I know we're all busy, and most of us have quite a few expenses that keep us from pursuing certain hobbies. However, I've been thinking a bit lately about doing a "movie club" of sorts.
The general rules would be these:
1) Movies would be classics of film, available on VHS/DVD at most local stores. They ought to be either readily available at rental places, or for sale for less than $15 -- most readers, I think, could afford to spend $15 a month or so on a movie if they wished. It's the same as tickets for two at a new movie, but you'd be seeing something that has already proven itself over time.
2) We'd watch one or two movies a month, depending on how it works out.
3) Either I, or one of my co-bloggers if they sponsored it, would post a review of the movie to start discussion. We'd carry it on in the comments.
4) I'd like to aim at movies that capture classic American values, the kind of films that we'd like our children to grow up watching. To start with, I'd like to sponsor the John Wayne classic The Alamo.
Any interest in this among the readers?
Movie club
Up the French Militia
Iraq the Model is taking the opportunity of the Paris riots to roll around on the floor in laughter:
I read this report about the Paris riots:The laughing is all in good fun, since down Iraq way my understanding is that the US military decided to permit each family to retain a Kalashnikov and a pistol for personal defense. Good on them! Having the tools is a big part of doing your duty as a citizen to maintain the common peace, and uphold the constitutional order.Faced with widespread lawlessness, some people in France have started defending their property. In Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris rocked by several nights of unrest, a community group has started patrolling local properties armed with…Here I was expecting shotguns, rifles or pistols to complete the sentence but then thought No, this is Europe and there must be laws against carrying firearms in public so I thought baseball bats would be the weapon of choice but again No I told myself; this is France they’re talking about and they don’t play baseball in France, so what did the community group carry to defend their property? "pepper spray and heavy flashlights" was the answer!! I don’t know how you see this but to me it feels like telling the rioters ‘come here and bring that piece of pizza, I have a pepper spray in my hand’ or ‘come and pose for a photo, I brought this excellent flashlight with me!’
However, if worst comes to worst, and you should find yourself in a situation where you've got a government like France or Maryland denying you your basic human rights, and on top of that barbarians torching your cities and cars, you can do worse than a flashlight and pepper spray. In fact, what really matters most is just the willingness to fight and die for what you believe -- the weapon you bring to bear is not unimportant, but it is far more important in a contest of professionals. With amateurs, the main thing is fighting spirit. A band of men determined to hold the line will hold it.
In the old days they used to say, "One Riot, One Ranger." It's not that different now. Give me five or ten men who will hold the line, and I expect you won't readily find the gangbangers or rioting band of punks to stand up to them. If that small band of men has rifles instead of flashlights, they can hold off anything short of an army.
The main thing is just to stand up. The main thing is to make up your mind, now, that the enemy won't burn your home or bring violence into your neighborhood. If you're committed to the fight, only the most professional of warriors will stand against you. Believe, and hold the line.
billR
Bill Roggio's in National Review Online today, talking about a joint MilBlogger-Senate conference. Don't miss it.
Jarhead
Froggy hated it and thought it was completely absurd.
Doc, on the other hand, thought it was the most accurate movie he'd ever seen about life as a USMC grunt.
UPDATE: Daniel, in addition to his comments below, also posted a review at his own site. It's broadly positive.
ZenP
ZenPundit is hosting a roundtable discussion on Globalization and the War. It involves a number of worthy voices, including former Marine "Chester" and Austin Bay. You might want to have a look.
Azahari
If this proves out, it is a huge story in the war against al Qaeda and its allied organization Jemaah Islamiyah. Indonesian police are reporting having killed Doctor Azahari, one of the masterminds of the Bali bombings and a leading figure in JI. More here.
This will, of course, produce another chaotic week for me -- but I don't mind. Well done.
Elections
The Virginia elections are now over, and I find that few of the candidates I voted for were elected to anything. It is possible that the Attorney General's race may yet be decided in favor of my candidate, but so far that remains to be seen. This has been my usual experience in elections, with only two exceptions that I can recall -- I was a Bush voter last year, and a Zell Miller voter during his gubernatorial days. (That is likely to produce two questions in the minds of readers, which are answered thus: I did not vote in the 2000 election at all, due to being in China and not being able to obtain an absentee ballot; and Zell was appointed rather than elected to the Senate.)
The Washington Post is interpreting the results as an anti-GOP movement in Northern Virginia (see here), and there is certainly something to that. I think that committed Republicans (of whom I am not one, being a Southern Democrat who occasionally votes Republican as circumstances warrant) did not feel they had much at stake this year, and didn't bother to get out and vote. Liberals, who seem to exist in Virginia only in the northern regions, have been drubbed in all the recent elections of any importance, and were spoiling for a victory of any sort. So, they got out in big numbers.
However, I think it's also important to note how minimal the stake really was this year. I have been a Kilgore supporter for nine months or a year, but only because of 2nd Amendment issues. In spite of the vicious campaign Kilgore ran against Kaine, the difference between the candidates wasn't great; the NRA endorsed Kilgore, but the even-more-committed Virginia Citizens' Defense League did not do so, and included pro-Kaine commentary in their newsletters in the runup to the election. For voters thinking of other issues, the difference was even less important; and Kaine was the scion of a popular governor.
Kilgore apparently believed his best card was Kaine's opposition to the death penalty. I think he misunderstood the issue. There are two reasons for opposing the death penalty, and only one of them is likely to spark opposition on the American Right. One reason, which will spark opposition, is to belong to the camp that says that the death penalty is "cruel or unusual" punishment. This annoys because the death penalty is a traditional part of American jurisprudence since the Founding. The claim that it is unconstitutional smacks of simply trying to redefine the Constitution to mean what you'd like it to mean without any concern for what it always has meant, a stance that will justly rouse opposition among many Americans.
Kaine's reason for opposing it is that he is a committed Catholic, and has devout religious beliefs that inform his opinion. That is going to win him respect among many on the Right, including most non-Catholics as well as Catholics. The American Right is generally well-disposed to people who are willing to let their faith inform their lives, especially when it causes them to take up positions that are obviously political disadvantages. I suspect that Kilgore's ad campaign -- which laughably invoked Hitler! -- did more damage to him than to Kaine.
Congratulations to the victors, both the ones I voted for and also the ones I did not. I wish them well in solving the problems of the Commonwealth, and restoring some of the political community that has been strained of late. I hope that the pleasure of victory will calm some of my more pricklish liberal neighbors, who have taken to staring angrily at anyone who habitually wears a cowboy hat (as I do myself). Really, folks: we're on your side, in spite of the occasional disagreements. It's more important that we're neighbors than that we disagree on this or that point of politics.
MailbagII
Greyhawk has a story he'd like you to read. It's pretty rare for Hawk to mail something like this out -- no reason he should, being one of the big fellahs. It's a piece written for Mudville by a guy who normally writes for the Boston Globe. The topic is the battle of la Drang, forty years ago.
Fusil
MilBlogger Chuck Ziegenfuss, "on the mend in Kansas," wrote to a few other MilBloggers today to draw your attention to a couple of things. I'm passing along his email just as it turned up in my box, since that's what I gather he'd like.
Publicity StuntGlad to oblige. By the way, if you're interested in helping out with Valor-IT, the USMC team is taking donations here. I'm also adding the button to the sidebar for the next few days while the competition runs. I gather I'm a bit late to the party, for which I apologize; but between the recent wedding and the extra work generated by certain recent events out in my area of responsibility, I'm a little swamped.
Mkay... I dragged my drugged and temporarily one-handed body out of the hospital bed to tell ya'll about something most important.
Carren is gonna be on national TV (and live national TV at that) to let everyone know about Project Valour-IT. She will represent me (the nerd who thought of this project), and the many people who have made this project a success.
She is going to be on "Connected coast to coast" a show run by MSNBC. Don't know how long she'll be on, but for the love of god, please tune in, put your hands on the top of your TV, and talk to Jebus when the show is over. The show runs from 1200-1300 (noon to one fer ya civlians out there)(and that's eastern time) My beloved is supposed to be on around 1240, but I will rest assured that her looks, personality, and general charm will either get her on early, or the show will go into extra rounds like Rocky and the Big Ruskie in Rocky IV.
Here's how you can help. Send this to every one you know, post it on your blog, get them to post it on theirs. One side will say it's a failure of the gummint to not prvide this for the soldiers, others just see it as a way to help our brothers and sisters who have fallen but will be getting up. However they spin it, just get the word out.
There's less than 18 hours to game time, so let's get our blog on!
--Chuck
p.s. I met the Secrtary of the Army a few days ago. I don't remember most of our conversation (because pain killers do that to you, espcially at the level I'm taking them...think chevy chase (or was it Dan Akroyd?) in "Modern Problems". But I brought two things to his attention: 1. It's stupid and a waste of manpower to hold a medical review board for a guy who's lost a finger 2. I pitched Valour-IT to him. He thinks it's a great idea. He was pressed for time, so his aide took the info sheets we gave him and gave us his card...and told us to call if we don't hear anything about it in two weeks!
Thanks, by the way, to Eric for blogging so heavily over the weekend. I appreciate it.
Doc
Aaron is building a "deck of death" for bloggers. He's reserved the clubs suit for MilBlogs.
Froggy, who has asked for votes, is leading. I added Doc Russia's blog to the list. I doubt we can generate enough votes to get into the face cards, but I would appreciate folks voting for Doc. I think he runs a great place -- an honest, direct blog by a veteran that often explains how the warrior spirit plays itself out even in civilian life. It's easy to be a warrior in the Marines or the 101st Airborne, but how many continue not just to uphold but to live the ideals after?
Well, Doc does. If his blog doesn't prove it to you, how about this after-action report? Scroll down to the picture of him making a 300-yard shot, just right the first time.
Out of admiration for the man's writing and living, then, I'd like to propose that we all go over and see if we can't vote him a playing card.
CongratsFeddie
While I have been away, a joyous event has happened in the blogosphere. Congratulations to Feddie on the birth of his daughter, Miss Mary Margaret Dillard. All the best to the wee lass.
MN
I've returned from St. Paul, which was a very different city that I would have expected. I was very impressed with St. Paul's cathedral, for example, one of the finest of its type that I've ever seen. It was an architectural masterpiece, inside and out. It steals all the glory from the nearby State Capitol, which is also a grand dome but in the Federal style rather than in the traditional Gothic. The Gothic style has all the advantages, as I suppose is appropriate. The temples built to faith ought to be finer and more glorious than the ones built to government, even government by the People.
Besides the Glory of God, the cathedral contained monuments -- in the tradition of Catholicism -- to important saints and religious men. There was a stained glass window containing the heraldic arms of St. Pius X, which I was pleased to be able to recognize. In addition, there was a statue to the archbishop who'd constructed the place. He was from, and named, Ireland; and if I understood his biography correctly, he was a child during the great potato famine, then a military chaplain throughout the War Between the States, and then a churchman for the rest of his life. He began construction of the place in 1907, when he was already an old man, but lived long enough to see completion of it and give the first sermon there. Sounds like a fairly heroic life to me, one worthy of the honors bestowed upon it.
In addition to the cathedral, St. Paul proved to have a particularly excellent pub called Cork's, which was a reference to the county Cork in Ireland. The bar was quiet, the beer was excellent, the pool table was fast and the televisions were muted and tuned to the University of Tennessee football game, and the Professional Bull Riders' rodeo. Outstanding.
I'm afraid that's more or less all I had time to see, because the business that took me there occupied the rest of the weekend. Congratulations are in order to my new brother in law. They played "Georgia on My Mind" at the reception, so that my father could have appropriate music for a last dance with his daughter. I have only rarely seen the man so moved, or happy.
New Book
The Geek With a .45 has begun a new book. It's got a grand premise: a thousand years after 1776, America is triumphant:
A surprising number of us went back for the Millennium. Many went by proxy and virtual, but more than any would have ever expected loaded their precious meat into quantum shuttles, to blink into an orbit teeming with craft of every description, hailing from every corner of the explored galaxies. No one who arrived in person needed to ask the motive of the other. The urge to lay ones actual foot, claw or tentacle upon the ground where it all began was strong, to fill one's lungs with air breathed by the founders, the refounders, and all the magnificent generations who built and sustained and sometimes just barely preserved The Vision.Good luck with it, old son.
So. Dennis the Peasant has issues with Pajamas Media. And is mocking them unmercifully.
What I find curious about this, (beyond the snarkiness of it all), is how the medium of blogs lends itself to such stuff. I mean, a business deal gone sour results in better comedy than I see on most sit-coms these days.
Disclaimer:
This blog is supposedly a member of Pajamas Media, (Grim got profiled and all), but I myself have absolutely no idea how all that is working out, having declined any notion or offer of making money off this blogging thing.
So. I went to see Shakespeare's Julius Caesar today, and I still marvel at how Shakespeare still speaks to me from a distance of 400 years.
I was struck by Marc Antony's funeral oration:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
This reminded me of Grim's post here
Yes, Senator Reid and Senator Durbin and Colonel Gardiner are honorable men. And the wicked may be blasted. But what else may get blasted along the way?
(yeah, I stole that).
ANYWAY, it seems incredible that there has been 8 straight days of rioting, violence and property destruction in Paris' suburbs and nobody has managed to get themselves killed yet.
The French can't even stage a race riot correctly.
UPDATE:
Austin Bay comments on the subject.
I can't see how the French are going to get themselves out of this one.
UPDATE 2:
Tim Blair weighs in.
And the Belmont Club.
And the Religious Policeman thinks he knows who started it all.
UPDATE 3:
Chiraq finally notices the smell of burning cars. (hat tip: Instapundit).
Trip
Not sure how much I'll be able to post while out of town. I trust that Daniel, Eric and Joel will fill the empty space if their own schedules permit. Otherwise, feel free to use the comments section to this post to argue about whatever you like. :)
See you Monday, if not before.
Alito
The nomination of Alito has been a good thing for the country, if only so we could have this debate. The question is, "We've come to something of a settlement on a woman's rights. Now, what rights does a father deserve, and how do we balance the two?" The de facto answer is that we don't: the father's sole reproductive right is to keep his pants on. After that, the woman alone has the choices.
This answer has been reached because of two separate strains of American thought. The feminist strain is well understood. But there is a masculine approach here as well, of which I've been a long-term member, which holds that men have duties and ought to be bound by honor. The sentiment is conveyed by John Wayne's character in Rio Grande, speaking of his son's enlistment in the cavalry: "He must learn that a man's word to anything, even his own destruction, is his honor."
The de facto answer is the cross-roads of those two modes of thinking. The feminists insist that abortion be seen as a medical procedure that is the woman's business and no one else's. The child has no rights that ought to bind her, because the advocates for the woman's position in our law insist on that point. The masculine understanding, however, holds that the man's rights are overwhelmed by his responsibility for the child. The men who have ruled the discussion, men like me, feel that fathering a child is an awesome duty and one that ought to bind you. The compromise position gives both sides what they want: the leading thinkers of the women's position have demanded freedom for women; the leading thinkers among men have demanded responsibility for men.
So here we are. Yet the compromise is not tenable.
Consider the comment thread here, in which the conflict is laid bare by one of the blogosphere's greats, Allah himself. The death of Allah's blog remains a subject of lamentation, but it's good to see him still active. [UPDATE: Slight editing change to update links, Aug 2008.] The key quote that he gets out of Lauren of Feministe.us is this:
I’m obviously no legal scholar, but it seems to be that Alito has to decide between being a good judge and upholding crappy laws. Personally, I’m not so much for judicial means (problematic, I know) as long as it reaches a satisfactory end.This is, of course, exactly what is meant by "judicial activism" -- the notion that the function of the judiciary is to strike down laws that are unpleasant, or undesirable, rather than unConstitutional. That is the real debate which we need to have, and it is one that has come directly to the fore here.
The fact is that the feminist and masculine reasoning on abortion is not compatible. We have reached a compromise that has lasted this long because the feminists were primarily interested in the effect of laws on women, and the men have primarily been interested in the duties of men. A compromise arose that gave each side what it wanted.
That cannot last. The same focus on duty that underlies the masculine position is horrified by this idea of the judiciary. The duty of the judiciary is to uphold, not make, the law. It is to judge constitutionality in order to preserve the Constitution, not to advance any other agenda. A political force that seeks judges who will advance their agenda in defiance of that duty is not acceptable. It does not matter if they are otherwise right, or otherwise wrong. The debate is pointless. They are demanding a class of public servant who will consider it proper to ignore core duties.
Nothing could be more unhealthy, or less likely to produce good government.