No Grasp of Your Reality

Sarah tagged me, so I’m therefore obligated to let you all know what I’m currently reading.

I’m in the middle of a couple books right now… I started out reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which has succeeded in stoking my hatred for people. In order to cheer me up, I took a break from that and read through Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is much less of a downer than Rand.

Sadly, I don’t know five bloggers to tag them, but I’ll try to make an effort to find a few.

Update: Apparently, I don’t know how to follow simple directions. I was supposed to “open the book you’re currently reading on page 161 and read the fifth sentence on the page, then think of 5 bloggers to tag with”

Here we go… Atlas Shrugged.

“Next time you give a party,” he said, “stick to your own crowd. Don’t invite what you think are my friends. I don’t care to meet them socially.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to give an explanation, but the “he” refers to Henry Reardon, the steel industrialist, and one of the protagonists in the book. It’s the end of chapter seven, after Henry’s wife had just thrown a birthday party for him, and purposefully (and spitefully) invited the exact sort of people that she thought Henry should be socializing with, but chose not to. The crowd was made up of people who thought themselves important in society, but (in the eyes of the industrialists) really didn’t amount to anything, i.e. the authors, journalists, philosophers and politicians.

Brave New World is much more mundane.

“Do you have many twins here?”, the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on the tour of their inspection

“The Savage” is John, and the tour is of a school in this brave new world. John was born in an Indian reservation, and although he was the son of “civilized” people, he spent his life among the savages. He received special permission to leave the reservation and tour the society outside the reservation, and at every turn in thoroughly disgusted by every aspect of it. In this chapter, he is touring the education/indoctrination facilities in the new world, and his question was due to his experience of seeing identical faces on all the lower class workers (gammas, delta, and epsilons), brought about the new technology of Bokanovsky’s Process, where a fertilized egg can be split into different identical people, with the world record being 16,500 identical twins. The identical twins unnerved John, hence his question. However, since they were touring a school for alpha-pluses, there were no twins to be found.

One side note… page 161 is about two-thirds of the way through Brave New World, and a little over one-tenth of the way through Atlas Shrugged.

I know I’ve been quiet for a while, but I wanted y’all to see a new independently produced Ron Paul video. It’s 8 minutes, but I think it’s worth it.

(HT to Daily Paul)

Never try to dry beef jerky when it’s 100% humidity. For some reason, it doesn’t work very well.

Good… seems like other people other there get it. Fred Thompson is not a conservative, but a neo-con globalist, and the Conservatives Against Fred Thompson are working to expose this. Here’s sample of some of their articles:

Fred Thompson’s Anti-gun Senate Record - The Conservatives Against Fred Thompson volunteers have compiled a list of proposals supported by Fred Dalton Thompson in the senate that include Gun Bans, confiscations and limitations to the free speech of Gun Rights Advocates.

Thompson fought against the Republican Pro-Life Plank - (From a 1996 article) Fred Thompson says he seldom hears about abortion in campaign travels throughout Tennessee and hopes the issue is downplayed at the Republican National Convention. The Tennessee Republican, a pro-choice defender in a party with an anti-abortion tilt, is preparing for next week’s convention in San Diego. He said the party must avoid distracting issues and focus on electing Bob Dole as president. ‘We need to concentrate on what brings us together and not what divides us,’ (emphasis theirs)

Is Thompson a Tennesseean for Choice? - CBN’s David Brody has uncovered a Tennesseans for Choice questionnaire filled out by Fred Dalton Thompson circa 1996 in which he answered questions about his personal philosophy on the issue of abortion.

We went to Hershey Park for the company picnic this year, and they had a new body board ride. Tab and Thomas both wanted to try the ride, even though we were watching adults wiping out and flying up the ramp. Undaunted, we waited in line and both got a chance to try.

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It makes me smile every time I watch it.

Many people who know me know that one of my pet peeves is when people try to pass The Battle Hymn of the Republic off as a Christian hymn. My blood pressure goes up every time I hear it.

At church this morning, we sang what I now consider the antidote. You can hear the tune if you have a means by which to play midi files.

The Son of God Goes Forth to War

The Son of God goes forth to war,
   A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar!
   Who follows in His train?
Who best can drink His cup of woe,
   Triumphant over pain,
Who patient bears his cross below,
   He follows in His train.

The martyr first, whose eagle eye
   Could pierce beyond the grave;
Who saw his Master in the sky,
   And called on Him to save.
Like Him, with pardon on His tongue,
   In midst of mortal pain,
He prayed for them that did the wrong!
   Who follows in His train?

A glorious band, the chosen few
   On whom the Spirit came,
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew,
   And mocked the cross and flame.
They met the tyrant's brandished steel,
   The lion's gory mane;
They bowed their necks the death to feel:
   Who follows in their train?

A noble army, men and boys,
   The matron and the maid,
Around the Savior's throne rejoice
   In robes of light arrayed.
They climbed the steep ascent of heav'n,
   Through peril, toil and pain;
O God, to us may grace be giv'n
   To follow in their train.

As a young man, though, [Ron Paul] did not protest the Vietnam War, which he now calls “totally unnecessary” and “illegal.” Much later, after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, he began reading St. Augustine. “I was annoyed by the evangelicals’ being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything that I was taught as a Christian,” he recalls. “The religion is based on somebody who’s referred to as the Prince of Peace.”

Just read it.

Hmm… my politics category is drowning out the others. Oh well.

Good article by John Nichols talking about a political race that on the surface didn’t look too important in the big scheme of things, but, as the author points out, could be a microcosm for the large distaste that the conservative Republicans are showing for the GOP. His article, Slapping Down the “GOP Establishment”, describes a race between Jim Whitehead and Paul Broun for the 10th Congressional Seat in Georgia. Georgia has a runoff system, where the two people receiving the highest number of votes go into a runoff. Whitehead is described as a “rubberstamp for the Bush White House and Republican leaders in Congress”, while Broun was running as simply “fighting the entire GOP establishment.”

Whitehead was a shoe-in for the election.

Well, Broun has won Tuesday’s election by less than four hundred votes.

Broun’s message sounds suspiciously like Ron Paul’s message during his Presidential run (and Paul’s message during his entire political career). Nichols describes this in the meat of the article towards the end:

As evidence of his independence, Broun emphasized a Ron Paul-like committed to “work to restore government according to the Constitution as our Founders intended.” While the Georgia appears to be a more cautious constitutionalist than the maverick Texas congressman who is making a longshot bid for the party’s presidential nomination in 2008, Broun borrowed one of the most popular of Paul’s principles, promising that if elected he would assess any new legislation by first asking: “Is it constitutional and a proper function of government?”

No one was going to confuse Broun with a liberal, but he did display a Paul-like libertarian streak, suggesting that the federal government ought to stay away away from issues gay marriage and legalizing marijuana — matters that the candidate suggested are best handled at the state level.

“I believe in the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which clearly says that all powers not specifically given to the federal government, or prohibited by the Constitution to the states, are reserved to the states and the people,” Broun said. “I am not a person who believes that our lives should be controlled by politicians in Washington. I do not believe that the states are merely administrative units of the federal government, to do its bidding.”

I’m hoping that this message is going to resonate outside of George, to the rest of the country. I know there are many Democrats who are switching their party affiliation in order to vote for Paul.

Finally, one of the big news channels is covering a Ron Paul news story. Could this be the dam breaking in terms of the apparent media blackout?

For those of you who didn’t hear, out of all presidential candidates, Ron Paul received the most campaign contributions from military employees, even more than John McCain. It looks like it hit a nerve with Fox News.

Richard A. Viguerie has penned an article on Fred Thompson asking whether he should be the choice for conservatives in the upcoming presidential election. After describing Thompson’s history in politics as senator and as a lobbyist, and going through issues like McCain-Feingold Bill and the Asia fundraising scandal, his answer is a resounding no. Here are some excerpts from the article:

Senator Barry Goldwater became the first political spokesman for the conservative movement because, out of all the Republican politicians who claimed to be conservative in the 1950s, he and he alone was willing to confront the sitting Big Government Republican in the White House. President Eisenhower’s policies were “a dime store New Deal,” he said on the floor of the Senate. He spoke truth to power.

Well, again we have a Big Government Republican in the White House, and now it’s no longer a dime store New Deal—it’s a supersized Wal-Mart of a New Deal. The Republican welfare state is far worse than anything the Democrats achieved.

And what has been Fred Thompson’s response these past seven years as the GOP massively expanded the federal government? If he’s said anything to warn us about the direction of the Republican Party, he’s said it so quietly that nobody—not just us, nobody—has noticed. And by his silence he has become complicit. (emphasis mine)

For six of his eight years as a Senator, Thompson ranked in the bottom half of Republican Senators in terms of his commitment to conservatism. What makes this more remarkable is that he served as a Senator from Tennessee, winning his two elections by hefty margins. He didn’t have the excuse that his electorate was liberal, like the electorates of RINO Senators from Oregon, Maine, or Rhode Island. He had a safe seat with a conservative electorate. So when he voted liberal, we have to assume it’s because that’s what he believed. (emphasis mine)

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Can someone please explain to me what appeal Fred Thompson has to conservatives? I’ve heard some people out there salivating at the idea of Fred running for president, and I don’t really see anything about him that appeals to me. My impression is that he’s a cookie-cutter conservative Republican, in Ronald Regan sense, but I don’t see much that distinguishes him from anyone else.

Of course, he was the man in The Hunt for Red October.

I can’t believe what little coverage Ron Paul is getting in the “mainstream press”. Running for political office seems to be a chicken and egg game, where the media ends up deciding who is viable. Think about it:

1. The press only cover “viable” candidates.
2. Viable candidates are those who poll well.
3. Candidates can only poll well if the electorate are aware of the them.
4. The electorate only know about people whom the press cover.
5. When people are polled, they choose a candidate they know about.
6. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Thankfully, the Ron Paul campaign, like the Howard Dean campaign during the 2004 election, is working as a true grassroots campaign, despite the lack of coverage. Now, the numbers are showing it! According the campaign fundraising disclosures, the Ron Paul campaign has raised more money than the McCain campaign, this puts him at number three amongst the Republican candidates, although he is admittedly well behind the Romney and Giuliani.

I was talking to a friend of mine who made a very interesting comment about the people where he grew up in western Pennsylvania. He said that the people out there tend to want to support the winner. It’s almost like betting on horses… their goal is to go in and vote for the person they think is going to win. I don’t think this thinking is limited to Western PA. Once you wrap your head around the recursiveness of this thinking, you start to see how much influence the media has in who gets elected in this country. If the media projects an idea that a person like Paul can’t win, people will conclude he can’t win, and end up not voting for him.

Kinda sad, really.

A meetup group has been formed in Chester County to support Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. The Chester County Meetup Group currently has 20 members, and is growing pretty quickly. The neat thing about the meetups is that they’re totally grassroots in their organization. People in different areas start their own groups, to get the word out in their communities. The Chester County group has plans to meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in Glenmoore.

If you’re not in the Chester County area, you can use the website to find a meetup group in your area.