Jane Fonda has started blogging and, sure enough, it took her only 4 entries to get down to business: opposing US military efforts overseas and lending aid and comfort to the enemy.

Her topic was one Marlissa Grogan, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and one of the so-called Hempstead 15, a group arrested by Nassau County Police for disorderly conduct during a protest outside of the final presidential debate at Hofstra University on October 15, 2008.

I left rehearsal tonight in a temp wig and costume to go downtown to the screenings of The FTA Show. David Zeiger and I came in after the first showing was over and answered questions. Joining us was Marlisa Grogan, Captain in the US Marine Corp (29 UES). I had never met her before and was very impressed. She has such a deep understanding of why it is important for us to support active duty members of the military who are anti war or, at least, anti a war they feel is wrong and ill-conceived. She herself has been involved in an anti war show that has performed for active duty personnel. She said that it is the soldiers who have seen active duty who tend to be anti war more than the ones who have stayed stateside. “They just don’t know,” she said.

She talked about the similarities that exist between today’s military and those of the Vietnam era but also pointed out the profound differences, citing in particular, the fact that so many recruits are confronted with the choice between jail or military. For many it’s a much needed job. Look how young she is, yet so wise and committed. “We can’t just rely on the hope that Obama has brought us,” she told the audience. “We have to get off our asses and make sure we organize and speak out for what we feel is right.”

Time to update Fonda’s soubriquet to “Jihad Jane.”

Velociman has harsh, but fair, comments on the American left.

I have no gripe with those who believe there are different paths to an ideal, healthy America. I’m fairly convinced that America is no Leftist’s dream, however, hence the charge of dishonesty. The smallest of children can smoke out a platitude, and I take no solace in the Left’s charade that they want as I do for the nation, and western civilization as a whole. It is a bald-faced lie, built upon a shifting, unstable Sargasso Sea of prevarication. …

The sad truth is the Leftist cohort, proudly represented by the Democratic Party, has engaged in a decades-long lie of being for the “little guy”, the “forgotten man”, when in fact they are power-mad usurpers of freedom, whose only interest in the little guy is how much of his hard-earned money they can abscond with, and to what nefarious disproven social experiment they can apply it.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to the Gerard van der Leun via the News Junkie

Peter Berkowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, identifies the source of the irrational immoderation and limitless self-righteousness of today’s community of fashion as our Gramscian-hijacked educational system.

Some will speculate that the outbreak of hatred and euphoria in our politics is the result of the transformation of left-liberalism into a religion, its promulgation as dogma by our universities, and students’ absorption of their professors’ lesson of immoderation. This is unfair to religion.

At least it’s unfair to those forms of biblical faith that teach that God’s ways are hidden and mysterious, that all human beings are both deserving of respect and inherently flawed, and that it is idolatry to invest things of this world — certainly the goods that can be achieved through politics — with absolute value. Through these teachings, biblical faith encourages skepticism about grand claims to moral and political authority and an appreciation of the limits of one’s knowledge, both of which well serve liberal democracy.

In contrast, by assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage the exercise of reason in public life. It is not that our universities invest the fundamental principles of liberalism with religious meaning — after all the Declaration of Independence identifies a religious root of our freedom and equality. Rather, they infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. This transforms dissenters into apostates or heretics, and leaders into redeemers.

Lt. Gen. H.G. Martin, in his memoir of soldiering and sport in pre-War British India, Sunset From the Main (1951), recalls an unpleasant encounter on angling expedition to the Simla Hills in search of mahseer.

The steep path dropped down to the bed of the gorge past brakes of thorn and matted evergreen and across unexpected lawns where the encircling cactus reared its knotted candleabras, rigid and grotesque as submarine coral-beds. In these occasional clearings troops of brown monkeys basked, scratching in the sunshine: plebeian monkeys, vulgar, thieving, shameless, who lowered and gibbered as we passed. I do not love the brown monkey. Who has ever seen him look pleasant? A typical, politically minded proletarian, he has the Communist’s capacity for hating all creation.

One of my classmates this morning was demanding that I explain why Conservatism has taken an anti-intellectual turn (Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber). I replied:

Conservatism isn’t anti-intellectual. Conservatism is anti a pseudo-intellectual community of fashion following the lead of the treasonous clerks who have hijacked the academic establishment. Why should it be surprising in this “the-great-professor-has-no-clothes” era, when the elite university class rushes to support drivelling nonsense like Global Warming catastrophism and Socialism, that the contrast between the educated fools and the wiser representative of ordinary Common Sense has become a standard cultural meme?

Elite education used to be aimed at producing leaders capable of rational and independent judgement, familiar with the broad sweep of Western culture, men of integrity willing to defend their civilization, their country, and the right. What our elite institutions have been producing for a very long time is a cadre of adequately glib functionaries, nominally acquainted with the standard cultural heights (from a Cliff notes, test taking perspective), opportunistic and calculating and conformist, with no fixed principles beyond sentimentality and a watchful eye constantly fixed on the decrees of the community of fashion. The older elite could be calculated to rebuke folly and resist popular enthusiams. The current elite only aspires to prominent positions near the front of the mob. Our generation grew up more spoiled and pampered than any generation in previous human history. We were favored with greater ease and opportunity than our parents and grandparents ever dreamed of, so, when we went to college, what did the overwhelming majority of our generation do? They rebelled against the terrible tyranny of middle-class American life, betrayed their country and their less-privileged contemporaries fighting and dying in the field to support… Communism. What an opportunity for dramaturgy and self-righteous poses the Vietnam War provided! Any snot-nosed, spotty-faced adolescent could get up on a soapbox and commence denouncing his country and its adult leadership from a supposedly morally-superior high horse and catch himself later in his glory on the 6 PM Evening News. And the generality of today’s American elite hasn’t changed one bit with age.

This is the American intellectual community, a tree hugging, Socialism-embracing, holier-than-thou, cause-loving, empty-headed collection of noisy poseurs and conformists. American Conservatism is simply a movement applying a critical gloss to the mass politics of the last century and attempting a serious defense of the traditional values of the European West and the principles on which the Government of the United States was founded. These days you have to be an extremist radical to argue that state and federal constitutions should be read to mean what they actually say, not interpreted so as to turn seasonal rain puddles into “navigable waterways” or equal protection before the law into a mandate to coerce your fellow citizens.

Victor Davis Hanson marvels at the new-found patriotism of the democrat left.

I distilled from the press coverage and the crowds and the punditry yesterday that for all too many suddenly a vote for Obama redeems America. Now, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in their lives they are apparently proud of the United States. (Had we not had the financial meltdown in mid-September, and had Obama stayed three points back in the polls, would millions have stayed soured on America and now in sullen silence licked their wounds?).

So I am surprised that suddenly the election of a single individual means that we are united, patriotic, proud of America? Suddenly Okinawa or Antietam, or all those who died at the Argonne, are ours to claim again? (This reminds of elementary school, when our third-grade split up into two sides, as the teacher quizzed us on geography–and the losers of the contest cried and said unfair and how they didn’t like school or Mrs. Wilson, and then when they won the next day, how suddenly third grade became glorious, and Mrs. Wilson and her games were once again wonderful).

J.R. Dunn puts the Bush presidency into historical perspective.

It can be stated without fear of serious argument that no previous president has been treated as brutally, viciously, and unfairly as George W. Bush.

Bush 43 endured a deliberate and planned assault on everything he stood for, everything he was involved in, everything he tried to accomplish. Those who worked with him suffered nearly as much (and some even more — at least one, Scooter Libby, was convicted on utterly specious charges in what amounts to a show trial).

His detractors were willing to risk the country’s safety, its economic health, and the very balance of the democratic system of government in order to get at him. They were out to bring him down at all costs, or at the very least destroy his personal and presidential reputation. At this they have been half successful, at a high price for the country and its government.

Although everyone insists on doing so, it is impossible to judge Bush, his achievements, or his failings, without taking these attacks into account. …

[T]he New York Times, which on its downhill road to becoming a weekly shopper giveaway for the Upper West Side, seriously jeopardized national security in the process of satisfying its anti-Bush compulsion. Telecommunications intercepts, interrogation techniques, transport of terrorist captives, tracking of terrorist finances… scarcely a single security program aimed at Jihadi activity went unrevealed by the Times and — not to limit the blame — was then broadcast worldwide by the legacy media. At one point, Times reporters published a detailed analysis of government methods of searching out rogue atomic weapons, a story that was no doubt read with interest at points north of Lahore, and one that we may all end up paying for years down the line. The fact that Bush was able to curtail any further attacks while the media as a whole was working to undermine his efforts is little less than miraculous.

Read the whole thing.

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Hat tip to Bird Dog.

Kyle Smith alerts us to a recently published guide to the land of the “progressives.”

For 143 years, The Nation magazine has maintained, in its adorable way, the blue-faced scowl of an angry toddler shaking its fist at the grown-ups. But while you could go to The Nation in recent years for instruction on how to think about the latest perfidy of the Bush administration, the magazine was no help when it came to advice on, say, how to find a really good lesbian knitting cooperative within easy bicycling distance or where to buy anti-globalization comic books printed on recycled hemp.

The long wait is over. Now comes “The Nation Guide to the Nation,” a travelog/catalog/almanac (whatever you do, don’t call it a bible) “for and about a community of committed, passionate people who have active consciences and a lively sense of social justice.”

Mencius Moldbug, most prolix of bloggers, goes on at great length, but is still often worth a read.

The mysterious Moldbug, it has been learned, is a 1992 Brown graduate who majored in Computer Science. Further details here.

In this alleged introduction to his blog, Moldbug accurately identifies the enemy (complete with whimsical H.P. Lovecraft allusions).

[I]n post-1945 America, the source of all new ideas is the university. Ideas check out of the university, but they hardly ever check in. Thence, they flow outward to the other arms of the educational system as a whole: the mainstream media and the public schools. Eventually they become our old friend, “public opinion.” This process is slow, happening on a generational scale, and thus the 45-year lag.

Thus whatever coordinates the university system coordinates the state, through the transmission device of “public opinion.” Naturally, since this is 100% effective, the state does not have to wait for the transmission to complete. It can act in advance of a complete response, as in this case the Supreme Court did in 1967, and synchronize directly with the universities.

This relationship, whose widespread practice in the United States dates to 1933, is known as public policy. Essentially, for everything your government does, there is a university department full of professors who can, and do, tell it what to do. Civil servants and Congressional staffers follow the technical lead of the universities. The residual democratic branch of Washington, the White House, can sometimes push back feebly, but only with great difficulty. …

There are a few brief periods of true reaction in American history – the post-Reconstruction era or Redemption, the Return to Normalcy of Harding, and a couple of others. But they are unusual and feeble compared to the great leftward shift. Nor, most important for our hypothesis, did they come from the universities; in the 20th century, periods of reaction are always periods of anti-university activity. (McCarthyism is especially noticeable as such. And you’ll note that McCarthy didn’t exactly win.)

The principle applies even in wars. In each of the following conflicts in Anglo-American history, you see a victory of left over right: the English Civil War, the so-called “Glorious Revolution,” the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Clearly, if you want to be on the winning team, you want to start on the left side of the field.

And we are starting to piece the puzzle together. The leftward direction is, itself, the principle of organization. In a two-party democratic system, with Whigs and Tories, Democrats and Republicans, etc, the intelligentsia is always Whig. Their party is simply the party of those who want to get ahead. It is the party of celebrities, the ultra-rich, the great and good, the flexible of conscience. Tories are always misfits, losers, or just plain stupid – sometimes all three.

And the left is the party of the educational organs, at whose head is the press and universities. This is our 20th-century version of the established church. Here at UR, we sometimes call it the Cathedral – although it is essential to note that, unlike an ordinary organization, it has no central administrator. No, this will not make it easier to deal with. …

Whatever you make of the left-right axis, you have to admit that there exists some force which has been pulling the Anglo-American political system leftward for at least the last three centuries. Whatever this unfathomable stellar emanation may be, it has gotten us from the Stuarts to Barack Obama. Personally, I would like a refund. But that’s just me. …

intellectuals cluster to the left, generally adopting as a social norm the principle of pas d’ennemis a gauche, pas d’amis a droit, because like everyone else they are drawn to power. The left is chaos and anarchy, and the more anarchy you have, the more power there is to go around. The more orderly a system is, the fewer people get to issue orders. The same asymmetry is why corporations and the military, whose system of hierarchical executive authority is inherently orderly, cluster to the right.

Once the cluster exists, however, it works by any means necessary. The reverence of anarchy is a mindset in which an essentially Machiavellian, tribal model of power flourishes. To the bishops of the Cathedral, anything that strengthens their influence is a good thing, and vice versa. The analysis is completely reflexive, far below the conscious level. Consider this comparison of the coverage between the regime of Pinochet and that of Castro. Despite atrocities that are comparable at most – not to mention a much better record in providing responsible and effective government – Pinochet receives the full-out two-minute hate, whereas the treatment of Castro tends to have, at most, a gentle and wistful disapproval. …

[T]he problem is not just that our present system of government – which might be described succinctly as an atheistic theocracy – is accidentally similar to Puritan Massachusetts. As anatomists put it, these structures are not just analogous. They are homologous. This architecture of government – theocracy secured through democratic means – is a single continuous thread in American history.

Barack Obama is widely expected to fulfill his campaign promise to close the US detention center at Guantanamo, if not on Day One of his administration, as soon as can practically be arranged.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay has been made into a symbol of Bush Administration offenses by the left, and its closing will appropriately signal the left’s victory in the struggle with George W. Bush for public perception of reality. But, delightful as the consummating moment of wet liberal humanitarianism’s triumph ought to be, clever democrats like Obama can probably already predict the ultimate consequences.

Simply transferring jihadis to US federal prisons will amount to moving them to the US domestic justice system, with all of them armed and equipped with top flight representation right out of America’s best law schools and white shoe law firms. Renditioning Guantanamo inmates to remote foreign locations where leftwing reporters and attorneys from Shearman & Sterling are in shorter supply would be effective, but rendition has been made into a dirty word.

The Bush Administration, squirming and wriggling ineffectively under continual liberal attack, already released all the likely safe bets and questionable case prisoners.

Reuters reported yesterday on just how well that worked out.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from its military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody.

The Pentagon declined to give the names of the 61 released detainees, but at least one, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, is pretty well known. He blew up seven Iraqi security force officers and himself in a suicide bombing last April 26th.

I’d say Barack Obama is in a no win situation.

The Nation’s Katrina Vanden Huevel climbs onto the lap of the American taxpayer and pleads for an increase in Leviathan’s allowance.

Poverty is on the rise, record numbers of people are relying on food stamps and we’ve seen no relief for the foreclosure crisis. There are increasing rates of child abuse and domestic violence linked to this recession. State governments don’t have financial resources to cope at the exact moment when those resources are most needed. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have lowered Medicaid payments or eliminated people from eligibility. The senior economist of the International Monetary Fund recently warned of another Great Depression

We don’t need a stimulus, we need a recovery. And that means investing $1 trillion over the next two years.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has proposed a plan to do just that–a detailed $1 trillion recovery plan to kick start the economy, invest in sustainable, long term growth and target individuals and communities that are most desperate for resources.

We’ve seen “progressive” economic plans work so often, after all.

Joel Stein happily admits that conservatives are right: lefties like himself don’t love America

Conservatives feel personally blessed to have been born in the only country worth living in. I, on the other hand, just feel lucky to have grown up in a wealthy democracy. If it had been Australia, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Israel or one of those Scandinavian countries with more relaxed attitudes toward sex, that would have been fine with me too.

Read the whole thing.

Reading this makes it even more depressing to remember that these kind of people won the last election.