Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
In an important book, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character, which appeared in 1992, Charles Sykes speaks of “victim chic” and deplores its “catalog of immanent grievance and infinite self-assertion.” Sykes quotes former Assistant Education Secretary Chester Finn, who had it exactly right: “In our no-fault society, it is acceptable to be a victim but not to be held responsible for one’s own situation or for that of one’s children.” We have, Sykes argues, torn up the moral contract underwriting “shared middle-class values” and installed a “victimist” ideology in its place, eliminating social distinctions “based on individual success.” We all experience unfairness and injustice, he concludes, “but that does not mean we need to turn them into all-purpose alibis.”
The confirmation of Sykes’ thesis is all around us. It seems as if we now live in societies filled mainly with victims: victims of mainstream culture, victims of exclusionary daycare policies, victims of transfats, victims of the schoolyard game of tag where some poor child is made to feel “it,” victims of secondhand smoke, victims of the tax system, victims of anti-terror laws, victims of those who pose as victims, victims of state lotteries, victims of potentially lethal glass mugs in British pubs, victims of our genes, victims of “puritanism” (i.e., moral propriety), victims of this and victims of that — those who make up what Bruce Thornton in Plagues of the Mind has aptly called “the conga line of victimhood,” to which the nanny state materially contributes.
And this new class of victims is abundantly complemented by an army of “survivors,” cashing in on what they regard as the prestige of those who have experienced real, historical calamities. Once we were content to say, as in the title of a famous poetry collection by D.H. Lawrence, “Look! We have come through,” and leave it at that. Now we are driven to proclaim our newfound status. We are survivors of this phobia or that phobia, survivors of one or another disease, survivors of tenement life, survivors of reality TV shows, survivors of the free market and corporate industry viewed as a great and oppressive structure of domination, survivors of brutal parents, survivors of feral children, survivors of workplace humiliation, survivors of scalding cups of McDonald’s coffee, survivors of what-have-you, all clamoring for attention, recognition, sympathy, and compensation.
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It gets worse. Everyone is innocent, it seems, except those who are prepared to assume responsibility not only for themselves but for their cultural patrimony as well. Despite the superficial differences, it is really the same quivering mindset, the same passion for submission, that governs our behavior in both the domestic and international realms. In the former we regard ourselves as victims of social circumstances before which we protest our helplessness, demanding that the state pay welfare retribution to those who come bandaged with grievances. In the latter, we suffer for the sins of our precursors and implore forgiveness for their evident transgressions, pleading to be shriven by our enemies. For both we and our enemies are regarded as victims of the same tainted past.
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We have lulled ourselves to sleep with the fashionable tranquillizers of the day, the “facile formulations” of current social and political nonthinking which we use to absolve ourselves of personal responsibility, cultural dignity, and historical conviction. To extend Honig’s Michael Jackson analogy, we are moonwalking backward as an unforgiving future advances with determined tread.
Moonwalking backward. That’s perfect.
Going through the motions of walking forward, in reality engaged in a full retreat and damn well knowing it. And all the time, oh so much fun to watch. But not getting anywhere near where we’re supposed to be getting.
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