THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
No
religion can resist science, except one.
-- Joseph
de Maistre
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.39 pm, 12 October 2005►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
What
happens in other forms of government -- namely, that an
organized minority imposes its will on the disorganized
majority -- happens also and to perfection, whatever the
appearances to the contrary, under the representative
system. When we say that the voters "choose"
their representative, we are using a language that is very
inexact. The truth is that the representative has
himself elected by the voters, and, if that phrase
should seem to inflexible and too harsh to fit some cases,
we might qualify it by saying that his friends have him
elected. In elections, as in all other manifestations
of social life, those who have the will and, especially,
the moral, intellectual and material means to force
their will upon others take the lead over the others and
command them.
The
political mandate has been likened to the power of
attorney that is familiar in private law. But in private
relationships, delegations of powers and capacities always
presuppose that the principal has the broadest freedom in
choosing his representative. Now in practice, in popular
elections, that freedom of choice, though complete
theoretically, necessarily becomes null, not to say
ludicrous. If each voter gave his vote to the candidate of
his heart, we may be sure that in almost all cases the
only result would be a wide scattering of votes. When very
many wills are involved, choice is determined by the most
various criteria, almost all of them subjective, and if
such will were not coordinated and organized it would be
virtually impossible for them to coincide in the
spontaneous choice of one individual. If his vote is to
have any efficacy at all, therefore, each voter is forced
to limit his choice to a very narrow field, in other words
to a choice among the two or three persons who have some
chance of succeeding; and the only ones who have any
chance of succeeding are those whose candidacies are
championed by groups, by committees, by organized
minorities.
-- Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class
Kevin
Michael Grace, 5.59 pm, 10 October 2005►
CONDIGN
PUNISHMENT
My favourite Scorsese film is After
Hours. Who says Marty lacks a sense of
humour? The plot: Paul (a weaselly Griffin
Dunne) sits alone in a NYC coffeeshop
reading Tropic of Cancer, when a stranger (the
luscious Rosanna
Arquette) greets him with praise of the
book. They talk; he gets her phone number; the trial
begins. Later that evening, they meet again in a SoHo
loft. Paul's intentions are not, shall we say, honourable.
Marcy seems willing enough, but as they sit on her bed and
talk some more, Paul's suspicion she is not 16 annas to
the rupee is confirmed.
Paul: Why don't you just
tell me what's wrong?
Marcy: I was raped once.
As a matter of fact, it happened right here in this room.
I lived here once. He came in through there off the fire
escape. He held a knife to my throat and said ... if I
made any noise, he'd cut my tongue out. He tied me to the
bed. He took his time. Six hours.
Paul: My God. Was he ...
Did they get this guy?
Marcy: No. Actually, it
was a boyfriend of mine. To tell you the truth, I slept
through most of it. So, there you are. You want to get
some coffee?
Why is it that this
scene comes to mind whenever I hear
"conservatives" complain of being "abused"
by demon lover Dubya?
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.40 am, 8 October 2005►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY (SPECIAL ANTICHRIST LOSES PEACE PRIZE EDITION
WITH YET ANOTHER OBSCENE LANGUAGE WARNING)
It was the
first time that there was a Catholic mayor in Derry. So
suddenly the Guild
Hall was open to Catholics. We were up
there to do the Tom O'Conner show with the Dubliners.
We were plugging "The
Irish Rover." Afterwards, we were
given an invitation by the mayor to come to this civic
reception, for us in honour of the Dubliners and
ourselves. [SDLP leader] John
Hume would be there and so on. They made a
huge miscalculation by inviting us back to the fucking
mayor's parlour and said, "Will you have a
drink?" At that stage we were all knackered; we were
in the middle of a promotional tour. The record company
had us going from one TV studio to another; we felt like
fucking Westlife.
We were all starting to buckle under the pressure, so when
someone said, "Come in and have a drink in the
mayor's parlour," we said, "OK, lets relax a
little." The mayor didn't know what hit him; he
thought he was hosting a polite civic reception where a
speech would be made thanking the Pogues and the Dubliners
for their contribution to Irish music; John Hume would say
nice things; and everyone would leave. That didn't happen.
We started singing "The
Auld Triangle," as it happens. You
could see John Hume getting tighter and tighter thinking,
"Should I be here?" One thing led to another and
it all got calamitous. 'The Auld Triangle" was
getting louder and louder, and it was deemed vaguely
inappropriate to be singing it in the Guild Hall, even
under a Catholic mayor.
At one point I
saw the mayor dash out issuing instructions, saying,
"Close the fucking drinks cabinet." I saw this
and thought, "I'll just have more drink!" I
don't actually know how we got out of there, but it was
certainly true that Terry Woods, Ronnie Drew and Barney
McKenna attempted to drive back to Dublin in that state. I
don't know how far down the road they got, but it wasn't
too far. I think it was Barney that was driving; they were
30 miles down the road, and the police stopped them. They
were perfectly genial. They saw who they were and said,
"I think it would be better if you didn't just drive
the rest of the way to Dublin"; the car was on the
other side of the road at this point! The police thought,
"Let's put them in the cells so they can sleep it
off." A few hours later the lads were starting to
come around in this cell, and Ronnie said, "What
hotel is this?" And Barney replied, "Hotel?
We're in fucking jail; sing 'The Auld Triangle" now,
you cunt." I always feel so sorry for John Hume
because he is a great man and had no part in any of that.
However, he is in the photograph. The evidence is there
that John Hume was there when the Pogues disgraced
themselves in the Guild Hall. Worse things have happened
to him since -- I mean later he was on stage with Bono;
that's much worse."
-- Phil
Chevron (Philip Ryan)
Bono: At present there is a
power which keeps him in check
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.42 am, 8 October 2005►
THE
WAY WE LIVE KNOW (WARNING: OBSCENE LANGUAGE)
[Chris]
Wilson, a 27-year-old Web entrepreneur living in Florida,
created the site [NowThatsFuckedUp.com] a year ago, asked
fans to contribute pictures of their wives and girlfriends
and posted footage and photographs bearing titles such as
“wife working cock” and “ass fucking my wife on the
stairs.” The site was a big hit with soldiers stationed
overseas; about a third of his customers, Wilson
estimates, or more than fifty thousand people, work in the
military. Wilson says soldiers began emailing him,
thanking him for keeping up their morale and “bringing a
little piece of the States to them.”
-- Chris Thompson, "War Pornography: In
an Echo of the Abu Ghraib Fiasco, Grisly Images of Dead,
Mutilated Iraqis are Traded for Access to Pornography, an
Apparent Breach of Geneva Conventions," East
Bay Express, 21 September 2005
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.35 am, 7 October 2005►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY (BY SPECIAL REQUEST)
"The
vows of marriage," says he, "are mostly made
under the influence of love-passion. I am talking of
modern marriages where the partners have been free to
choose for themselves. They are in love. I am not talking
about arranged marriages where the parents, the families,
have combined to bring about the union ... Let me tell
you," says Hurley, "that the vows of
love-passion are like confessions obtained under torture.
Erotic love is a madness. Neither of the partners know
what they are doing, saying. They are in extremis.
The vows of love-passion should at least be liable to be
discounted. That is why it is possible, and in fact
imperative, for a Catholic, who is supposed to belong to
the most rational religion, to believe in divorce between
people who have been in love, the marriage vows being made
in a state of mental imbalance, which amorous love is.
There is a reservation, under Catholic laws of annulment,
that allows for madness."
"You
mean," says Ella, "you should be able to obtain
a divorce on the grounds that you were madly in love with
your spouse?"
"That's
what I mean," says Hurley.
"I
never heard that before," says Ella.
He nearly
says, very pompously: "Ella, my dear girl, in this
house you will hear a great many things that you haven't
heard before." But he forbears to say it. He says
nothing, and leaves a little silence.
-- Muriel Spark, Symposium
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.20 am, 7 October 2005►
A PITIFUL, HELPLESS GIANT
The Katrina débâcle has been
from the beginning a mirror reflecting the attitudes of
those beholding it. I concur with the wise Anthony Burgess
that one needs data in order to formulate theories. There
was no shortage of data from New Orleans, but much of it
was conflicting or corrupt, so there seemed no point in
adding my voice to the Chorus of the Pundit Slaves.
Much of what occurred after the
levees broke will never be known. But sufficient data now
exists to draw some conclusions. I
concur with the wise Jerry Pournelle that we ignore
subsidiarity at our peril. But this is not the lesson that
will be taken. Grace's Law of the Counterintuitive
Response states that in any society that disdains truth,
the reaction to any calamity that threatens its most
dearly-held lies is much more of that which engendered
the calamity. Only faster and harder.
First example: AIDS. By the late 1980s, it was predicted confidently that AIDS would
soon become "everyone's disease." The
World Health
Organization, as I recall, declared that by early in the
next century, it would infect the entire world
population. It
seemed obvious that given what was known about the origin
of the disease and its dissemination, the result of the
predictions would be a savage anti-homosexual backlash.
(Those who maintain that male
homosexuals are, as Andrew Sullivan claims,
"virtually normal" are directed to a monograph
by the gay sociologist Gabriel Rotello, Sexual Ecology,
or to a pre-AIDS novel by the post-AIDS gay icon Larry
Kramer, Faggots. Warning: I thought I had a
cast-iron stomach, but Faggots made me physically
ill. Those who maintain that gay sexual mores have changed
since the 1970s are directed to read Michael Specter's already-famous New Yorker
essay, "Higher Risk" and stop insisting that
ignorance is a virtue.)
Instead, AIDS led to the triumph
of the "gay agenda." PWAs became the Saints
Among Us, dying for our sins. AIDS, we were instructed,
against all known evidence, was the result of our
prejudice resulting in their oppression. This fullest (to
date) expression of this idea is the legalization of
homosexual marriage, a notion belittled as fantastic even
in the late 1990s. Today, the culture, from Angels In
America to Queer Eye For The Straight Guy,
informs us that gays are our betters in every respect.
Second example: 9/11. It seemed
obvious that given what was known about Islam's mandate of
jihad, added to the knowledge that the bombers were legal
or quasi-legal residents of America, the result of the
bombings would be a savage anti-Muslim backlash.
Instead, 9/11 led to the triumph
of the multiculturalist agenda. Islam, we are instructed,
against all known evidence, is a "religion of
peace." George W Bush, in his Second Inaugural
Address, declared that "the words of the Koran"
are as integral to the American "edifice of
character" as the Decalogue and the Beatitudes. "Islamofascist"
violence is the result of our prejudice resulting in their
oppression. Specifically, our failure to impose universally the
benefits of "freedom," "liberty," "democratic
values," etc. To claim otherwise, to
insist that Muslims everywhere are not in embryo
"virtually Western" is nothing less than
"racism."
The Katrina débâcle was
the result of the failure of governments: civic, state and
federal. First and most important, a failure to understand
that the laws of nature cannot be ignored as inconvenient.
Continued development had resulted in a situation whereby
New Orleans's levee system had been fatally
compromised.
Its destruction was a
short-term likelihood. In other
words, the catastrophe was utterly
predictable. And it was predicted,
repeatedly. Second, the botched relief
effort was virtually guaranteed by Washington's decision to
subsume local self-defence associations in FEMA and then
subsume that agency in the Department of Homeland
Security. Finally, the venal and self-destructive
lawlessness displayed by many New Orleans residents was
the tragic conclusion to decades of government approved
and directed social and racial rent
seeking.
Of course we will not see a savage
anti-government backlash. Remember Grace's Law of the Counterintuitive
Response. The Era of Big Government is back with a
vengeance, and it's Springtime for
Michael
Harrington. What remains of
the great American tradition of self-reliance will be
swept away as thoroughly as Katrina swept away New
Orleans. No cost will be spared in the rebuilding of the
Gulf Coast, nature be damned. FEMA and Homeland Security
will be rewarded for their failures with behemoth budgets
and plenary powers. Harrington's War on Poverty will be
succeeded by a War on
Racism. And we can expect wars
against Syria and Iran as well. Dubya has suffered; now
it's their turn.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.54 am, 7 October 2005►
MORE
TK
That
untouched takeaway
I brought home the other day
Has quite a lot to say
The evidence is clear
Piled high and wide
About how lately I've let things slide
I'm just about holding on
But lately I've let things slide
-- Nick Lowe, "Lately I've Let Things Slide," The
Convincer
Kevin
Michael Grace, 7.44 pm, 6 October 2005►
