Posted under CoffeeTime & Culture
The rural people of Vermont as Ben Hewitt writes for Vermont Common’s blog:
“Summer came as summer does, fast and undeniable, bringing with it the means to fill each of its days from their gauzy 5 a.m. beginnings to the exhausted, body-sore collapse into sleep. Firewood to be cut, split, and stacked, a woodshed to be built for the firewood to be stacked into, a stand of mature fir to be thinned, skidded, and sawn.
Then the boards, redolent of the earthy sweetness of fresh-cut lumber, to be stickered and covered. The orchard to be pruned, the raspberries thinned and trellised, dozens of vegetable beds broadforked, weeded, and seeded. The sheep and pigs and cows turned out to pasture. Hay to be baled, bales to be loaded, thrown, stacked. And then the cows freshen and there is suddenly milk everywhere and even better, cream: To turn to butter, to cut the bitterness of strong coffee, to slurp by the cupful straight from a quart jar while standing before the open fridge in chainsaw chaps and a sweat-damp T-shirt. Fishing trips with the boys, walking downhill through the woods to the neighbor’s stream, where the brookies hide in the shadows of a tumbledown stone bridge, half or more fallen in, uncrossed for decades and perhaps even generations. Fish that dwell beneath bridges that can no longer be crossed: How apt a metaphor for 21st century America and her people.
The barely kept secret of my life is this: For all the activities that fill each of my days, I am not very good at much of anything. Sure, I can claim basic competence on many fronts but the hard truth is, I rarely if ever do anything with excellence. It seems as if my knowledge and skills have spread like a sudden rain atop a parched land, creating a latticework of water that runs helter-skelter across the surface, never accumulating, never soaking into the thirsty earth below.
You can read the rest of this post at the link above. Here are some others for your considerations also:
“15 facts about America’s Infrastructure” by Jennifer Lynch
“Sustainability in all things Except Rational Thinking” by SARTRE at BART
“The Left Wing Circular Firing Squad” by J.J. Jackson at Liberty Reborn
“The Fed and America’s Financial Reckoning Day” by Chuck Baldwin
“The Free State Project at 10″ by its founder, Jason Sorens
“Neocon Blowback” by Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com
“How American Became an Emipre” by Bill Bonner at Lew Rockwell.com
and my own “Man from Nowhere” in TAC
Bede on 26 Jul 2011 at 9:55 pm #
Justin Raimondo’s article is disturbing on many accounts. Although some of the people Breivik quotes are neocons, many of them are not. It’s odd that Raimondo mocks the threat of Cultural Marxism when many publications he’s written for (e.g. Chronicles) have warned for years about the effects of Cultural Marxism. I’m quite critical of US support to Israel, but I think that some antiwar libertarians have come to hate Israel with such a passion that it completely clouds their judgement where they end up becoming Muslim sympathizers — oddly, siding against Europeans and with Muslims in Europe. Ditto for their embrace of the Third World invasion of the West — where ironically they’re now walking in lockstep with the open-borders neocons. I’ve come to the conclusion that many of these libertarian types are living in a complete fantasy land.
A more nuanced article about Islam’s presence in Western countries is Fjordman’s ”When Treason Becomes The Norm: Why The Proposition Nation, Not Islam, Is Our Primary Enemy“
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/06/when-treason-becomes-norm-why.html
BTW, good find on America’s infrastructure. I recently read a summary of the report from the corps of engineers. It seems that America’s infrastructure is falling apart and there’s not really anything that we can probably do about it.
Sean Scallon on 27 Jul 2011 at 2:01 am #
I take it the reason we have so many articles about Breivik recently is the fact the term “cultural Marxism” is something we’ve all picked up from Chronicles or Pat Buchanan or what have you even though Breivik himself pretty much slipped out of the “paleo” orbit to embrace Masonism by his love for the Knights Templar. So in a sense he went from Chronicles to Atl. Right would you agree?
What is the solution then if violence is no solution? We better answer this question before there are more Breiviks. Obviously we need to restrict immigration from Muslim countries (no adherents, no need to build mosques) but one also need to engender some kind of Christian, Western revival in order to negate both Islam and the cultural Marxists.
Aaron on 27 Jul 2011 at 5:02 am #
“Treason”? Nuanced?
Aaron on 27 Jul 2011 at 5:03 am #
SS writes: “We better answer this question before there are more Breiviks.”
Steve Sailer and Peter Hitchens have suggested that the massacre might have had more to do with anabolic steroids than with ideology.
Kirt Higdon on 27 Jul 2011 at 10:49 am #
Oh come on. Do we even know he was juicing? If roids were the cause then we may expect many, many more of these atrocities.
Woden on 27 Jul 2011 at 5:14 pm #
In regards to Raimondo’s article, it should also be noted that ABB also quoted Ludwig von Mises in his manifesto and has mentioned his support of the Austrian school in other posts.
Woden on 27 Jul 2011 at 5:21 pm #
“Breivik himself pretty much slipped out of the “paleo” orbit to embrace Masonism by his love for the Knights Templar. So in a sense he went from Chronicles to Atl. Right would you agree?”
I don’t get this at all. Alt Right supports Freemasonry and the Knights Templar? I must have missed these articles.
Aaron on 27 Jul 2011 at 5:41 pm #
Yes, we know he was juicing. Sailer and Hitchens quoted Breivik’s own words.
Obviously nobody’s saying steroids were “the cause” of it. Hitchens and Sailer just suggest that the steroid use might be a more important factor than the ideology.
Sempronius on 27 Jul 2011 at 8:31 pm #
“What is the solution then if violence is no solution? We better answer this question before there are more Breiviks. Obviously we need to restrict immigration from Muslim countries (no adherents, no need to build mosques) but one also need to engender some kind of Christian, Western revival in order to negate both Islam and the cultural Marxists.”
Mr Scallon, forgive me, but your statement above calls to mind one of H.L. Mencken’s gems. Mencken wrote, “When people say we need more religion what they really mean is we need more police.”
A Christian “revival” is one of the last things we need. (What a mess those clowns will make.) As a matter of fact we don’t need a Christian revival at all.
Instead, we could profit from a really good defenestration.
Not to mention some lion breeders…
Matt Weber on 27 Jul 2011 at 9:38 pm #
“I don’t get this at all. Alt Right supports Freemasonry and the Knights Templar? I must have missed these articles.”
I took him to mean that Breivik moved away from traditional Christian conservatism towards the secular/pagan kind exemplified by sites like AltRight, not that Altright is specifically Masonic or anything. Altright has some Christians, but its general character is definitely secular/nonreligious
C Bowen on 27 Jul 2011 at 10:40 pm #
Of our sphere, Alt Right is the only site that even entertains that Islam is a great religion, if it should remain in its geography (Derick Turner); Richard Hoste wrote that it was a foregone conclusion Europe would go Muslim, but no need to spend too much time worrying about it as the gene pool will do a decent job with it; and remaining NSDAP sympathizers, or contemporary Far Rightists who comment, have pointed out the violation of ethics in killing Nordics.
The most American response I have scene in the comments at Alt Right has been, boiled down, nobody will actually care about this, and neither should we. The West has been supporting various terrorists for years, in so many ways–Nelson Mandela being more of a kingpin then a loan wolf, is an interesting example, but we all know the lesson at the heart is the bombing of the King David Hotel and the USS Liberty. Most of us are not naive about the ways of the world, but the complete attempt to erase from the historical memory is bound to lead to contradictions that don’t sit well.
Anyway, I reject the connection to the Alt Right community such as it is.
In this great rush of talk on the matter, lets keep in mind Norway is probably not a place we can much understand, having not lived there or experienced those sunny nights which I trust means the country is half-mad to begin with. One of my first experiences with grasping an understanding of the Far Right, happened to come via the (in my understanding of the time) Heavy Metal church burnings of the 1990s. The most infamous behind the arsons, Varg Vikernes (fresh from prison), released a quote denouncing the attack on ethical, and ideological (linking the Right to Zionism) grounds.
To understand the attack, one would actually have to understand Norway, and not just view it through the prism of Anglo-Neocon steam valves like the bizarre concoction of brew in the Invade the World, but lets rethink Inviting the World, with a Left Side that says, everybody but the Muslims, and a Right side that says Invade the World, but Don’t Invite It.
I dare say, for the better part of the past 10 years, this collective had been saying this would end badly; that there was something very contradictory about the message in present day Media and the actions of the State. Throw in contemporary culture (divorce, single mother upbringings, welfare state support, Big Pharma drugs, violent video games) and to feign shock…well, I guess that means we are still human.