- 5 Best Toys Ever.
- Life, or just a bucket list?
- The Thing That Used to Be Conservatism.
- Pecking order.
- Occupy something other than a job.
- In the name of national security.
- New link.
* Temporarily renamed in honor of the Nativity Fast, about which Mystagogy has some more information.
Boy, does this ever simplify Christmas shopping for children.
Or if you’re not willing to go that far, maybe this far?
Some people seem to have “bucket list” where “life” should be. I don’t have a bucket list at all, but if I did, it might look like an Orthodox version of Catholic Mark Shea’s list.
[T]he Thing that Used to be Conservatism seems to be dominated by an awful lot of people want to live in a police state and who seem to have no conception that a post-Christian police state will not keep them safe.
Mark Shea lamenting “Christian” support for jack-booted thugs who attack peaceful demonstrators. Steven Greenhut, whose libertarian musing inspired Shea, notes that:
Without the video, you know what would have happened – nothing. The lies would have become the official record. This is why police officers have become zealous in their confiscation of video cameras and arrest of people who record them doing their jobs.
…
The idea that this is “standard police procedure” is exactly what makes the video so horrifying. It doesn’t make it acceptable behavior. That’s why so many viewers were offended by it. The cop struts in front of the students and sprays them with massive amounts of pepper spray. He’s not in any danger. This is just standard procedure, ma’am. We treat everyone that way!
Just pause for a moment: in their twisted world view, the right to have contraception and abortion paid for by the government is more fundamental than the right to religious liberty. What a strange place we find ourselves in today.
Tom Peters, at CatholicVote. I don’t know why he buried this marvelous distillation in parentheses.
Time didn’t permit me to comment yesterday on James Howard Kunstler’s blog. I want to juxtapose two portions:
A big part of the automatic economy was the idea of a “job.” In its journey to the present moment, the idea became crusted with barnacles of illusion, especially that a “job” was a sort of commodity “produced” by large corporate enterprises or governments and rationally distributed like any other commodity; that it came with a goodie bag filled with guaranteed pensions, medical care to remediate bad living habits, vacations to places of programmed entertainment, a warm, well-lighted dwelling, and a big steel machine to travel around in. Now we witness with helpless despair as these illusions dissolve.
…
This holiday season spend a little time musing on what the re-set economy will be like in your part of the country. Think of what you do in it as a “role,” or a “vocation,” or a “trade,” or a “calling,” or a “way of life,” rather than a “job.” Imagine that life will surely go on, even civilized life, though it will be organized differently. Add to this the notion that you are part of a larger group, a society, and that societies evolve emergently according to the circumstances that their time and place presents. Let that imagining be your new American Dream.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the “Occupy” thingy has been the plaintive cry for “jobs.” I don’t mean to mock anyone here; jobs indeed may be scarce.
But in “the re-set economy,” the 9-5, perk-laden gift from the corporate hand will be less important, and you might as well go ahead and bite that hand right now. “Take this job and shove it” can be your theme song. Maybe you can start your own puppet troop.
Resourceful human beings can learn – or re-learn – to do things for themselves, and we may find that the result is a lot more gratifying than our thralldom to meaningless “jobs” with “bucket lists” for a simulacrum of meaning.
There’s reportedly some ominous national security crap legislation advancing furtively in Congress – including the prospect of indefinite military detention of American citizens, picked up on American soil, without charge or trial. See here and here.
I don’t have enough experience with Mark Shea as political or legislative commentator to call the information reliable; I haven’t seen it elsewhere yet. He’s quoting Economic Policy Journal, with which I’m even less familiar.
If true, faux conservatives will be thrilled.
Conservatism is poorly understood in the United States. It is not right-wing liberalism or nationalism; nor is it political Protestantism. It has nothing to do with a neurotic longing for an ideal past, and reactionaries who insist there is nothing left to conserve show that they don’t know the meaning of the word.
Daniel McCarthy, Metternich vs. McEmpire.
I’ve added a link in the sidebar to The Land Institute.
Perhaps their efforts are quixotic, perhaps visionary. In short, they’re trying to move our agriculture from annuals in monoculture to perennials in polyculture, with huge savings in soil erosion, petroleum-based fertilizers and such. They call it Natural Systems Agriculture.
Mission Statement
When people, land, and community are as one,
all three members prosper;
when they relate not as members
but as competing interests,
all three are exploited.
By consulting Nature as the source
and measure of that membership,
The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture
that will save soil from being lost or poisoned
while promoting a community life at once
prosperous and enduring.
* * * * *
Bon appetit!
Having become tedious even to myself, I’m Tweeting more, blogging less. View this in a browser instead of an RSS feeder to see Tweets at upper right.
I also have some succinct standing advice on recurring themes. Maybe if I link to it, I’ll blog less obsessively about it.
ldsfkja
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 