Maggie's Farm

The would-be socialist paradise that is Massachusetts wants even more of our money. Gov. Patrick is talking casinos. Viking:

Hey, why stop at casinos? Why not bring in some whorehouses which will also "create jobs" and "generate new government revenue." Aside from the social issues and crime that a casino invites, there's the new image of Massachusetts. Old and busted: Plymouth Rock, USS Constitution and Tanglewood. New and hot: slot machines and the "hard eight."

More from Squaring the Boston Globe.

I do not approve of government-sponsored gambling of any sort, for any reason. The need to define the immoral trumps my libertarian instincts in this case. If MA needs honest jobs in clean businesses, all they have to do is to lower their taxes and the jobs will flow in. At present, they have an outflow of both jobs and people. You could term it a flight from socialism.

Image: The wonderful concept of the Boston Tea Party has long been missing as a Massachusetts icon.

In a few centuries, will historians view the last 100 years as merely one long protracted struggle between freedom and collectivism in its many and varied forms?

Ed Driscoll, in a post entitled The Birth of the Modern

Today is Constitution Day. Good piece in Charlotte Observer, via Oxford via Burkean.

Wrong about the Northwest Passage. Ignorant, or deliberate misinformation?

Meanwhile, the arid UK may need to find a way to get used to rainy days. 

Thanks reader, for this photo of a late-blooming wild Beach Rose (Rosa Rugosa) yesterday on the New England coast. This tough import from Japan loves beaches, tolerates salt spray and dry, sandy soil, and its large ripe hips are good for making Rose Hip Jelly. Birds like the hips too, especially Robins.

Remembering the 60s. Dino

Remembering the 70s. Hog on Ice

Yes, I guess those were two stupid decades in many ways.

Peaches ripen in early to mid-September in Yankeeland.

Here's our first batch of peach chutney from our good tree: vinegar, sugar, raisins, hot pepper, whole black peppercorns, spices, lemon juice, raisins, etc. Do not overcook or you will lose that fresh peachy flavor.

After we finish the jars of chutney, we'll do some peach pies to spread around the neighborhood. Maybe a couple of peach cobblers too. We have good neighbors,and home-grown and home-made still means a lot in Yankeeland.

Important rule: When peeling and slicing, eat every tenth piece. No more, no less. You do it for health. Ripe peaches one hour off the tree have tons of zip to them.

The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It's far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose. -- P.17

Another quote from Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life, via John Hawkins

Dream Song 104: Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!

Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!
I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done.
The hospitals were fun
in certain ways, and an honour or so,
but on the whole fifty was a mess as though
heavy clubs from below

and from—God save the bloody mark—above
were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love,
what was you loafing of
that fifty put you off, out & away,
leaving the pounding, horrid sleep by day,
nights naught but fits. I pray

the opening decade contravene its promise
to be as bad as all the others. Is
there something Henry miss
in the jungle of the gods whom Henry's prayer to?
Empty temples—a decade of dark-blue
sins, son, worse than you.

Here is a bio of Berryman.

Biofuels: Is the cure worse than the disease? Synthstuff

Why one must take science research with a grain of salt. Dr. Helen.

I want a new pastor. Mr. Free Market

LaShawn on mammary breaks.

"Al Qaeda is the enemy of Allah." Gateway on Abu Risha's funeral

Junior Wells and Buddy Guy with the great Sonny Boy Williamson song which should be, or is, the theme song of Maggie's Farm (after Dylan's Maggie's Farm, of course). "Don't start me talkin', I'll tell everything I know..."

Megan Cox Gurdon in the WSJ on A Wrinkle in Time. (h/t, The Corner) A quote:

Of course I wasn't the only reader to find Ms. L'Engle's work of science fantasy initially disconcerting. Famously, 26 publishers rebuffed the manuscript before the author found a benefactor in Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1962. Winning the Newbery a year later secured the book's place in the pantheon of children's literature, and since then innumerable schoolchildren have experienced the dazzling weirdness of a story that starts with quantum physics and ends with a child's love overcoming vast powers of evil.

"It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice," Ms. L'Engle said in her Newbery acceptance speech. "And it was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.

Coming back to the book 30 years later, it's striking how true the same process is for the reader. A child is inclined to take away very different lessons from a novel than is an adult. For one thing, "A Wrinkle in Time" is infused with Christian faith to such a degree that, were it newly published today, it would probably be relegated to the religious section of the bookstore.

So says Hillary Clinton.

Yikes! Is our country that bad?

Warshawsky in American Thinker discusses.

If it's so bad, how come everyone with grit in the world wants to come here for freedom and opportunity? Maybe if we change it and make it less amenable, they will stop wanting to come?

A day or two ago The Barrister posted Kay Hymowitz on "Freedom Fetishes," which addressed the conflicts within Libertarianism. A good case in point is Moderate Voice's piece on legalizing prostitution.

A pure Libertarianism might suggest, as the latter piece does, "Why not? No-one is harmed, consenting adults, etc., so who cares?"

What's the correct answer?

A tip of the old camo cap to David Thompson, who found a site about New York's 1939 World's Fair. I know that my Gramps took my Mom and my uncle to see it all. Lots of images at the site. Here's a postcard of the Underwood Typewriter exhibit:

From Bruce Thornton's Fighting at a Disadvantage in City Journal:

Even a cursory survey of world history explodes these romantic clichés and noble-savage fantasies. The West’s sins have been the sins of humanity everywhere. But the goods of the West—political freedom, consensual government, human rights, rationalism, and respect for the individual, to name a few—are unique to the West and account for its success. Just ask the millions of non-Western Others who every year risk their lives to migrate to Europe and America, even as virtually nobody goes in the other direction.

Indeed, the ignorance of history makes multiculturalism possible. People who have never learned about the uniqueness of ancient Greece will make a bestseller out of a book like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, which argues that the West’s ascendancy is an accident of geography and the distribution of plant and animal species. Such people won’t think to ask why the Greeks flourished, inventing consensual government and political freedom, when they shared the same climate, plants, and animals as the Egyptians and Persians.

In the post-9/11 context, and before it, multiculturalism predisposed many in the West to look on Muslims primarily as fascinating Others, victimized by Western racism, imperialism, and colonialism. We rationalize Islamic terror and place the blame for it elsewhere—on ourselves. We saw such self-flagellation in the days after 9/11, when numerous Western intellectuals, most notoriously ex–University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, blamed the terrorist attacks on American crimes and rationalized 9/11 as the “justice of roosting chickens,” as Churchill’s speech was titled.

The therapeutic sensibility that now dominates our public thinking reinforces this tendency to excuse Islamic terror.

Read the whole thing. (h/t, Sissy via a comment)

The Herald should run a weekly Friday or Saturday feature entitled something like "Bay State Life" or "Notes from a Cabinetmaker," written by this guy, along with the photos he finds.

It would sell newspapers. I guarantee it. You could get him for cheap, because he is an undiscovered jewel: tasteful, hip, wry, dry, but tender and sentimental at the same time.

Many Christians misinterpret Jesus' promise of the "abundant life" to mean perfect health, a comfortable lifestyle, constant happiness, full realization of your dreams, and instant relief from problems through faith and prayer. In a word, they expect the Christian life to be easy. They expect heaven on earth.

This self-absorbed perspective treats God as a genie who simply exists to serve you in your selfish pursuit of personal fulfillment. But God is not your servant, and if you fall for the idea that life is supposed to be easy, either you will become severely disillusioned or you will live in denial of reality.

From Rick Warren's A Purpose Driven Life. John Hawkins of Right Wing News has a collection of his favorite quotes from the book.

From Flopping, who has a few more good 'uns: