I own only two instruments, one is a banjo and the other a concertina. The reason I own them is because when I was very young, in the mid-1950s, I was sent to a summer camp for the children of comrades in the movement. And because of the blacklist, there were limited opportunities for people with a communist history, so two musicians came up to this southern Ontario campsite to entertain the children, one who played the concertina whose name I no longer remember; the other was Pete Seeger. Not many definitive moments in a child’s life that are remembered more than half a century later, but that concert was one. And so, very badly, I play the banjo, and it was from Pete Seeger’s instructional manual I learned.
I had one other Pete Seeger moment. I was staying with my aunt in Fishkill, NY, sometime during the 1960s, and she mentioned that Pete Seeger was in their local phone book, living in a place called Dutch’s Junction. So I phoned over to invite him to tea and goodness gracious, he answered the phone himself and it was Pete Seeger who has the most distinctive voice in all of folk music on the other end. He thanked me for the offer but didn’t come round but an indelible memory.
Growing up, every single one of my parents’ friends was in the movement. All were Stalinists, my parents included, which is hard to reconcile about people I loved as much as I did. And they taught me a lot, gave me my interest in politics but, as I see it, fortunately taught me enough to break with every political tradition they held dear.
Life is complex. Pete Seeger has died at 94 and I mourn his passing into the great beyond.
It’s not going to be stopped. It’s only going to spread. The President is a well known former user and so are more than half the elites of American assuming they are not current users. But s the article says, grass is not good for your health:
Today’s marijuana has many times the potency (as the dealers and retailers tout regularly) of the weed that Obama and his contemporaries smoked in the 1970s. This contributes to the danger of addiction, but also increases other serious risks reported by researchers over the last 10 to 15 years. These include worsening or even triggering serious mental illness (including depression and psychosis) and permanent loss of up to eight IQ points. In addition, there are the well-known risks of short-term memory loss, inhibited concentration, and impaired motor function. These are the known dangers facing the low estimate of 18.9 million users. And the best available figures show that marijuana users have jumped almost 24 percent under President Obama—from 15.3 million in 2008 to 18.9 million in 2012.
So here is the first of the arguments made by Obama:
Obama makes two moral arguments that get to the heart of the distortion in today’s attitudes about illegal drugs. First, Remnick says,
What clearly does trouble him is the radically disproportionate arrests and incarcerations for marijuana among minorities. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said. “And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”
The charge is ludicrous. No one gets “locked up for smoking pot”—federal mandatory minimums don’t even kick in below 220 pounds, and only 9 percent of federal marijuana convictions involve African Americans. No part of law enforcement in America targets pot-smoking kids or simple users of any age. No one is being frisked on the streets for the purpose of finding marijuana users.
Just keep your head low and remain amongst the elites at the top of the tree. The scummed down neighbourhoods will be for lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
The self-inflicted death of America is not a pretty sight. Given how admirable the US was until not all that long ago, the descent into the dust is astonishing. Whatever principles of a free republic that were there then, they are being buried in front of our eyes. What you are looking at is a set of data that, according to the article Entitlement America shows this:
“A one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year.”
About which is added this comment:
It is not only the richest and most audacious thieves that prosper – it is also the penny scammers at the very bottom of the economic ladder that rip off the middle class each and every day, courtesy of the world’s most generous entitlement system.
It’s only a minor thing in the face of all of the other repressive activities in the US, but Mark Steyn’s travails within the court system, after having been sued by Michael Mann over his hockey stick, is quite significant in its own way, possibly more so because Mark is one of the few who is willing and able to fight back. In an article he brilliantly titles Slappstick Farce – and you will have to read the article to understand how clever it is – Steyn discusses how difficult it has been within the American system to deal with Mann’s lawsuit. One more example of how someone on the right finds dealing within the system so difficult.
I don’t think much about the First Amendment these days. As a practical matter, it’s simply not feasible in a global media market to tailor one’s freedom of expression to the varying local bylaws. So I take the view that I’m entitled to say the same thing in Seattle as I would in Sydney or Stockholm, Sofia or Suva. But, were Dr. Mann to prevail, it would nevertheless be the case that his peculiarly thin skin and insecurities would enjoy greater protection under U.S. law than they do in Britain, Canada, Australia, and other jurisdictions. It would thus be a major setback for the First Amendment.
That’s worth making a noise about. Up north, following a similar SLAPP suit from the Canadian Islamic Congress, my publisher Maclean’s, who are far less ideologically simpatico to me than NR, nevertheless understood the stakes — and helped get a disgusting law with a 100 percent conviction rate first stayed by a hitherto jelly-spined jurist and ultimately repealed by the Parliament of Canada. This too is a free-speech case. Free speech is about the right to thrash out ideas — on climate change, gay marriage, or anything else — in the public square, in bright sunlight. And you win a free-speech case by shining that sunlight on it, relentlessly. As we embark on our second year in the hell of the D.C. court system, that’s what I intend to do.I don’t think much about the First Amendment these days. As a practical matter, it’s simply not feasible in a global media market to tailor one’s freedom of expression to the varying local bylaws. So I take the view that I’m entitled to say the same thing in Seattle as I would in Sydney or Stockholm, Sofia or Suva. But, were Dr. Mann to prevail, it would nevertheless be the case that his peculiarly thin skin and insecurities would enjoy greater protection under U.S. law than they do in Britain, Canada, Australia, and other jurisdictions. It would thus be a major setback for the First Amendment.
The comparison is with Macleans, which is something like The Bulletin once was, and National Review, which is supposed to be the stalwart beacon of freedom on the right, is part of Steyn’s continuing disenchantment with the magazine in which he writes. Hardly anyone is standing up for freedom in the US any longer, with the dangers to wealth and reputation so large that the risks of being anything but a leftist jerk are just getting too high.
This is from Victor Davis Hanson in what he calls, Obama’s Recessional. There’s nothing about this I find exceptional other than no one seems to care. It ought to frighten the daylights out of Australians sitting out here in the South Pacific but life does seem to go on. This is Hanson summing up Obama’s foreign policy strategy.
The Obama Doctrine is a gradual retreat of the American presence worldwide — on the theory that our absence will lead to a vacuum better occupied by regional powers that know how to manage their neighborhood’s affairs and have greater legitimacy in their own spheres of influence. Any damage that might occur with the loss of the American omnipresence does not approximate the harm already done by American intrusiveness. The current global maladies — Islamist terrorism, Middle Eastern tensions, Chinese muscle-flexing, Russian obstructionism, resurgence of Communist autocracy in Latin America — will fade once the United States lowers its profile and keeps out of other nations’ business.
There is always a balance of forces that asserts itself. It’s basically, you’re on your own except that with Obama, his foreign policy is essentially to support America’s former ideological enemies and abandon its friends. Where, then, do you suppose that leaves Australia? But Hanson also transfers the Obama Doctrine to domestic policy as well.
For Obama, America abroad is analogous to the 1 percent at home. We need not squabble over the reasons why the wealthiest Americans enjoy unequal access to the things money can buy, or why America, of all nations, finds itself with unmatched global clout and influence. The concern is only that such privilege exists; that it is unfair; that it has led to injustice for the majority; and that it must be changed.
Obama, of course, cannot issue a global tax aimed at the United States. He cannot easily expand U.S. foreign aid as a sort of reparations. And he cannot craft the international equivalent of Obamacare. But he does seek the same sort of redistributive readjustment to America’s presence abroad that he does to some Americans at home — in the interests of fairness, equality, and social justice.
Just as the United States would be a lot better place if a few million were not so rich, so too the world would be better off if the United States — and to a lesser extent Europe — were not so powerful and interventionist.
Obama is a man of shallow thoughts and great hatreds. Describing anything that Obama does as a “doctrine” gives it more credit than it deserves. But there are no doubt instinctual attitudes and reactions to specific events and they are more than evident, and if you want to call them a doctrine, be my guest. But whatever you call the structure of America’s foreign and economic policies, they are re-shaping the world. Time moves more rapidly than you think. In this century 911 and the Global Financial Crises are the two most momentous events. In their wake, the world is different now and if we are thinking either who will be the most powerful nation on the planet or where will wealth creation be at its most rapid twenty years from now, what’s your guess? That things will be as they are today is nowhere near even a fifty per cent chance.
The new McCarthyists should not be subsidised by taxpayers. Nor should fools unable to distinguish rational, conservative democrats from genocidal Nazi totalitarians.
As it happens, I am particularly sensitive to this issue at the moment because of my having read American Betrayal which deals with the massive communist influence on American conduct of World War II. The book has opened a major debate in the United States on the significance of Soviet penetration of the Roosevelt White House which has led to a further discussion of Senator McCarthy which has been an eye-opener itself. These are the opening paras of an article at Breitbart by M. Stanton Evans titled, “‘McCarthyism’ by the Numbers” which goes to the heart of this issue:
The orchestrated attack on Diana West’s important book, American Betrayal, has been brutal and unseemly, but in one respect at least it has served a useful purpose.
This lone positive angle–counter-intuitive at first glance–is that her iconoclastic Cold War history has sparked a barrage of charges about “McCarthyism” and the senator from Wisconsin who gave his name to a decisive epoch in America’s long death struggle with the Kremlin.
As is well-known, “McCarthyism” was an alleged focus of political evil in the 1950s: accusations of Communist taint, without any factual basis; bogus “lists” of supposed Communists who never existed; failure in the end to produce even one provable Communist or Soviet agent, despite his myriad charges of subversion.
Such is the standard image of “McCarthyism” set forth in all the usual histories and media treatments of the era. Such is the image relied on by the critics of Ms. West to discredit her book and dismiss her as a crackpot and “conspiracy theorist.” By arguing that pro-Red elements in our government exerted baleful influence on US policy to suit the aims of Moscow, it is said, she becomes “McCarthy’s heiress,” reprising the evils of the fifties.
It does no one any good at this stage to actually try to turn back this tide but we do what we must. And before I go on, I would like to emphasise that this is SENATOR McCarthy who had nothing to do with the HOUSE Committee on UnAmerican Affairs (HUAC). You must read the above article, but unless you have read Stanton Evans’ Blacklisted by History, it is unlikely you will have very much if any personal knowledge about Joe McCarthy that has not come from sources so tainted you would never normally accept any unvarified statement from them about anything of a political nature. Stanton Evans’ concludes:
All told, the McCarthy cases linked together in such fashion amounted to several hundred people, constituting a massive security danger to the nation. However, numbers per se were not the central issue. By far the most important thing about his suspects was their positioning in the governmental structure, and other posts of influence, where they could shape American policy or opinion in favor of the Communist interest. This they did on a fairly regular basis, a subject that deserves discussion in its own right.
For now, there is enough to note that the standard version of McCarthy and “McCarthyism” being wielded to discredit Diana West is, throughout, a fiction.
Yesterday I discussed the never ending attack on Walt Disney by the left which has recently re-surfaced in a speech by Meryl Streep in which she accused Disney of being a misogynist and anti-semite. In his defence of Disney, one of the points made was this, in which he referred to the views of someone who had known Disney extremely well:
As you might imagine, my friend and his wife bristled at Streep’s accusations, noting that she was recycling smears that originated with the communist attempts to take over Hollywood following the Second World War. This was the same period in which Ronald Reagan was fighting the communists in the Screen Actors Guild, first as a member of the union’s board, then as its president. When Reagan said at his first presidential press conference that the Soviets “openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat,” he was speaking in part from his experience with Hollywood communists. Disney, my friend and his wife attest, was a target of the kind of lying and cheating to which Reagan referred.
Accusing someone of McCarthyism is to fall into a trap set by the left, McCarthy being as honest and brave as anyone has ever been. To smear and defame are the tactics of the left which you can see before you at every turn which is exactly the point that Andrew Bolt is trying to make but with the wrong analogy. But it is an analogy that by employing it oneself assumes into the very middle of the debate an equivalence that simply does not exist.
I’ve read the book myself and agree with how exceptional it is. But here we have the same thing said in this article by Kori Schake who is Research Fellow and member, military history working group. The title of the article is War: The Gambling Man’s Game and this is the opening para:
Geoffrey Blainey’s The Causes of War is a genuinely wonderful book. I had it pressed on me by one of the Pentagon’s most thoughtful people, and while it’s not a new book, it should be at the top of the reading lists of people interested in international relations. Like much else in the book, Blainey is straightforward in his title: he is examining why wars occur. He quotes Clausewitz to the effect that of all the branches of human activity, war is the most like a gambling game, and Blainey’s approach is very much marked by game theory.
This is more than creepy. The story behind the accusation that Walt Disney was both a misogynist and an anti-Semite and why it has suddenly surfaced once again. Via Hugh Hewitt:
Defending Mr. Disney
By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute
As a child, I was fascinated by Walt Disney. Not by his cartoons. Not by the Mouseketeers. Not by Davy Crocket. But by Disney himself, the creator of the company that produced all those films and TV shows. So I was dismayed two weeks ago when, as you have no doubt heard, actress Meryl Streep accused Disney of being a “gender bigot” and an anti-Semite.
Ms. Streep leveled the charges in the course of presenting a best actress award to Emma Thompson for her work in Saving Mr. Banks, which is about Disney, the children’s book author P.L Travers and the making of Mary Poppins. Commentators have noted that Streep spoke midway through the voting period for the Oscars. In a Hollywood meets Washington move, Streep was, some suggest, attempting to deny Thompson that highest profile Best Actress nod, and if so, she succeeded. Thompson and her film failed to snag a single major slot on this year’s lists.
Of course, Streep said the other day that she was “shocked” at Thompson being bumped from the Oscar lists, “shocked,” some say, in a Claude Raines Casablanca style. Ms. Streep is among the five nominees.
But what about the charges? Was Disney misogynous or anti-Semitic?
Streep quoted from a 1938 letter describing the division of the tasks between male and female artists. Animation, as opposed to coloring and other support tasks, was confined to men. But if that in fact was Disney’s practice in 1938, it was short lived. The lead animator in Bambi, made four years later, was a woman. And assigning her wasn’t a matter of finding someone could be paid less. Disney’s rule was, as he put it, “If a woman can do the work as well, she is worth as much as a man.”
Regarding anti-Semitism, Disney had numerous Jewish friends, business associates and employees, supported a number of Jewish charities and in 1955 was named the Beverly Hill’s B’nai B’rith’s Man of the year.
But here is one reason I am telling this. It happens that some of those friends, business associates and employees were the parents of friends of mine.
As a child, one of my friends played in Disney’s office. His father was in charge of some critical operations at the Disney studios. His mother was the model for Snow White. When he had days at the office with Dad, he would at times be deposited in the boss’ office, where one wall slid open revealing another room filled with Disney character toys and dolls. Today, on a wall at his home, this friend has on display framed Disney cartoons and animation cells, several made especially for his father and mother.
As you might imagine, my friend and his wife bristled at Streep’s accusations, noting that she was recycling smears that originated with the communist attempts to take over Hollywood following the Second World War. This was the same period in which Ronald Reagan was fighting the communists in the Screen Actors Guild, first as a member of the union’s board, then as its president. When Reagan said at his first presidential press conference that the Soviets “openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat,” he was speaking in part from his experience with Hollywood communists. Disney, my friend and his wife attest, was a target of the kind of lying and cheating to which Reagan referred.
The father of someone else to whom I am close was an investor in Hollywood in the 1950s. He was also among the Americans who provided instrumental support for the foundation of the State of Israel. He had a “radar” for anti-Semitism, I am told, and no use for anyone in whom he detected it. He knew and liked Disney and may have invested in Disney’s movies.
Here is the other reason I am telling this story.
It strikes me that, in addition to (if reports are true) grotesque ambition, Ms. Streep reflects a certain warped mindset that is all too prominent in the fashionable circles of our time. I am talking about a predisposition to believe that anything iconically American is corrupt. That anyone who has achieved great things in this country did it through exploiting power differentials derived from gender and ethnicity. That nothing is deserved, except, perhaps, the fashionable circle’s own fashionable achievements. That no other life’s work can be credited, particularly if it comes from, say, a dirt-poor kid of itinerant parents who grew up in the unfashionable precincts of the Midwest and never received one of the fashionable circle’s fashionable degrees.
Ronald Reagan was such a kid. So was Walt Disney.
UPDATE: I have done a bit of research into the issue of Walt Disney’s anti-semiteism. This accusation has apparently been in part based on this 1929 Mickey Mouse cartoon, “The Opry House”, since it has a section in it where Mickey, in “his caricature of a Hasidic Jew”, dances to a Hasidic tune. You should watch it, and also what comes just before (starting at 3:19), to see how vile this accusation is. On the basis of this 85 year old cartoon, animation aside, Disney not only was but still is a man ahead of his time.
FURTHER UPDATE: This is from an article trying to substantiate Disney’s anti-semitism:
Disney was plagued by allegations of anti-Semitism during his life and after his death. Sure enough, ethnic stereotypes common to films of the 1930s were included in several of his early cartoons.
For example, Three Little Pigs featured the Big Bad Wolf sneaking up to the door dressed as a Jewish peddler. And The Opry House, during which Mickey Mouse dresses up and dances like a Hasidic Jew.
The Opry House we have dealt with. As for “the Big Bad Wolf sneaking up to the door dressed as a Jewish peddler”, the peddler was specifically stated to be a “Fuller Brush Man” (see 5:59 in) which was the farthest thing in the world at the time from a Jewish peddler (think Avon Lady if that makes any sense today). But irrespective, the person at the door has to be seen as utterly trustworthy which is why the wolf chooses it as a disguise since his aim is to get the three little pigs to let him in. And if he’s Jewish, the most important question is why does he want to eat pigs at all?
These people and their accusations are disgusting, pitiful and sickening. Jews have enough trouble without inventing enemies who were actually their friends and allies.
Dinesh D’Souza, director of the 2012 documentary “2016: Obama’s America,” was arrested and indicted for campaign finance fraud on Thursday, Reuters reports.
Conservative activist James O’Keefe is accusing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration of targeting his group with document requests and a subpoena, claiming the Democratic governor’s recent comments critical of conservatives “aren’t simply words.”
Law of Markets 