy the consequences of their decisions. If I decide to buy a double cheeseburger instead of a salad, I ought to be allowed to without dealing with false scarcity or artifical overpricing through taxes or control. What I shouldn't be allowed to do is sue MacDonalds for being fat.

I think his point about conservation is that, without market forces and consumer decision making behind it, it doesn't really accomplish much, and can result in unforeseen consequences.

As for what are people supposed to do about economic problems - whatever it takes, within moral and legal bounds. If your job in Southern Ohio is gone - move. How do you think the west - for that matter this whole country - was founded and prospered.

I am sick of hearing that we are "told" what to do by politicians, or advertisers, or entertainers, and that we are not responsible for the consequences. These sources are always telling people what they want to hear, the difference in recent years is that people are ready to blame other people (politicians and corporations) instead of themselves for their choices.

Also, I don't think it is "nervy" at all to point out that self-relience is key to success, regardless of the source. Even with Limbaugh, he's about 60 years old and struggled to get where he is and didn't arrive until he was in his 40's. If anything, he's well-qualified to make the observation. I have had this kind of, you have a nerve, accusation thrown at me when I ponted out that a young couple struggling financially might not be struggling so hard if they weren't both driving brand new $25K cars. My wife and I had only one car untill we had our third child - inconvenient, but it was what we could afford. I didn't fall into success, I worked for it - what's nervy about communicating that.

"My work generates good income, yet I still don't have health insurance for myself, my wife or my three sons, and haven't for over five years. Sure, that sucks and it's stressful and it means we pay out of pocket when medical needs arise. But such challenges are not insurmountable."

Unless one of your family contracts a catastrophic illness, or is involved in
a serious, disabling accident, of course. You may be lucky enough now, but
sometimes the luck runs out.

Rod: "More substantively, we have a system that has, with the support of both parties, dismantled the kinds of social values and local institutions that would have provided for stability and self-reliance."

I agree with you there. I think race and our hopelessly corrupt and incompetent war on drugs has played a significant role in this community decline as well.

Rod: "Our leaders -- again, in both parties -- pursued policies that made it far too easy to get credit, and now that it's all come crashing down, the people who did as they were instructed are told, 'Tough. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.' Which is, in a way, correct: you shouldn't have bought the lie of easy money, and cost-free living. But that is what both parties have preached!"

Rod, I think you are putting far too much blame on the government. My wife and I have one piece of debt: our mortgage. When we go on vacation, it is because we have saved and budgeted for it. Our credit card bill averages about $100 a month, and we pay it off whenever the bill comes due. We have spent the past five years slowly building an emergency cash fund that is triggered if one or both us loses our job; the fund should keep us afloat for at least six months with no additional income. All of this is the result of common-sense, careful planning and sensible budgeting. We live a comfortable middle class existence, but we do enjoy nice things because we save. After 9/11, Katrina, etc. how can anyone trust what the government says?

Rod: "You expect that from the liberal party, but you expect the conservative party to be fiscally responsible, and to both preach and practice fiscal responsibility."

Oh, please. Are you writing this post from 1994? In 2007, the fiscally responsible conservative is riding in the same bus as the Lochness Monster, Bigfoot and the Magic Bullet. If conservatives proved anything in this first decade of the 21st century, it's that they are even worse than liberals when it comes to spending on credit.

Lectures on self-reliance from Limbaugh, the man who relied on (and blamed) his maid to supply him with drugs for his drug habit. I'm sure John and Jane Q. Citizen who are holding down two minimum wage jobs to make ends meet are impressed.

Alicia, that's a bit of a low blow re: Rush's drug problem. I'm not his biggest fan, but hey, an addiction's an addiction and is nothing to rip on someone about, IMO.

How are the economic interests of working people bettered by a party -- the Democrats -- who pursue policies that more or less cast off all traditional social mores in pursuit of individual sexual fulfillment -- and expect the state to pick up the tab, indefinitely, for children resulting from libertine lifestyles?

This is a little bizarre. When Democrats passed the WIC food program, that wasn't an effort to see that poor women and children received adequate sustenance, but actually an effort to facilitate an orgy? You don't have to agree with any or all of the Democratic economic and labor agenda, but to recast it all as a pro-fornication agenda is just weird.

"You don't have to agree with any or all of the Democratic economic and labor agenda, but to recast it all as a pro-fornication agenda is just weird."

But this is part and parcel of the religious reich's message, and Rod buys it hook, line and sinker. Anything liberal encourages fornication, and fornication is against God, so liberalism is against God.

Just drink the kool-aid, alkali, and you too will be able to connect the dots like Rod.

But it is rather nervy, to say the least, for someone who lives in a Palm Beach mansion to lecture people who have had to move back into their mother's trailer because they're out of work.

It's fine for someone who lives in a Palm Beach mansion to remember where he came from and give advice to others on how to achieve the same things that he's achieved. But lest we forget, where Rush came from is one of Missouri's wealthiest and best-connected aristocratic dynasties. He's pulled himself up by his bootstraps all of an inch.

In the interest of clarity, I should point out that the first paragraph of my post above was surrounded by quote tags, but Bnet stripped them out.

You do understand I hope Mr. Cramer that many of us would find you grossly irresponsible for not having health insurance for a family of 5 while you gross your $100,000. (I'm just taking the information you volunteered.) Are we to assume that have shirked other insurance responsibilites as well? I don't expect you to answer, and I don't think you should. For a bootstrapper though, you seem quite wiling to place a significant burdern upon your family and ultimately society for any misfortune that may happen.

The reality example Erin relates is not academic; neither is it isolated or low in frequency, nor confined to a specific region of this country. I am that man. I'm a 48 year old, living in Dallas, laid off after working 24 years in R&D for a large company that has essentially outsourced its R&D effort.

I, fortunately, have options, but many of the 500 people who were my co-workers have few or no options. And I'm looking at living on, at best, 50% of my former pay. And this with 3 kids in college.

I and my family will do fine but there are many for whom I worry, and those are just the people I know. How many thousands, tens of thousands, even more, face this same problem every day? Just something to think about....

Cleveland, where in the Catechism do you find anything like an endorsement of conservatism, particularly the free market open borders global investment-profit driven kind we have now? I must have missed it; it certainly doesn't agree with my memories of JPII's writings on the subject of capitalism.

My point about Rush and responsibility is that his brand of "quit whining and pull yourself up by the bootstraps" conservatism, in which he frequently points to his own failures in the past, fails to take into consideration the fact that there are significantly fewer options for a man who is responsible for a family than for a man who isn't, particularly in those moments of economic crisis. A man who has a wife and children to provide for often can't afford to gamble his family's livelihood on some iffy entrepreneurial enterprise; and more people than he will suffer the very real economic consequences of repeated failure. So for Rush to say, in effect, that if he can do it anybody can, is to ignore the reality that a single man who is responsible to and for no one but himself is in a position far different from the man whose children's daily necessities will cease to be provided if he can't find another job, and quickly, in the event that his company relocates to Mexico.

When you were a young employee, Cleveland, did you have to compete with Indian or Chinese workers making half or less of your salary? Our generation does. Did you believe you would never do as well as your parents? Our generation, particularly those of us traditional enough to try to live on one income, accepted that a long time ago. Did you wonder how much, despite talk of tax cut after tax cut, your Social Security withholding was going to have to rise to pay for a huge number of retirees who are just now beginning to retire? I suspect not, but it's an urgent topic of conversation among my generation, especially considering how many of the baby boomers who are going to 'need' our SS 'contributions' have more money and assets than we ever will. As for college, my husband and I both worked our way through, but if our kids go to college at all they won't be able to afford the orthodox Catholic college I graduated from.

Of course, I could do what the "conservatives" think I should: quit this crazy homeschooling venture, put my kids in public school, and go to work full time so my husband and I can start reaping the benefits of this global economy that a second 'investment' income would allow us to access. Pardon me if I don't think this current generation's notions of "conservatism" are really all that conservative.

Rod: "It is simply lunacy for Limbaugh to claim that conservatism is 'about' the American people being able to live how they damn well please, no matter what the cost, and at no personal sacrifice to their own desires. That is what Limbaugh-style conservatism amounts to -- and I believe many Republicans agree with Rush. It is absoutely, unequivocally unconservative! And liberalism, with its emphasis on sexual liberty no matter what the social cost, represents the other side of the coin."

For a wonderful articulation of what Rod is getting at here, see "Small is Still Beautiful: An Interview with Joseph Pearce"; guaranteed to break the ice at naughty parties, to adapt Eric Idle:

http://tinyurl.com/bxv9b

Angelo Matera: [Marxism and capitalist "economism" are] both materialist philosophies...

Pearce: Yes, they don't take into account that economics is a servant not a master. Now, in terms of Marxism, things have not evolved as Marx predicted they would, so that kind of economic determinism has lost all credibility, except for a crackpot few. But with economic libertarianism, the issue there is we need to examine their assumptions: First, the free market doesn't really exist, for a number of reasons. People are always interfering with the market, advertising distorts the market, the size of economic activity distorts the market, government policy distorts the market, government subsidy distorts the market, free trade, protectionism distorts the market; the free market as a theory is actually a fallacy in the sense that there are market forces but they're never free, they're always being manipulated by somebody, whether its government or big business, so the issue is how do we interfere with the market, what actually do we want the market to be doing, how should it be manipulated for the common good. I know that libertarians, when they hear the phrase 'the common good', they think you're a communist. But of course, the whole Catholic concept of subsidarity is that both economic and politics should be done on a human scale; it's not only about small businesses but also about small government, that we want the de-volution of power away from big central government back to regional government; we want laws that do not encroach upon the rights of the family, so this is very, very different than a state-run society...

Matera: About the Greens, beyond their Marxism, they've also become even more obsessed by sexual politics, by radical personal liberation, don't you think?

Pearce: Exactly. In many respects it's very hedonistic, and of course hedonism works against both environmental health, and individual health. You can't have a system based on selfishness in moral issues and expect, at the same time, to have an economic system based on self-restraint. It's a contradiction. On the one hand, they want complete self-centered liberation from all ethical constraint, and on the other hand, they expect people to behave economically and socially with self-restraint, and that doesn't compute.

Matera: It's ironic that in terms of traditional Marxism, whatever you think about it, it certainly wasn't about personal or sexual liberation...

Pearce: Quite frankly I think in the nineteenth and early twentieth century many people who were Marxists were responding to genuine economic injustices; however wrong their solutions were, they may have been well-intentioned. But a large part of the underlying philosophy of the Marxist or Green left today is based upon hatred of the whole of western civilization, driven by the desire to be iconoclastic against anything they consider to be traditional. Of course the result is that it leads to the breakdown of self-control, and people become hedonistic, which doesn't just mean having many sexual partners, but means having a disposal mentality in everything else, so that people like this live a very unhealthy lifestyle from the point of view of the environment, and from the point of view of their own sexual health, the sexual health of others, and social cohesion in general...

Rush Limbaugh isn't wrong to say that self-reliance is the only thing, ultimately, that can help anybody.

What a bizarre and un-Christlike thing for someone steeped in the Catholic tradition to say. Even the healthiest and strongest individual operates within a web of cooperation and mutual dependencies that can leave them helpless if things go too far wrong.

Taking responsiblity for your own actions is a central value, but it is a long way from relying only on yourself. No one ever really is.

I suspect that what is happening here is that one of the central institutions of communal assistance -- the government -- has swollen enormously and Christians believe it no longer shares their values. But this is a particular issue of this historical era and should not lead to a rejection of the idea of community or mutual assistance.

If the stupid proles in Ohio would actually have spent some time learning instead of drinking beer, they would have bootstraps aplenty. It's their own fault that they are in the mess they are and we owe them nothing.

"Cleveland, where in the Catechism do you find anything like an endorsement of conservatism, particularly the free market open borders global investment-profit driven kind we have now?" Erin

As to the first half of your question, this could have been written by Rush. Read it and weep.

Catechism 2431 The responsibility of the state. "Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy...presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services. Hence the principal task of the state is to guarantee this security, so that those who work and produce can enjoy the fruits of their labors and thus feel encouraged to work efficiently and honestly. . . . Another task of the state is that of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector. However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the state but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society." That could have been written by Rush. Read it and weep. And that's just for openers.

As to the "free market open borders global investment-profit driven kind we have now" that you see as evil, you really surprise me, Erin. How often must the Vatican implore the first world to share the wealth with the third world? Open and fair cross-border trade is the best way to do that. We can continue to provide, FOREVER, all of the billions in handouts Conservative U.S. Administrations have fostered, but, without fair, open trade, poor nations will continue to be the N.O. Ninth Wards of the world. VIZ:

Catechism 2440 "Direct aid is an appropriate response to immediate, extraordinary needs caused by natural catastrophes, epidemics, and the like. But it does not suffice to repair the grave damage resulting from destitution or to provide a lasting solution to a country's needs. It is also necessary to reform international economic and financial institutions so that they will better promote equitable relationships with less advanced countries. The efforts of poor countries working for growth and liberation must be supported. This doctrine must be applied especially in the area of agricultural labor. Peasants, especially in the Third World, form the overwhelming majority of the poor."

"Of course, I could do what the 'conservatives' think I should: quit this crazy homeschooling venture, put my kids in public school, and go to work full time so my husband and I can start reaping the benefits of this global economy..." Erin

I told you before, Erin, that your political thought is not yet well formed. In thread after thread you continue to confirm it, as you have here. Your statement immediately above is not something Conservatives tell you, but Liberals do. That, dear Erin, is Politics 101, and you flunked it. You don't seem to have even a rudimentary idea of what Conservatism is about, yet you keep attacking it. What a Conservative would tell you is that you should have the opportunity and the freedom to put your kids in school and take a job IF YOU WANT TO. Why can't you grasp that? The Wall Street Journal is NOT representative of Conservative thought--it's all about making money, which Liberals like as much as Conservatives. Ask George Soros.

Larry, thank you! :) La Dolce Vita, thank you, too.

Cleveland, the problem with cherry-picking the Catechism is that sometimes one ignores the out of sight--but heavily laden--branch or two.

Such as CCC 2425: "The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with "communism" or "socialism." She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of "capitalism," individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.207 Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for "there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market."208 Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.

Or CCC 2405: "Goods of production - material or immaterial - such as land, factories, practical or artistic skills, oblige their possessors to employ them in ways that will benefit the greatest number. Those who hold goods for use and consumption should use them with moderation, reserving the better part for guests, for the sick and the poor."

Or CCC 2409, which ought to be considered in light of our policies of corporate welfare and political cronyism: "Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another.192 The following are also morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others; corruption in which one influences the judgment of those who must make decisions according to law; appropriation and use for private purposes of the common goods of an enterprise; work poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks and invoices; excessive expenses and waste. Willfully damaging private or public property is contrary to the moral law and requires reparation."

I started with CCC 2425, but I'll end with the provision immediately above it, CCC 2424:

"A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable. The disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects. It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which disturb the social order.204

"A system that "subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective organization of production" is contrary to human dignity.205 Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread of atheism. "You cannot serve God and mammon."206"

So you see, Cleveland, it's not as clear-cut as you might think.

I am a Catholic, and an American. But I don't identify unfettered capitalism and the reign of multinational corporations with either; I am proud to be in the company of many good Catholics and many true patriots in reaching this conclusion.

"How are the economic interests of working people bettered by a party -- the Democrats -- who pursue policies that more or less cast off all traditional social mores in pursuit of individual sexual fulfillment -- and expect the state to pick up the tab, indefinitely, for children resulting from libertine lifestyles?"

I respect you very much Rod, but come on! This is a truly pathetic reduction of anyone who regularly votes Democratic. You should be embarrassed. How the heck do you reduce all policies from the Democratic party into this one tidy simple and foolish characterization?

"So you see, Cleveland, it's not as clear-cut as you might think.
I am a Catholic, and an American. But I don't identify unfettered capitalism and the reign of multinational corporations with either; I am proud to be in the company of many good Catholics and many true patriots in reaching this conclusion." Erin Manning

Can't you simply admit that you lost your argument against Conservatism? Your out-of-left field "Catechism doesn't support Conservatism" gambit didn't work, so now you change the subject to "unfettered capitalism and the reign of multinational corporations" (which is Libertarianism, not Conservatism) and cite irrelevant-to-Conservatism sections of the Catechism.

I reiterate, your political thought is not yet well formed. But you're still young. : )

gjoe:

"And I say unto you again: Rush Limbaugh is on an intellectual race to the bottom, and he's determined to win that race.

If within the ranks of these conservatives, the common denominator gets any lower, we're going to have an improper fraction."

Amen, brother. Amen.

And Erin Manning, ditto all that. Not like a "dittohead," you know. But after thoughtful consideration, I second your arguments.

And Charles Cosimano, I really hope those proles who so disdain wipe your sneer someday soon. Your misanthropy is exhibit A as to why the Republicans have it coming to them. Soon. Very soon. But nowhere near soon enough.

Great thread!

Here's what I see emerging. The GOP's biggest cheerleader since those glorious bygone days of Ronald Reagan has been Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh is disappointed with the 2008 GOP candidates (with the possible exception of Fred Thompson).

Meanwhile Rod and many of his readers are sick and tired of Limbaugh, as brilliantly articulated in numerous examples above, even if Limbaugh is rich and famous, and even if millions of "dittoheads" listen to his program.

It's just one of many rifts within the GOP today, but it's a good example of why many of those rifts have become chasms. Not only does Limbaugh spew vitriol and ignorance and hatred, but he fully supports torture, war, and a speed-up in global warming.

His attitude is ugly, and so is his political platform. What's more, he continues to support Bush and Cheney, which probably is why he's not as popular as he was back in the l990's.

Keep in mind, Limbaugh takes credit for killing Hillary's attempt in the early 90's to extend health care coverage to all Americans, and this summer he took credit for helping to move poll numbers against action on global warming.

Limbaugh increasingly is looking as out-of-it as his late hero, but he's also having trouble living up to his hero's 11th Commandment.

If McCain is nominated, I wonder if Limbaugh will mock him for calling for action to restrain global warming, which Limbaugh still thinks is a hoax.

Heck, even Reagan signed a bill authorizing the research of global warming. That was an idea (the United States Global Change Research Program) enacted into law late in his presidency, quite possibly with the encouragement of Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher, an Oxford-educated chemist, in her memoirs makes clear that she considers global warming potentially a serious threat, and called for "pure science" research into the possibility.

In short -- how much of a knee-jerk reactionary does Limbaugh have to be before the GOP itself turns against him?

That is what Limbaugh-style conservatism amounts to -- and I believe many Republicans agree with Rush. It is absoutely, unequivocally unconservative! And liberalism, with its emphasis on sexual liberty no matter what the social cost, represents the other side of the coin. Rod Dreher

Wow.

I didn't realize my liberalism was all about sex.

I've always considered my liberalism as the direct result of good fortune. I was lucky enough to be born capable of appreciating my inate compassion.

Cleveland is a troll and I would ban it---probably you guys know this already, but I wanted to second the view. It seems to think that conservatism is a single ideology, and that whatever that turns out to be, conservatism must not be questioned. Cleveland is making this thread inhospitable and unfriendly, and is making me rethink visiting the comments on this otherwise interesting blog.

I have listened to Rush for many years. I do not agree with him on much. But I have a conscience and I cannot join the Dems. Mike Huckabee, if it weren't for the intense hatred meted out to authentic Christians in America, would be a very good fit for leading this country from the White House.

"You do understand I hope Mr. Cramer that many of us would find you grossly irresponsible for not having health insurance for a family of 5 while you gross your $100,000."

I'm not Mr. Cramer and can't speak for him but I do know that self-employed people can't get health insurance if they have any kind of pre-existing condition, even if they can afford the premiums. If he took some corporate job so that he'd have insurance he'd have to settle for a salary that's probably 1/3 of what he's making now. I think we can assume he has a medical savings account of some sort and isn't being irresponsible.

The way health care is linked to employment in this country is ridiculous and inhibits people from becoming self-employed, but that's another day's rant.

Until we as a nation say enough is enough. We need to take care of our own. We need a system where everyone who wants an education can get one. We need a health care system that covers everyone. Everything is set up for only those who are well off can exceed and if you are poor who cares it's not ME. Since you mentioned Southern Ohio. Look at Portsmouth if you want to see what the rest of the country is in for because it is the perfect example. Giving money to corporations, letting them gouge us until the old saying can't get blood from a turnip. The economy has been bad for the past 7 years. The "free"credit and the home mortages was used just to keep it a float a little while longer. Just a thought If the government is by the people for the people what kind of people say don't depend on US

Anita,

Different States handle it differently, but typically there is a pool for risks that insurance companies don't want to take on. The premium is set by the State, and then the risks are apportioned to the various insurance companies in return for the privelege of doing business in the state. A medical savings account, which you can't get without a HDHP so no he wouldn't have one, is a device for metigating deductible costs. It wouldn't even come close to covering a tragic occurence without the benefit of insurance. Quite frankly, given his income he would probably be bankrupted by such an event.

Sal Mineo: "Cleveland is a troll and I would ban it---probably you guys know this already, but I wanted to second the view. It seems to think that conservatism is a single ideology, and that whatever that turns out to be, conservatism must not be questioned. Cleveland is making this thread inhospitable and unfriendly, and is making me rethink visiting the comments on this otherwise interesting blog."

To year-plus vet'runs of dezhe here comboxes: you do learize (Benny Hill), do you not, that "Cleveland" is actually The Commenter Formerly Known as Jonathan Carpenter in a fright wig? I wasn't going to go all Philip Agee/Counterspy on it and blow its "deep" cover, but having been granted the same English-prof tools (a blend of space-age polymers and OrangeGlo: thank you, Billy Mays) that enabled the author of Primary Colors back in '96 to be unmasked as Joe Klein, I couldn't resist: the hitherto-secret love child of Ted Baxter, Cliff Clavin, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam and Rumpelstiltskin (and what a peep-show *that* bedsplitter's quintet would make: paging Enzyte; "Bob"?) has been entertaining the ConCrunchies in the cheap seats for almost a fiftieth of a century.

And dear Heaven, Sal, if you leave us now, or drive off Cleveland and its friends, you'll take away the biggest part of us: no, Baby, please don't go (that's Chicago not Cleveland, I know, but I'm *from* the midwest). We read these comboxes in part *for* trolls like Canton, er - I mean Columbus, er, Cleveland: like its home state, it's round at both ends and HI in the middle.

When it lectures Erin paternally on her politics being supposedly immature and unformed, we haven't been so charmed by one so gruff-yet-lovable since Lou brought Mary to tears behind the plexiglas walls of WJM; or since Brit Hume and Fred Barnes responded to Peggy Noonan's break with Bush last summer in the Wall Street Journal as though she were a wayward teenage daughter who had just come home with Michelob on her breath, their tellingly nervous heh-heh-those-kids-nowadays chuckles the most amusing self-revelations at Fox that side of their forehead-mopping the night of Huck's *and* Obama's Inconvenient Triumph in the Iowa caucuses.

So all I am saying, is give Cleveland a piece. And though I'd love to come to its defense at greater chapter-and-verse length, I've misplaced my copy of the Catechism - and am due back on Planet Earth.

Well, this thread got active last night for sure! Sorry I couldn’t return, but I’ll do a final reply to some of the points raised:

MZ: Personally, I would never presume I could judge someone “grossly irresponsible” without knowing all the facts. My income has doubled in the past 4 months, thanks to a new client’s business. Previous to that, I’d spent about 10 years in the $40K-$50K range, including my first four years as a full-time freelancer. We work with a local clinic for certain health needs, like dental care, that has a sliding scale arrangement. And yes, I have a pre-existing medical condition (one that has cost me significant out-of-pocket costs, as I have paid hundreds of dollars monthly for certain prescriptions that the insured can get with a $10/month copay) that makes it impossible for me to secure health insurance privately, so we’ll be purchasing health insurance . We handle other medical needs – such as those related to the ACL my wife blew out last summer – out of pocket. We’ve never been a burden on the free health safety net. Sure, you could say that hypothetically we could someday; I could as easily say that, for example, someday you will be a drain on the public coffers because your speeding tickets indicate I’m going to have to chip in for your incarceration costs.

Erin: You’re right, there are folks at the margins who are screwed when an employer closes. Thank God they and their kids won’t starve, thanks to public assistance. But if you’re 45 – my age – and lose your job, you find some other way to generate revenue. And more importantly, you don’t wait until you lose your job to begin to build alternative revenue streams. One of the things I like about Huckabee is that he’s a good advocate for DIY improvement, thanks to his weight loss. I’d say that a parent who neglects to put time in to building some kind of economic self-sufficiency, starting when they get married and not just by putting a few coins in savings, is more likely to be endangering the future of their family than a parent who neglects health insurance. I sincerely believe that 5 hours/week and $100 month for a year or two is enough of an investment for anyone to protect themselves against something like a factory closing. Imagine if 80% of those struggling today because of recently lost manufacturing industry jobs had, 5 years ago, given up 10 hours a week of TV time and stopped drinking coffee, and put the time and money in to learning how to start a viable, sustainable, small business of some kind. I think that the overall economic situation of places like the Rust Belt would look very different today.

You keep talking about the limited options of those with families, compared to Rush, when things go bad. I’m saying that those families have plenty of options, but they require advance planning. Waiting until you’re fired to start a business makes as much sense as waiting until you have a heart attack to look for health insurance. I spent 10 years trying to get a successful business started, and my wife and I probably had 5 businesses fail before hitting on something that works. (Which is why the 80% business start-up failure rate is meaningless; we don’t know how many people behind failed businesses turn around and start another and another.) In hindsight, that was a much better investment of our energies than, say, savings or health insurance. I don’t know your own details, but it does sound as if you’re saying you have two choices – give up on homeschooling, or your kids can’t go to the college you went and other hardships. Maybe that’s so, but couldn’t your husband do something different, or take on a second career of some kind, that would help? Or couldn’t you do something from home while you’re homeschooling? I’m not saying this is ever easy; God knows how many times I’ve freaked out over the years because we couldn’t buy a decent coat for the kids, or I couldn’t afford to buy my wife flowers as she spiraled in to depression, or the 2 hour commutes I drove on bald tires in New England blizzards praying I didn’t die on the way home. I’m not trivializing the struggle; I don’t think Rush is either. Of course we have to fight to succeed, and perhaps we’ll fail, but we fight! We create the best life we possible can with the resources we have, and we don’t expect help from anyone but God. Indeed, we shouldn’t expect it – we should, like the widow with her two mites – be expecting that despite our hardships we’ll need to be the ones giving help, not receiving it. So even when we need something we don’t have, like help from Human Services figuring out the system, we have to be prepared to demand that help, to exhaust ourselves getting the answers we need, without losing belief in ourselves and our God. Perhaps this still comes across as pie-in-the-sky optimism, but that’s what I believe.

Susan/Anita: Thanks! Yes, I had decent health insurance for about 10 years of corporate work, and have learned since going full-time freelance that health insurance is impossible for me to secure. We’re still working on some options to get coverage for our kids. We put our emphasis on preventative care. I notice that folks who freak out about someone not having health insurance are often the same people who could care less about “insuring” against future disease and injury through diet and exercise.

Bless,
Doug

Speaking as a person who lives in Southern Ohio. It's not the people or a lack of morals. But if we are talking Christianity there should be no judgements. The economies of towns in Southern Ohio have been at the mercy of a few wealthy famlies who like to be the big fish in the little pond.
Every time an industry or a company has tried to move in the "families" do everything they can to keep progress from occuring. It's the same thing Bush is trying to do to the rest of the country.

It's easy to sit back and say get a job. I ask where? The econmony was been in the toilet for at least 7 years. Joblessness is out of sight the numbers show low only because they are manipulated. I know that Bob Evans has posted the same job at least 5 times in one year because they can not keep anyone. But it counts as if 5 jobs were created.

I'm tried of hearing about fast food jobs being starter jobs only for high school students that's bunk. How do you get a job when you do not own a car or can not get one. How do you have a minium wage or even work at a place like Mills Pride and pay for child care. Keep your judgements about if you can't afford children don't have them. You talk out of both sides of your mouth. There needs to be a living wage in this country. Try paying child care, automoble and medical insurance, car payment, rent, medical bills, gasoline for the car,food, electric and gas bills.

It's easy to sit back a judge. One church in the area said that people who were laid off it was becuase they wanted to be out of work. Some people need to walk awhile in some one else shoes to see what it is like.

Clevland:

Actually, I was never homeschooled. Public & Catholic schools all the way, baby. The nuns & friars ruyined me, 2 years under the Sister of Saint Joseph, and of course a bachelors under the Dominican Fathers & masters under the Edmundites.

So I guess you might say I had too little public school for your austere taste: You know how most forms of Catholic education these days tend to turn you pinker than an Irishman in the West Texas Summer Sun.. If he's pink, he probably a papist. I'm no exception. Deal Hudson and Rick Santorum's fond hopes aside, I, like most other American Catholics, am in essence a vociferously pro-life Democrat. So chill my brother: My instable pinko ravings sure the hell arn't homeschooling's fault.

Maybe it's that Foucault they made me read..

Or then again, maybe it's doing little math exercises like the one I started at the head of my first post. I'll spot you the numbers, pretend it's 8th grade, and it's like a test:

1 Trillion (1000 billion or 1 million million) barrels of oil. At $100 a barrel. What's that worth?

Right, 100 Trillion Dollars.

Each barrel of oil (I've been told) contains roughly the equivalent energy to fuel 12 men working every day for a year.

We burn 20 million barrels a day. So we might say - in crude terms, har har - that we're adding something like the labor of 240 million man years daily to our economy? Above and beyond the stone age wood fire & muscle based economy, I mean.

That world consumption (US consumption is currently about 1/4 of the world's, cf. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922041.html, etc.) is rapidly increasing, especially due to China & India industrializing & becoming more bourgeois.

If you do the math (and trust the numbers, which are at least ball park) that means that without a change into patterns of consumption we can expect to be effectively out of oil in less than 100 years, the oil economy perhaps being effectively dead within 50 years.

If we can evolve away from oil at all. Which is in doubt. Nuclear energy, solar, wind, hydrogen cells, all of them have limitations (and in the case of nuclear & perhaps hydrogen supply issues, too. Uranium is in limited supply, and nasty to dispose of when spent.)

So you can call me unstable, friend. But I think it's you who have drunk the cool aid. The US army is in Iraq, because we need that oil to run our energy drunk economy. Period. If we gave a crap about human rights & democarcy we'd be in Sierra Leone & the Congo (etc. etc.) right now, too. But we're not, because everyone who has read or investigated it at all, even the Democrats, understands the real score. Our pious hypocrisies aside, That oil is making us, especially our leadership, filthy rich. As in Trillions of Dollars rich, every year. We live like kings because of it, and think that when it's gone we will easily find a replacement.

But we almost certain will not. Dick Cheny knows it, and he knows that in 2 years when he is back on the Halliburton or Carlyle Group board that his portfolio is going to be flush with the cash- the oil cash- that he had to guarantee kept flowing our way. Into his cronies' pockets. Because though we may not being making millions of this, most of us are making thousands. We are his little cronies, too. We may not like it, but it's true.

Anyway, we lie to ourselves constantly in the back of our minds about this. But most of us know that in the back of our minds that our soldiers (my former brothers in arms, hooah) are over there killing and dying for our oil furnaces & SUVs. And Toyota hybrids. Which even if you can plug it into the electric grid is still being fueled by fossil fuel energy (90% of our electricity comes from non-renewable gas, oil or coal fueled plants.)

So when Rush, that vodoo kewpie doll of the Apocalypse, pooh poohs conservation and then starts spouting agitprop in defense of record oil company profits in our $3.10 a gallon of gas world, like when I listened to him a couple days ago ..

Well, honestly, I'd like to strangle him. And vote socialist. Just to piss him and his handlers off. Give the plutocracy a little of their own medicine. Jerk the chain right back at 'em. Because though we are all complicit, some of us are far more cynically involved than others. Enron & World Com (and the scandals in the Church too) are no flukes. We deserve our leaders, and they answer to us. The bossman had better serve his workers. And the poor. As Servus Sevorum Dei, knowing that God will judge.

I doubt Rush or Cheny have much thought for the Last Things, though.

I'm demanding an account, now, before they take us over a cliff.

Look, Cleveland,

the comparative profit index of various industries is really irrelevant to this discussion. Because fossil fuel extraction is not just any industry. It (oil drilling and coal mining) provides the seminal fuels that make everything we think of as modern possible. Without them everything will change. And that day is not far off.

Not only transportation, but agriculture, medicine, electrical generation, but everything else that depends on these essential sectors is going to constrict. Oil, and the electricity & plastics that it provides - has been a crack bonanza, and the trip is almost over.

Agriculture depends on petroleum fertilizer. Will we find an adequate substitute? Will we still be able to feed 6 billion+ people (something we are not in fact even really doing now, though we produce enough food, distribution is ridiculously inadequate) without chemical fertilizers? Electricity is primarily generated by fossil fuel. Wind, hydro & solar will not generate energy in sufficient quantity or fashion for us to live as we do now. Plastics are almost all petroleum based.

Every industry is going change, and many will probably disappear, when the fossil fuel glut ends. Instead of planning for this, and exercising the restraint and discipline that the likes of Rush Limbaugh so facilely pays lip service to (Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! What a gas! Can Rush even sit up in bed without the help of a hydralic crane these days? From his waistline we can see what sort of restraint he exercises on himself.) we burn the oil away.

Burn it, with no thought for tomorrow, or the needs & wellbeing of our children or people in other countries (about 25% of the worlds fossil fuel & other non-renewable resources are consumed by the US, where only 3-4% of the worlds population lives.. Can you sleep at night? I'm sure Rush can.. oh, wait, maybe not.. what is it with that whole oxytoxcin scandal? Maybe the old gasbag has a conscience after all, and it won't let him rest?)

Which isn't even to touch on climate change, which is apparently real, and whose effects we cannot yet gauge. Rush would like to scoff it all away, but what if he's wrong? What if his Florida mansion is under water in 50 or so years? Oh, well. He's gonna have gone to the great cigar emporium in the sky by then, and it won't be his concern..

Then again, maybe God might not see it quite that way.

Maybe Rush should consider that despite decades of globalization, capitalism has yet to really lift many out of poverty. Three quarters of the world lives on less than 2$ a day. Few of those who are slaving 12 hour days in sweat shops will never likely see the middle class. Not as we know it. Because the fuel will be spent long before they will ever be able to afford a 6k square foot home and a Hummer.

Rush probably considers this none of his concern. Like Dives, Lazarus just is not interesting to him.

This is not about being a liberal or any of that nonsense. It is instead caring about people. And this concern is based in the Faith. Which is the only thing that will ever save us, from anything in the End.

I learned this from my Traditionalist Catholic grandmother, my devout convent educated mother, as well as the good friars at Providence College. Neither I, nor any of these mentors (or any of my many other friends like Belloc, Barry, and our esteemed host here, Rod Dreher) of mine has (or would have) anything particularly good to say about Roger Cardinal Mahoney, so we generally keep our thoughts on him to ourselves. Well, Rod doesn't, but he gets excitable sometimes. Which is understandable, given the circumstances.

The thing about Marx is that he is actually quite brilliant. Many of the things he wrote are quite useful to thinking about the world. His materialism is his seminal flaw. But his prediction of eventual capitalist implosion may right on the money (and is seeming more credible by the day.)

So yeah, I'm pink. But I'm a traditionalist, a Orthodox Catholic, too. I just don't see how materialism is reconcilable with, or any particular ideology - capitalist or Marxist or whatever - is in any way predicated by, the Faith. In fact, these ideas are all open to our scrutiny and discussion, to be considered in the light of the ethics that flow from the fact of the Incarnation, and on that doctrine of human personhood which depends on it.

Being a Republican or "conservative" is in no way synonymous with being Catholic. Indeed, such pretension may keep us from truly embracing the Faith in its fullness. We should be careful.

That's it. That's all.

See Cleveland,

I call myself pink and suggest Marx may be worth reading both because it's fun to jump people, and try to subvert categories.. and because Marx is really very interesting.

I mean, have you actually ever read him? Like, just picked up Kapital and plowed into it? The man (like many Continental philosophers) can write, unlike with most of brood who claim to be inspired by him, he is - I swear - often an entertaining read. He will broaden your mind, and challenge you. Almost always a good thing, that.

I am not suggesting that he be taken as gospel, or that we should radically reinterpret Church doctrine (like many Liberation theologians do) in light of his teaching. Rather, what I am saying is that Capitalism is - in my opinion - in trouble. Open your eyes, lick your finger, and put it to the wind. What do you sense? Is that barometer dropping, and are those dark clouds on the verge? I think so.

Something wicked this way comes. Five, fifteen, perhaps fifty or a hundred years down the road, things will be very different than they are now. And the change may - I say may- be brutal, even catastrophic.

Remember what that little burp in oil production we call the Saudi Oil Embargo did to the American economy? Dude (and this is not some enviro wacko nightmare, it is rather probably the stuff of Top Secret Rand Corporation memos to National Security Advisors, the President, people like that) the oil is running out, soon. That is a cold fact.

The "Reagan Revolution" (it's morning in America!) had everything to do with the resumption of the oil orgy. Remember how the Saudis neutered OPEC in 1985? No? They dropped the price of oil for a generation, on purpose, Specifically to subvert the regimen of austerity "Crazy Jimmy" Malaise Carter put us on in the late 70's. IT WAS A MASSIVE LONGTERM "ARTIFICIAL" MANIPULATION OF YOUR SACRED FREE MARKET DESIGNED TO SUBVERT THE TRUE, ABSOLUTE VALUE OF OIL AND LULL US ALL INTO A CATIONIC SLUMBER. Sorry for shouting there, but I just want you to get the point. The Saudis, and their pawns such as the Bush family and most of the rest of our establishment, have conspired to bring this all upon us. While not so incidentally getting filthy rich themselves.

We get the leftovers & scraps off the table, good house negroes that we are.

(Call them all the Illuminati if you like, shows you how scary the devil really is.. Dubya.. good Lord. That's the best he could do? Well, have to give him points for subtlety: the minimalist approach really got us good.. Which, when you think about it, in fact is damned scary. The anti christ in a Yale jersey.)

Anyhow, I just went off the deep end there, huh? Forget all that conspiracy stuff. There are no conspiracies. The Saudi Royal family has our interests truly at heart. And the scion of the Bush clan hasn't been caught repeatedly prancing across the (Western, whatever) White House lawn paw in hand with a panoply of Saudis. Makes you wonder what a cowboy might be willing to do behind closed doors.

Bush and Rush are both very "conservative.." Sure. Huff the hype. What do they want to conserve, exactly? I mean, other than their own power & portfolios?

Charles Curtis and Cleveland: Don't stop now, gentlemen! I'm enjoying it too much ...

You ain't kiddin', DC - watching Charles Curtis and Cleveland piss each other off (talk about a 3C-P.O.) such that they can't help themselves coming back with fresh bandages thanks to their own friendly fire - that's appointment TV for a new generation I can't wait to; all of the things that go to make heaven and earth are here, to borrow from The New Pornographers...

>[Charles Curtis on The Decider] "The anti christ in a Yale jersey."

Even better than "The truth in one free afternoon" (The New Pornographers again, "My Rights Versus Yours").

Contrary to someone from another thread, Cleveland's no troll: there's a benignly geeky and fraternal monomania that's actually charming to watch; he wants to save us from our folly all right, in lecturing us six inches from our faces, but reeks of nothing more noxious than Cheese-Its and root beer, such that you never feel the need to smile nervously in moonwalking backward and dropping your paper plate in trash, bound suddenly homeward from the reception.

Charles is equally tough for your eyes to leave - he's like one of those great pinwheel fireworks that spins so fast and so furious you wonder how he manages not to fly off his spindle and into the shrieking crowd. One gift cannot be denied him: amid the ducked sparks, he gives off just enough fugitive flashes of genuine light you want to stick around just in case there's a blackout, and/or you've mislaid your Zippo. He's no the only one to be sickened, after all, by the whole Saudi connection. And Marx, though straitjacketed beyond hope by a nineteenth-century materialist "scientism" that is brother to much we ourselves still, alas, hold dear to our ongoing peril, was at his best a remarkably vivid wordsmith, with a dramatist's superb Greco-Hebraic mythopoetic gift that, fiction though it might be in large part, retains its power to captivate.

The Charles-Cleveland needle-matches were best caught in their essence by Big Audio Dynamite two decades ago in "Hollywood Boulevard":

Flynn and Reed in conversation
Reowned throughout the land
Used a calculator
Work out who's the better man
Now Errol's got the looks
And Ollie's got the strength
One is talking numbers
And the other's talking length...

[And silent film fans, mark well the next graf]:

Fatty's feeling frisky
Orders more champagne
Women run out screaming
"Oh no, not again!"

Ah, Cleveland..

Seems we amused a few cognoscenti. Earnestness amuses the jaded, you know. Some a few have apparently sunk so low as reading Belief Net threads in lieu of watching the Satyricon.. yet again.. or resorting to Seinfeld re-runs.

Cleveland, have you ever looked up the meaning of irony? It's one of those words, like "literally," whose contemporary usage ironically enough literally define our decadence. So many claim to be ironists..

Hellene oracle undone, Efes Cassandra spurned, Laocoon and his sons the serpent on the altar consumed. Çanakkale has made its claim. Jonah in his word remains.

"Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?"

Ah, Cleveland..

Yeah thanks, DC.

Cleveland and I subside.. with so many unpopped kernels here yet left to fry.. what's up with the corn these days, anyway?

By the way, since guessing people's true ids is such the rage, is your nom de famille Deneen?

No, Charles, my last name isn't Deneen. Now that's a mistaken identity to which I'm not accustomed. I'm glad we're still reading. Now where's Cleveland?

Cleveland, I guess one of the things I am trying to get at here is that no market (exchange) is ever truly "free." Especially if by that you mean ungoverned by tradition, by rules, by custom and law. Wealth is essentially social, it is of our collective interaction. Of our interrelation with creation, with one another.

One of the things I mean is that in the end, our distinction between metaphysical and physical is facile, and I believe, (and as I say, ultimately) meaningless. But then, I am a Catholic. And a lay economist. "LOL"

In semantic terms, I believe (intuit) that words so often rupture and trivially dichotomize, when what is real can ultimately only be apophatically known, experientially understood. As for example a child or woman in your arms, or Christ on your tongue.

But I babble, a man of unclean lips.

I won't fully parse my poetical attempt here, except to say that the bit about Cassandra may only truly work if you understand Artemis is Apollo's twin. This is perhaps a fudge, but I wrote it in five minutes, and had to force it. About Laocoon and his sons, I'll only refer you John 3:14-15. And as for Jonah, well, you can read his book. The rest of the poem must stand on its merit, unannotated by its author, so as not to do violence to the symbols. Words have a life that their shepherd cannot control, even if he did choose them.

On your poem, the lines "The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung." Read as a fit elegy to modern individualism. Which is the liberal creed. That of the libertarian, which is all most contemporary "conservatives" and Democrats in essence truly are. We may pay lip service, like Rush Limbaugh or Bill Clinton, to religious "values," and then return to fiddling with our cigars..

Seeking ethical solipsism, spiritual autism.. But ironically, we are nonetheless still inescapably in it for ourselves. Never in isolation. No matter how we we seek oblivion, that Truth will never escape us.

Our "bipartisan" record on things such as abortion and foreign policy prove that all too starkly.

Disambugation: as a Catholic all people are my own. Every country is mine. All truth is ours. There is no foreign strand upon which we have not planted our standard. We belong to eachother, in our common parentage, in our common God.

I am my brother's keeper. All ideologies aside.

Jeremy Bentham and his ilk are thus hereby anathematized.

And DC, why so coy? All this talk about ethanol subsidies, and you can refrain from opining? Such stoic restraint.

DC,

You think the tone of Cleveland's & my exchange overdone? Is that a gentle way of saying overwrought? As opposed to the sober, factually based discourse "in the image of" the city you live in..?

Ah, DC.. DC. I'm smiling, not smirking.

Yeah, magical realism. Much nicer than muddling about with The Hirsch Report, GOA & CERA bulletins, all that Potomac Jazz. Talk about blackwater. See that unctuous muddied water roil, blossoming such gorgeous permutating oleaginous sheen.

See, the thing about guys like Cleveland and me (and he might not admit to this, but by what he writes I suspect it's true) is that we struggle to live flagrantly by our myths. People tend to sneer at myths these days, as if "myth" was a synonym for "bulls**t." But even Penn & Teller, Hitchens, Pullman, Harris, Hume, Comte, O'Hare and Dawkins live and die by their myths. Only they strangle, and seek to snuff us all, in the sinew of their secularism. But the supposed superstition of our personhood catches them too, like ligament to marrow's bone. Their every word & misanthropic sneer bely them ontologically, hypocrits they are.

The progressive's tragedy is that she is caught in the Comtian and Hegaelian narrative arc. The very logic of which was ripped from the pages of Genesis & John, but without reason, being rooted in a fallacy, a delusion that own their goddess denies. See the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

So who are the real fantasists? The true fabulists? Zarathustra was taken for mad by the bovine denizens of the burg. Perhaps it was because imagination failed them. For God is Truly Dead. Amen, Amen, I say unto you. Dead. Check the Symbol of the Faith, professed at Nicea by Marmara for the details. Muslims mark the day as their sabbath.

For ignostics generally make for very poor poets & novelists, or haven't you noticed?

But transcendental paradox is their satire and sarcasm very often's good for a laugh. As a certain comedienne cracking Hannakah and Christmas jokes says, Jesus is (after all) Magic. I mean, he probably won't subvert prophesy according to GAO-07-283. But then, that Maccabean (Judean) flame burns eight days. Even any astrophysicist will tell you there are only seven days in a week.

Anyhow, DC, as a fellow devotee of Woolf & Our Lady of Ephesus (that is, a primordial sort of feminist) I salute you.

But our exchange really hasn't really been about ethanol at all, has it? I thought we were talking teleology. I mean, A Cigar is Never Just a Smoke. That explosive symbolic potency provides sort of a post modern version of Anselm's proof, imo. That's the joke.

Anyway, feel free to mail me if you like, chascurtis at hot mail dotcom.

No, not irritable. Just cloddish. And Herbert was a fine man, but I've since become somewhat enamored of the Bloomsbury set. As I said I'm now a Smith '28 man, all previous loyalties aside. I doubt Cleveland will see much point in hashing over Keynes, though.

Cleveland, I would like to read it, no matter how much it apparently offends Rod's (or whoever might be censoring his forum's) sensibilities. You can send it to the above address, just be sure to put your moniker, or something equally recognizable in the title, so I can pull it out my junkmail.

Now see here, C and CC - allow me to quote on the hold-comments-for-approval question from The Man himself, who is doing anything but Keeping Us Down:

Scott:

[quoting SL through next graf] "Your comment is being held pending review by the moderator."

Same holding-pattern boilerplate I got upon a comment in a CC thread on Scientology last week. Note to self: disable all cookies, and go all stealth from now on under an assumed identity conveniently reversing for the alert elect my usual moniker...[end quote]

I'm sorry this is happening to you, but I say to you and to everyone else who has this problem: it's not me. And it's not any actual person at Beliefnet, to the best of my knowledge. It's the software. Again, I apologize, but nobody's doing this to your posts on purpose.

Posted by: Rod Dreher | January 22, 2008 7:21 AM

"Speaking as one of those guys who's taken his turn under arms guarding us on that wall, I gotta say that Col. Jessup got his just desserts in that movie.. He was a egotistical martinet, and a traitor. It's pretty funny that you'd quote him with approbation." Charles

Of course you're right about Jessup's character. I wasn't intending to quote him with approbation, I was trying (badly, I see now) to separate out the crude truth in his words as a counter balance to your words: "One of the things I mean is that in the end, our distinction between metaphysical and physical is facile..."

I meant that the said distinction is not facile if it's your ox that's being gored, as in the case of the long-suffering Iraqi people who welcomed a physical response from U.S Rush Limbaugh Conservatives, which is how our Hatfield and McCoys debate started out--I think. :)