Maggie's Farm

Read the Analyst's piece on Internet Porn here.

Read the Laconic Yankee Farmer's non-laconic final post here.

Read our piece on How out to Lunch is Europe? here.

"Citizens assemble with the sole goal of declaring that they disapprove of the course of government. To meddle in the government of society and to speak about it is the greatest business and, so to speak, the only pleasure that an American knows...An American does not know how to converse, but he discusses; he does not discourse, but he holds forth. He always speaks to you as to an assembly."

Democracy in America, 1831

^{Psalm 147, 1-12}

¹Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.
²The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
³He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.
⁴He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.
⁵Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.
⁶The Lord lifts up the downtrodden; he casts the wicked to the ground.
⁷Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre.
⁸He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills.
⁹He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.
¹⁰His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;
¹¹but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.
¹²Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion!

As the cartoon nonsense spins out of control, resulting in destruction of property and expressions of religious hatred and intolerance, any blogger worthy of the name must have an opinion.

Our opinion is that people, in the "free world," have and should have the freedom to mock, criticize, and satirize anyone and anything: Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Indians, atheists, whites, blacks, hispanics, Poles, Norwegians, and every other human category. All are fair game.

We do not particularly enjoy it when such things are done in rude, crude or socially unacceptible ways, but that's just too bad: hypersensitivity is the problem of the hypersensitive and, as they say in AA, "Feelings aren't facts." Besides humor, expressions of anger and hate need to be permitted. When Julian Bond terms all Republicans "Nazis," some folks just laugh, some are upset, and some are deeply disturbed. But freedom means freedom to be a dumb jerk, and to express hate, however loony or untrue. Thankfully, we have the freedom to talk back and to satirize such malignant idiocy, and to expose them as wacko fools, as has been done with the KKK.

We've been known to get a little juvenile on these pages, ourselves, with the occasional TR ("therapeutic rant"), etc. I thought that Piss Christ was hideously offensive, and a childish effort to get attention by being "controversial". I find the Moslem newspapers' anti-semitic cartoons equally offensive. Were those Danish cartoons offensive? Only mildly so, if you have a chip on your shoulder and are looking for a fight and have no sense of humor. "Orchestrated tantrums," in the words of Gates of Vienna. But words and pictures are not action. Sticks and stones...

Free speech means we all have to be willing to be offended, rightly or wrongly. The Moslem world clearly does not widely share that ideal, and exists in a different, quasi-medieval culture with entirely different ideals and rules: a theocratic, autocratic culture in which wife-beating is normal practice, in which hanging is an acceptable punishment for gays, beheading the punishment for adultery, and the word of the Prophet, however interpreted, is the Law. Nor do they make the sharp distinction between speech and action that we do, and neither did Jesus.

They are not on the same page that we are on: we left it 400 years ago with The Enlightenment. No-one enjoys having their world-view changed: it entails both a loss, and an unclear future. There are plenty of Americans who, even now, resent the effects of the Enlightenment, regardless of how much we are the beneficiaries of it.

The Moslem Middle-East, it seems to me, is in the position of resisting our Western Enlightenment. All of our ideals - political freedom, democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, hedonism - are felt to be a threat to a long-established world view. What surely makes it feel worse is that these ideas are imports - not home-grown. However, the outside Western influence will prove irresistable in time - just see all of those satellite dishes on the tops of apartment buildings in Tehran. TV, the Internet, and the shrinking world will sooner or later, for better or worse, change the culture of the Middle East. They are experiencing a reaction, similar to our historical Inquisition and Counter-Reformation. But to understand the European Counter-Reformation is not to excuse it. And to understand the cultural threat felt in the Middle East by Western ideas does not to excuse barbaric behavior.

Should we respect other cultures? I see no reason why we should. Respect, like trust, is a precious gift and not a casual commodity. Should we be interested in understanding other cultures? Sure, if we are curious, but just understanding our own is the work of a lifetime or two. Should we tolerate intolerance expressed in destructive action? Of course not. Should we stand for the freedom to say dumb and cruel things? Sure. Should we speak against dumb and cruel statements? Of course. Should we be intimidated? Never. Do we have things worth fighting for? Damn right we do. And not only that, but if the Jihadists will leave us alone, they are free to live however they chose, in their own homeland. Just don't tread on me.

Image on top from yesterday's "protest" in London. Is such a threat of violence covered under freedom of speech? Lawyers know the answer to that.

The catalogs are springing up like crocuses.

For fruit trees, berries, and misc, we like Miller Nurseries.

For unusual and interesting plants, we like Wayside Gardens. Some say they aren't what they used to be, but who is?

For large scale plantings for wildlife, we like Musser Forests.

For perennials, we like White Flower Farm, but they ain't cheap.

Jackson and Perkins is an old stand-by for roses of all sorts, but there are many growers of antique roses these days - Google antique roses. Vintage roses are tougher than modern ones, and they smell like roses. Here's one source.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Anon.

Unbelieveable. Whatever happened to "sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me"? This is pathetic. And it would never happen if the cartoons were about Roman Catholics, would it?

I am not a Marxist.

Karl Marx

It has been twenty years since Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death was published. Postman's son Andrew has written the introduction to the 20th Anniversary Edition of the still-fresh book, which might be more applicable in 2006 than it was in 1985. Some quotes from the Intro:

Substantive as this book is, it was predicated on a “hook”: that one British writer (George Orwell) with a frightening vision of the future, a vision that many feared would come true, was mostly off-base, while another British writer (Aldous Huxley) with a frightening vision of the future, a vision less well-known and feared, was scarily on target. My father argued his point, persuasively, but it was a point for another time – the Age of Television. New technologies and media are in the ascendancy.

Fortunately – and this, more than anything, is what I think makes Amusing Ourselves to Death so emphatically relevant – my father asked such good questions that they can be asked of non-television things, of all sorts of transforming developments and events that have happened since 1985, and since his death, and of things still unformed, for generations to come (though “generations to come” may someday mean a span of three years). His questions can be asked about all technologies and media.

What happens to us when we become infatuated with and then seduced by them? Do they free us or imprison us? Do they improve or degrade democracy? Do they make our leaders more accountable or less so? Our system more transparent or less so? Do they make us better citizens or better consumers? Are the trade-offs worth it? If they’re not worth it, yet we still can’t stop ourselves from embracing the next new thing because that’s just how we’re wired, then what strategies can we devise to maintain control? Dignity? Meaning?

Read entire at Pressthink