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Recommended Reading: Two Books on Turning Rightward

Reading is a luxury, and it would be a luxury to go back and read these two books again. I can only jot down a few thoughts on both, as much for my own sake (to be reminded of later, when I forget what I've read!) as for the sake of whoever happens to read this entry. 

Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life, by Michael Medved. Here's what I jotted down in my notes: "As much a book of history as it is memoir . . . A history of American leftism as seen through the eyes of one who spearheaded it before rejecting it." I found his analysis of why leftism as a philosophy has a corrosive impact on personal happiness particularly  interesting: 

Over the years, I've concluded that the obvious contrast between gloomy, dour liberals and cheerful conservatives has less to do with the reassuring influence of right-wing ideas than it does with the unfailingly depressing impact of leftist thinking. Over the past thirty years, the liberal project has emphasized national guilt over past American atrocities; competitive claims of victimhood from various aggrieved groups; reports of impending environmental disaster threatening the future of the earth itself; the helplessness of ordinary people in the face of cruel corporate elites; the impossibility of racial justice without preferential treatment for oppressed minorities; the doomed, outmoded nature of traditional marriage, conventional religious faith, and other sources of common comfort; and a constant sense of dire crisis which justifies the sweeping, radical governmental initiatives that the left considers our only hope. Good news and self-confidence present existential threats to "progressive" activists. If people feel happy in their private lives and personal arrangements, then why would they need the thoroughgoing transformation of society and its fundamental institutions that left-wing agitators invariably demand? For the true believers of the liberal faith, discontent, restlessness, and rage amount to far more than useful political tools; they provide the very basis for their philosophical orientation (230-231).

 There are 35 chapters ("lessons") in the book. It's a true autobiography in the sense that he begins at the beginning, i.e., with the story of his immigrant ancestors who emigrated to America from Eastern Europe (the Ukraine), their hardships and sorrows, the almost miraculous birth of his (Medved's) father, his own childhood and upbringing, first in Philadelphia, then in San Diego, and ultimately in Los Angeles, where he thrived intellectually and precociously (if not socially) and began his college career at Yale at the age of 16. There are fascinating, almost Forrest Gump-like encounters throughout his young adult life with people and situations that represent significant milestones in American politics (most interesting to me were his warm friendship with Hillary Rodham and his political activism in support of Robert Kennedy's candidacy for president. Medved was at present at the Ambassador Hotel the night Kennedy was shot). 

Some of the chapters could be stand-alone essays: Chapter 4, "Business Isn't Exploitative--It's Heroic," about the entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants; Chapter 9, "The Highway Provides a Better Education Than the Ivy League," an amazing story about his hitchhiking adventures (he logged a total of 82,000 miles hitchhiking over a period of five years during his college and young adult years); Chapter 16, "Sometimes Father Really Does Know Best," about his gradual return to Orthodox Judaism;  Chapter 22, "Everything Worth Defending Depends on Military Might," about the Vietnam War, leftism, and his gradual shift from left to right.

Other chapters on divorce, re-marriage, abortion, the media, movies, talk radio, and a particularly detailed discussion about Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (Medved was actively and aggressively involved in helping stem the controversy that swirled around the making of this movie) are all, in their own rights, extremely interesting, insightful, honest, well-written. 

Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys, edited by Mary Eberstadt, who's a research fellow at the Hoover Institute. First, I loved Eberstadt's introductory comments, particularly her personal comments about what pulled her inexorably to the right: legal abortion. I resonated with her comments here, since it was abortion, for me, as well, that pulled me rightward. She writes: 

Though a lackadaisical apostate at the time, I read Roe v. Wade at the suggestion of Jeremy Rabkin (then one of Cornell's few conservative professors), and found myself thinking, This can't be right. I listened over the years as one hyphenated kind of feminist after another sounded weirdly full-throated cheers for the routine trashing of what was obviously some form of human life . . . and just as repeatedly I thought: This can't be right either. 

This can't be right: an intuitionist phrase does not a political philosophy make. But what started for me and, I believe, many other people weighing the real legacy of Roe went on to become something more--a ground-up rethinking of many other political facts that supposedly enlightened people regarded as self-evident, and that turned out on inspection to be be anything but (19-20).

Of the twelve writers describing their political journeys rightward, the ones I enjoyed the most were Richard Starr ("Killer Rabbits and the Continuing Crisis"); David Brooks ("Confessions of a Greenwich Village Conservative"); Dinesh D'Souza ("Recollections of a Campus Renegade"--funny!), Stanley Kurtz ("Pig Heads"--disturbing discussion about how the left took over academia and how it silences "true," i.e., classical liberals). Peter Berkowitz also writes about the importance of "conserving liberalism, properly understood." Liberalism, that is, as distinct from leftism. Berkowitz writes: 

Of course, the liberalism to which I refer is not what everybody understands by the term. In the United States, a liberal is a man or woman of the left, a progressive, who wants government to take an aggressive role in combating market imperfections and social inequities by ensuring all citizens a robust level of material and moral well-being...On the other side of the Atlantic, a liberal is a kind of conservative, a libertarian and free marketeer, who wishes to firmly limit government regulation of the economy and morals in order to emancipate individual creativity and drive...This larger liberalism refers not to a political party but to a centuries-old tradition of political thought and order. The liberal tradition is defined above all by the moral premise that founds it, which is that human beings are by nature free and equal, and the political premise that directs it, which is that the purpose of government is to secure the individual freedom shared equally by all (246).

At the end is a bibliography (next up: Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind). Reading these essays, on the heels of Michael Medved's extraordinarily detailed, beautifully written autobiography, I realize there are many brilliant, educated, intelligent conservatives out there, writing, publishing, researching,  speaking, working tirelessly to promote and advance conservative ideals and policies. It's a shame that more of these individuals are not only not given more prominence or respect, but are mocked, ridiculed, dismissed as irrelevant or fanatical. The caricature of the right-wing lunatic, the racist, the bigoted, the narrow-minded, conservative is just that: a caricature. How wrong, how inaccurate, that caricature. 

Bullies Beget Bullies

Michael Brown was a bully. Not surprising so are those protesting in his name. Way to make us sympathetic to your cause, Ferguson thugs. 

Facts are Stubborn Things: Reaction to the Ferguson Grand Jury Decision

"Facts are stubborn things," our second president John Adams said in his Argument in Defense of Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials back in the time when presidents said things that mattered. 

"Facts are stubborn things: and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion..."

As I watch the country erupt in anger and rage and passion over the decision of the Grand Jury not to prosecute Darren Wilson and listen to the reaction of people great and small (Barack Obama among the latter), I'm impressed most by the utter disinterest in the facts. To hear prominent figures describe Michael Brown as a "gentle giant," as an unarmed young man cowering (hands upraised in surrender) before a race-obsessed policeman, as shot from behind, etc. all of which has been disproven both by forensics and testimony, is to marvel at the refusal of many to allow facts to dictate the narrative. The quaint cliché, "you're entitled to your opinion but not your facts," is brushed aside like a pesky mosquito. It's practically the norm (at least in mainstream media reporting and some cable news programming) to gloss over the facts and dissect the narrative.

"Facts are stubborn things: and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." 

It's the narrative, stupid, which is usually the case, but what's really unsettling is how quickly the narrative replaces truth until the narrative becomes truth. Ask anyone you know who Matthew Shepard was and how he died and you'll hear about how the young man who was gay was brutally "beaten, tortured, and left to die" by two young men who were repulsed by Shepard's sexual advances. This was in 1998. Since then new information has been revealed and a book written that tells a different story, not only about Matthew but about his killers, as well. But the narrative is all that matters. 

Ask anyone you know who Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman are. The narrative (racist Zimmerman stalking and shooting unarmed black boy Trayvon) and the reality (Zimmerman, with no personal history of being racist, and Trayvon, who, contrary to the images that saturated the media of a sweet-faced young boy was, in fact, a pretty buff, strong, fully grown kid who managed to overpower the older man and begin to slam his head into the sidewalk. The ensuing struggle resulted in Zimmerman managing to retrieve his gun (legally owned) and shoot the teenager dead. The facts support the scenario, which resulted in Zimmerman's acquittal. The facts did not support the narrative. Thus, the rioting. 

Here we are again. The facts do not support the narrative. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to Al Sharpton or to CNN or to President Obama who said we need to "understand" their (i.e., the rioters') response. Understand looting? Understand destruction of property? Understand torching of cars and stores? Understand a refusal to accept the truth that Michael Brown was not a gentle giant, that he assaulted the officer, attempted to wrest the officer's gun from inside the police car, was apparently shot in the scuffle before running away and refused to stop. We can second guess the officer's actions, but that's all we can do. Monday-morning quarterbacking, it's sometimes called. But we weren't there. Police officers are trained to react to these kinds of situations. Factor in the aggression of the suspect, the adrenaline of the encounter, the uncertainty of the suspect's actions, his size and demeanor (apparently under the influence of marijuana), his refusal to comply with an officer's orders. 

Facts are stubborn things. Our wishes, our inclinations, our passions, our interest in a narrative, cannot alter the state of facts, cannot alter the evidence. 

They may alter them for a time. It's only been two years since Trayvon Marin died, fifteen years in the case of Matthew Shepherd. How long will the story of Michael Brown be one of an unarmed gentle giant gunned down by a racist cop, who was merely doing what all cops are inclined to anyway. Ferguson, according to one writer, is "yet another unraveled thread in the closely woven fabric of racism that has cloaked this country for 500 years." 

More to say on this. Maybe later. 

Stock Options?

The holidays are upon us, Samson! Time to whip up some stock. This year, I'm hosting the grand Thanksgiving feast, with at least one known vegetarian in our midst. So in addition to my traditional turkey stock, which I'll probably make a couple days before Thanksgiving so I don't have to freeze it, this year I'm also making a homemade vegetable broth, using a recipe I found on The Splendid Table ("nothing weak-kneed" about it). I plan on using this broth for the main dish I'm making to accompany the turkey, Curried Vegetable and Chickpea Stew with Tofu. This being a special occasion meal, nothing but homemade for my guest. 

It's a beautiful broth, so rich and full of flavors, which I attribute to the mushrooms. There's no salt, since it serves as a base for other recipes, but it barely needs any. It's pretty easy but does take a bit of time, not to mention over half a dozen bowls, vessels, colanders, and assorted kitchen utensils. Here are a few pictures!

In a non-stick pan or pot, sauté carrots, onions, celery, and mushrooms (I used a mix of Cremini and white) in olive oil, add minced garlic, and then de-glaze with a bit of white wine. 

Transfer ingredients to a large stock pot, add romaine lettuce (lettuce? why not chard? oh well, lettuce, it is), chopped tomato (I used canned), a sprinkling or two of nutmeg (don't have fresh, not that gourmet), and then about 4 quarts water. Simmer, partially covered for an hour and a half. By the way, what's nice about this stock is there's no icky foam to skim away the way there is when you make a stock out of bones.

After 90 minutes, strain stock through a colander lined with cheese cloth and let cool . . . 

. . . while cleaning up!

Distribute among smaller containers to freeze or use as needed. I'm sure there's a better method for freezing, but what I do is line the top of these containers with some plastic wrap, sort of pressing down on the surface, the idea being that there will be no air space to create ice crystals. Not sure if that works, but it's what I do for lack of other better options. 

Stock options! Ta da!

Worldwide Muslims at a Glance: Ben Shapiro Crunches the Numbers

Ben Shapiro of Truth Revolt, responding to the recent kerfuffle between Ben Affleck and Bill Maher about whether Islam was a violent religion. I jotted down the statistics Shapiro provides. Here's the video, with my notes following: 



The question he poses: Is radicalism in the Muslim community a tiny minority phenomenon? Shapiro defines radicalism as someone who agrees to any of the following*: 

• Enforcement of strict Sharia Law
• Positive or mixed feelings about Osama bin Laden
• Positive or mixed feelings about Al Qaeda
• Suicide bombings or targeting of civilians is sometimes justified
• Honor killings of women can sometimes be justified
• Support for terror attacks on Israel
• Mocking or drawing caricatures of Mohammed

Noting that there are 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, from 49 countries where they have a majority, Shapiro proceeds to address the question posed above by relying on population statistics from The Pew Research Center as of 2011. Using one or more of the above criteria, the following numbers of Muslim worldwide could, in fact, be considered radicalized: 

African and Middle East Region

Indonesia: 143 million
Egypt: 55.2 million
Pakistan: 135.4 million
Bangladesh: 121.9 million
Nigeria: 53.7 million
Iran: 62.1 million
Turkey: 23.9 million
Morocco: 24.6 million
Iraq: 24.3 million
Afghanistan: 24 million
Jordan: 3.8 million
Palestinian areas: 3.83 million 

Western Countries

France: 1.6 million
Great Britain: 2.2 million
United States: 500,000 thousand

Number of radicalized Muslims in the regions listed above: 680,030,000 million out of a total 942.4 million Muslims.

As Shapiro notes, this figure does not include countries (apparently not included in Pew research) such as Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Somalia, and Libya. However, it's safe to assume the percentages in these countries would be at least similar to, if not higher, than the above countries, leading one to conclude that the numbers would likely go even higher, up to or even beyond 800 million, which is over half of the total population of Muslims worldwide. 

Not, by any stretch of the imagination, a "tiny minority phenomenon." 


* It must be noted that the report by Pew does not interpret the results of its findings in terms of labels like "radicalism." While I tend to agree with Shapiro's interpretation, anyone who wants to quibble about whether or not these criteria do represent radicalism should contact Ben Shapiro himself. For a more nuanced discussion of the statistics presented in this discussion, go to the original source below.

Source: The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics, and Society (Pew Research: Religion and Public Life Project, April 30, 2013)

Who's Calling Whom "Chickenshit"?

Barack (Barry) Obama

Sergeant Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu

'Nuff said. 


**** 

"The Crisis in U.S. Israel Relations is Officially Here" (Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, October 28, 2014). 

Not Useful, Just an Idiot

Behold the beautiful people, Hollywood gentility, blue blooded, empty-headed, imbeciles, idiots. 

Ay me! She speaks!

"Give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass" 

(Gwyneth Paltrow, speaking at a fund raiser at her house for Barack Obama).

I wanted to include her in my (growing) list of "useful idiots," but Paltrow strikes me as nothing more than a foolish, fatuous, vacuous, unschooled, ignorant person, so I didn't want to dignify her with the designation. Now, though, reading this article by Steve McCann, published a couple of years ago, I suppose I should go ahead and upgrade her status to "useful." As McCann explains, the term "useful idiot" was coined "by the leaders of the Soviet Union to describe those in the West who naively promoted the cause of Russian Communism when in reality they were held in contempt and were being cynically used by the Soviet hierarchy." Now, he remarks, the term aptly applies to "a vast swath of citizens in the United States who have been cynically used by the hardcore left for a cause they are unwilling to understand." He continues: 

Among the mysteries confronting those of us who have immigrated to the United States from countries that have experienced the devastating outcome of socialist/Marxist ideology [McCann apparently came to America as a child in 1952, but I don't know from where], is why seemingly successful and educated people could be so easily swayed to support those whose end-game is to transform the country into a socialist "utopia" and to control the day-to-day lives of all Americans. Among these "useful idiots" are a seeming majority of the Jewish population as well as many in business, and nearly all in the entertainment industry.

So yes, Ms. Paltrow, it appears you are, in fact, a useful idiot after all, along with Maxine Waters and Ben Affleck. 

Speaking of Affleck, I wonder what his thoughts were today about the Islamists he defends with such ardor as he read in today's Los Angeles Times that Islamic State proudly justifies "forcing ethnic Yazidi women into sexual slavery--a practice they say is encouraged under Islamic [Sharia] law" and that the group "exults in the enslavement and rape of women from the Yazidi religious minority captured in Iraq after their husbands or fathers were killed or taken prisoner." Comments, sir? 

"Islamic State Publication Seeks to Justify Slavery and Sexual Abuse" (by David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2014).

Ben Affleck, Another Useful Idiot

What an odd group of panelists. Ben Affleck, Michael Steele, and Nicholas Kristof debating Bill Maher and Sam Harris discussing radical Islam and whether condemning radical Islam is a type of Islamophobia. I never thought the day would come when I sided with Bill Maher, but that day has come. The world truly must be topsy-turvy. 

I'm surprised to see Michael Steele siding with Affleck and Kristof against Maher. I sort of wonder what the back story is. And what a foolish man, Ben Affleck, whose reasoning seems to be (if you'll pardon the cliché), a mile wide and an inch deep.

Transcript can be read here, if you can't stand listening to these gentlemen argue.

Recommended Reading: 1776, by David McCullough

I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this after having read David McCullough's remarkable book, 1776.  But I'll say it anyway: how in the world did the Americans win the Revolutionary War?


To say this was a David vs. Goliath tale is to traipse precariously close to cliche, yet it is so. The description of Washington's ragtag rebel army is no exaggeration, especially in that final month of the year. 

Most of the troops, comprised of teenagers and older men, farmers and businessmen, had never served in a military, let alone been trained in the art of war. Many of them came to the end of that year literally barefoot, marching in snow, on ice, in sleet. The army's leadership emerged by instinct and sheer grit. The incredible story of Henry Knox, then a junior officer, and his successful effort to retrieve cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, is but one example. Words of hope or encouragement sometimes fueled the defeated army to fight another day, but it was often short-lived. 

Contrast the Continental army with the British military, well-disciplined, well-fed, well-supplied, constantly reinforced (those Hessians!), and, of course, His Majesty's Royal Navy, and, well, you can't help but wonder, as I did, again and again, if this time, the outcome will be different (spoiler alert: it isn't).  

But really, at any given point during this one year, the war should have ended in defeat. Some battles were literally decided on a change in weather--a fog, a sudden storm, a gale-force wind--or a disagreement between British officers about whether or not to advance today or wait until tomorrow. 

This book ends, of course, in Trenton, New Jersey, in December 1776. All depended on the element of surprise, a midnight (Christmas Eve!) march (barefoot!), and silence. But then, that storm. Should they proceed? Yes, they marched, which probably gave them the advantage. The Hessians were celebrating the season with no expectation of an attack in this kind of weather. 

George Washington ("that fox!") who had been outwitted again and again with only a few small victories to his credit, somehow managed to summon, deep within himself, the ability to persevere. After the victory at Trenton, John Hancock had this to say of Washington: "Troops, properly inspired, and animated by a just confidence in their leader, will often exceed expectation, or the limits of probability." 

That the Americans exceeded the limits of probability is an understatement. That they won that battle, and, in time, the war, certainly was improbable. 

Here's how McCullough ends the book: 

The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too, they would never forget. 

Especially for those who had been with Washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning--how often circumstance, storms, contrary winds, the oddities of strengths of individual character had made the difference, the outcome seemed little short of a miracle. 

This is probably one of the best books I've ever read. 

Another Useful Idiot

A friend posted a video on Facebook of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) speaking at a town hall event sponsored by the Islamic Society of Orange County in February 2012. The title of the event was "Sharia and the Constitution." I'll embed the video below.

Ms. Waters speaks for about 12 minutes. I'm not sure if she was the keynote speaker, or if her remarks preceded or followed those of other speakers. I didn't hear a specific reference to the Constitution in her speech, so perhaps there were other speakers presenting that aspect of the town hall meeting. 

Rather, the gist of Ms. Waters' remarks focused on the attempts by some Republican lawmakers, specifically Peter King and Newt Gingrich, to make Sharia Law illegal in the United States. Her point was that America is a country where all religious expression is a fundamental right; in attempting to criminalize one aspect of religion, in this case, Sharia Law, the GOP is discriminating against Muslims. 

Unfortunately, her argument is undermined by the fact that, implicit in Sharia is the expectation of conversion--voluntary or coerced--to Islam, and its tenets are oppressive, tyrannical, anti-woman (are you listening, Ms. Waters?), and, if we're talking about the American legal system, illegal. For example, according to Sharia law:

•  Theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand.
•  Criticizing or denying any part of the Quran is punishable by death.
•  Criticizing or denying Muhammad is a prophet is punishable by death.
•  Criticizing or denying Allah, the moon god of Islam is punishable by death.
•  A Muslim who becomes a non-Muslim is punishable by death.
•  A non-Muslim who leads a Muslim away from Islam is punishable by death.
•  A non-Muslim man who marries a Muslim woman is punishable by death.
•  A man can marry an infant girl and consummate the marriage when she is 9 years old.
•  Girls' clitoris should be cut (per Muhammed's words in Book 41, Kitab Al-Adab, Hadith 5251).
•  A woman can have 1 husband, but a man can have up to 4 wives; Muhammed can have more.
•  A man can unilaterally divorce his wife but a woman needs her husband's consent to divorce.
•  A man can beat his wife for insubordination.
•  Testimonies of four male witnesses are required to prove rape against a woman.
•  A woman who has been raped cannot testify in court against her rapist(s).
•  A woman's testimony in court, allowed only in property cases, carries half the weight of a man's.
•  A female heir inherits half of what a male heir inherits.
•  A woman cannot drive a car, as it leads to fitnah (upheaval).
•  A woman cannot speak alone to a man who is not her husband or relative.
•  Meat to be eaten must come from animals that have been sacrificed to Allah.
•  Muslims should engage in Taqiyya and lie to non-Muslims to advance Islam.

* Note: I found the above list of Sharia laws on a website called BillionBibles. The link has a picture of a severed hand next to a Koran, so I decided not to link it here.

Today's Los Angeles Times reports that Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL), the Islamic (i.e., religious) terrorist group that is attempting to establish a caliphate in the Middle East and probably aspires to world dominion, is recruiting women to join their cause, marry their soldiers, get pregnant, raise children ("lions"), and cook. At the same time, in Syria, a female militia has been created whose job it is to enforce Sharia among women:

Early this year in the Syrian city of Raqqah, capital of the self-styled caliphate, local women formed the Khansa Militia, an armed morality squad whose job one anti-Islamic State activist summed up as "detaining and whipping." The militia counts many foreigners among its ranks, said the activist, who asked that his name be withheld for security reasons. The women, armed with handguns and rifles, drive around the city looking for violators of Islamic State's severe interpretation of Islam. During one raid, the militia detained several high school students and teachers for such transgressions as wearing niqabs that were too transparent, having visible eyebrows or wearing a hair clip under the hijab. Each one was whipped 30 times, said another activist in Raqqah.

This barbarity is what Ms. Waters considers religious expression and defends as constitutional? She repudiates lawmakers who are trying to prevent such barbarity from creeping into our legal system? 

Ms. Waters is either ignorant of or blind to the oppressive nature of Sharia. Another useful idiot. 

Red Pill or Blue Pill?

Ezekiel Emmanuel doesn't want to live beyond the age of 75. That shouldn't really be anyone's concern besides his own, and, perhaps his immediate family's. 

Unfortunately, it is our concern, because Ezekiel Emmanuel isn't just some random guy, living in flyover country. He's Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He also heads the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He's also one of the chief architects of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. 

So when Dr. Emmanuel says he doesn't want to live beyond the age of 75, after which he won't accept medical intervention for illness or use preventive health care screenings, and presents his reasoning in a lengthy article in The Atlantic called "Why I Hope to Die at 75," he's not just waxing poetic or nostalgic. He's shaping policy. He may claim otherwise ("I am not advocating 75 as the official statistic of a complete, good life in order to save resources, ration health care, or address public-policy issues arising from the increases in life expectancy"), but he's fooling nobody. 

On the heels of his piece in the Atlantic comes this article, "Panel Urges Overhauling Health Care at End of Life," in the New York Times reporting on the recommendations of (wait for it) The Committee on Approaching Death (I guess we need a committee for this). Their book, Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preference Near the End of Life, contains the panel's recommendations. 

OK, so people who work with the elderly (and I know a few) might regard the committee's suggestions with equanimity. What's wrong with reimbursing health care providers for "conversations with patients on advance care planning?

Yet, from where I sit, it's impossible, when juxtaposing the seemingly benign suggestions of The Committee with Dr. Emmanuel's sunny rejection of old age, not to see where this is headed. And yes, I'm talking about that slippery slope. Good call, Ms. Palin.


That's how it works, folks. It begins with a "suggestion," moves into a "conversation," veers into debate, creeps into policy, seeps into mores, metastasizes into worldview. Before long, the right thing to do is not only to nudge the aged to choose an early exit, but to deprive them of the choice to extend their lives altogether, at least from the standpoint of insurance benefits. 

So here we are, 2014, in Obama's America. It is, as promised, fundamentally transformed. Ezekiel Emmanuel may be cool with it, and Michelle Obama, positively giddy. But, of course, that's what it's like when you're plugged into the Matrix. Peace and joy and light and sunshine and flowers. 

 The red pill for me, if you please, Morpheus.

Dillard on Writing and Revising: "It's Not Holy Writ!"

We began this semester in English 50 by reading two pieces by Annie Dillard, the first, an excerpt from her book, Holy the Firm, about a moth that flies into a candle's flame; the second, an essay called "How I Wrote the Moth Essay--and Why."

There's a lot to love about Dillard's approach to writing. I especially love that she has amassed and indexed over 30 of her own journals which she relies on for her writings, her personal Google database, if you will. I also love her remarks on writing and revising:

On getting started:

How do you go from nothing to something? How do you face the blank page without fainting dead away? To start a narrative, you need a batch of things. Not feelings, not opinions, not sentiments, not judgments, not arguments, but specific objects and events: a cat, a spider web, a mess of insect skeletons, a candle, a book about Rimbaud, a burning moth.

What do you do with these things? You juggle them. You toss them around  . . . you need bits of the world to toss around. You start anywhere, and join the bits into a pattern by your writing about them. Later you can throw out the ones that don't fit.

On revising: 

[Revising] requires . . . nerves of steel and lots of coffee.

It doesn't hurt much to babble in a first draft, so long as you have the sense to cut out irrelevancies later.

The most inept writing has an inadvertent element of suspense: the reader constantly asks himself, where on earth is this going?

Usually I end up throwing away the beginning: the first part of a poem, the first few pages of an essay, the first scene of a story, even the first few chapters of a book. It's not holy writ.

Revising is a breeze if you know what you're doing--if you can look at your text coldly, analytically, manipulatively.

On engaging her readers:

I try to give the reader a story, or at least a scene (the flimsiest narrative occasion will serve), and something to look at.

I try not to hang on to the reader's arm and bore him with my life story, my fancy self-indulgent writing, or my opinions. He is my guest; I try to entertain him. Or he'll throw my pages across the room and turn on the television.

My favorite: "It's not holy writ."

More important to me, working with students in a beginning composition class, is growth. Show me where you started, I tell them, show me the messy trail that began with those first scribbles in your writing journal culminating in that nicely formatted (MLA!) final draft. I'll read the final draft and give it a grade, yes. But if I don't see a finished product that's much different from the early drafts, the final grade suffers.

I tell my students this, but I'm not sure they hear, not sure they care.

First draft, narrative paragraph.

Some do, though. I was pleased to see a few students getting the idea in a fairly inconsequential early writing assignment, a narrative paragraph, describing a place they'd visited. They brought their paragraphs to class, but I didn't collect them. We talked about Dillard, on hands and knees in her bathroom, peering at the discarded remains of sow bugs ("those little armadillo creatures who live to travel flat out in houses, and die round"), earwigs, moths ("wingless and huge and empty"), that have collected behind her toilet, beneath a spider's web, and marvel (I did, anyway) at the writer's interest in things most of us would sweep up or vacuum away. There, in the detritus, a story, a narrative, a life lesson.

What do you see? What does it feel like? Smell like? Look like? Show me!

I allocated class time to experiment on their drafts, then sent them home to revise ("It's not holy writ!"). The next class session, I collected both drafts, and read them yesterday.

Revised draft, narrative paragraph.

Some got the idea. I saw scribbles and notes on the first drafts, incorporated into the second, and gave them 10 points for trying. A few students turned in two drafts, virtually identical. I deducted 5 points for not trying. The occasional student rose to the challenge and wowed me. Carina's, I show here. Students like this make it all pretty much worthwhile.

Two Reasons Why I Mislike President Obama

After nearly six years of watching this man in action, the first four of which I was fairly vocal (inasmuch as one can be vocal in a blog that no one reads), expressing a veritable alphabet of emotions: anger, bewilderment, bitterness, concern, disgust, dismay, exasperation, frustration. You get the idea. 

Now nearly six years in, emotion and agitation have been replaced. I'm less angry and more resigned. There's a dullness, a sinking feeling, even a sort of sadness. I, like so many, was right about this man. But the truth is, he's so much more than what I suspected. I don't think he's malicious, malevolent, conspiratorial. It's almost worse. He's a narcissist of the worst order. He's arrogant, intolerably so. Narcissism is bad enough, but it's not necessarily a deal breaker. Bill Clinton was (is) narcissistic. But his narcissism wasn't fatal. Combine narcissism with arrogance, put it in a place of power, surround it with fawning yes-men, prop it up with an acquiescent, uncritical media, and you really do have a problem, big time.

A new alphabet, this time of adjectives: arrogant, condescending, duplicitous, haughty, manipulative, narcissistic. 

At first, as I said, one gets all worked up and agitated and exercised. And early in this game, one genuinely believes that by pointing out these blindingly glaring character deficits, those who haven't seen them yet will suddenly see them, will have their ah ha! moment, agree, and, at the very least, be a bit more scrutinizing. But it doesn't happen. And after awhile, it dawns on one, that not only will those people not see the deficits that you so clearly see, they actually regard those deficits as qualities! 

About that time, one remembers pithy sayings, like, "There is none so blind as he who will not see," realizes one is fighting against a blindness, of sorts, and little by little, day by day, stops saying anything, and only sits back and gapes, open-mouthed, as the fundamentally transformed world that this man promised (the one promise he kept), continues to unfold. Deception runneth deep. 

Emotion mutates into resignation, with surreptitious glances at the calendar: two more years, two more years. Will this nation survive two more years with this foolish, arrogant man calling the shots? 

Fortunately there are a few who haven't stopped trying to explain. Today, for example, I'm reading Dan Henninger (Wall Street Journal) and Victor Davis Hanson (scholar, historian, author). Henninger illustrates Obama's arrogance, while Hanson focuses on his dishonesty. Two of the main reasons I mislike this president.

Who is listening? Surely not the members of my immediate family. But I'm resigned to this, as well. 


The Humbling of a President, by Dan Henninger

Brief excerpt (in case the article is only available to subscribers): 

There is a story about Mr. Obama relevant to the war, battle or whatever he declared Wednesday evening against the Islamic State, aka ISIS. It is found in his former campaign manager David Plouffe's account of the 2008 election, "The Audacity to Win." Mr. Plouffe writes that during an earlier election race, Mr. Obama had a "hard time allowing his campaign staff to take more responsibility." To which Barack Obama answered: "I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I'll hire to do it." 

Audacity indeed. In a 2008 New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza, Mr. Obama is quoted telling another aide: "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors." Also, "I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters." 

And here we are. 

In the days before Mr. Obama's ISIS address to the nation, news accounts cataloged his now-embarrassing statements about terrorism's decline on his watch—the terrorists are JV teams, the tide of war is receding and all that.

What we now know is that Mr. Obama is not even close to being his own best Secretary of State, his own best Secretary of Defense, his own best national security adviser or his own best CIA director.  The question is: Does he know it? Can a humbling experience of such startling proportions have sunk in? It had better. What the U.S. needs if it is to prevail in the battle Mr. Obama put forth Wednesday is the genuine article of presidential leadership. What the U.S. does not need in the Oval Office is a utility infielder playing everyone else's position. We are competing against global terrorism's heaviest hitters, who have established state seizure as a strategic goal. 

If Mr. Obama still thinks he's better than Susan Rice, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and John Brennan, then he and the nation supporting his anti-ISIS effort are being poorly served. 

Obama's Untruth, Inc., by Victor Davis Hanson 

Brief excerpt:

Obama’s prevaricating has lost him any thought of a legacy, all the more so because for years as a candidate and as president he pontificated about his new transparency and the need for executive candor — itself an untruth at best, and at worst a cynical ploy to provide cover for a deliberate effort to enact policies that could not be honestly presented to the American people. 

The two fuels that run Untruth, Inc., are, first, a realization that most of the president’s policies, whether deliberately or as a result of indifference and laziness, run counter to what most Americans support, and, second, a media establishment so invested in his agenda that it will not call the administration to account. So the engine of lying keeps humming. 

On any given day the president of the United States can step up to the teleprompter amid the latest disaster and swear that he did not do what he just did, or insist that someone else, not he, did the dastardly deed, or simply skip over recent history and make things up. The press at first quibbles, then nods in agreement, and Obama is empowered to do it again and again. We have not seen such a disingenuous president since Richard Nixon — but he, at least, was countered rather than enabled by the media.