Big O, Meet Mr. Jackson

In Mr. Obama, Meet Mr. Jackson, John Robson of Mercatornet writes,

(W)hat historian Walter Russell Mead in Special Providence calls the “Jacksonians”, and David Hackett Fischer’s invaluable though regrettably interminable Albion’s Seed calls “borderers” (for their origins in the Anglo-Scots border region), remain the largest single component of the American political community. These folks left a huge stamp on America, with their rough and ready egalitarian manners and robust, unapologetic self-reliance.

It is they whom observers like Tocqueville took to be typical Americans and in large measure they still are. And though many will vote Democrat this time, it’s not because they share Barack Obama’s cultural or foreign policy instincts. If he doesn’t understand why he didn’t have to court them during the campaign he will become politically irrelevant with a speed that would astonish even Jimmy Carter. Especially given the growing contingent of “Blue Dog” Democrats in Congress, noted by Canadian commentator John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail, who are classic Jacksonians, culturally conservative foreign-policy hawks.

At the moment Middle America is disaffected from the Republican party for good reasons. But not those the Democrats take for granted. Jacksonians have no patience with cultural radicalism. And they do not care that the world seems to despise America; Jacksonians despise foreigners and rally ferociously round the flag when America is attacked.

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Rabid Mama Bear - Karen Hall

Karen Hall goes to the mattresses in Confessions of a Hatemonger.

'Will Say Anything to Win'

As the race gets ugly - particularly and typically from the Leftist side - Sen. McCain spots a reality: Obama will 'say anything' to win. It's par for the course for those who mythologize their increasingly violent actions, all the while crying, "Peace, peace!"

Peering Into the Abyss

From New Oxford Review's contributing writer Maria Hsia Chang, Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Adjunct Professor at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California, during the 2008 spring semester. When a man looks into an abyss, the abyss also looks into him.

"I THINK THE JOKER KILLED HEATH LEDGER." So writes licensed attorney and former public defender Jay Gaskill in his review of The Dark Knight. Gaskill is not being melodramatic; he is simply stating what other reviewers only hint at.

The Dark Knight, the latest Hollywood incarnation of the superhero Batman, broke records for best opening weekend at $158.4 million. The movie ranked top in box-office sales for four consecutive weekends, pushing its domestic total to a staggering $461 million, and making The Dark Knight second only to the all-time box-office champion The Titanic.

No doubt, many went to see The Dark Knight out of a macabre curiosity because of the untimely death of one of its lead actors. On January 22, 2008, six months before the movie's opening, Heath Ledger was found unconscious in his Manhattan apartment. Paramedics called to the scene could not revive him. The medical examiner later determined that the 28 year old had died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs -- a lethal brew of sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medication, and the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone.

Reviewers have lauded The Dark Knight for its fine acting. In particular, Ledger's "electrifying" performance is singled out for praise; there is increasing talk of a posthumous Academy Award. His face caked with moldy makeup, with black-shadowed eyes, a red-smeared mouth, and yellowing teeth, Ledger's character, the Joker, is more than a sociopathic master criminal. Instead, reviewers use the language of the supernatural, calling him "demonic" and "diabolical" -- "a hound fresh out of hell," "a vivid, compelling picture of naked, nihilistic evil…with almost preternatural power," "a truly frightening vision," and "like Satan." Michael Caine, who plays Batman's butler Alfred, said that he found Ledger's performance so terrifying and disturbing that he sometimes forgot his lines.

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UPDATE: Nicholson says, “I warned him.”

The Quiet Eye

St. John Cantius via Daniel Mitsui at The Lion & the Cardinal. More here and here.

Obama, Keyes, and the Supreme Court

Benson, Ham, Bailie & Chivalry

Two young conservative journalists not bowled over by the Big O juggernaut and who want John McCain to win the election do a great service in compiling The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama.

Please note in the first video clip featured in the above: Obama is on the record regarding the first thing he'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. Gil Bailie has noted:

The Freedom of Choice Act would Eliminate:

• State abortion reporting requirements in ALL 50 states
It would render null and void:
• Laws in 44 states requiring parental notification when minors request abortions
• Laws in 40 states laws restricting late-term abortions
• Laws in 46 states providing conscience protection for individual health care providers
• Laws in 27 states providing conscience protection for institutions
• Laws in 38 states banning partial-birth abortions

The bill would abolish all restrictions on government funding for abortions. Once signed into law, therefore – as the Democratic nominee for president has promised to do – all restrictions on abortions would be eliminated and they would be funded by taxpayers, like it or not. Doctors and nurses would risk losing their jobs if they refuse to cooperate.

But there’s more: The Born Alive Infant Protection Act – which would require medical personnel to provide medical care to children who survive an attempted abortion – passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate – all the pro-abortion politicians voting for it. But the Democratic nominee for President, then a state legislator, led the fight against an identical bill in the Illinois legislature.

[ ... ]

When the Rip Van Winkles awaken and rub their eyes, they will find that their children and grandchildren are being taught in public schools that the deeply held moral principles of their parents are not only wrong but morally odious and socially hateful – a hint of what’s to come as the modern intermission in the world’s persecution of the Church draws to a close and Christian faith will be once again entail social opprobrium, legal and financial hardship and more.

If the voters elect the presidential candidate who has made his radical commitment to the culture of death unmistakably clear and his acquiescence in the demise of traditional marriage as clear as political expedience allows – the moral blame will fall very largely on two groups: American journalists and American Catholics. History will judge the former for professional negligence, but the latter will be judged morally and more harshly when the whole sordid episode of abortion becomes as clear in hindsight as the Nazi Holocaust is today. The past is prologue. God and posterity will hold us accountable.

KEEP praying. KEEP working. KEEP trusting. This work is about saving the children, our marriages, our families - all the basics of God's Natural Laws against a culture of death and unconscious, ignorant neopaganism.

Our work is that of chivalry. Keep at it, with faith, hope, and charity. In Christ's grace and by his Sacraments sing and work and pray to your last breath.

10 Ways of Reforming the Scimitar

A few days old, but still quite useful, Daniel Pipes offers R. Spencer's ten criteria for a moderate Scimitar religionist.

Abortion - Moral Crucible of Western Culture

With his usual concise candor, Gil Bailie puts his finger on the moral evil being fought by a Christian minority in America this election season; simultaneously, it is a monstrosity being studiously swept under the political platform of the left:

Imagine what life was like for the average German in the 1930s. The Jews were being rounded up and sent first to ghettos and then to concentration camps while respectable German politicians sought “balanced” their hand-wringing on those matters by pointing to how clever and compassionate their proposals were for improving the tax code or public transportation or working conditions in the armaments industry. This is our situation today.

What, after all, was the moral monstrosity at the heart of both slavery and the Holocaust? It was that a whole class of human beings were morally and legally invisible and therefore exploitable or expendable at the whim of others. This is the crystal-clear moral center of the abortion issue.

If western civilization abandons the most vulnerable and innocent to abortion, it doesn’t deserve to survive, and if it abandons the institution of marriage, it won’t.

Read more …

Holman Hunt - PRB

Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1868) - William Holman Hunt

Anglican Cleric Sees Threat in Olympic Mosque

Building a mosque next to the Olympic site could create a breeding ground for extremists, a senior Church of England official has warned, reports The Sunday Telegraph.

Dr Philip Lewis, an interfaith adviser to the Bishop of Bradford, said that the plans threaten to establish a ghetto of Muslims taught to embrace jihad.

Tablighi Jamaat, the group behind the proposal, are "isolationist", "patriarchal" and has a narrow reading of Islam that leaves it vulnerable to extremists, he said.

In the first intervention by a Church figure over the controversial project, Dr Lewis raised fears that a 12,000-capacity mosque in London would lead to a segregated Muslim community. The mosque would be four times the size of Britain's largest cathedral. [emphasis added]

Read more …

Making of a New Herr Wolf

Under the Let He Who Has No Sin Category in The Strangest Time of the Campaign Season, I merely offer the following as one who scratches his head at inebriated hero-worship by those who fall for internal mediators. Enter 'ali sina making of a fuehrer' in your search engine. If this seems sinister and overwrought, you forget your historical time line from the Weimer to the Reicht.

By their fruits shall you know them.

Follow the Petrol Money

Not since Robert Redford's depiction of The Candidate (1972) has such a brazenly cynical approach to the presidency been enacted. But now, it is happening in real time. And, strangely (?), during a financial crisis (??).

The only normative voiced against the single most pro-abortion (read: structurally in favor of demographic winter to western civilization) presidential candidate in United States history is this:

Follow the money, and it reeks of petrodollars.

Bring On the Meltdown

In a fascinating report from the L. A. Times, we see that A few fringe groups seek to sow chaos, convinced it will hasten the arrival of the Mahdi, the Shiites' 12th imam who they believe will bring peace.

From the perspective of mimetic theory, this is structurally called "sacrificial preparation." The anthropological record contains many instances during the time when the cultural cohesion was waning that the priesthood would choreograph such a cultural meltdown: release reprehensibles - murderers, violent criminals - encourage the breaking of traditional mores and taboos - adultery, theft, etc. All this to intensify the cultural crisis already at hand.

In our cultural hardwiring, all human beings know that at the paroxysm's climax, someone (usually a member of the priesthood, an imam, cleric, or an "ad hoc" priest) will make the accusatory gesture - "It's HIS fault" - signaling the culprit upon whom the mob can vent its collective wrathful violence.

This scapegoating "mechanism", R. Girard insists, is the origin of religion - of the gods - what he calls the "primitive sacred." And through the three components essential to its continuance and development - ritual, myth, and prohibition - arises what we all know as conventional culture.

So, these "fringe groups" of Shiite Muslims know a thing or two about how to re-invent peace and harmony from the perspective of the primitive sacred. Ratcheting up the sacrificial ante is a sure fire element of the reestablishment of a kind of peace the world understands.

Structurally, one might argue forcefully that the 60's in America were just such a "sacrificial preparation," replete with the murder of JFK, MLK, Jr., and RFK.

It just isn't the kind that the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, and his Catholic Church seek nor grant. "My peace I leave you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you."

Where do these two organizing principles meet today, the former still seeks victims to reestablish its satanic kingdoms. And there the latter still provides "lambs slain since the foundation of the world."

Rossetti - PRB

Bottles (1848) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti