Palin's "Prop"

A local feminist Democrat accused Governor Sarah Palin of using her handicapped infant son as “a prop on late night television.” It caused a fuss and she resigned last week from Representative Carol Shea-Porter’s (D-NH) campaign as a result. It’s not clear whether she was asked to resign or she did it on her own initiative. No matter. The remark crystallizes why Palin drives feminists crazy.

Radical feminists say they’re “pro-choice.” It looks to them like Sarah Palin made a choice when she got pregnant in her forties after being inaugurated the first woman governor of Alaska, but we can’t be sure of that. To make a choice, she would have had to consider an abortion and we don’t know if it ever entered her mind. Only she knows that. Maybe she discussed it with her husband before anybody else knew she was pregnant and made a choice then. We just don’t know.

During the pregnancy, she found out her baby had Down Syndrome. She’s bound to have known families with such children and thought about how difficult it would be to raise her child. Maybe she considered abortion then. Maybe not. Maybe someone else asked her if she thought about abortion. Maybe not. It could be her friends and family believed she would never consider it because she had borne four children already and knew what was inside her was her child. Maybe they knew she believed abortion was murder so they never brought it up. Maybe she and her husband had a private conversation in which they weighed the prospect of living with a Down Syndrome child against the prospect of living with the guilt they would feel for killing it. Maybe they made a choice then. Or, maybe it never came up because each knew what the other would say.

Whatever went on in Sarah Palin’s mind during her pregnancy, she clearly carried a handicapped baby to term and delivered it when she could have had an abortion. She rejected that most prized “constitutional right” feminists believe they “won” for women everywhere in America and has a highly successful political career without it. When Palin’s family is on stage with the older girl holding her handicapped, infant brother, it drives the local feminist mentioned above and all the rest in the “sisterhood” of feminism nuts. She calls the infant boy, whose name is Trig, a “prop” because, although he’s the smallest, he stands out most in her eyes.

Perhaps it would be petty of me to speculate about another thing that annoys feminists about Palin: In addition to all the above, and after bearing five children, she’s attractive. Back in 1987 when Rush Limbaugh wrote that “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society,” I believe he was kidding - mostly. As with all humor though, what makes it funny is that there’s a grain of truth in it. Feminists have long railed against societal standards of female beauty and they’ve made some good points along the way, but many of us have sensed that, as Shakespeare put it, they “protesteth too much.” Do many feminists resent attractive women and the advantage it gives them? I think so. Is there a disproportionately large number of angry, man-hating, homely women in the “sisterhood”? I think it’s pretty obvious that there is. I believe it’s safe to say that jealousy is also a factor in their hatred of Governor Palin.

The feminists favored candidate, Barack Obama, has the most pro-abortion record in the US Senate - indeed the most pro-abortion record of any candidate for president in history - by far. Speaking on sex education and his two daughters during the campaign last April, he said: “I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.” To Obama, babies are “punishment.” While in the Illinois State Senate, he voted against the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” He would rather leave babies born alive after unsuccessful abortions to die on a shelf in another room, alone and unattended, because to recognize them as human beings would threaten the legality of abortion itself. Explaining his vote, Obama said, “I mean, it - it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.” If it’s not a child, Barack, then what the hell is it?

Ignore that crying baby in the other room. We must protect abortion. No wonder feminists love Obama and hate Palin. To them, her baby is a prop, a symbol that she rejects their culture of death.

Criticize Obama? You're a Racist

“If the election were held today who would you vote for: Obama or McCain?” I asked them.

By a margin of greater than four-to-one, my students favored Obama. They indicated their choice enthusiastically - shooting their hands straight up without hesitation. McCain supporters, however, kept their elbows on the desk and shyly showed their palms while pulling their head down into their shoulders and glancing around to see who was watching. When I asked the Obama supporters why they chose him, most told me it was time for America to have a black president. Others said McCain was too old, or that Obama was cool.

That was last spring when my current students were finishing seventh grade and were in my classroom on “Step-up Day” to meet their future teachers. I asked why they thought it was time America had a black president and they said it would be proof that Americans are not racists. In September I asked them again with the same result. It’s very clear that they chose their favorite candidate on the basis of race and style over substance. Not one of the Obama supporters mentioned any of his positions on the issues as a basis for their choice. When I pointed this out, most just shrugged. A few then said they liked Obama because he would bring American soldiers home from Iraq. That was all they knew about what he planned to do if elected.

These, of course, were fourteen-year-olds and we don’t expect them to discharge their civic responsibilities maturely. Until I teach them, they’re not likely to understand many of the challenges facing our country. Very few understood differences between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, or left-wing and right-wing political philosophies. After learning a few of those things, some of their choices have changed. Most still support Obama over McCain, but only by a two-to-one margin or less.

My circle of friends is mostly conservative, with a few liberals. The political philosophies of people in my wider circle of aquaintances is unknown to me for the most part, but most seem to be Obama supporters if I were to extrapolate based on overheard snippets of conversation or seeing their bumper stickers. When meeting new people, I avoid bringing up politics, but it comes up often in this election year. When it does, I usually listen rather than talk. If I’m drawn in, I prefer to ask questions rather than state my positions. What I’m learning dismays me.

Perhaps it was always thus, but I’m noticing that many adult voters are not very different from my fourteen-year-old students in that race and style are much bigger factors in their considerations of whom to vote for than substance. They’re excited about the prospect of a President Obama because he’s black, or says he is. That his mother was white and his father was mixed Arab and black (they’re both dead) is immaterial. Obama has chosen to think of himself as black and presents himself thus. That choice is a major subject of his two auto-biographies and it’s working well for him so far if opinion polls are any indication. Spoken or unspoken, it looks like the biggest single dynamic in the presidential campaign. Many voters who think of themselves as white are troubled by the notion that, if they were to vote against Obama, others may think them racist for doing so.

This notion is strongly encouraged. According to a Washington Post article last Sunday by Anne Kornblut: “In Youngstown, Ohio, last month, two Democratic state legislators accused swing voters who were not backing Obama of being racist. ‘Race - that's the only reason people in the Valley won't vote for him,’ state Rep. Thomas Letson said.”

Is that so, Representative Letson?

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatimah Ali wrote: “If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!”

A “race war,” Ms. Ali?

According to the New York Times, Georgia Democrat Congressman John Lewis accused McCain and Palin of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” for their criticism of Obama’s close association of terrorist Bill Ayers. Lewis said it could lead to racial violence like the 1963 Alabama church bombings that killed four girls. Apparently, that Obama is black should insulate him from criticism of any type in Lewis’s view. “Senator McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire,” he said, “and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all.”

Really, Congressman Lewis?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama stoked it himself in a speech last summer, saying: “What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know: ‘He’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name.’ You know, ‘He doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’ ” He made similar remarks in three different speeches.

Who is “they,” Senator Obama? Anybody who criticizes you?

In The Tank

They’re not even embarrassed about how obviously they’re in the tank for Obama. Rather, they seem to feel righteous about it. Our media elite are so smug and insular in their world view, they don’t realize or care about how out of touch they’ve become with ordinary Americans - how we live or how we think. Paradoxically, our media elite see themselves as champions of the oppressed, of “minorities,” and other “victims” of “American oppression.” They’re embarrassed when ordinary Americans express our patriotism or our faith in God, considering it childlike and unsophisticated. Their friends are far too sophisticated to look at the world that way.

They know Obama goes to church and professes love of country, but they figure he does those things because he has to in order to get elected. And they want to see him elected because he’s one of them. He pronounces words as they do and he went to Ivy League school as they did. And like them, he sees the world from a hard left perspective. If we wonder why they don’t go after Obama’s William Ayers connection, that’s why. It doesn’t alarm them. Ayers fits with mainstream Democrat politics in Chicago. And why not expose racism in the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Because they’re not alarmed by him either. He fits in with their world view too - way better than Justice Clarence Thomas does. Wright and Obama profess a belief in God, but it looks as if Thomas actually has one and lives his life accordingly. To our elitist media, that qualifies him as an intellectual lightweight and not qualified to serve on the US Supreme Court.

Seldom, if ever, do they question Barack Obama’s qualifications to be president, though his is the thinnest of resumes. Most of his career was as a “community organizer.” What the heck is that? And he served in the state senate? Big deal. He avoided nearly every controversial vote that came up when he was there, voting “present” instead of yes or no. US Senate? If ever there was a club for political prima donnas, it would be the US Senate and Obama did only two years there before running for president full-time.

Obama wants to be our chief executive, but his only executive experience was as Chairman of the Annenberg Challenge - a position Bill Ayers secured for him. Obama cited his Annenberg tenure in an unsuccessful congressional campaign, but has hidden it since and no wonder - it was a $50 million boondoggle which purported to raise standards for Chicago schools, which showed no measurable change when the money was all spent. Most of the money was authorized by Obama and spent by Ayers and his radical friends to push Chicago’s educational establishment further to the left than it already was. I remember getting $25,000 of Annenberg Challenge Grant money here in Fryeburg around the same time. A few other teachers and I trained students in the use of digital imaging technology and local history. I’m proud of what we did with just a tiny fraction of what Obama spent. The Chicago Democratic establishment, however, is trying to block reporters from investigating records of where Obama’s and Ayers’ $50 million went.

Then there’s Obama’s purchase of his Chicago mansion with convicted felon Tony Rezco - possibly using money from Iraqi/British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, implicated in the infamous Iraqi “Oil For Food” debacle, the biggest financial scandal in world history until the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Obama is tangled up in that one too through his close associations with infamous Fannie Mae executives James Johnson and Franklin Raines (who, as CEO, took $90 million in bonuses). Johnson headed Obama’s vice presidential search committee and Raines advised his campaign on housing issues.

Since McCain selected Sarah Palin for his VP running mate, however, investigative reporters have swarmed over Alaska looking for dirt. Palin’s got at least as much experience as Obama, but all we hear about is her lack of it. She epitomizes ordinary Americans and the elite media’s contempt for her is sickeningly obvious. When she galvanized the GOP’s conservative base, they declared relentless, all-out war on her. They dug into her private life and even hung out her seventeen-year-old daughter to dry. They seemed to have Palin on the ropes until the debate with Biden last week. They were expecting Biden to knock her out, but instead, she took control and spoke directly to the American people, even looking into the camera and winking.

I’ve been watching presidential politics a long time from both sides of the spectrum and I’ve never seen the media go as softly on a candidate as they have on Obama. Nor have I ever seen them attack anyone as vociferously as they have gone after Palin. The elite media’s power is waning, but possibly still powerful enough to deliver a radical leftist into the oval office in January.

Teaching the Crisis

I’m responsible to teach economics and current events to eighth graders - woven into a 20th century US History course - and this sub-prime mortgage crisis is the biggest story of the year. It’s complicated, charged with politics during election season, and nobody seems to understand the big picture. I plowed ahead anyway and started by asking my students how many of them had money in the bank. Nearly all did. “Do you know what banks do with the money you put in there?” I asked. Most realized that banks lend that money so people can buy houses, cars, businesses, and so forth. We discussed how banks make money by charging people more interest on loans than they pay to depositors like them.

Then I told them of the three houses my wife and I purchased or built, how much of a down payment we put on each, how much we borrowed for them - how we fixed up the first two, sold them, and used profits to pay for much of building our present house. I told them about our employment history, our credit rating, and the factors that made our mortgage contracts examples of “prime mortgages” because we never borrowed more than we could afford to pay back and never missed a payment. Then I explained that the economic crisis was caused by “sub-prime mortgages” - banks (encouraged by government) lend money to people who can’t or won’t pay it back, either because they borrowed too much, because they were unreliable, because they fell on hard times, or because they didn’t put any of their own money down and can walk away from their payment without losing anything.

Then I wrote on the board and explained that what sound like names for people are actually crude attempts to phonetically pronounce the acronyms for FNMA - the Federal National Mortgage Association, and FHLMC - the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, respectively. I explained that local banks negotiate mortgage contracts such as mine but have limited money to lend, so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy those contracts. Mine was for $95,000 at 6% for fifteen years with monthly payments of $801.66 and my house was worth way more than that. My contract can be sold - and has been twice, to Bank America and again to Wells Fargo Bank. My contract is worth more than $95,000 because of the interest I pay. By selling it, my local bank made a profit and got more money to lend so others around here can buy and build houses. That keeps carpenters, plumbers, electricians, excavators, dry-wall contractors, and others busy, giving us a healthy economy.

Most students understood this much. Then it got more complicated.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by government, I explained. Together, they control $6 trillion in mortgages - half of all American mortgages. When they buy a mortgage, they guarantee it - like a parent cosigning a loan for a teenager to buy a car. If the teenager doesn’t make payments, the parent must. When Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac wanted to sell sub-prime mortgages, few wanted to buy because they were such a bad risk by nature. So, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bundled sub-prime mortgages with prime mortgages. Those packages became “Mortgage-backed Securities” which could be sold and re-sold because buyers believed that if they failed, government would fix everything - be the parent making payments for delinquent teenagers, so to speak. Wall Street jumped on and rode the ensuing boom. So long as house prices continued rising, sub-prime mortgagees could flip their properties and even profit, but as soon as prices leveled off and then fell as they inevitably do, foreclosures skyrocketed and it all caved in. Businesses most heavily invested caved with it, including the allegedly private Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Neither the Republican Congress nor the Democrat Congress saw it coming and they should have. Neither Clinton nor Bush saw it either. Some individuals did, but they didn’t blow the whistle loudly enough. Anyway, nobody listened.

Who is responsible for sub-prime mortgages at the root of all this? There’s plenty of blame to go around, but it started with the Carter Administration’s “Community Reinvestment Act” in the seventies. Standards to screen bad borrowers were relaxed. Buyers flooded the market and prices went up in the 1980s housing boom. Then President Clinton ordered standards lowered still further in 1995 so more “minorities” and other low-income people could own homes. Welfare payments qualified as “income.” Even illegal immigrants got mortgages with no money down. Uncle Sam became Jolly John. All this triggered a second housing boom now gone bust. Trouble is, this bust is so big,“experts” predict it may bring us all down with it unless the federal government solves the mess it created. Are they Chicken Littles and Henny Pennys warning us the sky is falling? Government wants us to buy back those dubious securities for up to $700 billion and sort out good from bad, claiming taxpayers will get their money back and more. Others doubt it.

Nearly every student learned something about the problem, but none understood it all. Neither do senators, congressmen, or voters. Neither do I. Not fully. Still, many think government must do something. If we do, hopefully we won’t make things worse.

Faces of Ireland

Though I’d never been there before, many faces I saw in Ireland were familiar. I was told that would happen and it did. All my ancestors come from that island, but they left more than a hundred years ago. Still, the country felt very familiar.

On our first day there, my wife and I checked out Dublin on the “Hop on, Hop off” tour bus, and it was just that. About fifteen double-decker busses made a continuous loop, each with a driver/tourguide, each stopping at about twenty-five different locations around the city. If a place seemed interesting, we’d hop off and investigate. Another bus would come along every ten minutes or so, and we could hop back on anytime and resume the tour. With a telephoto lens on my new Nikon, I could zoom in on faces without making my subjects nervous, because most were unaware of what I was doing. There was no shutter delay with the new camera and I could shoot hundreds of pictures on one memory card. I sat in the front on the bus’s upper level and when
an interesting face appeared, I’d shoot it.

To my eye, there are about 20-30 stereotypical varieties of Celtic countenance for men, and the same for women. Growing up in Greater Boston, I saw the same faces on the streets, at wakes and weddings, in school, in the bleachers at Fenway Park - almost everywhere I went. We Americans of Irish extraction continued our clannish ways for generations in the United States, tending to marry others like ourselves and preserving our characteristic countenances for another century. Hair can be red, black, blonde, or brown. Eyes can be blue, green, or brown. Skin can be clear or freckled. There are certain configurations of ears, eyes, noses and mouths. There are characteristic expressions on all those faces, however, which convey a personality and a mood. It was as if I knew some of what each was thinking and feeling. I wondered if we were all programmed to react to our environment with characteristic thoughts and emotions because of our shared DNA. Did we have a common wave length with which to communicate what was on our minds or in our hearts? That Ireland is an island country and, as such, was isolated and insular for millennia, perhaps contributed to this commonality of awareness in its human population.

We were there on a cool, drizzly Thursday in August and most of my subjects were going to work or going home, alone with their thoughts as they walked down sidewalks, waited at street corners, or lingered in doorways. I was able to focus in on most without their knowledge, but some seemed to sense my scrutiny and looked into my lens at the split second my shutter snapped. Those images were particularly interesting. They were people alone in the crowd until they saw my camera aimed at them. It was more than catching me staring. I was taking their image away with me without their permission. They could do little about it since they were on a sidewalk I was atop a moving bus. I felt a little guilty each time, but not enough to stop.

Some faces had a lot of miles on them - broken noses with whiskey blossoms flanked by wary eyes. There was a hardness to them that contrasted with other faces on the same sidewalk - those that looked like poets or academics. Many had cigarettes dangling from their lips as they walked along. There were more smokers in Dublin, but not many fat people compared to, say, Portland or Boston. They were in better shape than Americans and seemed less hostile. More made eye contact on the sidewalk and smiled than would do so here. They seemed more comfortable with each other on busses and trains too, more likely to look at one another and exchange words than just stare straight ahead.

When touring Ireland’s countryside later in the trip, I experienced the warmth, friendliness and and hospitality for which the Irish are well-known, especially toward others in the clan. While getting to know some of its people, I was learning more about myself. Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat is the heritage I was born into, like it or not. It shaped me in many ways. There have been times when I liked that and other times when I didn’t. As with any other legacy in the human family, there are desirable traits and dysfunctional ones among the Irish. It’s the hand I was dealt at birth. How I play it is up to me.

Sexualization

When parents tell me their oldest child is going to be in middle school, I sense they have mixed feelings. They’re proud but worried. They’re worried about their children’s loss of innocence. No parent can put that off forever, of course, but they shouldn’t have to worry about it when their kids are only eleven. When it’s parents against the culture, I hate to admit it but the culture is likely to win. Parents know this at some level and fear it.

Students are more sexual these days than I ever remember. I shouldn’t be surprised given the escalating sexualization of the entire culture in which we all live. Our children grow up permeated by sex on the television they watch, in the music they listen to, in the literature they read, and in the advertising they’re continually bombarded with from all angles every single day. So of course I’m going to see it more in class, and it can be awkward at times.

On the first day of school I passed out textbooks, just as I’ve done for decades. I have to record what number book each student gets, so I call their names one at time and they tell me what it is. In four out of five classes, at least one student said he or she had textbook number 69. Each time, there were knowing looks and snorts by other students, mostly boys but not exclusively. There should only be one book numbered 69 in the whole batch of course, but at least three students last year had changed the number in the book they were assigned. I had to decide in an instant if I was going to confront the sniggling behavior or let it pass. The first time, I ignored it. I recorded the 69 in my computer and called the next student’s name. When it happened again in the second class, I realized that at least one of the books had been altered and I had to ask myself how would I deal with it. To do so in the moment would call more attention to it. Considering that there may still be many students who didn’t know what sexual connotations the number 69 has, I hesitated. My attention to the matter would cause them to ask questions and find out. Maybe I’m naive to assume they’re unworldly, but I hope not. I wanted to believe most of them - maybe only some at this point - are still innocent enough at thirteen or fourteen to not understand why the boys were snickering. So, I ignored it the second time, but I was disturbed. This was the first day of school. I’ve been teaching a long time and it didn’t use to be this way. I ignored it in the third and fourth classes too and tried to put it out of my mind by filing it in the mental folder I call “another depressing sign of the times.”

Last fall, nearby Portland’s school board gave King Middle School permission to prescribe birth control to students as young as eleven. Last spring, the Centers For Disease Control reported that 1 in 4 teenage girls in America ages 14-19 has a Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). I remember how sad I was reading that. I remember mentioning it to a group of teachers the same day and getting no response. It made me feel like a dinosaur. I’m not the oldest teacher in the district, but I’ve been here the longest. Sometimes I feel like yelling to students and teachers that it didn’t use to be this way, but what good would it do? It’s the way things are now and I guess it has to continue trending like this until a critical mass in the wider culture out there says, “Enough!”

I hope I’m still around when it happens.

How does that lipstick taste Barack?

Obama is showing how shallow he really is. His image built by our media became larger than life sometime early this year and he started believing it was real. Nobody could have lived up to it and now he's stumbling. I've been waiting for this. It was inevitable, but I was afraid it might not happen until after November when it would be too late. Now, however, it looks like his "Lipstick on a pig" remark may prove to be the pinprick that popped the hyper-inflated Obama balloon in the eyes of America.

It was inevitable. Nobody could have fleshed out the image media created for him and Obama is realizing that himself. I can see it in his eyes today. It's over. Obama can speak well when he's scripted, but when he has to think on his feet, he's not very good. That's becoming painfully obvious to starry-eyed Democrats who thought they'd found the reincarnated JFK.

JFK could not have lived up to the media hype of his image either, but he was killed dramatically before it popped - so the myth continued to build. He was just as flawed as any of us, maybe more so , but one doesn't speak ill of the dead and the myth grew.

When RFK picked up JFK's mantle, he too died dramatically and the myth grew larger still. After him there was only Teddy - who seems to have been the least able of the Kennedy brothers to even try living up to the now hopelessly hyper-inflated Camelot legend. I have little affection for the "Liberal Lion" of Massachusetts, but nobody could possibly have filled out that role.

Now here's Obama trying to do it. He wants to be JFK and MLK all rolled into one. He chose Caroline Kennedy help him pick a VP running mate and look how that turned out. Biden vs. Palin October 2nd? I'd have to offer long odds to find somebody willing to bet on Biden. Then Ted passed the mantle to Obama in that big convention ceremony. Ted failed to embody the myth and so will Obama.

All this is good for us conservatives of course. Obama beat Hillary for the nomination and now he's self-destructing. Looks now like President McCain and Vice President Palin next January, but there's a month and a half before the vote and that's still an eternity in politics. Anything can happen.

Exciting, no? It doesn't get any better than this for us political junkies.

Provocative Palins

Sarah Palin provokes. Just her presence on the national stage has the political world in a tizzy. She doesn’t even have to say anything. Being who she is creates a firestorm. And who is she? She’s someone who got into politics for reasons we say we want people to get into politics - an ordinary citizen believed she could do things better. She challenged the status quo in Alaska and won. She made it to the top as governor - the youngest ever and the first female. She challenges oil companies, the Democrat establishment, and the Republican establishment - and actually changes things. This would seem to be enough for the National Organization for Women and the Mainstream Media to make her a Goddess. But that’s not happening. Instead, they hate her guts and they’re doing everything they can to destroy her. Why? What’s up with that?

It’s because of the rest of who she is. It’s because she’s a conservative who believes in God. Those two facts trump everything else and make her unacceptable to NOW, to Katie Couric, to Sally Quinn, to Oprah, and all the rest of the Mainstream Media. Palin’s very existence threatens their whole world view and they can’t stand it. She had five kids and quite obviously doesn’t give a whit about all those extra carbon footprints. That would have been enough for the liberal media to call her crazy, but then there’s this: She found herself pregnant for the fifth time with a Down’s Syndrome child. She was in her forties, had just been inaugurated governor, and it was very inconvenient - but she didn’t have an abortion! What is wrong with this woman? It’s one thing to say you’re personally opposed to abortion, but to actually live out your life according to your beliefs even when it’s hard? Who does that anymore?

Palin didn’t have an abortion because she believes her son is a gift from God. She couldn’t kill him before he was born any more than she could kill him after he was born. It was out of the question and her husband supported her. All politicians say they believe in God, but to actually put your trust in Him when things aren’t going the way you’d like? When you’re worried and afraid? Nobody really does that anymore, do they? What is wrong with this woman?

When McCain asked her to be his running mate, her unmarried seventeen-year-old daughter was pregnant and she told him about it. It wasn’t a secret in Alaska, but nobody brought it up nationally until rumors circulated on left-wing weblogs that Palin’s fifth child was actually borne by her seventeen-year-old daughter and Palin was covering up by claiming it was hers. Many in the mainstream media reported on the rumors and disingenuously amplified them behind a pretense of objectivity. To counter the smears, the McCain Campaign announced nationally that Palin’s daughter was pregnant. Nearly all of us know people who have had abortions in similar situations, but the younger Palin isn’t going to abort her child either. She’s planning to deliver it and marry the baby’s father instead. Doesn’t she realize that left-wing feminists have worked their oversized butts off for over four decades just so that women like her can get rid of their unwanted children? Now here are two women bearing inconvenient babies in the same Palin family. What is wrong with these people?

As if all this weren’t bad enough, Sarah Palin eats meat. Worse still, she personally shoots some of the animals she eats and seems to enjoy doing so. Not only does she kill and eat caribou, she wants to drill for oil in their habitat! And her husband actually does it! in the Alaskan wilderness! While working with his hands! Talk about disrespect for nature. He races loud, smelly snowmobiles across wilderness areas too and doesn’t seem to care whether animals or cross-country skiers may get upset about it. True feminists don’t marry men like that. What kind of woman is this?

Looks to me like Palin and her husband are the kind of people Barack Obama warned us about: “Typical white people who cling bitterly to their guns and religion.” If Sarah Palin is allowed to continue her rise to political power, millions of other women may start using her as a role model. Decades of carefully-crafted, radical-feminist propaganda will go down the drain. Clearly, this woman cannot be allowed to win.

Left And Right And Wrong

Saul Alinsky, guru for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, is familiar to me. I worked with his followers thirty-five years ago.

People who haven’t known me long are surprised that my politics were pretty far left when I was a young man working on a radical newspaper called “The Communicator” in Lowell, Massachusetts with some “Red Diaper Babies.” The term refers to children raised by parents who were members of CPUSA (Communist Party - United States of America). The ones I worked with were Jewish and devout followers of Saul Alinsky - hero to the two top Democrat candidates for president in 2008. His book: “Rules for Radicals,” was put in my hands by my Lowell friends who, just like Obama, called themselves “Community Organizers.” I skimmed through it, but it didn’t grab me. Alinsky and my friends wanted to kindle a revolution, but I just wanted to change a few things. One of the group was Alan Solomont, who later went on to become Treasurer of the Democrat National Committee during the Clinton Administration and slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. Alinsky followers like Solomont, Obama and Hillary Clinton took over the Democrat Party and pushed it far to the left.

Though I’ve always been conservative on social issues like abortion, I didn’t become fully conservative until the ’90s. Having worked both sides of the political spectrum gives me a broader view than most.
Regarding this election year, neither presidential candidate excites me and I expected to be bored by the record-long presidential campaign at this point, but I’m not - anything but. American voters have a clear choice between left and right and the debates will be fascinating from that perspective. Alinsky disciple Barack Obama has the most left-wing voting record in the US Senate. Joe Biden ranks third behind Ted Kennedy. Those three are more liberal than even Bernie Sanders - the Socialist Senator from Vermont. While John McCain’s right-wing credentials are somewhat lacking, it looks like he’s chosen a bedrock conservative in vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin. The little bit I’ve learned about her so far tells me she is the genuine article. She’s pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, wants to secure our borders, cut government, lower taxes, drill for oil, and - she’s articulate. Like most of Middle America, she and her husband have worked with their hands and still do. They didn’t go to Ivy League universities and are unimpressed by those who did. Americans who know how to shingle a roof, shoot a gun, dress out an animal, and change the oil identify with Sarah Palin. They’re the people who really make America work and this scares hell out of liberal elitists who run the Democrat Party and purport to represent average Americans. I can’t wait to watch her debate Joe Biden.

If I could be so bold as to sum up the political dichotomy of left and right, I would say right-wing conservatives believe what Thomas Paine said: “Government, in its best state, is but a necessary evil” - necessary only to maintain order while individual citizens live out their lives privately - with the liberty to make their own decisions and take responsibility for them. Whatever happiness they achieve is up to them alone. As Jefferson put it: “That government is best that governs least.”

Left-wing liberals believe the opposite: “That government is best that governs most.” Government is the source of happiness by being arbiter of who gets what and does what. Individual citizens depend on government for their welfare, cradle to grave. Unhappy citizens are victims. Their unhappiness is someone else’s fault. They blame “the rich,” for hoarding things so there’s not enough to go around. The size of the economic pie is static, they believe, and doesn’t expand. Rather than produce their own wealth, they use government to redistribute it.

Such victimhood dogma drove Alinsky strategy. His advice for “Community Organizers” like Barack Obama was: "Rub raw the sores of discontent.” No wonder Obama befriended race-baiting Jeremiah Wright. Rubbing raw the sores of discontent is Reverend Wright’s stock in trade, just as it is with those other two black “leaders,” the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton.

Alinsky was an atheist, but he understood the power of religion and used it perversely. Though he dropped it in subsequent editions to avoid alienating liberal church leaders, he dedicated his first edition of “Rules For Radicals” thusly:

"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer."

Hillary didn’t mention this in her senior thesis on Alinsky at Wellesley College either, but it’s worth pondering.

Canary in the Coal Mine

Israel is a canary in America’s coal mine. Miners kept a caged canary in the mineshaft as they worked and watched it carefully. Should odorless poison gas creep into the air, the canary would be affected first. It it collapsed, miners had to do something or they wouldn’t survive either. Both America and Israel are threatened by the poison of Radical Islam. We face the same enemy.

Israel’s creation in 1948, or rather its re-creation after going out of existence for nearly two millennia, was improbable - indeed it was unprecedented in all of history. America’s creation was improbable too - a tiny strip of land between the Appalachians and the Atlantic in 1776 - fighting the British in the north and across the sea, Indians in the west and south. Both are outposts of democracy in a world hostile to it. Israel is on the front line. It’s our canary and we must watch it closely. Both will elect a new government soon and our victory or defeat against Radical Islam will be strongly influenced. Choices are similar too. Will we pick aggressive leaders or conciliatory ones? Will we show Radical Islam our fists or the tails between our legs?

Will Israel pick someone to carry on outgoing Prime Minister Olmert’s policy of appeasement? He wanted to give the Golan Heights to Syria and the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority. Considering how giving over the Gaza Strip worked out, Israel might as well commit suicide now and get it over with. Land for peace is a failed policy, as Neville Chamberlain discovered when dealing with Hitler. Europe’s Jews were almost wiped out for Chamberlain’s folly. Those who survived the Holocaust formed modern Israel. Israelis fought four wars in twenty-five years against larger, Arab-Muslim neighbors dedicated to its destruction.

After four humiliating defeats, those enemies changed tactics. They don’t invade with conventional planes, tanks and troops. Now they use teenaged suicide bombers and rockets launched from civilian population centers by Iranian proxies Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile, Iran builds nuclear weapons and promises to wipe Israel off the map. In spite of fifty years in an almost constant state of war, many Israelis still believe Radical Islam can be appeased and Chamberlain-like policies will bring peace.

Winston Churchill defined appeasement as: “Feeding the crocodile, hoping he’ll eat you last.” Hitler gobbled up mainland Europe and took near-fatal bites out of England before America stepped in. If Israeli appeasers elect another Olmert, Israel is doomed.

Modern Israel was founded by Jews who were determined to have their own military to defend themselves against the Hitlers who would make them extinct. Today’s Hitler takes the form of Radical Islam which denies the Holocaust while preparing nuclear genocide. In the face of this grave threat, many Israelis seem to have forgotten their birthright - they’re losing their identity, and if they don’t regain it, they’re doomed.

To wake up fellow Israelis, Natan Sharansky’s latest book is titled: “Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.” Newsmax’s Christopher Ruddy interviewed Sharansky and reports:

The thesis of [Sharansky’s] book is that democratic society, if it has any hope for long-term survival, must offer an identity for its citizens. Looking out at the world, he says “our enemies look so dangerous because they have a strong will.” This means they have beliefs they are ready to die for. “The free world, if it does not have values for which people are ready to die, will be powerless, its people decadent. It will be doomed to failure.” Identity, he says, gives people these values. It is not the enemy, as many [multiculturalists] in the West believe. “Europe is suffering the most from a loss of identity. Faith and patriotism have weakened as it embraces a super-identity — all in an effort to avoid war.”

What’s the best way to avoid war? The “Bush Doctrine” - adopted after September 11th - authorized preemptive strikes against countries planning to attack us, but America, and Bush himself, have backed away. Voters will choose soon between Democrat Barack Obama - an appeasing worshiper of Multiculturalism, and Republican John McCain - someone who understands our enemy and is willing to do whatever it takes to defeat it. Israelis must decide soon if they will attack Iran before Iran “wipes it off the map” and vote accordingly. Do Israelis have the will? Do we? Iran is betting against it.

Martin Luther King said: “If a man has nothing he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.” If such people comprise the majority in Israel or the United States, neither country is fit to live and won’t for much longer. The Israeli canary is teetering on its perch.

McLaughlin Roots

Carrickabraghy Castle keep. All that's left of it on Isle of Doagh

Thirty years ago, I learned that my great-grandfather, James McLaughlin, emigrated to Boston from Isle of Doagh on the Inishowen Peninsula (pronounced “In-ish-own”) of Donegal with his brothers Michael and Jeremiah. They had a sister, Sarah, who stayed. Ever since, I’ve wanted to find the old homestead. Last week, I did.

Neal "Dick" McLaughlin and wife, Marge

If I’d put off the trip much longer, I wouldn’t have found it. Eighty-year-old Neal McLaughlin is the only one left there who remembers stories of my great-grandfather’s family and it took me three days to find him. Inishowen is loaded with McLaughlins - which they pronounce “Mac-Loch-lan.” The only name more common is Doherty, because the O’Doherty Clan defeated the McLaughlin Clan back in 1244 AD. Everyone I spoke to asked if James had a nickname. There are so many McLaughins that extended families get nicknames. For example, one of Neal’s ancestors was named Richard and called “Dick,” so Neal became “Neal Dick” to distinguish him from other Neal McLaughlins. Locals pronounce it “Nail Deck.”

Isle of Doagh, looking west at the Atlantic

The only other information I had was that in 1921 or 1922, my great-great-grandfather (whose nickname was “Wee John,” Neal told me) sold the family homestead to someone named McGonagle. According to family stories, Great-grandfather James went back to Ireland to settle the estate and bring back Michael’s and Jeremiah’s shares, but he stayed for seven years and returned to Boston with nothing. James liked to drink, and that’s where the money went. His brothers were not pleased of course, and may have come up with other nicknames for James Wee John, like “Shithead” perhaps. Though the brothers had emigrated more than a hundred years ago, I hoped that some older people in the neighborhood might have heard stories about James’s seven-year frolic in the 1920s. Neal McLaughlin - “Nail Deck” - had.

Isle of Doagh

It rained my first three days in Ireland. On the fourth I got to Inishowen - the northernmost tip of the country - and the sun was shining. My wife was sure we’d be killed driving on the left-hand side of its steep, narrow, winding roads, but we made it. Isle of Doagh is stunningly beautiful. One road leads to it across a boggy field, and then it’s sheep and cattle pasture, stone walls, limestone outcroppings, beaches, cliffs, grassy dunes, and the ruins of a castle - all surrounded by shallow bays and the Atlantic Ocean. As we explored, I wondered why James would leave such an enchanting place.

Yours truly with Glashedy Island behind off Isle of Doagh (Glashedy means "Green on top")

The first person we met was Mary McGeoghan, walking on the beach. She referred us to Marie McLaughlin, who lives at the end of the beach next to the ruins of Carrickabrachy Castle (built by the O’Dohertys). Marie is one of the “Castle McLaughlins.” I gave her my information but she couldn’t help me. She referred me on to Lily McLaughlin, (which she pronounced “Lally”) on the other side of the Isle. Neither Lily nor her many sons knew of James either. For three days, I knocked on doors and most people mentioned “Nail Deck” (among others) as someone who might be able to help me.

My wife, Roseann, at the castle

Neal lived in another part of town called Cloontagh (pronounced “Cloincha”) which means “gathering of houses” in Gaelic. He was on the phone when I walked up. He didn’t know me, but waved me inside anyway. When he hung up, I introduced myself and explained what I was looking for. He had a twinkle in his blue eyes as he listened patiently to my information. Then, to my great delight, he said he knew the family. He remembered stories about “James Wee John,” as my great-grandfather was called back then, and chuckled as he told me one: Sometime during James’s seven-year-frolic, a child was born and people were planning a Baptism celebration. James volunteered to take a chicken home to pluck and clean for the dinner. When it came time to cook though, James didn’t show up with the chicken. He’d gotten into some poteen (Irish moonshine - pronounced “pa-cheen”) and was found passed out in a field with the half-plucked chicken next to him.

“That sounds like James,” I said.

Carrickabraghy Castle keep from another angle

Neal, who is a retired farmer and building contractor with six sons, went on to tell me that Wee John’s house and ten acres were sold to James McGonagle for £160. Neal’s family owned the land around it then and still does. He knew James Wee John’s sister, “Sarah Wee John,” who married a Doherty and was “not long dead.” He said my great-great-grandparents - Wee John and his wife Winifred (nee McCarron) - are buried in the cemetery next to the chapel in Clonmany, just inside the gate, but don’t have stones.

"Wee John's" Lane with newer buildings to the left and right

Later, we drove to the old homestead. “There’s Wee John’s Lane,” said Neal. Up a sloping lane was a small house Neal remembered being built when he was a boy and now is used for storage. Stone sheds attached to it were older and probably existed during Wee John’s time. A still newer house and garage about ten years old stood nearer the road. The property displayed a typical evolution that can be seen everywhere as Ireland became prosperous.

Great-Great Grandfather "Wee John's" place, now a barn

I imagined how the place must have looked a century ago when Wee John lived there - very likely a modest, thatched-roof stone cottage with a low doorway. That’s what most of Ireland would have looked like then but little of that old Ireland remains. Few people are leaving the country these days. Affluent Ireland has an immigration problem now.

People, Time and Place

Inishowen Peninsula

First come those dew-covered webs ground spiders make on the lawn. Then crickets start chirping as they are while I write - early on this misty morning. Ferns will begin to wither soon. Those are the signs of waning summer I notice each year. Others may detect different indications of the passing season, but those are the ones that bring me that familiar mixture of anticipation and dread when I realize that school will begin soon. It’s more anticipation than dread this year because I don’t know how many more first days there’ll for me. I’ve gone back in early September more than fifty times. When that pattern will end I don’t know, but it won’t be long.

As I sit here on my back porch, one of Ed Dunlea’s cows is lowing over on Shave Hill and a loon is crying on Kezar Lake. The mist is rolling back and forth between my hill and Ed’s like an ocean tide. When it’s over me I can’t see very far, but then it rolls the other way and I can see the mountainous horizon with a few patches of blue. I like it because there hasn’t been too much blue to look at up there lately. It’s warm and wet this day, but soon will come a morning crisp and dry. I’ll need long pants and a quilted shirt to sit out here so early, but that means the humidity will be gone too and I’ve had enough of that. The towel in my shower was clammy this morning and the salt shaker was caked up last night when I tried to sprinkle my corn.

It’s my habit to rise before the sun, when everything is still and I can watch the day dawn slowly while I go through my morning rituals. The dog knows I’m about, but no one else. The complicated world is simpler at this time. Early and alone is my favorite way to start the day. Then I’ll try to stay in it - stay in the moment if I can. I know my mind will drift away to the future or the past, but I hope I catch it and get back to the present before it gets lost. That’s not always easy for a history teacher. Today though, there’s much I must do to prepare for my journey to Ireland.

By the time this is published Thursday, I should be walking the streets of Dublin. When I tire of that, I’ll go north a bit to look over Newgrange, a five-thousand-year-old structure of white quartz and other stone. Little is known of the people who constructed it and carved its spiral patterns. Were any my ancestors? Don’t know. Nobody does. Then I’ll look over the Battle of the Boyne site nearby - that place where Catholics were defeated in 1690 and the Protestant British hardened their control over the island. Then I’ll head northwest to British-ruled Ulster where I want to feel what may remain of the struggle or “The Troubles” as they’re sometimes called. Many McLaughlins have lived in the city of Derry (or Londonderry as the British call it) for eight centuries, and still do. One, Mitchell McLaughlin, is General Secretary for Sinn Fein - political wing of the Irish Republican Army. He lives in Bogside, the Catholic quarter. Will it feel at all like my visit to the West Bank last year? I hope not, but we’ll see.

Then it’ll be on to Donegal further to the north - to the northernmost tip of Ireland (the Inishowen Peninsula) from where my great-grandfather, James McLaughlin, emigrated around 1900. It’s part of the Republic of Ireland and most people are surprised to hear that. “Northern Ireland” conjures up British-occupied Ireland, but it would more accurately be called “Northeast Ireland.” I want to find what remains of his house and get a feel for the people still there. After more than a century, will I recognize any by their looks or their laughter or by something else? We’ll see. I’ll keep my movie camera handy to record it if I do.

During the few August days I spend in that remote place, I’ll smell it, see it, hear it, and feel it - find out why my great-grandfather left it, and maybe get some clues about myself.

Evil Speculators

Democrats blame “evil” speculators for the high price of oil. Speculators figure that, with liberal Democrats in firm control of Congress and a left-wing Democrat leading in the polls for president, the ban on drilling for oil on our coasts and in the Arctic will continue indefinitely - and oil prices will keep going up.

I’ve been speculating on the price of oil too. Does that make me a bad person? I sent a check to B&L Oil of Fryeburg to assure that I would pay no more than $4.85 per gallon for heating oil through next winter. I left my foot in the door a bit though. If the price should go down, I’ll pay market price. (Maybe Democrats will be forced to lift the ban? Heck, you never know) I could have paid up front for all 750 gallons - the amount I burned last year - at $4.60 per gallon. I have the money, but I chose what I chose because I still have the liberty to do so.

Some people are avoiding oil and laying in a lot of firewood. I have a couple of cords left out in the yard, but I’d prefer to burn oil. Some people are converting to wood pellets. Others are buying coal. Some will burn used motor oil, or even old vegetable oil from restaurant fryolaters. We’re all speculating. We’re exercising the liberty to make our own choices and live with the results. If we choose right, we’ll be happy. If we choose wrong, too bad for us. That’s how liberty works. As Benjamin Franklin put it: "The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself."

Lots of people have been speculating in real estate over the past ten or fifteen years. Some made a lot of money at it, causing many others to jump in. They took out mortgages for more than they could afford to pay back. They took risks, and that’s what speculation is. They figured they would make interest-only payments while the value of their new real estate climbed. Then they would flip it - sell at profit. It worked for a while and many got rich. Were they bad people? Some think so because their speculation helped drive home prices up. People who already owned real estate, however, thought that was wonderful. People who were renting and wanted to buy a home didn’t think it was so great. Oh well.

Somewhere along the way, liberal Democrats noticed that banks avoided granting mortgages to people in certain neighborhoods. They called it “Redlining” and accused loan officers of racism. Banks pointed out that it was bad business lending to individuals who were unable to make their payments. If minorities happened to comprise a higher percentage of such people, or if certain neighborhoods had lots of them, that was not evidence of racism. Mortgage decisions were based on numbers, not colors. As economist Thomas Sowell pointed out in a recent column: “In our own personal lives, common sense leads us to avoid some neighborhoods. If you want to call that "redlining," so be it. But places where it is dangerous to go are often also places where it is dangerous to send your money.” Liberal Democrats in Congress, however, passed legislation forcing banks to make risky loans to certain people, and in certain places, where they never would have otherwise.

Eventually, real estate prices stopped rising. Many who speculated couldn’t make their payments and defaulted. Then prices fell and more defaulted. Then prices fell still further. Banks who lent money to a lot of risky speculators went belly up. No one knows when it will all bottom out because, as Benjamin Franklin pointed out a long time ago, there are no guarantees. Liberal Democrats in Congress, however, don’t believe that. They passed a $300 billion bill to bail out nearly half a million speculators. They want Americans who made the right choices to bail out those who chose wrong. We who are making our payments now have to help speculators make theirs too.

I don’t like that. I don’t like it one bit. I don’t want to take away from speculators the liberty to fall on their faces. They should have the freedom to fail because, as British farmer Thomas Tusser said half a millennium ago: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

The question now is, are we fools too? Does the Democrat-controlled Congress take us for fools? It appears that way. What’s even worse? Our “Republican” president - the guy who put the “Dub” in Dubya - is going to sign the bill.

And here’s another question. Why are people who speculate on oil prices “evil” to be punished by excess-profits taxes, but those who speculate on real estate prices are “innocent victims” to be protected by taxpayer-funded bailouts?

Life Is Good

“Can you scrunch together more?” the photographer would say when he can’t back up any further. The people posing rub shoulders, and sometimes feel uncomfortable if they have to put their arms around others they don’t really like, or hardly know, to fit in the camera’s frame.

“Come on, now. Smile!” I almost never feel like smiling when I’m ordered to. Someone has to say something genuinely funny or I can only fake it. If the photographer has to take more than one shot and fumbles with the camera in between, my cheek muscles cramp up. I don’t like posing for pictures and I suspect most people are that way. I do like taking pictures and always have, but I don’t like getting people to pose any more than I like posing myself. I much prefer shooting people when they’re not aware of it, when they’re not self conscious about how they look to others, when they’re being themselves. I do take posed group shots, however, because people ask me to and it’s usually my wife who is doing the asking. She knows I almost always have a camera with me and, though it’s more work for me than fun, I seldom refuse.

With my economic stimulus check I bought a new camera: a Nikon D-60 SLR and it came stock with an 18mm to 55mm zoom lens. Now all that’s required for those tight group shots is a twist of the wrist and everybody is in the picture. I’d never used a camera with a wide angle capability before and I love it. Trees are a favorite subject - old individual trees with distinctive shapes. Many are in tight locations and it’s not always possible to move backward to include the entire tree from ground to crown. Again, the wide angle capability is terrific; just a flick of the wrist and the tree can be framed perfectly.

Another great feature of the D-60 is that the shutter clicks as soon as I press the release button, just like my old analog camera. For three years I used an earlier digital camera with a two-or-three-second shutter delay and it drove me mad. If I were shooting a moving object, I’d have to anticipate where it would be seconds after I pressed the shutter release. If a human subject wore a particular expression, it usually changed two seconds hence when the camera finally recorded it.

My wife and I rented a cottage on the Maine coast last week so I had lots of time to play around. I watched terns dive into the Little River at Reid State Park and come up with sardines in their beaks. I got several nice shots of their aerobatic diving that would have been impossible to obtain with my old camera. Then a huge osprey appeared and hovered high over the waves further out. He hung in the air long enough for me to change lenses and I was able to get several images of him (her?). The auto-focus feature was problematic at times with only blue sky as background. It was difficult to keep the bird in the center of the frame and the lens wanted to go to infinity when my aim was off. The osprey’s eyesight was apparently off a bit too because, as much as I wanted him to, he never dove for his dinner while I was shooting and eventually flew back inland. Oh well. Can’t have everything.

A quote I read recently keeps reverberating in my head: “We don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.” I’m happy to say that I’ve been seeing many interesting and beautiful things lately and I’m taking the time record them. Life is good. The old man who sold me the camera said there are two kinds of photographers: “those who bring their camera to photograph a particular thing, and those who always have it with them because they see something beautiful every day.”

Graffiti and Anarchy

Some people consider it an art form, but I’m not one of them. To me it’s a canary-in-the-coal-mine thing, an indication of an unraveling civilization. It was appropriate that one of the symbols was an upper-case A with a circle around it - a symbol of anarchy. Last week, someone spray-painted graffiti representing whatever crude impulses entered his head around the Lovell Dump, or what is probably referred to as the Lovell Solid Waste Recycling Center now. If there ever were a proper venue for graffiti I suppose it would be a dump, but it was offensive even there.

Why do I say “his” head you may ask? Because the perpetrator was likely an adolescent male who knows very little but thinks he knows much. That two giant phalluses were among the symbols is also a clue. It’s possible he’s former student since I’ve taught nearly every fourteen-year-old who came through eighth grade around here for more than a generation. It’s also possible that he’s already been charged by the time this goes to print, but I’m out of town and out of touch, where there’s neither cellphone nor internet service and that’s nice. There’s no graffiti around here either. If he was caught and he’s under eighteen, his name won’t be published. People in town will know who he was though. They always do, and you can find out if you listen to the talk at one of the local lunch counters.

Graffiti “artists” who render crude phalluses probably wear their pants low on their rear ends - because they desperately want to belong to other groups of boys like themselves who don’t pull their pants up. Graffiti is part of their lifestyle. When they get old enough to drive, they’ll have sub-woofers installed in their cars to vibrate everything within a wide radius, blaring their angry “music” which they impose on us along with their graffiti. Sound and symbol go together, and those of us who pull our pants up consider both obnoxious.

Adolescent males who run in packs are anarchist by nature. The only limits they recognize are the impulses of the alpha male and change hour to hour. Anarchy is as old as the human race, but during the past two centuries, anarchists have adopted a loose philosophy. They believe there should be no government and they behave as if there weren’t any. They don’t respect private property, and that squares nicely with communists over on the extreme left of the political spectrum. Anarchists and communists have historically worked together to bring down governments. Once they’re successful in that, however, they part company. To fill the power vacuum, communists create huge government bureaucracies to control everything everybody does, and that’s the opposite of what anarchists profess.

Several anarchist groups like “Unconventional Action” and “Recreate 68” are planning to disrupt the Democrat Convention in Denver next month. According to the Denver Post: “A draft law proposed by the Denver Police Department would ban the possession by protesters of materials such as weighted pipes and chains and items that can make urine and feces bombs.” Hmm. Urine and feces bombs, huh? The excremental equivalent of rap “music” and graffiti, I guess. Would these be aimed at police or at Obama delegates?

Few adolescent boys understand anarchist history, but they’re attracted to symbols like the A with a circle around it because it’s associated with other angry young males who become sub-cultural heroes. Our media magnifies them as they make “music” and destroy things and treat young women like whores. Big media like Time Warner feed this subculture and profit mightily in the process.

The majority culture either accepts this adolescent anarchy, or even celebrates it because it’s associated with protected minorities. It is therefore an element of Multiculturalism - which purports that all cultures are equal. No culture, or subculture for that matter, is any better or any worse than any other. Cultural relativity has become a sacred principle and it’s not politically correct to question it. It’s even a hate crime in Canada where provincial Human Rights Commissions can bring charges against you and impose huge fines if you should publicly criticize a culture to the point where its adherents’ feelings get hurt. They don’t have a First Amendment up there.

Our society seems to have swallowed all this even when it means many of our adolescent boys behave like characters from “Lord of the Flies” and many of our adolescent girls look like prostitutes. Many grumble about it privately, but few speak out publicly lest they be called intolerant or even racist.

Such were my thoughts while I was photographing the graffiti before the dump attendant painted over it last week. That’s what we have to do with graffiti - kill it before it spreads, disinfect before it reproduces. Some claim this prevents “the broken-window effect” - if a broken window isn’t fixed right away, others around it will soon be broken too. Let’s hope we caught it in time.

Baby Bust

Hey liberals: I have good news and bad news.

Good news first: Remember how worried you were about increasing human population taking over animal habitat? Westerners using too much energy? Eating too much meat? Cutting down too many trees? Sending too much carbon into the atmosphere? Oppressing “people of color”? Well, the Western Civilization you hate is in decline. Europeans aren’t reproducing much and it looks like they’re just going to fade away in a few more generations. Immigrants “of color,” especially Muslims, are having lots of babies. They’re out-breeding Europeans (people “of pallor,” I suppose) as much as four-to-one. Won’t be long before Muslims “of color” are the majority, which is why some already refer to Europe as “Eurabia.”

The bad news? Europeans work few hours, take lots of vacations, then retire early with full benefits - just what liberal Americans think they should do too. Trouble is, that lifestyle requires working young people vastly outnumbering geezer retirees - and they’re just not there anymore. Not in Europe. Not in Canada. Not in blue-state America either (red staters are still breeding). A European cradle-to-grave socialist welfare system cannot sustain itself without lots of babies every year. It doesn’t work when there are more geezers than young people. So, the socialist utopia envisioned by American liberals and temporarily actualized by Europeans will disappear.

One great book covers this: “America Alone” ©2006 by New Hampshire’s Mark Steyn. He documents, in his tragic-comic style, how Western Civilization is committing suicide by refusing to reproduce. Meanwhile, Europeans bring in millions of Muslim immigrants from former colonies in Turkey, Pakistan, and Arab countries - most of whom refuse to assimilate and who breed like rabbits. They also collect welfare at higher rates than native-born French, Spanish, Italians, British or Germans. And, they would rather impose Sharia Law than support European geezers.

The New York Times finally got around to reporting the story in their June 29th Sunday magazine supplement with a cover piece called “Childless Europe.” Although author Russell Shorto quotes twice from “America Alone,” it’s as if he never read it. He acknowledges part of the problem, but doesn’t agree with Steyn about what caused it or how to deal with it. While Steyn blames multicultural, diversity-celebrating socialist welfare states for the continent’s baby bust, Shorto suggests they’re the solution, vainly in my opinion. He insinuates that because of it’s more generous child-care and maternity/paternity-leave programs, northern Europe’s birth rates are declining more slowly than southern Europe’s birth rates. North and south are both dying, but at different speeds. Steyn makes the case that Europeans don’t have children because of laziness, narcissism, and selfishness. Shorto claims it’s because they cost too much.

Steyn uses gallows humor to skewer sacred icons of liberalism - abortion and homosexuality - as obvious causes of Europe’s baby bust along with the social welfare state. Shorto ignores them completely - never mentioning either in his long article although there are 33 abortions for every 100 live births in western Europe and 105 abortions for every 100 live births in eastern Europe. Dead babies outnumber live babies there. How could Shorto overlook those statistical 800-pound gorillas in a cover story called “Childless Europe”? How could he disregard homosexual “marriage” as a factor in population decline? That’s hard, unless you work for the New York Times where they publish “All the news that’s fit to print.” Guess it’s not fitting to suggest that either abortion or homosexuality may be detrimental to society.

Steyn and Shorto both reference Paul Erlich’s “The Population Bomb.” Steyn ridicules Erlich’s predictions of demographic disaster and the western world’s Chicken Little reaction to it. Shorto interviewed Erlich and quoted him saying: “It’s insane to consider low birth rate as a crisis. Basically every person I know in my section of the National Academy of Sciences thinks it’s wonderful that rich countries are starting to shrink their populations to sustainable levels. We have to do that because we’re wrecking our life-support systems.”

It’s wonderful, huh Mr. Erlich? Just what is a “sustainable level”? Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population” made a similar “running out of resources” case back around the turn of 19th century when there were fewer than a billion people worldwide. Charles Dickens’ “Ebeneezer Scrooge” reflects Malthusian thinking when he talks about “decreasing the surplus population.” Malthus was off the mark in his population disaster predictions since there are more than six billion humans on the planet now. In 1968, Erlich wrote: “the battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Uh-huh. Now, about Al Gore’s writings . . . Nah. Never mind.

Worst That Could Happen

Thirty years ago, I remember feeling complimented when asked if I were an anti-nuclear activist. If I ever was, I’m not anymore. The world has changed and I have too. In my idealistic world-view, I thought it might be feasible to rid the world of nuclear weapons - too naive to realize that once the toothpaste is out of the tube, we’re never going to get it back in. People like me were against all things nuclear - weapons and power plants producing uranium and plutonium that could be made into weapons.

In 1979, Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant nearly melted down. In January of 1986, I was in my first term as a selectman when the federal government notified us that my town and others in southwestern Maine were being considered as a repository for high-level nuclear waste. Maine was moving rapidly leftward because of an in-migration of people like me and we were in high dudgeon as we berated bureaucrats from the US Department of Energy at hearings around the state. They tolerated us calmly and then abandoned their plans after the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down in late April.

Shortly thereafter, Presidents Reagan and Bush negotiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Soviet Union and after four decades of building them, we actually began dismantling nuclear weapons.

Trouble is, the Soviet Union disintegrated. It was as inept monitoring its nuclear weapons as it was monitoring its nuclear power plants. Its huge military was not getting paid. Its nukes, its plutonium, its enriched uranium, and its nuclear physicists were hanging around - lots of weapons and weapons experts looking for cash. Radical Muslims just to the south were flush with cash and looking for nuclear weapons. It doesn’t take an expert in international politics to understand deals were likely made. We must operate under the assumption that our enemies have nukes and are anxious to use them against us.

In January, 2007, I was in the audience in Washington DC when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said: “At some point down the road, we run a serious risk of losing two or three [American] cities to nuclear weapons [in terrorist attacks], and it’s a lot better to act now before we lose a city.”

And it’s not just conservative Republicans warning us. On the other side of the aisle, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden said: “the most dangerous threat America faces is the possibility that one of the world's most extreme groups -- like al Qaeda -- gets its hands on a nuclear bomb."

Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government claims: “a successful terrorist nuclear attack devastating one of the great cities of the world is inevitable.”

Scotland’s Sunday Herald quoted Ian Dickinson, who leads the police response to chemical, biological and nuclear threats there: "These materials are undoubtedly out there, and undoubtedly will end up in terrorists' hands, and undoubtedly will be used by terrorists some time soon," he claims.

Although he didn’t use the word “nuclear,” Senator Joseph Lieberman said on CBS’s Face the Nation: “"Our enemies will test the new president early. Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

What Lieberman didn’t mention is that al Quaida returns to a target if they’re unsuccessful destroying it the first time - as they did with the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001. United Flight 93 was believed to be headed for either the White House or the US Capitol Building before it was taken over by passengers and crashed in Pennsylvania. Does al Qaeda plan to go back to the Capitol and finish the job?

SITE Intelligence Group revealed a horrific, computer-generated image of what the US Capitol would look like after a terrorist nuke attack. SITE found the image on two password-protected al-Qaeda-affiliated web sites. Evidently, our enemies found the image somewhere and use it to salivate while making their plans. With our porous borders and port facilities, we’re vulnerable.

Every American needs to look long at our enemies' vision for us. Perhaps it will help us understand that we need to get a whole lot tougher if we’re going to prevent it from becoming reality. Five Supreme Court justices should have gazed at it before voting to grant rights of habeas corpus to Guantanamo terrorists who would live only to bring down the Great Satan - that’s us, in case you didn’t know. To accomplish that, nothing would be more effective than nuking Washington, DC.