Bill Whittle is back! [h/t: H. Hewitt]

And it’s about time. In his latest post, Rafts, he gives us the first chapter of his new book, AN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION, which he will roll out for us over the summer, a chapter-at-a-time. Attempting to cut through the stagnant impasses that are constipating our political process — between the Right and Left, Conservative and Liberal, Republican and Democrat — Bill, in this first chapter, presents to us a means to be able to look for ourselves, aside and apart from, our preconceptions, to teach us a way to glean from our own observations a method for determining Truth. No small feat, that. Here’s a sample:

Everywhere I’ve looked – and I’ve been looking around a lot – I get the sense of powerless frustration, of standing on the beach as the Thousand Foot Wave rises up to block out the sun and take everything we have built and fought for with it.

The forces of ignorance and barbarism – bearers of ruin and despair wherever they make camp – are growing in confidence. But beside their will to destroy and die they have nothing. These Death Cult barbarians think this is all they will need – that, and an initial alliance with the forces they most despise. I still hold out hope that they will crack open a second book – a history book, say – that might at the eleventh hour give them some insight into the avocado nature of the Civilization they seem determined now to assault: soft and pulpy on the outside, impenetrably tough and hard within. They are going to do more than chip a tooth on us, these raving, bloodthirsty lunatics: they are about to make, I think, the same mistake that others have made before them – to see the Cindy Sheehans and Michael Moores as representative of a corrupt and dying culture, rather than what they really are: somewhat entertaining animal acts we Westerners use to pass the time while waiting for the next opportunity to pull the gloves off, and kick some new inhuman, barbaric horde onto the ash heap of history, where reside Aristocracy, Slavery, Fascism and Communism, holding in common only the mark of our boots on their asses.

You gotta admit, if you’re not some lotus-eatin’, sprout-munchin’ head-up-the-wazzoo milktoast, that segment got your attention. Go and read the rest of chapter one — and keep goin’ back all Summer. I didn’t excerpt his method of truth determination — that you need to read and digest for yourself — you might just learn how to make up your own mind. I just wanted you to get a feel for the tone. Certainly a hell of a lot more insightful, and entertaining, and factual than reading the LA Times! (db)

Technorati Tags: William Whittle, Eject! Eject! Eject!, An American Civilization

A friend of mine (thanks Force!) sent me an often-forwarded email that highlights a speech that former Colorado Governor (‘75 – ‘87) Dick Lamm made in Washington D.C. around the end of ‘04, beginning of ‘05. I always check out email forwards with Snopes.com to verify authenticity, and sure enough, Lamm made the speech. In fact, he even sent Snopes an updated version of it, which I’m posting parts of here: (sorry for the all caps!)

I HAVE A PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA
RICHARD D. LAMM

I HAVE A SECRET PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA. IF YOU BELIEVE, AS MANY DO, THAT AMERICA IS TOO SMUG, TOO WHITE BREAD, TOO SELF-SATISFIED, TOO RICH, LETS DESTROY AMERICA. IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO DO. HISTORY SHOWS THAT NATIONS ARE MORE FRAGILE THAN THEIR CITIZENS THINK. NO NATION IN HISTORY HAS SURVIVED THE RAVAGES OF TIME. ARNOLD TOYNBEE OBSERVED THAT ALL GREAT CIVILIZATIONS RISE AND THEY ALL FALL, AND THAT “AN AUTOPSY OF HISTORY WOULD SHOW THAT ALL GREAT NATIONS COMMIT SUICIDE.” HERE IS MY PLAN:

I. WE MUST FIRST MAKE AMERICA A BILINGUAL-BICULTURAL COUNTRY.

II. I WOULD THEN INVENT “MULTICULTURALISM” AND ENCOURAGE IMMIGRANTS TO MAINTAIN THEIR OWN CULTURE.

III. WE CAN MAKE THE UNITED STATES A “HISPANIC QUEBEC” WITHOUT MUCH EFFORT. THE KEY IS TO CELEBRATE DIVERSITY RATHER THAN UNITY.

IV. HAVING DONE ALL THIS, I WOULD MAKE OUR FASTEST GROWING DEMOGRAPHIC GROUP THE LEAST EDUCATED -

V. I WOULD THEN GET THE BIG FOUNDATIONS AND BIG BUSINESS TO GIVE THESE EFFORTS LOTS OF MONEY.

VI. I WOULD ESTABLISH DUAL CITIZENSHIP AND PROMOTE DIVIDED LOYALTIES.

VII. THEN I WOULD PLACE ALL THESE SUBJECTS OFF LIMITS – MAKE IT TABOO TO TALK ABOUT.

VIII. LASTLY, I WOULD CENSOR VICTOR HANSON DAVIS’S BOOK MEXIFORNIA — THIS BOOK IS DANGEROUS —

Both Governor Lamm and the writer of the e-mail misidentify the author of the book Mexifornia, whose correct name is Victor Davis Hanson.

You should go to Snopes and read the support for each of those eight talking points. Now, especially considering what has been going on this week, that’s scary stuff! (db)

Technorati Tags: Governor Dick Lamm, Bilingual, Multiculteralism

[h/t: Anchoress]

I had a hard time categorizing this post so I added one called “Future History”. Kind of an oxymoron, but you’ll see what that means if you continue on. The Anchoress introduced an important essay by Gerard Van der luen over at American Digest like this:

If you read nothing else today, please take time to read Gerard Vanderleun’s stunning and brilliant essay, The Return of History. Send it to everyone you know and stick it in your harddrive. He puts its better and more lucidly than anyone could: the “vacation from history” is over, the “me-like-fun” era is over, and it is once again – as before in America, in all of her greatests eras – “us-time.”

So, I followed her advice and read it all — it’s an excellent piece. I don’t believe that it will change any of the “all-about-ME” minds that might stumble into it, but it certainly is an afirmation to those who have taken a similar journey into the enlightenment of cold-hard-reality, and a strong voice in the choir of those that never became the prodigal, or that were raised right from the beginning. Let me excerpt from it a bit to show what I mean.

IN THE DAYS AFTER THE TOWERS FELL, in the ash that covered the Brooklyn street where I lived at that time, in the smoke that rose for months from that spot across the river, when rising up in the skyscraper I worked in, or riding deep beneath the river in the subway, or passing the thousand small shrines of puddled candle wax below the walls with the hundreds of photographs of “The Missing,” it was not too much to say that you could feel the doors of history open all about you.

Before those days, history happened elsewhere, elsewhen, to others. History did not happen to you. In your world, until that day, you lived in the time after history. There were no more doors in front of you, all history lay behind you. It was a given.
(…)
With the end of the Soviet Union in a whimper and not a bang brighter than the sun on earth, history was officially over. The moment even got its own book, “The End of History,” which stimulated an argument that even more than the book emphasized that history was over.

Most sensible people liked it that way. In fact, a lot of people really liked it that way. Because if history for the world was over, these people could get on making the history that really mattered to them: The History of Me.

How many of us, the Boomers, managed not to get caught up in this ME-ness? Those of us that attended the University in the 60s & 70s had it drilled into them, by faculty and peers. Mass culture, driven by advertising and marketing, made our own self-importance almost a religion. Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive of a New York-based advertising agency, has more on this here. (free – reg. req.)

My religion (So. Baptist) , or more acurately, my faith, was in constant conflict with the big ME during this time and throughout my 20s and 30s. Only in my 40s — after accepting that I wasn’t ever going to become a non-believer, and after having the opportunity to travel outside the U.S., and after coming to the realization that it was going to take concerted efforts towards rather than against something for our generation to come close to the character of our parents’ one, if that was even possible (the jury’s still out) — could I attempt to purge the overwhelming weight of ME-ness from my own existence. Like someone in a 12-step program, it’s offtimes day-by-day, and some days are definitely more difficult. Blogging helps — focuses the mind. A sense of gratitude is a must! But, I digress too much . . .

Van der Luan neatly presents the “ME” President’s two terms of ME-ness, and the chaos of the MEers after the failed campaign of the mini-ME in 2000. That was Gerald’s own initial crack in the ME-ness chain — he just didn’t relate to them, the self-absorbed, anymore.

After all, we were well beyond the End of History by this point, so what did it matter?

So, after the election, before the new administration’s first year is out — 9/11, the giant wake-up call of the new millennium shatters illusions all over the globe — at least for a minute . . .

Then on one bright and unusually fine New York September morning History came back with a vengeance we’d never seen before in the history of America. It came back and it stayed and stayed and stayed. The doors of history swung open again and we were all propelled through them into… what?

Nobody knows. Not the President, not his opponents, not the right, left, center, or just plain unhinged and now in low-earth orbit. We know how it began, but we don’t know how it will end. We don’t really know what’s next. Indeed, we never know.
(…)
(…)Indeed, there is an understanding there, backed with deeds and policies, however flawed in conception and execution, that our holiday from history is over and we need to get back to business if we’d like to be around in any kind of recognizable form by mid-century. There is even, if you look at it closely, a distinct lessening of “Me” and the beginnings of an “Us” on the peripheries of the [Republican] Party. Not a lot, but when you look at the other, there is none. Only a yearning for the warm mud of Me.

I heartily recommend that you go and read it all — you owe that to yourself, and to “Us”. (db)

Technorati Tags: Gerard Van der leun, Return of History, Anchoress