Month: June 2023

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Monterey Pop Festival June 16-18, 1967

Monterey PopIt transpired 56 summers ago, this June, the granddaddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what is known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of patchouli, sandalwood incense, not to mention the aroma of what was variously known as cannabis sativa, marijuana, reefer, tea, Miss Green, mary jane, pot, weed, grass, pacalolo (Hawaiian term), loco weed, and just plain dope. But my friends and I, students at an all-boys Catholic high school that enforced a strict dress code, were fairly straight: we partook of no orgies, smoked no dope, and slept in a motel. The wild stuff came later in our lives, when we were better able to handle it.

I have in my hand the program book of the Festival, in mint condition. Do I hear $1,000? On the first page there is a quotation from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night, become the touches of sweet harmony.

Hendrix MontereyAh yes, I remember it well, the "sweet harmony" of the whining feedback of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster plugged into his towering Marshall amps and the "soft stillness" of the The Who smashing their instruments to pieces. Not to be outdone, Jimi lit his Strat on fire with lighter fluid. The image is burned into my memory. It shocked my working-class frugality. I used to baby my Fender Mustang and I once got mad at a girl for placing a coke can on my Fender Deluxe Reverb amp.

On the last page of the program book, a more fitting quotation: the lyrics of Dylan's The Times They Are A'Changin', perhaps the numero uno '60s anthem to youth and social ferment. (Click on the link; great piano version. Live 1964 guitar version.) Were the utopian fantasies of the '60s just a load of rubbish? Mostly, but not entirely.

"Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been."

Tunes and Footage:

The Who, My Generation. "I hope I die before I get old."

Mamas and Papas, California Dreamin'

Mamas and Papas, I Call Your Name

Canned Heat, Rollin' and Tumblin'

Byrds, Chimes of Freedom

Otis Redding, Try a Little Tenderness

Scott MacKenzie, San Francisco

Jefferson Airplane, Embryonic Journey

YouTuber comment: 

For all the people getting sad nostalgia from this, whether it’s from missing friends or missing the good days, please don’t be sad, be happy that you got to live through this time and experience it with your friends, I’m 16 and feel so out of place in this generation, yes I have lots friends but for them fun is crammed in someone’s basement blasting dubstep and fighting over games of pong, you guys did well, be proud of it.

Thanks. We're proud. Perhaps too proud.

The hipster-monk Tom Merton would have found good things to say about the festival. He was 52 in '67.

Do Not Underestimate Russia’s Resolve

An American Thinker article by our friend, James Soriano.   

The two camps differ not only on the cause of war, they have completely different world views as to how a system of sovereign states works.   Russian war policy is the epitome of a broader realist approach to international affairs:  states have interests, not friends, and they must rely on self-help to do what is necessary to protect themselves.  Accordingly, Russia went to war not to conquer, but from a no-nonsense threat assessment.  By contrast, the United States entered the fray with an ideologically charged missionary spirit.  The U.S. has long seen itself as the savior of the world, the “indispensable nation,”  Its diplomatic discourse often lapses into moralizing rhetoric.  It believes that a world filled with more democracies would be a safer and better place than it is today.  It is disdainful of traditional balance of power politics and favors a “rules based” world order.  The Russian view of power politics is “bottom up” and conservative.  It insists that a state’s historical and geographic circumstances must be taken into account.  It grapples with the question, “What is there?”  The American view of the world is “top-down” and revolutionary.  It is less concerned with historical contexts than with hypothetical theorizing about how people and states ought to behave.  It grapples with the question, “What should be there?”

[. . .]

One side is saying that world peace is served when the great powers exercise self-restraint and are respectful of other powers’ security.  The other side is saying that maintaining a sphere of influence is implicitly an aggressive act.  One side is saying that tension between the great powers is not the result of the particular character of their regimes, but rather is built into the international system whenever a great power veers out of its lane.  The other side is saying that a regime’s character is exactly the point, because different characters affect the relations among the states in different ways.  One side emphasizes historical and geographic circumstances as a constant in world affairs.  The other side de-emphasizes these in favor of an overlay of law and ethical precepts.

Many Russians believe that U.S. talk about “spheres of influence,” and respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty, and the need for a “rules-based” international order is only a moralizing cover for what the United States really wants — which is regime change in Moscow.  Russia has suspected this all along.  Ironically, it sees the United States pretty much as the United States sees itself:  as a messianic power spreading the good news of democracy around the world.  Russia knows that if it had acquiesced to Ukraine’s joining NATO, if it had been passive in allowing an opposing military alliance to push itself right up against its fence, then Russia would permanently lose its freedom of action and any claim to great power status.  It would have to fit pliantly into an American-designed world order.  It would have to go along with the U.S., rather than to present itself as an alternative to it.  Going back to Napoleon, Russia has a history of opposing hegemonic power bidders.  If it had gone along with NATO-on-the-Dneiper it would have prostrated itself to one.   It would become like Europe, another American appendage. 

The Russian people get this.  They sense that the battle in Ukraine is not just about Ukraine.  It in an existential fight, a struggle of life or death, between them and the West.  To them a challenge originating in the West has once again reared up to put Russia under overwhelming pressure.  They believe that losing this fight would not amount to just a setback from which Russia could later recover; it would be tantamount to Russia’s losing its historical identity, not merely as a country but as a civilization, for Russia is a civilization culturally distinct from that of the West, and not, as many Westerners mistakenly believe, an un-democratized expanse on Europe’s eastern edge.

Extremism and Leftist Projection: Capital Punishment

This is the second in a series.  (The first is here.) You will have noticed that leftists call us extremists though there is nothing extreme about our views. They are all of them moderate. What our political enemies do is to project their extremism into us. Projection is a well-known psychological defense mechanism. What I am doing in this series is cataloging political forms of projection as practiced by hard-leftists, 'wokesters,' 'progressives,' whatever you want to call them.

So consider capital punishment. At the one extreme are those who deem  it always and everywhere wrong. This bunch includes every Democrat politician at the present time.  (I am open to correction if you can prove me mistaken.) At the opposite extreme, or in the vicinity of the opposite extreme, are those who readily employ capital punishment for all manner of supposed 'crimes.' There are of course plenty of historical examples, but at the present day the Iranians have distinguished themselves in this regard, which is not to say that other Muslim countries are much better.

Under Iran's penal code, people can be executed for crimes that are not considered among "the most serious" under international law, such as drug trafficking.

The UN expert said vague charges, such as "enmity against God" and "corruption on Earth", were meanwhile used to sentence individuals to death for participation in protests, for other forms of dissent or where there was a lack of evidence for the accusations.

Judges trying capital and other cases also relied heavily on forced confessions extracted through torture and other forms of duress to prove guilt, he added.

[. . .]

At least 17 women were executed in total, eight more than in 2020, it adds. They included Zahra Esmaili and Maryam Karimi, who were convicted of murdering abusive husbands. Esmaili's lawyer is cited as saying that she suffered a heart attack as she watched several men being executed in front of her, and that officials still hanged her lifeless body.

Two men convicted of crimes committed when they were children were also put to death, according to the report. One of them, Arman Abdolali, found guilty of murdering his girlfriend in 2013 when he was 17, was taken to the gallows seven times in the months prior to his execution, it says.

In Iran, homosexuals are executed. By contrast, here in the decadent USA and elsewhere in the decadent West, homosexuals are not merely tolerated  but officially celebrated, celebrated by the government, as if their 'lifestyle' were on a moral par with every other 'lifestyle.'  

And so again we see that the position of  what I call the American conservative is moderate, sane, and reasonable. As an American conservative rooted in the principles and values of the Founding documents, I  say you are morally obtuse if you think that there is no conceivable circumstance in which capital punishment would be justified. And I say that you are both morally and intellectually obtuse if you agree with Roman, Nazi, or Iranian penology. This American conservatism itself avoids two extremes, that of throne-and-altar reaction (and its close cousin 'post-liberalism') and an extreme laissez-faire libertarianism-libertinism that overvalues the economic while undervaluing if not suppressing the cultural.  It takes on board the best of classical liberalism while avoiding the noxious extremes.

The Assault on Reality

Man wins first place in women's cycling event.  Why not, if there is no biological difference between a man and a woman?  If a man can 're-imagine' himself into woman so as to enter into athletic competition with them, then surely an adult can 're-imagine' himself into a child for the same purpose, as in the prescient Seinfeld episode in which Kramer dominates the dojo.

And if there is no biological difference between men and women, how could anyone reasonably kvetch  that 'man,' 'men,' and 'he' exclude women? You can't exclude what doesn't exist. By the same token, 'woman' does not exclude men.

Extremism and Leftist Projection: The Border

Mainstream leftists promote extreme ideas and policies; mainstream conservatives do not. But this fact does not stop leftists from projecting their extremism into us. They call us extremists! Uncomfortable with their extremism, and not wanting to admit it, they suppress their awareness of  their extremism by projecting it into us. There are numerous examples of this political-psychological projection. This entry will discuss just one. 

Consider the question of national borders. My thesis is that conservatives at the present time in the USA are moderates on all or most questions pertaining to national borders and their enforcement.

A moderate position is one that is more or less midway  between two extremes. One extreme is the de facto if not de jure open borders  view according to which anyone at any time may immigrate  without being in any way vetted as to health status, criminal status, or in any other way. The opposite extreme is the closed border view according to which no immigration of anyone at any time is permitted by law and the law is strictly enforced. 

Now no one is for the second extreme. No one in the USA holds that all immigration should be illegal, than no one should ever be granted political asylum, etc.

But the Biden administration's position is very close to the first extreme. That cannot be denied by anyone who is  both well-informed and intellectually honest.

The conservative position is commonsensical and moderate, lying as it does between the extremes. Conservatives, to harp on the obvious, are not opposed to immigration; they are opposed to illegal immigration. Among conservatives there are debates as to how latitudinarian immigration policy ought to be. But that is a further question.

I could go on from here and show that on every or almost every issue that divides the nation, mainstream conservatives are moderates. I solicit your help. Tell me in the ComBox what those further issues are and how the mainstream conservative treads the via media.

What Motivates George Soros?

What could motivate anyone to use his billions to bankroll the unravelling of the fragile fabric of civil society?  

Miranda Devine explained last night on Fox that Soros is a utopian who believes that only after the status quo is razed to the ground can we start over and build utopia. But utopia is "Like, nowheresville, man" as Maynard G. Krebs once remarked. Or at least it is nowhere we can get to by individual or collective effort. The eschaton is not up for immanentization. 

The deepest metaphysical error of the Left is the conceit that there is no reality antecedent to human beliefs and desires, and that everything is susceptible to human manipulation and production, to something like Heideggerian Machenschaft. 

Devine on Soros. Check out the photos. "Birds of a feather flock together." 

Kamala with Soros scion.

Memo to useful idiots: if you vote Dem, you should know what you are voting for.  You need to wake up to wokery.

The Smart Home Blues

Sino-styled surveillance is upon us. No up-to-date police state without it. So only a dumbass would spring for a 'smart home.' Be smart, and keep your house dumb.  How dumb? As dumb as a ding-dong dumbbell Dem.

In today’s world of politically correct insanity, it’s truly baffling that a significant number of Americans willingly invite in their homes these advanced devices that constantly eavesdrop on their conversations and actions. Yet, that’s become the norm with gadgets like Echo and Alexa, which feel like creepy spies sitting in the corner, recording every noise you make. Well, one guy learned the hard way just how risky that idea can be when his doorbell accused him of being “racist” and Amazon completely shut down his entire “smart home.” The guy’s name is Brandon Jackson, and he gave a detailed account of what went down that fateful day.

Story here.

The Difference between Philosophy and Polemics

Top o' the Stack. 

Tony Flood comments:

Congrats on another vital post, Bill. You referred to our spectatorship and to theoria without adverting to the etymological connection between them. (You can't do everything in one post! (:^D) ) In Philosophy after Christ, p. 39n1, I noted: 

The Greek theoreō (θεωρέω) means to look at; gaze; spectate; form a picture. “Theory” comes from the noun for “spectacle” and the verb “to behold,” theaomai (θεάομαι), from which we get “theater.” A theoros is a spectator. “When all the people who had gathered to witness this spectacle (θεωρίαν, theōrian) saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away” (Luke 23:48). “He [Jesus] beholds (θεωρεῖ) a commotion with people crying and wailing loudly” (Mark 5:38).
 
You'll no doubt see other implications.

Saturday Night at the Obituaries

Astrud Gilberto, the Girl from Ipanema, has passed on at age 83. The genre, Bossa Nova, was popular from the late '50s to the mid-'60s. 

"Blame It on the Bossa Nova" is a song written by Cynthia Weil (lyrics) and Barry Mann which was a 1963 hit single for Eydie Gormé, reaching number 7 on the Hot 100 in Billboard in March 1963. 

'Route 66' actor George Maharis is dead at 94.  

Jack Kerouac in a letter from 17 January 1962: "Everybody is making money off my ideas, like those "Route 66" TV producers, everybody except me . . . ." (Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed. Charters, Viking 1999, p. 326; see also p. 461 and pp. 301-302.) 

Here is the Nelson Riddle theme music from the TV series.  And here is part of an episode from the series which ran from 1960-1964.  George Maharis bears a striking resemblance to Jack, wouldn't you say? And notice Maharis is riding shotgun.  Kerouac wasn't a driver.  Neal Cassady (The Dean Moriarty of OTR) was the driver. Neal at the Wheel

Now dig Bobby Troup.  Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Dr. Feelgood,  and others have covered the tune. How should we describe the good doctor's performance? Energetic? Nay, manic. Makes this old man want to hit the road, which he will be doing before too long. Every true American loves the open road. And if you don't? Then you are not a true American. The version by Asleep at the Wheel is especially good.  "Four on the road, one in the hand," as Neal Cassady says somewhere. 

Tina Turner died recently at 83.  Some of us remember her mainly in connection with the abusive Ike. 

It's Gonna Work Out Fine 

Enough death for one night.

We Need a Broad Coalition to Defeat the Left

Substack latest.

Tony Flood comments, with characteristic erudition:

A good case, Bill. I wouldn't say I'm looking for atheists to work with, but a conservative's atheism would be no barrier to my doing so. While reading, I thought of Antony Flew (not to be confused with Anthony Flood), once a target of academia's cancel culture. In 2001, the Mises Institute, then run by trad Catholic Lew Rockwell, awarded him its Schlarbaum Prize. His 1981 The Politics of Procrustes tore into Rawls's Theory of Justice. This was all before he went deistic, as was his 1995 "The Terrors of Islam." My friend David Gordon's brief notice of Flew's death credits the influence of David Conway to his abandonment of his long-held atheism.

I have the Politics of Procrustes in my library and drew upon it when I taught political philosophy at Case Western Reserve University. Flew had a salutary influence on my thinking in those days, as did Robert Nozick, although I find libertarians too 'economic' in their thinking and insufficiently appreciative of cultural considerations. 

If Tony has Conway's book and is willing to part with it, he can contact me. By the way, if you are bookman looking to get hitched, make sure you marry a woman who won't mind living in a library. 

And a bookman these days is well-advised to develop some ancillary skills.

Collective Guilt

Are there such things as collective guilt and collective responsibility? In Black Reparations, I put forth the following principle:

Only those who are victims of a crime are entitled to reparations for the crime, and only those who are the perpetrators of a crime are obliged to pay reparations for it.

A commenter, not impressed by the principle, offers this by way of rebuttal:

Continue reading “Collective Guilt”

Confuse Hate and Dissent and You Will Find Hate Groups Everywhere

Did you know that Moms for Liberty is a hate group?  

At least that’s the view of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-left political organization, which is drawing scorn for labeling Moms for Liberty and other parental rights organizations as “extremist organizations,” including them on the same “hate map” as neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

Like many SPLC critics, [Vivek] Ramaswamy dismissed the attack as “a farce.”

“The SPLC is a tentacle of the woke-industrial complex,” he told NHJournal. “I’m proud to be the first candidate to sign the Moms for Liberty Parent Pledge. Tomorrow [Thursday, June 8], I’ll be in New Hampshire hosting a Parents Rights Town Hall with my favorite ‘hate group’ (badge of honor).”

Here is what these domestic terrorists and insurrectionists look like. Call me naive, but they strike me as sweet, loving, and lovable suburban mommies who want what is good for their children and have a healthy sense of the difference between good and evil.

Just for fun check out this SPLC Hate Map. It includes a nifty search utility. Look up how much hate is in your state! Fun for the whole family. In Arizona in 2022 there were 39 hate groups, including a chapter of Moms for Liberty in Pima County. Yikes!

The SPLC calls these groups "anti-government groups." The SPLC-ers are the kind of people who think that being FOR limited government is being AGAINST government. 

Are you anti-government? I'm not. I'm anti-police state. Can you wrap your head around the difference? 

ComBox open. I want your opinion. Is the USA at the present time a police state? Dan Bongino says it is. Agree? Adduce evidence  for and against.

Addenda (6/9)

Dan Bongino: The Police State is here. 

"You have to understand what's going on," Bongino added. "The timing here is not accidental. Evidence came out today, hard evidence that the president of the United States, while he was Obama's vice president, was involved in the biggest political payoff in human history and a political scandal.

"This is all about making Trump go away and covering up for not just Biden, but covering up for Obama. Remember, Biden was the vice president. If he was paid a bribe for policy decisions, what policy decisions? He can't make them. He was Obama's vice president.

"Everything is about covering up for the Obama-Biden regime. That's all this is. The timing here is not accidental."

Rudy Giuliani: We're a 'Banana Republic,' 'Fascist'

"We have these allegations of massive bribes to Joe Biden," Giuliani said. "I mean, I've seen them. I know them. I've heard them. I've heard them on tape. To me, it's astounding. And the FBI has been investigating these for four years. And done nothing.

"Never did a search warrant. Never interviewed a witness, and now they're taking a document dispute, and trying to make it into a federal crime. I mean, there's no comparison between the $5 million bribe and a document dispute; the $31 million from China and the document dispute.

"It's ridiculous. I mean, we're a banana republic and a fascist country. If we do things like this and let them get away with it."

John Hinderaker: Trump Indictment Watch

The criminal prosecutions of Trump are thin if not entirely baseless, and they obviously are politically motivated. Nevertheless, they illustrate why Trump should not again be president.

Reader J.I.O comments and I basically agree:

No, Mr. Hinderaker. You are writing nonsense and I can prove it to anybody:
Turn all that you opine around and ask: "Do you want anyone so weak towards the heat in the kitchen, in the kitchen?" I sure don't.
 
Trump, no if's and's or but's, has the best and best enduring interests of the United States at heart, full speed ahead. And that's best for all the nations of this world as well.
 
Now let's examine a little more the track of 'candidates' along the lines you favor. They're thinking of that brass ring out there so they are NEVER focused on the task at hand. 
 
Hence you can count on two things, 1. their work is not their best, or, 2. they fob it off on someone else, so it's not really their work, they sit as a figure head, you know, that statue on the prow of an old sailing ship, a superstitious talisman. To sum up your favored candidates self-screening process: one finger in the wind, one eye looking backwards, the other eye looking WAY down the road at their all-along real goal.
 
Trump alone can turn things around. He has proven over four years that he can.  He cannot be bought. He is tough as nails and can withstand the withering hatred directed at him from all sides. He doesn't need the job. He is not a career politician. He can have at most one term in office. He loves his country, and, contrary to the brazen lies of the filthy Dems, he is moderate in his views. There is nothing extreme about them.
 
The question to put to well-meaning useful idiots like Hinderaker and so many other yap-and-scribble never-trumping pseudo-cons is: which side are you on, man?  Grow a pair and man up. Are you not embarrassed to be a lapdog of the Left?