Understanding Lost
By Bernie Quigley
- for The Hill on 4/28/10
My kids watch a comic news report about the unfortunate spouse or family member who lives with someone who watches “Lost” and suggests survival strategies. As this astonishing concoction of soap opera, Saturday matinee, and mythical religion draws to a close, it might be worth explaining to them what is happening. This is what is going on with that: In our time, the 2000 year ages known as Platonic Months have shifted. The Age of Pisces, which began when three Zoroastrian astrologers followed a star to Bethlehem, has ended. It ended technically on January 1, 2001 and the next 2,000 year link in the 24,000 year sun cycle, the Age of Aquarius, began on that date. This is what “Lost” is about.
Each of these ages has a Watcher and that Watcher has in Jungian terms, a Shadow. In “Lost,” the Watcher (which is a kind of celestial Helper) is Jacob and his Shadow is known as the Man in Black (the smoke monster). The Watcher comes from the ancient most place in human consciousness or probably beyond (the Self in Vedic texts), but not a real physical place, a cosmic place. The Egyptian Alligator god Taweret towers over the cosmic island and its center, the Temple. The Temple suggests Temple Mount, which might be considered the portal to “earth soul” or “Unconscious” of the earth and cosmos. It is anima mundi; the eternal mother soul of the earth to which in Mircea Eliade’s expression, the race “endlessly returns.”
“Lost” is a narrative of the shifting astrological ages and although people associate Aquarius with the Sixties, the ages technically shifted in 2001 – a year which will be eternally marked by the destruction of a temple, one as relevant to our day as Temple Mount was to its 2,000 years ago, the World Trade Centers.
Jack Shephard (son of “Christian Shephard”) seems to be developing as the new Watcher of the age and John Locke as his Shadow. They replace Jacob and the Man in Black. “Lost” is about objective truth/logic and faith/intuition and comes down on the side of faith. When Jack rises to faith by trusting his intuition, “logic” personified by John Locke becomes subordinate to faith (becomes Shadow) and the world can awaken again.
Jack is the Aquarian. I think. Or maybe George W. Bush.
As critic Stanley Kauffman said about the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” back in 1978, it was an “an event in the history of faith.” “Heaven,” wrote Kauffman, “with a capital H is being replaced by the heavens and the fiction of the field [UFO flicks] is a chief pulse in the change.” “Close Encounters” could be seen, as C.G. Jung saw throughout the UFO culture, as a “modern myth of things seen in the sky.”
What is interesting about “Lost” is that it is a modern myth of things returning to earth. So is the “Survivor” series. They are myths about the eternal return to anima mundi, the mother spirit of the earth.
“Lost” could well become a kind of Mahabharata for the age ahead. I think it would make a good one. This is kind of important (for hippies, anyway) because there is something in very long swings of time that likes returns to the beginning, as Eliade suggests in his text, “The Myth of the Eternal Return.” Even history – especially history – returns to first moments.
When you return to day one of the Age of Pisces it is the birth of the Christ to which the Zoroastrians were heading, and the whole next 2,000 years seems to have spiraled out of that moment. Interesting here because when historians (or hippies or “Lost” cultists) return to the beginning of Aquarius say 1,500 years from now they will find four things in the first decade: “Lost,” the broken temple on Wall Street, George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. In the mist of time everything else for hundreds of years on each side may be swept away.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Vermont does the right thing
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/27/10
Rugged individualism was the original guiding ethic of northern New England. Possibly it still is. I know master builders up here who have never yet seen the need to hook up the electricity to their own houses and loggers who do well for their families pulling trees out of the forest with Percherons. But this I wasn’t expecting.
Lisa Rathke of the Associated Press writes that Vermont will not seek millions in a federal grant program aimed at improving failing schools, joining a handful of states in dropping our of the “Race to the Top” program despite strapped education budgets.
The Obama administration requires states to link teacher pay to student performance and invest in charter schools, which would require policy and legislative changes in Vermont.
And Vermont said no to $40 million federal dollars.
“When we look at it realistically, with limited resources, we have to make sure we put our energies and our efforts in places that we know we can be successful in and that fit what the direction of Vermont education is moving in,” said Armando Vilaseca, Vermont Commissioner of Education.
Vermont’s Governor Jim Douglas was the first to run to Washington, D.C. for federal bailout cash although we seem to need it least here in New Hampshire and Vermont than anyplace else. It is a conditioned reflex, felt first in those who do public budgets: Fed funds are free. It takes time to develop the temperament – possibly a new generation – to just say no. The new thinking that says states can and should think for themselves came from a New England tradition and started up here in Vermont and New Hampshire. But oddly enough, took root elsewhere.
Maybe Vermont is finding its old self again under the federal veneer. It is a better self. Scott and Helen Nearing, among the most rugged of rugged individualists, left Vermont in the Sixties when city folk started coming in by the bundles. Scott didn’t like them. One neighbor even forgot to feed his horse. Vermont was becoming a detached borough of New York City. So they moved way off into the forest. It is conceivable now that if they were still alive, they might even begin to think of coming back.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/27/10
Rugged individualism was the original guiding ethic of northern New England. Possibly it still is. I know master builders up here who have never yet seen the need to hook up the electricity to their own houses and loggers who do well for their families pulling trees out of the forest with Percherons. But this I wasn’t expecting.
Lisa Rathke of the Associated Press writes that Vermont will not seek millions in a federal grant program aimed at improving failing schools, joining a handful of states in dropping our of the “Race to the Top” program despite strapped education budgets.
The Obama administration requires states to link teacher pay to student performance and invest in charter schools, which would require policy and legislative changes in Vermont.
And Vermont said no to $40 million federal dollars.
“When we look at it realistically, with limited resources, we have to make sure we put our energies and our efforts in places that we know we can be successful in and that fit what the direction of Vermont education is moving in,” said Armando Vilaseca, Vermont Commissioner of Education.
Vermont’s Governor Jim Douglas was the first to run to Washington, D.C. for federal bailout cash although we seem to need it least here in New Hampshire and Vermont than anyplace else. It is a conditioned reflex, felt first in those who do public budgets: Fed funds are free. It takes time to develop the temperament – possibly a new generation – to just say no. The new thinking that says states can and should think for themselves came from a New England tradition and started up here in Vermont and New Hampshire. But oddly enough, took root elsewhere.
Maybe Vermont is finding its old self again under the federal veneer. It is a better self. Scott and Helen Nearing, among the most rugged of rugged individualists, left Vermont in the Sixties when city folk started coming in by the bundles. Scott didn’t like them. One neighbor even forgot to feed his horse. Vermont was becoming a detached borough of New York City. So they moved way off into the forest. It is conceivable now that if they were still alive, they might even begin to think of coming back.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Why Pataki is important
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/26/10
There can be seen now two schools of Republicans. Bush Republicans and Perry Republicans. This took form in Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent primary race when Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes (W’s proxy) lined up behind Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Sarah Palin lined up behind Rick Perry. Perry won in a landslide. But the sides had already been drawn up for and against in Doug Hoffman’s Conservative Party challenge in NY 23. It was the moment of the significant turning. Palin and Perry were there and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty showed up after the brush was cut, while Newt Gingrich and the party regulars lined up behind the traditional Republican. But George Pataki, former governor of New York, was there first. The Bush clan is now sidling up to Tea Party types; Cheney to Rubio in Florida, Mitt Romney to Nikki Haley in South Carolina. But George Pataki was there first.
He told The Hill that he won’t rule out a Presidential race in 2012. He’d be a great addition to a line which would hopefully include Perry, Palin and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. That would leave Mitt Romney holding the coat for the Bush people. But all of these others add substance and character to what is the sea change known as the Tea Party. It is heartland-based and the American century ahead will find its strengths and prosperity in the American heartland.
The fledgling spirit of the Tea Partiers, like Tamino, may need three words for guidance on its journey to maturity. Those words might be: passion, perspective and packaging. Palin provides passion and Perry the comprehensive abilities of a well-run and healthy state manager. But Pataki provides perspective. His recent six-stop tour, Revere America, geared to repealing Obamacare, adds class and character to this grassroots movement.
“Obama’s government controlled health care significantly jeopardizes jobs, our economy and our children’s futures by spending one trillion dollars and adding $600 billion in new taxes on families and businesses,” says Pataki. “ObamaCare represents an unprecedented overreach of the federal government into the lives of individuals and tramples on the Constitution as evidenced by 19 states filing suit against the federal power grab.”
It is of vital importance that this movement include someone from the northeast, preferably New York, or it runs the possibility of dangerously dividing red states from blue. Giuliani has the passion but not the perspective. Pataki is that man. Honest Jeffersonian strengths are growing in the heartland, reaching already beyond the states challenge to Obamacare. Minnesota and other states are now formulating legislation which would build a high legal threshold to any future federal legislation. These strivings are necessary and must find equitable solutions in our time.
And as long as Bill Mayer, Noam Chomsky, Frank Rich, Tiny Fey and David Letterman scorn the Tea Party and Sarah Palin – German fascists, Ku Klux Klan, slut, “two-headed circus freak dog” I read about Palin in a North Carolina newspaper this week; writes on her hand and has a Garfield calendar on her desk - the movement will grow and clarify. This debased commentary suggests a troupe of vampires in the twilight and triggers an archetypal and instinctive Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, conditioned reflex out there with the plain folk in Sunnydale, and she comes with a sword.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/26/10
There can be seen now two schools of Republicans. Bush Republicans and Perry Republicans. This took form in Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent primary race when Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes (W’s proxy) lined up behind Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Sarah Palin lined up behind Rick Perry. Perry won in a landslide. But the sides had already been drawn up for and against in Doug Hoffman’s Conservative Party challenge in NY 23. It was the moment of the significant turning. Palin and Perry were there and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty showed up after the brush was cut, while Newt Gingrich and the party regulars lined up behind the traditional Republican. But George Pataki, former governor of New York, was there first. The Bush clan is now sidling up to Tea Party types; Cheney to Rubio in Florida, Mitt Romney to Nikki Haley in South Carolina. But George Pataki was there first.
He told The Hill that he won’t rule out a Presidential race in 2012. He’d be a great addition to a line which would hopefully include Perry, Palin and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. That would leave Mitt Romney holding the coat for the Bush people. But all of these others add substance and character to what is the sea change known as the Tea Party. It is heartland-based and the American century ahead will find its strengths and prosperity in the American heartland.
The fledgling spirit of the Tea Partiers, like Tamino, may need three words for guidance on its journey to maturity. Those words might be: passion, perspective and packaging. Palin provides passion and Perry the comprehensive abilities of a well-run and healthy state manager. But Pataki provides perspective. His recent six-stop tour, Revere America, geared to repealing Obamacare, adds class and character to this grassroots movement.
“Obama’s government controlled health care significantly jeopardizes jobs, our economy and our children’s futures by spending one trillion dollars and adding $600 billion in new taxes on families and businesses,” says Pataki. “ObamaCare represents an unprecedented overreach of the federal government into the lives of individuals and tramples on the Constitution as evidenced by 19 states filing suit against the federal power grab.”
It is of vital importance that this movement include someone from the northeast, preferably New York, or it runs the possibility of dangerously dividing red states from blue. Giuliani has the passion but not the perspective. Pataki is that man. Honest Jeffersonian strengths are growing in the heartland, reaching already beyond the states challenge to Obamacare. Minnesota and other states are now formulating legislation which would build a high legal threshold to any future federal legislation. These strivings are necessary and must find equitable solutions in our time.
And as long as Bill Mayer, Noam Chomsky, Frank Rich, Tiny Fey and David Letterman scorn the Tea Party and Sarah Palin – German fascists, Ku Klux Klan, slut, “two-headed circus freak dog” I read about Palin in a North Carolina newspaper this week; writes on her hand and has a Garfield calendar on her desk - the movement will grow and clarify. This debased commentary suggests a troupe of vampires in the twilight and triggers an archetypal and instinctive Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, conditioned reflex out there with the plain folk in Sunnydale, and she comes with a sword.
Why Pataki is important. - draft
There can be seen now two schools of Republicans. Bush Republicans and Perry Republicans. This took form in Rick Perry’s recent primary race when Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Karl Rove and Karen Hunghes (W’s proxy) lined up behind Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Sarah Palin lined up behind Rick Perry. Perrry won in a landslide. But the sides had already been drawn up for and against Doug Hoffman’s Conservative Party challenge in NY 23. Palin was there, then Perry and Tim Pawlenty after the brush was cut while Newt Gingrich and the party regulars lined up behind the traditional Republican. But George Pataki was there first. The Bush clan is now siddling up to Tea Party types; Cheney to Rubio in Florida, Mitt Romney to Nikki Haley in South Carolina. But George Pataki was there first.
He told The Hill that he won’t rule out a Presidential race in 2012 and would be a great addition to a line which would hopefully include Perrry, Palin and bobby Jindal. That would leave Mitt Ronmey holding the coat for the Bush party. But all of these others add substance to what is the sea change known as the Tea Party. They, like Tamino, maya need three words for guidance and their journey to maturity. They might be: passion, perspective and packaging. Palin provides passion and Perry the comprehensive abilities of a well-run state. But Pataki provides perspective. ______
It is of vital importance that this movement include someone from the northeast, preferably New York, or it runs the possibility of dangerously dividing red states from blue. Pataki is that man. Honest Jefferrsonian strengths are growing in the heartland, reaching already beyond the states challenge to Obamacare. Minnesota and other states and now formulating legislation which would build a high legal threshold to and federal legislation. These strivings are necessary and must find equitable solutions in our time. And as long as Bill Mayer, Noam Chomsky, Frank Rich, tiny Fey and David Letterman scorn the Tea Party and Sarah Palin – German fascists, Ku Klux Klan, slut, “two-headed circus freak dog” I read about Palin in a Durham, NC, newspaper this week; writes on her hand and has a Garfield calender on her desk - the movement will grow and clarify. They conjure images of vampires in the twilight and trigger an archetypal and instinctive Slayer response out there in Sunnydale, and she comes with a sword.
The Tea Party is an amouphous force, but it may already have done its work. It is inherently a fledgling Federalist party or rising theme in the Republican party.
go to Revere America and talk to the constitutional challenge by the states to Obamacare - this is an ideaa looking for a ringmaster. it is now an idea which will not go away - hippie sttes and Indian tribes are claiming sovereignty as well as Texas and Pacific Northwest and Alaska - and will spread to other cultural regions - as I opposed national prayer day from a federalist perspective; it was a federalist ue. point of view. but with a poor master a great and good idea can become intolerable, fanatic. The good master is the key. Perry is a good master and Palin a good representative spirit of rising America. Guliani represents this as well in a heartfelt way. But not all the way. Petaki is a picture of controlled passion, but ot passion denied but passion organized. new York needs to be involved in this, and it presents a good run: Pataki, Palin, Perry, Romney in 2012 - a stabilizing
There can be seen now two schools of Republicans. Bush Republicans and Perry Republicans. This took form in Rick Perry’s recent primary race when Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Karl Rove and Karen Hunghes (W’s proxy) lined up behind Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Sarah Palin lined up behind Rick Perry. Perrry won in a landslide. But the sides had already been drawn up for and against Doug Hoffman’s Conservative Party challenge in NY 23. Palin was there, then Perry and Tim Pawlenty after the brush was cut while Newt Gingrich and the party regulars lined up behind the traditional Republican. But George Pataki was there first. The Bush clan is now siddling up to Tea Party types; Cheney to Rubio in Florida, Mitt Romney to Nikki Haley in South Carolina. But George Pataki was there first.
He told The Hill that he won’t rule out a Presidential race in 2012 and would be a great addition to a line which would hopefully include Perrry, Palin and bobby Jindal. That would leave Mitt Ronmey holding the coat for the Bush party. But all of these others add substance to what is the sea change known as the Tea Party. They, like Tamino, maya need three words for guidance and their journey to maturity. They might be: passion, perspective and packaging. Palin provides passion and Perry the comprehensive abilities of a well-run state. But Pataki provides perspective. ______
It is of vital importance that this movement include someone from the northeast, preferably New York, or it runs the possibility of dangerously dividing red states from blue. Pataki is that man. Honest Jefferrsonian strengths are growing in the heartland, reaching already beyond the states challenge to Obamacare. Minnesota and other states and now formulating legislation which would build a high legal threshold to and federal legislation. These strivings are necessary and must find equitable solutions in our time. And as long as Bill Mayer, Noam Chomsky, Frank Rich, tiny Fey and David Letterman scorn the Tea Party and Sarah Palin – German fascists, Ku Klux Klan, slut, “two-headed circus freak dog” I read about Palin in a Durham, NC, newspaper this week; writes on her hand and has a Garfield calender on her desk - the movement will grow and clarify. They conjure images of vampires in the twilight and trigger an archetypal and instinctive Slayer response out there in Sunnydale, and she comes with a sword.
The Tea Party is an amouphous force, but it may already have done its work. It is inherently a fledgling Federalist party or rising theme in the Republican party.
go to Revere America and talk to the constitutional challenge by the states to Obamacare - this is an ideaa looking for a ringmaster. it is now an idea which will not go away - hippie sttes and Indian tribes are claiming sovereignty as well as Texas and Pacific Northwest and Alaska - and will spread to other cultural regions - as I opposed national prayer day from a federalist perspective; it was a federalist ue. point of view. but with a poor master a great and good idea can become intolerable, fanatic. The good master is the key. Perry is a good master and Palin a good representative spirit of rising America. Guliani represents this as well in a heartfelt way. But not all the way. Petaki is a picture of controlled passion, but ot passion denied but passion organized. new York needs to be involved in this, and it presents a good run: Pataki, Palin, Perry, Romney in 2012 - a stabilizing
Friday, April 23, 2010
Cruising porn at the SEC: Will centralized government destroy America?
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/23/10
The dubious effect of the stimulus will soon be up, 100,000 will be added to the unemployment list in August when the census has been completed and President Obama charges after Wall Street in a dangerous populist offensive lead by the Keystone Kops at the SEC which seems to have been drummed up in an undergraduate coffee house. Possibly the most tedious aspect of centralized government; ours, like that in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, is that the need to accommodate the entire vast horde in art and language requires a bulletproof single metaphor. One that even a child could understand. Wall street bad. Big Brother good. A not-so-bright child. Possibly a Child Left Behind in a country left behind.
"As the country was sinking into its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years, Security and Exchange Commission employees and contractors cruised porn sites and viewed sexually explicit pictures using government computers, according to an agency report obtained by CNN." Youth wants to know: Do we in Texas and New England still need a central government?
Current economic policies are unsustainable and the world faces doom because "the governments are taking over", said Marc Faber, editor & publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. Warning that the "ultimate Armageddon" will be much worse the next time around, Faber told CNBC, "What I object to the current government intervention in so-called 'solving the crisis', (is that) they haven't solved anything. They've just postponed it."
Is one-size-fits-all, nationalist, globalist centralization finding its end game? This week's Newsweek, featuring Texas governor Rick Perry in his "Come and take it" boots on the cover, looks at Texas and sees behind the veil a different economic paradigm. "Texas has always been something of a separate country when it comes to politics and culture," they write. "Lately, the state seems to be functioning as its own economic republic." And as its federally dependent neighbor California unravels, it appears to be a quite successful model, but one, which could well be destroyed by Obamcare, the bailouts and centralization. Perry was the first to oppose.
We might ask in New England why this can't be said about us. Because our governors were first to flock to the rhetoric of Obama and the last perhaps to see ourselves with the kind of independence that Perry and Texas today represents. We need to go back to our Emerson and brush off in particular, his essay "Self Reliance" which gave Yankee independence its independence. Today Perry embodies it.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/23/10
The dubious effect of the stimulus will soon be up, 100,000 will be added to the unemployment list in August when the census has been completed and President Obama charges after Wall Street in a dangerous populist offensive lead by the Keystone Kops at the SEC which seems to have been drummed up in an undergraduate coffee house. Possibly the most tedious aspect of centralized government; ours, like that in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, is that the need to accommodate the entire vast horde in art and language requires a bulletproof single metaphor. One that even a child could understand. Wall street bad. Big Brother good. A not-so-bright child. Possibly a Child Left Behind in a country left behind.
"As the country was sinking into its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years, Security and Exchange Commission employees and contractors cruised porn sites and viewed sexually explicit pictures using government computers, according to an agency report obtained by CNN." Youth wants to know: Do we in Texas and New England still need a central government?
Current economic policies are unsustainable and the world faces doom because "the governments are taking over", said Marc Faber, editor & publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. Warning that the "ultimate Armageddon" will be much worse the next time around, Faber told CNBC, "What I object to the current government intervention in so-called 'solving the crisis', (is that) they haven't solved anything. They've just postponed it."
Is one-size-fits-all, nationalist, globalist centralization finding its end game? This week's Newsweek, featuring Texas governor Rick Perry in his "Come and take it" boots on the cover, looks at Texas and sees behind the veil a different economic paradigm. "Texas has always been something of a separate country when it comes to politics and culture," they write. "Lately, the state seems to be functioning as its own economic republic." And as its federally dependent neighbor California unravels, it appears to be a quite successful model, but one, which could well be destroyed by Obamcare, the bailouts and centralization. Perry was the first to oppose.
We might ask in New England why this can't be said about us. Because our governors were first to flock to the rhetoric of Obama and the last perhaps to see ourselves with the kind of independence that Perry and Texas today represents. We need to go back to our Emerson and brush off in particular, his essay "Self Reliance" which gave Yankee independence its independence. Today Perry embodies it.
From my friends in Israel, Manhigut Yehudit :
Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them: 'Draw out, and take lambs according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb.
24 And you shall observe this matter for an ordinance for you and your sons for ever.
26 And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you: What do you mean you by this service?
27. And you shall say: It is the sacrifice of G-d's Passover, for He passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.' (Exodus 12)
Soon, with G-d's help, we will establish Jewish leadership for Israel. Please be forewarned that when that happens, our familiar, comfortable Pesach holiday will be radically changed. We will have to forget about the Pesach seder with the extended family at the home of the family balabusta. Instead, we will be face to face with the Korban Pesach (Passover offering) at the Temple Mount.
For those who have forgotten, the Korban Pesach is a positive commandment, equal in its importance to the mitzvah of brit milah (circumcision). The mitzvah of circumcision is a personal covenant between a Jew and his Father in heaven. The Pesach offering is the national covenant between the Jewish Nation and its Father in heaven. These two commandments forged the Jewish People as the unique nation of the Creator – both as individuals and as a collective.
Today, a Jewish policeman stands at the entrance to the Temple Mount and explains to the Jews that they are prohibited from praying there. A request to bring a sacrificial lamb is out of the question. When we will finally establish Jewish leadership for Israel, though, the same policeman will stand at the entrance to the Temple Mount and cheerfully explain what you need to know, ensuring that you are well-versed in the Jewish laws that must be observed during your momentous visit.
In truth, it is not the policeman who blocks our entrance to the Temple Mount. It is the observant Jews whose Torah and faith are still in exile. They/we feel more comfortable when our covenant with G-d remains exclusively in the realm of the individual. It's great to be religious in your home and "Israeli" in public. The people subscribed to this mode of living will go to great lengths to avoid being a complete Jew in the complete Land of Israel – both in private and in public. In other words, at some level, all of us have a little policeman in our hearts, blocking the entrance to the Temple Mount. That is why we have a full-sized, flesh and blood policeman at its gates.
When we establish Jewish leadership for Israel, all of this will be distant memory. The prime minister and his cabinet will ascend to the Temple Mount with their sacrificial lambs. The entire national mentality will change, and there will be no more lame excuses for not bringing the Pesach offering.
Instead of sitting in the comfort of our living rooms and chewing on matzah that symbolizes the Pesach offering, we will joyously sit in the streets and alleys surrounding the Temple Mount, eating our roasted sacrificial lamb.
The international uproar will be deafening. How will we be able to conduct "peace" negotiations when the entire Jewish Nation is at the Temple Mount with their Pesach offerings? And who will protect us from Iran? And what will Obama do? And how will Russia react? And what about the European Union? What will we explain?
27. And you shall say: It is the sacrifice of G-d's Passover, for He passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.'
Happy Festival of Freedom,
Moshe Feiglin
Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them: 'Draw out, and take lambs according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb.
24 And you shall observe this matter for an ordinance for you and your sons for ever.
26 And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you: What do you mean you by this service?
27. And you shall say: It is the sacrifice of G-d's Passover, for He passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.' (Exodus 12)
Soon, with G-d's help, we will establish Jewish leadership for Israel. Please be forewarned that when that happens, our familiar, comfortable Pesach holiday will be radically changed. We will have to forget about the Pesach seder with the extended family at the home of the family balabusta. Instead, we will be face to face with the Korban Pesach (Passover offering) at the Temple Mount.
For those who have forgotten, the Korban Pesach is a positive commandment, equal in its importance to the mitzvah of brit milah (circumcision). The mitzvah of circumcision is a personal covenant between a Jew and his Father in heaven. The Pesach offering is the national covenant between the Jewish Nation and its Father in heaven. These two commandments forged the Jewish People as the unique nation of the Creator – both as individuals and as a collective.
Today, a Jewish policeman stands at the entrance to the Temple Mount and explains to the Jews that they are prohibited from praying there. A request to bring a sacrificial lamb is out of the question. When we will finally establish Jewish leadership for Israel, though, the same policeman will stand at the entrance to the Temple Mount and cheerfully explain what you need to know, ensuring that you are well-versed in the Jewish laws that must be observed during your momentous visit.
In truth, it is not the policeman who blocks our entrance to the Temple Mount. It is the observant Jews whose Torah and faith are still in exile. They/we feel more comfortable when our covenant with G-d remains exclusively in the realm of the individual. It's great to be religious in your home and "Israeli" in public. The people subscribed to this mode of living will go to great lengths to avoid being a complete Jew in the complete Land of Israel – both in private and in public. In other words, at some level, all of us have a little policeman in our hearts, blocking the entrance to the Temple Mount. That is why we have a full-sized, flesh and blood policeman at its gates.
When we establish Jewish leadership for Israel, all of this will be distant memory. The prime minister and his cabinet will ascend to the Temple Mount with their sacrificial lambs. The entire national mentality will change, and there will be no more lame excuses for not bringing the Pesach offering.
Instead of sitting in the comfort of our living rooms and chewing on matzah that symbolizes the Pesach offering, we will joyously sit in the streets and alleys surrounding the Temple Mount, eating our roasted sacrificial lamb.
The international uproar will be deafening. How will we be able to conduct "peace" negotiations when the entire Jewish Nation is at the Temple Mount with their Pesach offerings? And who will protect us from Iran? And what will Obama do? And how will Russia react? And what about the European Union? What will we explain?
27. And you shall say: It is the sacrifice of G-d's Passover, for He passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.'
Happy Festival of Freedom,
Moshe Feiglin
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Crisis in Jerusalem: Israel, Moshe Feiglin and the iPad – final copy
By Bernie Quigley
To be published at The Hill on 4/19/10
Israel has puzzled travelers by blocking them from bringing Apple’s new iPad into the country. They say it threatens to create interference with other products. But Apple says “iPad complies with international industry for Wi-Fi specifications.” Brings to mind a moment decades back when England banned Sesame Street. Said she didn’t want to be dominated by American symbolism and Sesame Street was rife with it (Big Bird). It was the talisman of American dominance same as the Spanish cross was to the Conquistadors.
Like McDonalds, like Sesame Street, the iPad is the new marker of American territoriality. Suddenly Israel resists. Silicon Valley is mystified. But China doesn’t want to be marked either, thus they tussle with Google.
Interesting that the Israelis picked iPad to tussle with. The apple symbol used as the cool capitalist company’s logo seems assumed or borrowed from the Beatles era, as they used the apple for their emblem. Apple computer products would be the dark materialist side of that experience – the outside like the inside for those who cannot tell the difference. Apparently, someone in Israel can.
Interesting as well, in 1964 the Surrealist artist Rene Magritté used the green apple to mark the arrival of messiah. His famous painting of an English man in bowler hat with a green apple in front of his face was titled Son of Man. From the Book of Daniel: “I beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo, one like a son of man came with the clouds of heaven . . . “ Daniel 7:13.
If Israel has a sublime voice, it is that of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel. This week he placed full page ads in the Washington Post, the Wall street Journal and the New York Times about deteriorating relationships between the Obama administration and Israel, a situation which “terrifies” former New York mayor and defender of Israel Ed Koch. Could get worse.
The conservative party in Israel faces a credible challenge. According to Likud law, elections must take place immediately to seat a new Central Committee. Current Israeli Prime Minister and Likud chair Benjamin Netanyahu has tried mightily to permanently postpone these elections. The vote on whether or not to postpone the Central Committee elections is currently scheduled for April 22nd. If Moshe Feiglin, soldier, sabra, who wants Israel to be a “Jewish state” and not a “state for Jews” takes leadership from Likud’s American friends, it will mean a new Israel.
“Soon, with G-d's help, we will establish Jewish leadership for Israel,” writes Feiglin (article here).”Please be forewarned that when that happens, our familiar, comfortable Pesach holiday will be radically changed. . . . When we establish Jewish leadership for Israel.... the prime minister and his cabinet will ascend to the Temple Mount with their sacrificial lambs. The entire national mentality will change.”
Instead of sitting in the comfort of living rooms and chewing on matzah that symbolizes the Pesach offering, Israelis will “ . . . joyously sit in the streets and alleys surrounding the Temple Mount,” eating roasted sacrificial lamb.
“The international uproar will be deafening,” he writes.
Get ready.
By Bernie Quigley
To be published at The Hill on 4/19/10
Israel has puzzled travelers by blocking them from bringing Apple’s new iPad into the country. They say it threatens to create interference with other products. But Apple says “iPad complies with international industry for Wi-Fi specifications.” Brings to mind a moment decades back when England banned Sesame Street. Said she didn’t want to be dominated by American symbolism and Sesame Street was rife with it (Big Bird). It was the talisman of American dominance same as the Spanish cross was to the Conquistadors.
Like McDonalds, like Sesame Street, the iPad is the new marker of American territoriality. Suddenly Israel resists. Silicon Valley is mystified. But China doesn’t want to be marked either, thus they tussle with Google.
Interesting that the Israelis picked iPad to tussle with. The apple symbol used as the cool capitalist company’s logo seems assumed or borrowed from the Beatles era, as they used the apple for their emblem. Apple computer products would be the dark materialist side of that experience – the outside like the inside for those who cannot tell the difference. Apparently, someone in Israel can.
Interesting as well, in 1964 the Surrealist artist Rene Magritté used the green apple to mark the arrival of messiah. His famous painting of an English man in bowler hat with a green apple in front of his face was titled Son of Man. From the Book of Daniel: “I beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo, one like a son of man came with the clouds of heaven . . . “ Daniel 7:13.
If Israel has a sublime voice, it is that of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel. This week he placed full page ads in the Washington Post, the Wall street Journal and the New York Times about deteriorating relationships between the Obama administration and Israel, a situation which “terrifies” former New York mayor and defender of Israel Ed Koch. Could get worse.
The conservative party in Israel faces a credible challenge. According to Likud law, elections must take place immediately to seat a new Central Committee. Current Israeli Prime Minister and Likud chair Benjamin Netanyahu has tried mightily to permanently postpone these elections. The vote on whether or not to postpone the Central Committee elections is currently scheduled for April 22nd. If Moshe Feiglin, soldier, sabra, who wants Israel to be a “Jewish state” and not a “state for Jews” takes leadership from Likud’s American friends, it will mean a new Israel.
“Soon, with G-d's help, we will establish Jewish leadership for Israel,” writes Feiglin (article here).”Please be forewarned that when that happens, our familiar, comfortable Pesach holiday will be radically changed. . . . When we establish Jewish leadership for Israel.... the prime minister and his cabinet will ascend to the Temple Mount with their sacrificial lambs. The entire national mentality will change.”
Instead of sitting in the comfort of living rooms and chewing on matzah that symbolizes the Pesach offering, Israelis will “ . . . joyously sit in the streets and alleys surrounding the Temple Mount,” eating roasted sacrificial lamb.
“The international uproar will be deafening,” he writes.
Get ready.
Crisis in Jerusalem: Israel, Moshe Feiglin and the iPad
By Bernie Quigley
To be published at The Hill on 4/19/10
Israel has puzzled travelers by blocking them from bringing Apple’s new iPad into the country. They say it threatens to create interference with other products. But Apple says “iPad complies with international industry for Wi-Fi specifications.” Brings to mind a moment decades back when England banned Sesame Street. Said she didn’t want to be dominated by American symbolism and Sesame Street was rife with it (Big Bird). It was the talisman of American dominance same as the Spanish cross was to the Conquistadors.
Like McDonalds, like Sesame Street, the iPad is the new marker of American territoriality; the dog peeing on the edge of the property which to date includes all of earth and the near half of the moon. The dog pees now across the Universe. Suddenly Israel resists. Silicon Valley is mystified. But China doesn’t want to be marked either, thus they tussle with Google.
Interesting that the Israelis picked iPad to tussle with. The apple symbol used as the cool capitalist company’s logo seems assumed or borrowed cultural karma from the Beatles era, as they used the apple for their emblem. Apple computer products would be the dark materialist side of that karma – the outside like the inside for those (like Bono, Al Gore) who cannot tell the difference. (“I’d rather be dead than cool,” said Kurt Cobain.) Apparently, someone in Israel can.
Interesting as well, in 1964 the Surrealist artist Rene Magritté used the green apple to mark the arrival of messiah. His famous painting of an English man in bowler hat with a green apple in front of his face was titled Son of Man. From the Book of Daniel: “I beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo, one like a son of man came with the clouds of heaven . . . “ Daniel 7:13.
If Israel has a sublime voice, it is that of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel. This week he placed full page ads in the Washington Post, the Wall street Journal and the New York Times about deteriorating relationships between the Obama administration and Israel, a situation which “terrifies” former New York mayor and defender of Israel Ed Koch. Could get worse.
The conservative party in Israel faces a credible challenge. According to Likud law, elections must take place immediately to seat a new Central Committee. Current Israeli Prime Minister and Likud chair Benjamin Netanyahu has tried mightily to permanently postpone these elections. The vote on whether or not to postpone the Central Committee elections is currently scheduled for April 22nd. If Moshe Feiglin, soldier, sabra, who wants Israel to be a “Jewish state” and not a “state for Jews” takes leadership from Likud’s American friends, it will mean a new Israel. And of course it will be the end for Hillary’s bitch, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Soon, with G-d's help, we will establish Jewish leadership for Israel,” writes Feiglin.”Please be forewarned that when that happens, our familiar, comfortable Pesach holiday will be radically changed. . . . When we establish Jewish leadership for Israel.... the prime minister and his cabinet will ascend to the Temple Mount with their sacrificial lambs. The entire national mentality will change.”
Instead of sitting in the comfort of living rooms and chewing on matzah that symbolizes the Pesach offering, Israelis will “ . . . joyously sit in the streets and alleys surrounding the Temple Mount,” eating roasted sacrificial lamb.
“The international uproar will be deafening,” he writes.
Get ready.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Maybe Howard Dean needs a Tea Party
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/16/10
I would have no objection if Texas wanted to hold a “state day of prayer” but here in northern New England we pray different or not at all and we consider that to be a sublime spiritual path; what Emerson, Bronson Alcott and Theodore Parker called “natural religion.” So it is good for us that U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb didn’t demand that Rick Perry sit through a Tibetan chant up here or that Howard Dean hold hands during that cry that comes pure from the heart of Free Church Appalachian, by ruling this week that The National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.
One-size-fits-all religion is not religion. It is gruel. Worse even than one-size-fits-all government. The judge’s ruling helps explain what we mean by federalism and one-size-fits-all American nationalism; that we are and were intended to be as per Jefferson’s vision, different but related peoples. Tea Party made that point at first. History may find it like the old Newport Folk Festival. It really caught on for a few years then faded. But when it was over the world had Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. When this is over, and maybe it is now, the world has or will have Sarah Palin and Rick Perry.
But whether he knows it or not, Howard Dean actually qualified for the first shouts of what became the Tea Parties. Sudden demands came from here first that we in Vermont and New Hampshire could oppose the invasion of Iraq as unconstitutional and as per Jefferson and the Kentucky Resolutions of 1797, we were not obliged to participate in unconstitutional action. Dean in fact, was a model of federalist thinking to some of us, including myself. In one of his last speeches as governor of Vermont Dean used the phrase, “We have more in common here with the eastern provinces of Quebec than we do with Texas.”
And Dean as governor pioneered what might be called a “new federalism” in opposition to what might be called “American nationalism.” American nationalists (Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Reid, Clintons, Bushes) are ideologists at war, nationally and now globally, one with one another. They are “citizens of the world” who cannot name their state bird. Regionalists – federalists – are guided by earth, intuition and region to who they are. Dean was adopted nationally as an anti-war figure, but it would only weaken the Democratic party. He won no primaries and outside of his region became a political cult figure, much like George McGovern during the war in Vietnam.
But here at home he shares a common sensibility with his state and with many in neighboring states. With Collins and Snowe in Maine and with Independent governor Angus King there. With Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island and even with Scott Brown in Massachusetts I would venture. All of these people reflect a genuine New England sensibility finding itself again; a new sensibility which will be destroyed again by one-size fits-all nationalism.
His helper Joe Trippi writes this week for Fox: “If you strip away the social issues that separate the Dean movement from today’s Tea Partiers, they share a fundamental principle -- the government is broken, and it is the duty of everyday citizens to fix it.”
Dean cannot fix the country, and fixing the world is a nationalist delusion gone global. But he can fix New England. Vermont’s sovereigntists did not go away. The Second Vermont Republic is sending reasonable candidates up for office in November. Jefferson is new to Vermont, but what is happening here should be asked throughout New England: Suppose we hill Buddhists were required to sing The Old Rugged Cross in school because the Supreme Court says so. What should be done? Do the Supremes, which seem now to be identified with varied tribes instead of stats and regions as intended, dictate New England karma? If so, we not only forfeit self government, but we forfeit our humanity.
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/16/10
I would have no objection if Texas wanted to hold a “state day of prayer” but here in northern New England we pray different or not at all and we consider that to be a sublime spiritual path; what Emerson, Bronson Alcott and Theodore Parker called “natural religion.” So it is good for us that U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb didn’t demand that Rick Perry sit through a Tibetan chant up here or that Howard Dean hold hands during that cry that comes pure from the heart of Free Church Appalachian, by ruling this week that The National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.
One-size-fits-all religion is not religion. It is gruel. Worse even than one-size-fits-all government. The judge’s ruling helps explain what we mean by federalism and one-size-fits-all American nationalism; that we are and were intended to be as per Jefferson’s vision, different but related peoples. Tea Party made that point at first. History may find it like the old Newport Folk Festival. It really caught on for a few years then faded. But when it was over the world had Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. When this is over, and maybe it is now, the world has or will have Sarah Palin and Rick Perry.
But whether he knows it or not, Howard Dean actually qualified for the first shouts of what became the Tea Parties. Sudden demands came from here first that we in Vermont and New Hampshire could oppose the invasion of Iraq as unconstitutional and as per Jefferson and the Kentucky Resolutions of 1797, we were not obliged to participate in unconstitutional action. Dean in fact, was a model of federalist thinking to some of us, including myself. In one of his last speeches as governor of Vermont Dean used the phrase, “We have more in common here with the eastern provinces of Quebec than we do with Texas.”
And Dean as governor pioneered what might be called a “new federalism” in opposition to what might be called “American nationalism.” American nationalists (Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Reid, Clintons, Bushes) are ideologists at war, nationally and now globally, one with one another. They are “citizens of the world” who cannot name their state bird. Regionalists – federalists – are guided by earth, intuition and region to who they are. Dean was adopted nationally as an anti-war figure, but it would only weaken the Democratic party. He won no primaries and outside of his region became a political cult figure, much like George McGovern during the war in Vietnam.
But here at home he shares a common sensibility with his state and with many in neighboring states. With Collins and Snowe in Maine and with Independent governor Angus King there. With Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island and even with Scott Brown in Massachusetts I would venture. All of these people reflect a genuine New England sensibility finding itself again; a new sensibility which will be destroyed again by one-size fits-all nationalism.
His helper Joe Trippi writes this week for Fox: “If you strip away the social issues that separate the Dean movement from today’s Tea Partiers, they share a fundamental principle -- the government is broken, and it is the duty of everyday citizens to fix it.”
Dean cannot fix the country, and fixing the world is a nationalist delusion gone global. But he can fix New England. Vermont’s sovereigntists did not go away. The Second Vermont Republic is sending reasonable candidates up for office in November. Jefferson is new to Vermont, but what is happening here should be asked throughout New England: Suppose we hill Buddhists were required to sing The Old Rugged Cross in school because the Supreme Court says so. What should be done? Do the Supremes, which seem now to be identified with varied tribes instead of stats and regions as intended, dictate New England karma? If so, we not only forfeit self government, but we forfeit our humanity.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Two Republican Parties: Do we still need the Senate?
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/12/10
Two things were cleared up this week at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. First, there are now clearly two Republican parties: Big Government Republicans (George W. Bush and Karl Rove) and Small Government Republicans (Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul). The second thing is that it is now clear what we mean by “small government.” We mean state government.
“[W.] Bush increased federal spending on domestic programs more than any president since Richard Nixon, easily surpassing Bill Clinton, Carter and his own father, so much so that by 2008, America had two big-government parties,” write Reagan biographer Craig Shirley and American Conservative Union vice chair, Donald Devine, Reagan’s first director of the Office of Personnel Management, in a Washington Post op-ed.
The Southern Republican convention this week illustrated this healthy division in conservatism. It brought in new people with dynamic thinking, and Sarah Palin, correctly called now by the mainstream press, a “superstar.” Perry and Palin gave great speeches and so did Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, who sounded like Opie in his response to the President’s address to the joint session of Congress, but at the party conference making prominent reference to the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty. Ron Paul, an outcast at the debates less than two years ago, was the venerable Old Grandfather. Tea Party is becoming a conservative theme, like a religious revival, instead of a doctrine or manifesto.
Five more states have joined the Constitutional challenge against Obamacare. Before Tea Party ideas are fully absorbed by heart and spirit, a few thoughts which were there at the beginning should be kept on.
In recent years both parties have tried to run up vast deficits when their party was in office, deficits so deep that the next in office would not be able to spend to actualize any programs. Ron Paul brings an antidote with a new approach based on Austrian economics. That his son, Rand, is doing well in his Senate race in Kentucky is auspicious. But it should not be allowed to happen again and the way to prevent it is for states and regions to demand a voice in economy.
“With President Obama’s policies of big government, big bailouts, big banks and big bureaucracy, the Democratic Party has jettisoned the working man and woman of America, who are increasingly coming to reject being ruled by one corrupt city along the Potomac. They want to be governed by themselves in their communities, their localities and their states, in a 21st-century version of the founders’ federalism,” write Shirley and Devine.
Instead of asking do we need the departments of energy or education, which is not about small government but about thinning and pruning big government, we should be asking today, do we still need the Senate? Nothing in our time represents the decline and degradation of the American spirit as the current bunch of coconuts in the Senate. The Louisiana Purchase and Ben Nelson’s Cornhusker kickback highlight a viral condition. The Senate today is the House of Lords. In original intent, the House of Lords might better have been seen as a group of advisors to those who make the laws.
The states and the regions offer a solution and one comes from America’s greatest of minds and greatest of diplomats since Franklin, George Kennan. Later in his life Kennan took to the idea of a Council of Elders, an idea floated by the Gorbachev Institute in San Francisco. It would in fact, play a role like a university’s Board of Visitors or a corporation’s Board of Directors. In this period of reflection he also suggested regional autonomy:
“I have often diverted myself, and puzzled my friends, by wondering how it would be if our country, while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government, were to be decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment. I could conceive of something like nine of these republics—let us say, New England; the Middle Atlantic states; the Middle West; the Northwest (from Wisconsin to the Northwest, and down the Pacific coast to central California); the Southwest (including southern California and Hawaii); Texas (by itself); the Old South; Florida (perhaps including Puerto Rico); and Alaska; plus three great self-governing urban regions, those of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles—a total of twelve constituent entities. To these entities I would accord a larger part of the present federal powers than one might suspect—large enough, in fact, to make most people gasp.”
A Council of Twelve. Under Kennan’s scheme states might consolidate their legislative bodies. There would be 12 instead of 50. It would require a Constitutional Convention like that proposed by James M. LeMunyon of Virginia and signed on to by 20 states. There would always be a role for feds; raising an army, maintaining Arlington Cemetary and the honored heritage, flying the flag.
And do we still need a Supreme Court?
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/12/10
Two things were cleared up this week at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. First, there are now clearly two Republican parties: Big Government Republicans (George W. Bush and Karl Rove) and Small Government Republicans (Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul). The second thing is that it is now clear what we mean by “small government.” We mean state government.
“[W.] Bush increased federal spending on domestic programs more than any president since Richard Nixon, easily surpassing Bill Clinton, Carter and his own father, so much so that by 2008, America had two big-government parties,” write Reagan biographer Craig Shirley and American Conservative Union vice chair, Donald Devine, Reagan’s first director of the Office of Personnel Management, in a Washington Post op-ed.
The Southern Republican convention this week illustrated this healthy division in conservatism. It brought in new people with dynamic thinking, and Sarah Palin, correctly called now by the mainstream press, a “superstar.” Perry and Palin gave great speeches and so did Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, who sounded like Opie in his response to the President’s address to the joint session of Congress, but at the party conference making prominent reference to the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty. Ron Paul, an outcast at the debates less than two years ago, was the venerable Old Grandfather. Tea Party is becoming a conservative theme, like a religious revival, instead of a doctrine or manifesto.
Five more states have joined the Constitutional challenge against Obamacare. Before Tea Party ideas are fully absorbed by heart and spirit, a few thoughts which were there at the beginning should be kept on.
In recent years both parties have tried to run up vast deficits when their party was in office, deficits so deep that the next in office would not be able to spend to actualize any programs. Ron Paul brings an antidote with a new approach based on Austrian economics. That his son, Rand, is doing well in his Senate race in Kentucky is auspicious. But it should not be allowed to happen again and the way to prevent it is for states and regions to demand a voice in economy.
“With President Obama’s policies of big government, big bailouts, big banks and big bureaucracy, the Democratic Party has jettisoned the working man and woman of America, who are increasingly coming to reject being ruled by one corrupt city along the Potomac. They want to be governed by themselves in their communities, their localities and their states, in a 21st-century version of the founders’ federalism,” write Shirley and Devine.
Instead of asking do we need the departments of energy or education, which is not about small government but about thinning and pruning big government, we should be asking today, do we still need the Senate? Nothing in our time represents the decline and degradation of the American spirit as the current bunch of coconuts in the Senate. The Louisiana Purchase and Ben Nelson’s Cornhusker kickback highlight a viral condition. The Senate today is the House of Lords. In original intent, the House of Lords might better have been seen as a group of advisors to those who make the laws.
The states and the regions offer a solution and one comes from America’s greatest of minds and greatest of diplomats since Franklin, George Kennan. Later in his life Kennan took to the idea of a Council of Elders, an idea floated by the Gorbachev Institute in San Francisco. It would in fact, play a role like a university’s Board of Visitors or a corporation’s Board of Directors. In this period of reflection he also suggested regional autonomy:
“I have often diverted myself, and puzzled my friends, by wondering how it would be if our country, while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government, were to be decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment. I could conceive of something like nine of these republics—let us say, New England; the Middle Atlantic states; the Middle West; the Northwest (from Wisconsin to the Northwest, and down the Pacific coast to central California); the Southwest (including southern California and Hawaii); Texas (by itself); the Old South; Florida (perhaps including Puerto Rico); and Alaska; plus three great self-governing urban regions, those of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles—a total of twelve constituent entities. To these entities I would accord a larger part of the present federal powers than one might suspect—large enough, in fact, to make most people gasp.”
A Council of Twelve. Under Kennan’s scheme states might consolidate their legislative bodies. There would be 12 instead of 50. It would require a Constitutional Convention like that proposed by James M. LeMunyon of Virginia and signed on to by 20 states. There would always be a role for feds; raising an army, maintaining Arlington Cemetary and the honored heritage, flying the flag.
And do we still need a Supreme Court?
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Bob McDonnell’s Confederate Moment
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/8/10
The difference back when my home state, Rhode Island, was a major slave port, was culture. Economy in the North was urban and heading toward industrialization. Economy in the South was agrarian. The two had never met and were temperamentally at odds. Jefferson anticipated Yankee invasion as early as 1797. In the 1820s Henry Adams wrote with stunningly accurate of how and when the Civil War would emerge.
But then as in all wars, economy was key: When industrialization began working in England and in the North equilibrium between North and South was broken. England ended her slave empire in the early 1830s – Evangelical piety arose once the slaves were no longer needed. Industrial wealth and vast flows of immigrants bolstered the Empire State and my great grandfather was drafted right off the boat from Ireland.
As C. Vann Woodward points out in “The Burden of Southern History,” the goals of the northern compact were three: prevent the states from secession, freeing the slaves, equality between white and black. But letters home from Vermont soldiers show that all the soldiers really cared about was Southern secession. When extreme wealth came to the North the first – territoriality – was suddenly possible. The only real problem was Stonewall Jackson, but when he was killed by friendly fire at Chancellorsville, the Southern spirit began to yield.
At the conquest, the South was poor and broken. It remained poor for almost a century. The North was rich and the Empire State was the richest and would go on to being the richest in the world until 1929. But then, after the Second World War, the wealth would spread in a South cheered by Patsy Cline and Hank Williams and beyond to the Southwest and Texas. Then it would recede from New York. And now Rick Perry’s Texas has the best balance sheet in the country and eight out of ten new hires are in Texas. While the real unemployed rate in New York City is said to be up to 20 percent, Albany’s government is corrupt to the core and the debt is endless.
The first purpose of the Civil War was economic consolidation under a single economic system and a single currency in a globalist vision designed by Alexander Hamilton, the New Yorker. Washington signed on with Hamilton at Jay’s Treaty in 1794, sealing the fate of America, sealing the fate of the South and Texas.
Until April 15, 2009, and the tax revolt at the Alamo and everywhere. Because it is all about economics. And the conqueror today looks to the economically healthy Southern and Western free states for material support and a hefty pension after burning Atlanta to the ground and bringing it into submission at the cost of 34,624 lives at Chickamauga, 51,112 at Gettysburg and 26,134 at Antietam in a matter of hours. How’s that supposed to work again?
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/8/10
The difference back when my home state, Rhode Island, was a major slave port, was culture. Economy in the North was urban and heading toward industrialization. Economy in the South was agrarian. The two had never met and were temperamentally at odds. Jefferson anticipated Yankee invasion as early as 1797. In the 1820s Henry Adams wrote with stunningly accurate of how and when the Civil War would emerge.
But then as in all wars, economy was key: When industrialization began working in England and in the North equilibrium between North and South was broken. England ended her slave empire in the early 1830s – Evangelical piety arose once the slaves were no longer needed. Industrial wealth and vast flows of immigrants bolstered the Empire State and my great grandfather was drafted right off the boat from Ireland.
As C. Vann Woodward points out in “The Burden of Southern History,” the goals of the northern compact were three: prevent the states from secession, freeing the slaves, equality between white and black. But letters home from Vermont soldiers show that all the soldiers really cared about was Southern secession. When extreme wealth came to the North the first – territoriality – was suddenly possible. The only real problem was Stonewall Jackson, but when he was killed by friendly fire at Chancellorsville, the Southern spirit began to yield.
At the conquest, the South was poor and broken. It remained poor for almost a century. The North was rich and the Empire State was the richest and would go on to being the richest in the world until 1929. But then, after the Second World War, the wealth would spread in a South cheered by Patsy Cline and Hank Williams and beyond to the Southwest and Texas. Then it would recede from New York. And now Rick Perry’s Texas has the best balance sheet in the country and eight out of ten new hires are in Texas. While the real unemployed rate in New York City is said to be up to 20 percent, Albany’s government is corrupt to the core and the debt is endless.
The first purpose of the Civil War was economic consolidation under a single economic system and a single currency in a globalist vision designed by Alexander Hamilton, the New Yorker. Washington signed on with Hamilton at Jay’s Treaty in 1794, sealing the fate of America, sealing the fate of the South and Texas.
Until April 15, 2009, and the tax revolt at the Alamo and everywhere. Because it is all about economics. And the conqueror today looks to the economically healthy Southern and Western free states for material support and a hefty pension after burning Atlanta to the ground and bringing it into submission at the cost of 34,624 lives at Chickamauga, 51,112 at Gettysburg and 26,134 at Antietam in a matter of hours. How’s that supposed to work again?
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Temple Mount: Next Year in Jerusalem
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/7/10
Just when you think it is all wrapped up, something happens and it all changes. Like when the glorious arrival of the millenium was officially declared at Barack Obama’s Democratic nomination, biblically staged at Mile High stadium. Then barely 12 hours later Sarah Palin showed up and ruined everrything. We may face another such turning but on a quantum scale if and when israelis begin to rebuild the Temple Mount.
As Wikipedia reports, according to Judaism, the Temple Mount is the place where God chose the Divine Presence to rest, and it was from here that the world expanded into its present form and from where God gathered the dust used to create the first man, Adam. It is also the centermost place from which the western churches emerged. And it was the central office of Knights Templar, from which they take their name. Viewers of the TV show “Lost” have reasonably speculated that the show’s temporal mysteries are ultimately sourced at a mythic Temple Mount.
Haaretz reports that the Our Land of Israel party (Eretz Israel Shelanu) said it intended to mount an extensive bus campaign, with the slogan "May the Temple be built in our lifetime," along with an artist's rendition of the completed temple.
"The mosque on the temple mount is temporary," said Baruch Marzel, one of the party’s leaders, referring to the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques, "and it's only a matter of time before the Temple which the entire people of Israel are waiting for will be built."
The fate of Israel is tied to party elections this month. If Moshe Feiglin’s Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) group, the largest faction in the Likud, comes into power, Israel will be “a Jewish state” instead of “a state for Jews.” In any event, the day is ahead. Tiime is quickly passing when the “authentic” Israeli leadership we have long viewed on Jim Lehrer’s The News Hour appears to hail from a suburb of Philadelphia.
Youth wants to know: How does Sarah Palin feel about Manhigut Yehudit? Mitt Romney? Rick Perry?
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/7/10
Just when you think it is all wrapped up, something happens and it all changes. Like when the glorious arrival of the millenium was officially declared at Barack Obama’s Democratic nomination, biblically staged at Mile High stadium. Then barely 12 hours later Sarah Palin showed up and ruined everrything. We may face another such turning but on a quantum scale if and when israelis begin to rebuild the Temple Mount.
As Wikipedia reports, according to Judaism, the Temple Mount is the place where God chose the Divine Presence to rest, and it was from here that the world expanded into its present form and from where God gathered the dust used to create the first man, Adam. It is also the centermost place from which the western churches emerged. And it was the central office of Knights Templar, from which they take their name. Viewers of the TV show “Lost” have reasonably speculated that the show’s temporal mysteries are ultimately sourced at a mythic Temple Mount.
Haaretz reports that the Our Land of Israel party (Eretz Israel Shelanu) said it intended to mount an extensive bus campaign, with the slogan "May the Temple be built in our lifetime," along with an artist's rendition of the completed temple.
"The mosque on the temple mount is temporary," said Baruch Marzel, one of the party’s leaders, referring to the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques, "and it's only a matter of time before the Temple which the entire people of Israel are waiting for will be built."
The fate of Israel is tied to party elections this month. If Moshe Feiglin’s Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) group, the largest faction in the Likud, comes into power, Israel will be “a Jewish state” instead of “a state for Jews.” In any event, the day is ahead. Tiime is quickly passing when the “authentic” Israeli leadership we have long viewed on Jim Lehrer’s The News Hour appears to hail from a suburb of Philadelphia.
Youth wants to know: How does Sarah Palin feel about Manhigut Yehudit? Mitt Romney? Rick Perry?
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Imagine there’s no Easter
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/4/10
On Holy Thursday, a secular political site I go to, feeling the turn in the seasons, but not wanting to draw on any specific religion, offered a version of John Lennon’s Imagine.
It infuriated some viewers, not because it was considered bad Easter religion, but because some viewers saw it as “communist.” More a Taoist or Tolstoyan anthem – themes from which Lennon drew on through the later parts of his creative arc.
But I’ve seen this again and again, including at the Olympics and at one very poignant 9/11 nationally televised memorial featuring Tom Hanks, Clinton Eastwood and Neil Young, where we mourned our deepest hurt and turned to Lennon’s Imagine to speak for the inner spirit.
We are a secular people and if, as President Obama did this weekend, we see Easter as a “celebration of mankind” then John Lennon might as well be its avatar. Because although distinguished psychiatrists like Barbara Hannah correctly in my opinion, see the “one world” thing as a childish and narcissistic delusion, it was only in recent times we came to see ourselves collectively as “mankind” (or “humankind” which is even more insipid).
But Lennon would be better than Marx. Better than Mao, who he very publicly denounced. Better than Bill Clinton or Al Gore or Michael Jackson or Barack Obama or any of a ghoulish host of global conquistadors (and what is enough to gag a horse, the self-proclaimed “world elders”) conceived by the Universe to speak on behalf of “mankind.”
But this Easter, I’m concerned about the Catholic Church. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said, the child predator scandal is vast and threatens even the character of Ireland. And in western Europe and even in Quebec’s oldest of North American churches, the congregations are thin and elderly. The only people who seem to go to church up here in the north are politicians.
My family lines are RC and C of E. The Catholics have mostly turned Buddhist or to science and the stone churches of the Boston Irish are now art studios. C of E has long been secularized and has substituted sociology for the sacred, but the RC side says it always was like that.
And there are 1,600 mosques today in Germany and almost as many in France, but they are politicized as well and some of them violently obsessed.
The only real religious people I talk to today are Southerners – generally Baptist – and Israeli Jews. Both peoples with a sense of place. (A place in nature, a “natural state” as in Tolstoy.) Invariably they are considered “right wing” here in the northeast, where religion is viewed as something like a hat.
But I see a future growing with them, possibly a future together. I see a future here as well among us New England Buddhists and hippies, who follow the gospel of Lao Tzu and Black Elk as we find it and the “no religion” religion proclaimed by Lennon in Imagine. It was after all the Christ who said to go alone to the Father and not listen to the rabbis the “elders” or any of the others in getting there. I see a future in this here, but it looks like a different future.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 4/4/10
On Holy Thursday, a secular political site I go to, feeling the turn in the seasons, but not wanting to draw on any specific religion, offered a version of John Lennon’s Imagine.
It infuriated some viewers, not because it was considered bad Easter religion, but because some viewers saw it as “communist.” More a Taoist or Tolstoyan anthem – themes from which Lennon drew on through the later parts of his creative arc.
But I’ve seen this again and again, including at the Olympics and at one very poignant 9/11 nationally televised memorial featuring Tom Hanks, Clinton Eastwood and Neil Young, where we mourned our deepest hurt and turned to Lennon’s Imagine to speak for the inner spirit.
We are a secular people and if, as President Obama did this weekend, we see Easter as a “celebration of mankind” then John Lennon might as well be its avatar. Because although distinguished psychiatrists like Barbara Hannah correctly in my opinion, see the “one world” thing as a childish and narcissistic delusion, it was only in recent times we came to see ourselves collectively as “mankind” (or “humankind” which is even more insipid).
But Lennon would be better than Marx. Better than Mao, who he very publicly denounced. Better than Bill Clinton or Al Gore or Michael Jackson or Barack Obama or any of a ghoulish host of global conquistadors (and what is enough to gag a horse, the self-proclaimed “world elders”) conceived by the Universe to speak on behalf of “mankind.”
But this Easter, I’m concerned about the Catholic Church. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said, the child predator scandal is vast and threatens even the character of Ireland. And in western Europe and even in Quebec’s oldest of North American churches, the congregations are thin and elderly. The only people who seem to go to church up here in the north are politicians.
My family lines are RC and C of E. The Catholics have mostly turned Buddhist or to science and the stone churches of the Boston Irish are now art studios. C of E has long been secularized and has substituted sociology for the sacred, but the RC side says it always was like that.
And there are 1,600 mosques today in Germany and almost as many in France, but they are politicized as well and some of them violently obsessed.
The only real religious people I talk to today are Southerners – generally Baptist – and Israeli Jews. Both peoples with a sense of place. (A place in nature, a “natural state” as in Tolstoy.) Invariably they are considered “right wing” here in the northeast, where religion is viewed as something like a hat.
But I see a future growing with them, possibly a future together. I see a future here as well among us New England Buddhists and hippies, who follow the gospel of Lao Tzu and Black Elk as we find it and the “no religion” religion proclaimed by Lennon in Imagine. It was after all the Christ who said to go alone to the Father and not listen to the rabbis the “elders” or any of the others in getting there. I see a future in this here, but it looks like a different future.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Virginia’s James M. LeMunyon calls for a Constitutional Convention
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 3/1/10
As Karl Rove, Dick Armey and others try to steal the fire of the Tea Parties, a singularly good idea, and a thoroughly origin one, that might find a place with this theater seeking a theme is suggested today in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal: A Constitutional Convention. Because the 14-state Tenth Amendment challenge to Obama health care is likely to fail and anyway, this is not about health care. It is about who will manage, nurture and determine the fate of that volatile and enlightened collective soul which is Texas, Rick Perry or Barney Frank? And why again is that?
“The U.S. Congress is in a state of serious disrepair and cannot fix itself,” writes Fairfax, VA, House of Delegates representative, James M. LeMunyon. “It has reached this point over the course of many years – in fact over decades. Regardless of the party in power, Congress has demonstrated a growing inability to effectively address the major issues of our time, including soaring federal debt and the extension of federal authority to states and localities.”
Interest in calling a first-ever Article V convention is growing at the state level, writes LeMunyon, who has introduced a resolution (H.J. 183) in Virginia, calling for a Constitutional Convention to restrain the national government. A petition for such a convention passed the Florida Senate last month. If approved by the House, he says, Florida would be the 20th state with an active call to do so.
The call for a Constitutional Convention might have been inevitable after the bewildering recent decisions of that motley sanga of vying ethnics which is the Supreme Court – a few of whom actually appear troubled - on private property and Presidential powers and their casual dismissal of Habeas Corpus, a talisman of the English-speaking people since 1215 when it was incorporated in the Magna Carta.
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 3/1/10
As Karl Rove, Dick Armey and others try to steal the fire of the Tea Parties, a singularly good idea, and a thoroughly origin one, that might find a place with this theater seeking a theme is suggested today in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal: A Constitutional Convention. Because the 14-state Tenth Amendment challenge to Obama health care is likely to fail and anyway, this is not about health care. It is about who will manage, nurture and determine the fate of that volatile and enlightened collective soul which is Texas, Rick Perry or Barney Frank? And why again is that?
“The U.S. Congress is in a state of serious disrepair and cannot fix itself,” writes Fairfax, VA, House of Delegates representative, James M. LeMunyon. “It has reached this point over the course of many years – in fact over decades. Regardless of the party in power, Congress has demonstrated a growing inability to effectively address the major issues of our time, including soaring federal debt and the extension of federal authority to states and localities.”
Interest in calling a first-ever Article V convention is growing at the state level, writes LeMunyon, who has introduced a resolution (H.J. 183) in Virginia, calling for a Constitutional Convention to restrain the national government. A petition for such a convention passed the Florida Senate last month. If approved by the House, he says, Florida would be the 20th state with an active call to do so.
The call for a Constitutional Convention might have been inevitable after the bewildering recent decisions of that motley sanga of vying ethnics which is the Supreme Court – a few of whom actually appear troubled - on private property and Presidential powers and their casual dismissal of Habeas Corpus, a talisman of the English-speaking people since 1215 when it was incorporated in the Magna Carta.
WSJ calls for Constitutional Convention
As Karl Rove, dick Armey and others try to steal the fire of the Tea Party, the singularly good idea, and a thorouly origin one, that might find a place in this group, is suggested in the op-ed pages of the WSJ today: A Constitutional Convention.
This weekend, Michael Reagan, osn of Ron, hopes to lead 200,000 in a tax revolt to D,C. That’s good, but Reagan is not a Tea Party leader. This is a new zeitgeist that might officially be considered to have gotten its start on April 15, last year at The Alamo. Present were Glenn Beck, Rick Perry and performer Ted Nuggent. Sarah Palin should also be considered the charmed spirit of the group, but none of these can really be identified exclusively by the wants and needs of the Tea Party, and each individually is larger than the identification of the group. Of these, Perry, who is up for reelection in November, has most succinctly and professionally discussed the issues perttenent to the groups and their basis in the Constitution and the Texan and American traditions. He should add to the contours of his reelection campaign the call for a Constitutional Convention.
As Karl Rove, dick Armey and others try to steal the fire of the Tea Party, the singularly good idea, and a thorouly origin one, that might find a place in this group, is suggested in the op-ed pages of the WSJ today: A Constitutional Convention.
This weekend, Michael Reagan, osn of Ron, hopes to lead 200,000 in a tax revolt to D,C. That’s good, but Reagan is not a Tea Party leader. This is a new zeitgeist that might officially be considered to have gotten its start on April 15, last year at The Alamo. Present were Glenn Beck, Rick Perry and performer Ted Nuggent. Sarah Palin should also be considered the charmed spirit of the group, but none of these can really be identified exclusively by the wants and needs of the Tea Party, and each individually is larger than the identification of the group. Of these, Perry, who is up for reelection in November, has most succinctly and professionally discussed the issues perttenent to the groups and their basis in the Constitution and the Texan and American traditions. He should add to the contours of his reelection campaign the call for a Constitutional Convention.
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