Maggie's Farm

The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.

Carlos Casteneda (Thanks, Readers!)

This 1927 22' Chris Craft Cadet, with its original 6 cylinder Chrysler engine, can be had for $52,000. Having beauty in life is one good reason to make money. What's not to like about this boat?

And hey, blog brother Right Wing Nation - you need to get over your water phobia. Shrinks sometimes think it's a fear of one's own unconscious: the strange and unknown depths, etc. Dr. Bliss could cure it in one day with her "total immersion" technique in blue water. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Reposted from Feb, 2005

This excellent, personal essay by Rogert Scruton appeared in The New Criterion in 2005. A classic, and one to which many of us recovering liberals can relate. One quote:

By 1971, when I moved from Cambridge to a permanent lectureship at Birkbeck College, London, I had become a conservative. So far as I could discover there was only one other conservative at Birkbeck, and that was Nunzia—Maria Annunziata—the Neapolitan lady who served meals in the Senior Common Room and who cocked a snook at the lecturers by plastering her counter with kitschy photos of the Pope.

One of those lecturers, towards whom Nunzia conceived a particular antipathy, was Eric Hobsbawm, the lionized historian of the Industrial Revolution, whose Marxist vision of our country is now the orthodoxy taught in British schools. Hobsbawm came as a refugee to Britain, bringing with him the Marxist commitment and Communist Party membership that he retained until he could retain it no longer—the Party, to his chagrin, having dissolved itself in embarrassment at the lies that could no longer be repeated. No doubt in recognition of this heroic career, Hobsbawm was rewarded, at Mr. Blair’s behest, with the second highest award that the Queen can bestow—that of “Companion of Honour.” This little story is of enormous significance to a British conservative. For it is a symptom and a symbol of what has happened to our intellectual life since the Sixties. We should ponder the extraordinary fact that Oxford University, which granted an honorary degree to Bill Clinton on the grounds that he had once hung around its precincts, refused the same honor to Margaret Thatcher, its most distinguished post-war graduate and Britain’s first woman Prime Minister.

Please read it, if you haven't. We like Scruton.

Image: Scruton receiving an honorary doctorate in 1998.

Is passivity always the best response to aggression? Dr. Helen discusses

Ace claims Dems will trade deaths for votes.

Will the US Survive until 2022? Derbyshire at New English Review. Among other things, he discusses multi-ethnic nations, and central govt incompetence. A quote:

Certainly our federal government inspires little confidence.  I have a sheaf of credit cards in my wallet, any one of which my local merchants can validate with a quick swipe.  Why cannot a prospective employee’s social security card similarly be validated?  Because private corporations are approximately 100,000 times better—more efficient, more capable—of doing anything than is the government. 

In the 1990s I had a job which required me to make occasional phone calls to banks and investment houses, and also to the offices of federal regulatory agencies like the FDIC in Washington.  To call a private company with a request, then to call a government agency, was to step through a horological time warp.  A business would deal with me more or less well (sometimes less well, to be sure), usually in a single call.  To get the equivalent response from a government agency needed a whole week of calls.  If anyone picked up the phone at all, I would hear a slow, indifferent voice, irked at having its game of Solitaire interrupted, saying:  “She ain’t here today…  Oh, he left early…”  Would my contact be in the office next day?  “Hard to say…  I guess…”

Are humans becoming smarter and more moral? Kling thinks so. I'm a skeptic, but he makes the case at TCS. A quote:

I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Fuller Seminary's new worship center. Wow. But didn't we used to call these churches, or chapels? Worship Centers? h/t, Smart Christian

The argument against government negotiating drug prices. WaPo (h/t Bruce Kesler)

The Moslem "bitchslap culture"  No Pasaran

The urbanization of the world continues apace.

Eliminate disgusting "farmer's tan." Dust my Broom

You will not believe this Duke Prof. Durham in Wonderland. What she says sounds psychotic to me, both in structure and content.

Vietnam loves America. Not your father's Vietnam

From G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, as posted in Dr. Bob's good recent piece on Faith and Reason:

… [T]he materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. … The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. … The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

The problem with government-controlled health care is that it tips a fundamental balance, and an important psychological balance, between individual citizen and the state by transforming everyone into a client/supplicant/dependent in relation to the state in one of the most important areas of their life.

This is a paraphrase of something I read or heard in the past week. Wish I could remember who said it. Whatever. What it captures, I believe, is the reason the Left wants government health care. Power over your heart - literally. One step closer to that bowl of lentils - and serfdom. Guess what - your doctor won't work for you anymore. They will work for "the greater good." How about if your plumber worked like that? Or your lawyer? They are all just technicians, right?

We have been very boat-oriented this week. Is Spring coming?

1. A father's life advice to his 21 year-old son: "You only need to know two things: you can marry more money in a minute than you can make in a lifetime, and always have friends who own boats."

2. "A boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into."

A reporter can create controversy, and thus a story, almost effortlessly. All you do is ask enough people a suggestive question until you find someone who disagrees with whatever it is. Then you have your story.

Whether they're a nut, or uninformed, matters not.

Apparently some people do not care for coyote hunt contests. We did a piece on the eastern Coyote last year. We would welcome such contests in New England.

"Trying" is lying.

A reader's mom.

Do, or do not. There is no try.

Yoda

Among various other business interests, my Gramps had the Elco dealership for New England in the 30s. Although he was mainly a sailor, he loved all sorts of boats, and the dealership made it possible for him to have a new Elco every year. I still think of the Elco as the classic yacht. You can still buy them, if you want to can afford to mess with wooden hulls. The history of Elco here. (BTW, PT 109 was built by Elco.) He donated his last Elco to the war effort. It was shipped to Britain, and used at Dunkirk.

Here's a 1925 57' Flat Top Motor Yacht ($195,000):

Here's a 1938 34' Sedan Cruiser ($137,000):

A sight for sore eyes, especially considering the vulgar, non-nautical appearance of most modern motor yachts. You can look at other old Elcos for sale here.

Dracula's castle for sale. BBC. Cheap, but can you afford to heat it?

17 cool and unusual buildings.

It's not a Hinckley, but the Fortier 26 seems like a fine boat, for less than half the price of the Hinckley Picnic Boat. You can find one used between $60-90,000. Certainly enough boat to handle the blue water off Block and the Islands, or Maine.

Michelle is in Baghdad. With photos. Bravo.

Sensible Mom has a round-up of reactions to Bush's speech.

A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.

Sei Shonagon, Hateful Things, 900 AD (h/t, Sippican). Somehow, the quote reminded me of Maggie's Farm.

Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen.

MAN: "Hello"

WOMAN: "Honey, it's me. Are you at the club?"

MAN: "Yes"

WOMAN: "I am at the mall now and found this beautiful leather coat. It's only $2,500. Is it OK if I buy it?"

MAN: "Sure, go ahead if you like it that much."

WOMAN: "I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2007 models. I saw one I really liked."

MAN: "How much?"

WOMAN: "$92,000"

MAN: "OK, but for that price try to get it with all the options."

WOMAN: "Great! Oh, and one more thing...the house I wanted last year is back on the market. They're asking $3,500,000"

MAN: "Well, then go ahead and give them an offer of $3,000,000., in cash. They will probably take it. If not, we can go a few extra 100 thousands if it's really a pretty good price."

WOMAN: "OK. I'll see you later! I love you so much!"

MAN: "Bye! I love you, too."

The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are staring at him in astonishment, mouths agape.

MAN (turns and asks):  "Anyone know who this phone belongs to?"

The Religio-Fascists are coming! The Religio-Fascists are coming!

Dunn at American Thinker considers ex-NYT reporter Hedge's new book.

Last Sunday, The New York Times featured a review of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, in which author Chris Hedges makes the argument that millions of Americans are about to fall on their fellow citizens and punish them in the name of a righteous Lord. This is the latest of a series of such volumes - also mentioned is Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. We could add as well the recent "militant atheist" volumes by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, which are intended to serve the same readership for the same purpose.

While reviewer Rick Perlstein doesn't particularly approve of the book in question, he does buy into the thesis. "Of course there are Christian fascists in America", he insists, followed by several anecdotes that demonstrate no such thing.

"...they want dominion - for the Lord to make an America where other values are impossible to hold", he concludes.

And that, in a nutshell, is the latest left-wing horror story. The fascists are coming. They're waving crucifixes this time.