In Which We Go To The Parade

From an inauspicious beginning, Memorial Day evolved into one of those happy family days you can't plan, but sometimes "happen."

I made the command decision (Mr. W. was leaving town for business, so he had no say) that we were neither going to the pool all day nor staying indoors lounging (the default holiday postures), but going to the National Memorial Day Parade.

The news was not met with the unalloyed delight of innocent children eager for a patriotic outing, but rather with the highly alloyed, indeed jaded, protest of spoiled kids who can't face heat, humidity, effort, or time away from their precious gizmos.

Which only convinced me of the plan's fitness and necessity. (They look smart, my children, yet still have not grasped that whining causes Mom to dig in her heels.) "We're losing our country because half our citizens don't think there's anything worth celebrating or getting off our duffs for, there are men who fought in our wars who will be there and we are dang well going to applaud them and show in public that we love the country and care about these things."

I played the guilt card, I'm not sorry.

I am not a monster, however, and sweetened the pot with the promise of the Air & Space Museum and dinner in its cafeteria after. Plus we were going by subway, which was enough to get the little dudes on board; they are Metro enthusiasts.

So we slathered on the sunscreen and departed. We disembarked at the Navy Memorial stop, and paused to enjoy the waters there, and also to laugh at a drake and mallard who were resting in the fountains. (Shades of Make Way for Ducklings).  The memorial  at ground level has the feel of a ship sailing through downtown. Stand in the center of it and you get the feeling you're about to crash into the National Archives. It's pretty cool how the design makes concrete seem to have motion.

Then we walked a couple of blocks more to the start of the parade route, pausing at an ice cream truck for "snowies." Overpriced, but I rightly determined that huge cups of syrup-covered ice would ward off whining about the heat, which really is oppressive when it's 95F, humid and ricocheting off black-top.

The National Memorial Day Parade features veterans from every war America's ever fought. Re-enactors wear authentic uniforms for the early days, but real Veterans come for all the other engagements. The first year there were still vets from WWI, though no longer.

It's odd what kids know and what delights them. 9-yr-old Weed was delighted to see Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders and thrilled beyond reason when a PT boat paraded by. Youngest Weed, 6, provided knowing commentary throughout. When "survivors of Pearl Harbor" were announced, for example, he turned to me very seriously and said,

Pearl Harbor, you know, was the start of World War II.

I told him the war had actually already begun, but he was correct that it began for the US. To which he replied,

Well, right, but it wouldn't be a **world** war if we weren't in it.

Where does this kid get this stuff? He's six, and I don't recall checking Curious George Goes To Anzio out of the library. 9-yr-old knew all about the Code Talkers.

And the Band of Brothers and other heroes he has now seen in real life.
The Kuwaitis send a float in gratitude and a sizable number of them march in front of the float too.

Then came a review of military trucks and such, plus the marching of recently returned vets from Iraq & Afghanistan. By that time the kids were starting to get antsy, but I told 'em we weren't moving 'til we had cheered the men and women who were defending us right now, which we did, and loudly. So I felt better.

Then, true to my word, I marched them a few blocks over to the Air & Space, and my kids have now had the quintessential growing-up-in-Washington experience. That of participating in some massive event on the Mall in summer, being drenched in sweat, and finding relief in the icy blast of air that greets you as you enter the Smithsonian. Ahhhh.

Hubble 3D, shown on the museum's Imax screen, was an unlooked-for patriotic experience. I was mostly looking for a movie to cool the kids down in, but it's a remarkable film showcasing what Hubble is showing us and documenting the final updating of its lenses by a shuttle crew.

You come away both with a sense that the universe is more vast and astonishing than you've even imagined (you can see into a star nursery light years away) and simultaneous wonder at what men can achieve. It was truly awesome.

So... then early dinner, more museum crawling, and in a very pleasant, breezy, early evening, we took our time getting home, stopping to play in fountains and enjoy the remainder of the day.  Everyone was cheerful, and even Eldest Weed agreed it was a very nice day ("although the parade was somewhat boring.")

Memorial Day 2010

Executive Mansion
Washington, D.C.
November 21, 1864

Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln

Of note: How we bury the war dead

Supplemental Theology

Shamelessly pinched from here,
curtsy Kaching!

Trinity Sunday

Andrea del Sarto, Disputation over the Trinity

It's been quite a while (if ever) since I've heard a homily on Trinity Sunday with a message other than, "Yeah, no one 'gets' it, but it's true." I've no objection to acknowledging the mysterious nature of the doctrine, but as food for the journey it's quite weak to leave it at that. Perhaps a little Donne for the occasion:

Sonnet XIV

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.

or even Belloc:

A Trinity

Of three in One and One in three
My narrow mind would doubting
be
Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
And all at once were Juliet.

Regensberg Unpacked

Just arrived from Amazon is Robert Reilly's new book that appears to be a thorough intellectual accounting of how Islam got where it is now. He attributes the problem to a disastrous theological turn in Sunni Islam in the 9th century.

Can't wait to read it...it's said this is the best contribution to Western understanding of the roots of Islamic terrorism since Bernard Lewis.

Mr. W. attended a lecture Reilly gave somewhere or other last week and came back with a few anecdotes. Remember the group of Iraqi Muslims who'd had their right hands chopped off Saddam at Abu-Ghraib and were flown to Texas to receive prosthetic arms? Reilly's the guy behind the scenes who arranged that.

He reported reading a translation of the letter one of those men wrote to his wife from prison the evening before his arm was butchered. Reilly said he'd hardly ever encountered such courage, faith and strength. It was a beautiful letter. Brought the translator to tears. In it the man encourages his wife to bear with courage what Allah allows and said the next time you see me I won't have a right arm, so you will be right arm.

Reilly had numerous accounts of how amazed and impressed Iraqis were by American kindness to them. He also reported that the average Iraqi Muslim does not subscribe to the strain of Islam that hates everyone but its own. He cited the example of an American chaplain who was told not to wear his crucifix while in Iraq and blew off that regulation. The local Iraqis called him "the Christian imam" and honored him.

In memory Mr. W. isn't sure if a second anecdote involved the same man or a second Christian chaplain, but in any case, the fellow was wounded and the local Muslim community felt horrible about it and gathered to pray for him.

That certainly comports with the wonderful signs of friendship and tolerance the Iraqis have shown for Christianity since the war, but I would like to know what Reilly would say about the other side of the story -- because in spite of those positive signs, the Christian community in Iraq is being decimated by extremists.

Maybe the book will shed light.

Mostly For Ms. R (nee M)

"Towards a grand unification of cutlery"

"Half the fun of hybrid cutlery is the peculiar names." 

Indeed. The spork and foon jokes never get old.

Too Cool

Virtual tour of the Sistine chapel with wraparound and zoom.

Now I'm Interested

I hadn't been following the Sestak thing (it doesn't strike me as that unusual that Parties try to shuffle personnel around to put their best candidates forward), but this from the Prez' presser yesterday caused me to say Hmmm.

President Barack Obama said Thursday that "nothing improper happened" regarding allegations that the White House offered Rep. Joe Sestak a job to get out of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.

Speaking at a press conference in the East Room, Obama said his administration would release an official response to the claim very soon.

So the President's statement is not the White House position?

Weekend Agenda

Now showing at the National Gallery:
The sacred made real: Spanish painting and culture 1600-1700.

Mary Eberstadt offers an enthusiastic review.

To the surprise of no one who has seen it, “The Sacred Made Real” has been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic since its first appearance in London in 2009. Secular sources acclaiming the show include among many more the Washington Post, whose reviewer Blake Gopnik suggested that it might “turn out to have been one of the most substantial, important events our Washington museum has hosted.”

She also ponders the meaning of the exhibit's run-away popularity, since the art is unabashedly Catholic.

the runaway success of “The Sacred Made Real” in London took even its organizers by surprise – including self-described agnostic Xavier Bray, the assistant curator who made it happen. Secular or not, the British and American publics have more than vindicated Bray’s aesthetic judgment. In cosmopolitan post-everything London, fully four times more people turned out to see this show than even he anticipated.

Such public enthusiasm for unapologetically, fervently, thoroughly Catholic art in the far-off country of Spain four centuries ago is worth pondering for a moment – all the more so since it comes at a time when the Church’s standing in the secular world hovers near an all-time low.

Update: If you're downtown on Memorial Day, stop in and see the exhibit on its closing day. It's well worth it. I enjoyed the paintings more than the polychrome sculptures, which are freakishly life-like --foreshadowings of Madam Tussaud. It's kind of cool to feel you're looking St. Ignatius right in the eye, but I'm not sure it's an artistic experience precisely, even if there is undeniable artistry in painting wood to look so lifelike.
Surprises: Mr. W. & I both noted the forceful manliness of the figures of Ignatius and St. Francis Borgia. So often in religious art the figure is so spiritualized as to be almost a wraith.  And although, as in this Ecce Homo, the figures are made hyper-real so as to provoke an outpouring of love and emotion, we were surprised that "Spanish realism" was not anything like so gory as we'd expected. Mr. W's favorite piece was the Ecce Homo linked above; mine a painting of a crucifix by Zubaran. With a black background, hung in an alcove, it seems like a sculpture.

Once Burned, Twice Shy?

Testosterone makes naive women less trusting.

You don't say? (It's really about brain chemistry, but the headline's hilarious to me.)

The Illustrated Republic

Shamelessly pinched from here.

...And Leave A Cuddly, Adorable Corpse

I'll never feel like a bad parent again: this 2-yr-old has a 2-pack-a day habit.

The government has offered to buy his parents a car if he stops, but they claim he gets too angry without smokes.

I'm not sure what's the most horrifying: that his parents got him hooked and he can't run and play, or that I didn't learn to smoke until college and never looked that cool.

Don't Mess With Texas

Did you hear about the big Texas school board fight over curriculum standards a few weeks ago? The news stories made it seem like a bunch of right wing loonies imposed their theories on everyone, irrespective of facts. Ann Althouse discovers it isn't so and, shockingly, WaPo reporters among others appear not to have done their homework. She compares the reporter's allegations to the actual texts and concludes:

Virtually everything cited in the article to make the curriculum seem controversial is misstated! Appalling!

The Genius of Woody Allen

Not only does Woody want Obama to be dictator for a few years, he had this to say in defense of Roman Polanski.

They should take the money they spent on the Polanski case and go after drug dealers and rapists.

Oy vey, what a meshuggeneh.

Fattening The Perky Little Tyrant File

Not that you need telling that Thomas Friedman has the soul of a tyrant, but he went and brazenly admitted it.

I have fantasized—don't get me wrong—but that what if we could just be China for a day?  I mean, just, just, just one day.  You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment.  I don't want to be China for a second, OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness.  But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.

He just knows he's got the "right" solutions, and he wants to impose them rather than debating them democratically. He just wants government to "work" with the authority and focus and stick-to-itiveness of the Chicoms. He is tired of democracy, poor baby.

You go first, Thom. 

Update: The Anchoress has a most excellent rant in the same vein, calling out Andrea Mitchell, Woody Allen et al and ending with a nice horse laugh at the tyrants' expense. 

Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are, and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world.
It is the ultimate fantasy of the narcissist. And we’ve got whole generations of them, in control of our media and our government, all intent on “remaking America.”

Columnists have probably always been horse's asses. Scarier for me is that more than half of my facebook friends cite the tyrants and their calls for tyranny with approval. They agree with Woody Allen that Obama should be dictator for a few years...just until things are "right," and then we can go "back" to freedom.

Wanna Bet?

Interesting political ads running in Alabama this season. This one ends, "They're not gonna call ME a racist."

Best of luck to him, but yes they will.

Zero Prudence Policies

Here is an example of how zero tolerance policies quickly become inhuman and absurd because they preclude rational thought and prudence. A freshman who is "a pleasure to have in class" was suspended for having his rosary at school. No, it's not a church and state thing. It's a gang thing.

Laguna says she was told the school has an unwritten policy regarding beads because they could be used to show gang affiliation. 

Unwritten policy! Woe to the law-abiding who run afoul of unwritten bureaucratic policies.

The principal claims it was insubordination, saying Laguna's actions, "endangered the safety, health, morals or welfare of himself or others."

Yes, we can all see how other children are endangered by the possibility their classmate might pray for them. Shanked by the 4th luminous mystery: happens all the time!

Whatever. The principal is another petty little tyrant helping us craft a society where what the majority has the "right" to do is dictated by imams, drug lords and gang members.

Pirates On Texas Lake

While El Presidente was lecturing Congress about how poorly Arizonans treat his people, Mexican pirates were terrorizing Texan vacationers.

Recall that Congress applauded and our President took El Presidente's side. We have a national government with no interest in defending the citizens of the United States.

Let's Talk About Illegal Not Mexicans

Most-Wanted terrorist spotted in Atlanta.
Curtsy:Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Let's Get Fired Up!

Pentecost, Fernando Gallego

Happy Feast Day, and wouldn't you know the day we celebrate speaking in tongues there'd be no one on duty to translate the Pope's Italian homily. Maybe the Spirit will help us understand it anyway. Asia News summarizes it thus:

The Apostles, together with believers of different communities, have brought this divine flame to the ends of the Earth, thus they opened a path for humanity, an illuminated road, and they collaborated with God who with his fire wants to renew the face of the earth. How different this fire is from that of war and bombs! How different the fire of Christ is, propagated by the Church, than that of the dictators of every age, even those of the last century, which left behind scorched earth. The fire of God, the fire of the Holy Spirit, is the fire of the bush that rages without burning. It is a flame that burns but does not destroy, indeed, its flames bring out the best and truest in man, like in a fusion it reveals his inner form, his call to truth and love. "

"And yet - continues the pope - it transforms, and therefore must consume something in man, the waste that corrupts and hinders his relationship with God and his neighbour.  This effect of the divine fire, however, frightens us, we are afraid of being 'burned', preferring to stay as we are. This is because many times our life is set according to the logic of having, of possession and not giving. Many people believe in God and admire the figure of Jesus Christ, but when they are asked to lose something of themselves, then they draw back, afraid of the demands of faith. "

The Pope goes on to say: "In losing something, indeed, losing ourselves for the true God, the God of love and life, we actually gain something, we find ourselves more fully.  Those who entrust themselves to Jesus in this life experience a peace and joy of heart, that the world can not give them or take away from them once gifted by God.  It is therefore worthwhile to allow ourselves be touched by the fire of the Holy Spirit! The pain that it brings us is necessary for our transformation”

Did They Know He Was Djouish?

Hawaii elects a Republican. For 6 months, anyway.

Always With The Happy Thoughts, Our Victor

Though of course he's right. Maybe not about the particulars, but about the race to destabilization being created by American isolationism and Euro-laziness.

what will happen with Germany, when it is lectured by the French, insulted by its debtor dependencies in southern Europe, and starting to become angry that only its own work ethic and productivity—not some grandiose platitudes about the EU—keep Europe going?

Very soon German workers are going to grasp that all the financial reserves they piled away the last two decades from not doing what a Spain or Italy did are essentially gone. Someone in Munich worked 40 hours a week until age 67 for someone in Athens not to—and for someone in Athens to demand that someone in Munich do so or else. The idea that nations like Greece, both overtly and implicitly, insult nations like Germany has no basis in historical terms.

He says Germans are getting ticked off. Maybe they need a tea party?

NATO is an alliance mostly in name. Germany is angry. So far all the traditional restraints upon its pique—allied military rivals on its two borders, a divided country, fear of a nuclear Soviet Union, incorporation within the EU and NATO—are either nonexistent or increasingly problematic.
If it should choose, Germany could go nuclear in six months, its arsenal reflective of a country that makes Mercedes and BMWs. That is not so wild an idea in an age when unstable nations like Iran and North Korea boast of their arsenals and their aggression, while others such as Turkey and Brazil flaunt U.S. faculty-lounge sermons on non-proliferation.
If Iran should go nuclear—and I think it will within a year or two—we should imagine that a Brazil, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria would too. As the European Union collapses, as third-rate nations become nuclear, and as the United States abdicates its postwar role in ensuring the safety and security of the West, why would Germany continue to subsidize southern Europe while receiving mostly blame for its efforts, while its airspace would be in theory vulnerable to the likes of a theocratic Iran?

Oldest Known Footage Of A Pope

This is Pope Leo XII in 1896. Can't quite tell what he's doing. The audio is also of him, although from a different occasion. It was recorded in 1903, the year his death at the age of 93.

Curtsy: Adam's Ale

Excellent Liar

I see The Liar's been extended to May 30th at the Shakespeare Theatre, which reminds me I never posted a review.

The production is well cast, well-costumed and well-played. The script, after Corneille but heavily adapted by David Ives, makes me an Ives fan. The entire thing is done in incredibly clever rhymed iambic pentameter -- exactly what the doctor ordered if you adore word play, and the actors have a ball with it.

A very fun, lively evening of theater --though the play itself is a bit of fluff, and you won't have much to chew on later -- except the solidification of the view that the French are very funny, but deep down, a dark people.

How Could I Get Him To Switch Chairs With Me?

Photo credit

This member of the Russian Patriarchate looks like he's thinking...."So close, and yet...."  However, both he and B16 are listening to a concert dedicated to B16 by Patriarch Kyrill I of Moscow.

This photo likewise made me laugh, but only because of the caption, "Pope Benedict XVI and Italian actress Sophia Loren (R) listen to a concert...." From the caption you'd think they were sitting together. She simply happened to be present as well -- her son directed the Italian orchestra.

Judea Pearl Speaks

An interview with Daniel Pearl's father.

Just How Little Respect Do Other Nations Have For Us?

The President of Mexico just criticized an Arizona state law before a joint session of Congress. Imagine the reverse --that an American president had criticized a Mexican law responding to a crisis created by the United States in Mexico?

Felipe Calderon has...cajones. Congress, the Democratic side of which applauded this diplomatic outrage? Not so much. I think they'd have applauded if he'd demanded the return of Texas outright.

School Marms In Charge

Shamelessly pinched from Michelle Obama's Mirror.

Everybody Draw Mohammed...And Obama

Shamelessly pinched from a Persian manuscript

Today's the day the internet hath designated as a moment to take a stand for free speech against self-imposed sharia. I don't believe in gratuitously insulting religious belief or in blaspheming other people's religion. I believe in most circumstances it is uncivil and immoral to insult someone just because you can.

However, I do believe in civilization; in refusing to be cowed by extremists who have invented the prohibition against images of Mohammed; and in exercising rights that Muslims and imams claim for themselves.  

• The image above is but one in a long history of Muslim renderings of Mohammed; there is no Islamic prohibition on depicting the prophet except in extremist Wahabism. The "orthodox" Muslim prohibition is against figures of any kind in sacred spaces. At the link you can see an Algerian postcard of Mohammed's escape from Mecca from as late as 1920-30!

• And let's not forget that the three truly insulting, blasphemous, offensive-also-to-me cartoons of Mohammed that started the Danish-cartoon riots were not posted in that Danish paper, but created by imams who wanted to stir up hatred of the West. 

If imams can do it, so can we. So it's a good moment to reprise a classic, doodled at the time of the original cartoon controversy.

 "Subtle Humor," from The Ryskind Sketchbook

Reason is supposed to post results from its draw Mohammed contest later today.

May I just add, though, that my free speech rights are not threatened nearly so much by Islamic extremists as they are by the Obama administration & Pelosi Congress?

There is the DISCLOSE act, a bill to impose civil and criminal penalties on political speech, the attitude behind which is exemplified by the chilling chatter of our regulatory czar (whose duties include telling companies how much they can pay their CEOs, which essentially means there is no longer a right of contract in the US). The President just gave a commencement address which was a sustained attack on free political speech, demonizing anyone who disagrees with him while at the same time calling for civility.

He creates a cult of personality around himself, "I don't appreciate...oil company executives' testimony," "I have better things to do than run car companies..." as if he were a monarch paternally overseeing his children and not a person elected to office with delegated powers it his privilege to exercise for a time. His White House encourages people to "sign" bills, deliberately undermining the Constitutional understanding of how power is to be exercised.

The free exercise of religion, indeed, the rational underpinning of human rights, is under attack.

They are printing money, which is not only an economic problem, it's a moral and political one. Here is a line from Federalist #44 which deserves further thought.

The loss which America has sustained since the peace, from the pestilent effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character of republican government, constitutes an enormous debt against the States chargeable with this unadvised measure, which must long remain unsatisfied; or rather an accumulation of guilt, which can be expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of justice, of the power which has been the instrument of it.

Madison is referring there to a debt crisis caused right after the Revolution when states printed money not backed by any stable commodity, causing runaway inflation. Creditors stopped accepting unsecured paper money, commerce ground to a halt, farmers couldn't get credit, so states passed laws that stopped foreclosures and debt collection, causing credit markets to collapse utterly, and everyone was reduced to barter. There were riots in the streets and Europe laughed at the teetering republic, just waiting to re-colonize.

As Madison wrote, the problem was not money so much as trust. By undermining the currency, the states broke down the essential forms of trust necessary to a free society.

necessary confidence between man and man…necessary confidence in the public councils…the industry and morals of the people, and…the character of republican government.

That's what our government czars with their regulations do every day. It's nice to say, "you make too much money in this time of financial crisis, " but what you're really telling people is that there is no way of knowing when I sign a contract whether it will be honored....and therefore, I don't have much obligation to honor my part. It contributes to the collapse of basic morality on which freedom rests. Our decline right now is so fast it's dizzying and the Congress just keeps right on going.

This guy is more incendiary and scary-looking.

But it's the perky. little. tyrants. who just want to help who are actually restricting our freedoms little by little, more and more each day.

Luxury Car

Shamelessly pinched from a friend's FB page.

Childish, Jealous Killings

ninme found a fascinating article on the psychology of Muslims. Well worth a read, although the author, a Dane, has some secular euro-prejudices of his own (as proof of the inability of Muslims to assimilate into Western nations, he cites the fact that very few immigrant Muslims will classify themselves as "more French [or German, or whatever] than Muslim." I wouldn't say I was more American than Christian, but I am unabashedly American. I dispute the premise of the question). Still very worth the read, however, and he has concrete suggestions about how to resist.

Many young Muslims become assailants. This is not just because of the Muslim cultural acceptance of aggression, but also because the Muslim honor mentality makes them into fragile, insecure men. Instead of being flexible and humorous they become stiff and develop fragile, glass-like, narcissistic personalities.

Unfortunately, most journalists and media people use the term “honor” when describing cases of violence where the offender makes excuses for himself by stating that his honor was offended....By using this term, as used by the offender, the media automatically takes the perspective of a clearly psychopathic and narcissistic excuse for treating other people badly. Instead, we should take our own Western culture as a basis when describing such crimes. Terms like “family execution," “childish jealousy,” “control maniac” or “insecure” would be much closer to our cultural understanding of such behavior.

I Am Confused

When did Republicans start having so much sex and Democrats start faking military service? And I can't even rejoice that Specter's gone, because he's replaced by a stronger candidate against Twomey for the fall.

Gaudeamus Algortur

I'm amazed the graduates didn't go home and slit their wrists.
Curtsy: The Corner

The Word "Voluntary" Is A Little Complicated

This is Obama's regulatory czar talking. Another perky little tyrant. I've said it before, but here it is again.

We have so many folk willing to be masters now, and so blithely certain they'd be good at it. ...Ask yourself what kind of person would agree to serve on such a panel. Merely accepting the position ought to be a cause for immediate revocation of citizenship

Curtsy: CMR

Adventures In "Literally"

From Drudge comes Rev. Wright telling people his word is mud at the White House:

When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!

 Pretty sure we'd have heard about that.

What Happened Here?

This video has gone viral as a Muslim student's chilling endorsement of the idea that all Jews should gather in Israel so they can be killed more easily.

Odious as Hamas & Hezbollah are to me, I honestly don't think that's what the girl meant. I think she was responding to Horowitz' prior question about whether or not she supported Hamas. She initially doesn't want to say, and finally, as he goes on and on, she basically blurts out, fine, I'm for it --for Hamas, not genocide-- to get him to respond to her.

Leaving aside for the moment whether Hamas can be separated from genocide (I think it ultimately cannot), I am asking about the girl's self-understanding (some Palestinians do try to make a distinction between Hamas as a governing party and the unsavory elements of its creed). I am completely with Horowitz as to the politics of the issue, and understand why he misunderstood her. Nevertheless, I think he did. What do you think?

Update: nin thinks I'm nuts, or at least woke up too cheerful this morning. I understand she's (the student, not ninme) being smug and defiant; I just think her defiance is refusing to denounce Hamas, not endorsing the Hezbollah guy's murderous statement. FWIW, here's her follow-up statement.

Democracy's Good, But It Requires Sanctity

As an addendum to yesterday's Potpourri, I have to note this, from B16's address at the Lisbon airport when he first arrived. It's interesting to me that multiculturalism was such a big topic here (it came up in every meeting with various groups), and here he gives the foretaste of what's to come in the other addresses:
From a wise vision of life and of the world, the just ordering of society follows. Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life. The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom. What matters is the value attributed to the problem of meaning and its implication in public life.
That's vintage Benedict: you can't have justice before you know who and what you are, so let's have that conversation. Now look at this (look very hard, you Catholics suspicious of democracy):

By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church...

But nothing says that freedom is easy. It's thrilling, but also frightening in that no one can make you be who you're called to be, and under pluralism, the quality of Chrisitian witness must be more intense:

Living amid a plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks requires a journey to the core of one’s being and to the nucleus of Christianity so as to reinforce the quality of one’s witness to the point of sanctity...

Alabama Is Not Like DC

Curtsy: CMR

Potpourri of Popery, Catholic Sundance Edition

Happy Ascension Thursday Sunday for those to whom it applies. The Pope travelled to Portugal last week, where his spokesman had promised us he would deliver an "intense message" at Fatima, which he did, so let's get to it.

Popery 

Benedict made headlines before even disembarking from his plane with his in-flight comments. It is clear he considers the Fatima message and his preaching there an essential moment of grace and purification --the beginning of casting off the "filth" (as he called abusing priests and enabling bishops in 2005) of the 1970s generation of clergy. I am tempted to say the message of the entire pilgrimage was "Die, Boomers, Die," but of course that is not the way he put it. The overall message of the pilgrimage was cling to Christ, renew your faith and embrace penance as the only way some devils are cast out.  

In an interview with reporters, I liked his succinct formulation of Europe's mission:

I think that the precise task and mission of Europe in this situation is to create this dialogue, to integrate faith and modern rationality in a single anthropological vision which approaches the human being as a whole and thus also makes human cultures communicable. So I would say that the presence of secularism is something normal, but the separation and the opposition between secularism and a culture of faith is something anomalous and must be transcended. The great challenge of the present moment is for the two to come together, and in this way to discover their true identity. This, as I have said, is Europe’s mission and mankind’s need in our history.

Wonder what he would say America's mission is? But that's not what made headlines. This is what made headlines:

the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church, and that the Church thus has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice. Forgiveness does not replace justice.

Stung by the just accusations that they'd gone way too far in their Holy Week feeding frenzy on the Pope, they eagerly embraced his absolution in worldwide headlines. Didn't see too much coverage of the remainder of the thought, however:

In a word, we need to relearn precisely this essential: conversion, prayer, penance and the theological virtues. This is our response, we are realists in expecting that evil always attacks, attacks from within and without, yet that the forces of good are also ever present and that, in the end, the Lord is more powerful than evil and Our Lady is for us the visible, motherly guarantee of God’s goodness, which is always the last word in history.

Blah-de-blah, don't bore us with that hope and salvation stuff. Despair! Despair!  Anyway...good stuff, too, on the Greek economic crisis, but at this rate we'll  never leave the plane.

The Pope did what he normally does on pilgrimages. He celebrated Mass with the faithful (beautiful homilies in Lisbon, Fatima, and Porto); he prayed with them (vespers with priests & religious, consecration of all priests to the Immaculate Heart, candlelight rosary); and he met with various groups. His meetings with the faithful are always both challenging and encouraging, and frequently quite beautiful too: the beauty that springs from a profound personal life of prayer. 

This visit was no exception, but I'm going to skip the general homilies and focus on the meetings with groups, where the pope can be, in a good way, quite tough. He is always gentle, but equally direct. The iron hand in the velvet glove as they say.

I sometimes get a kick out of Vaticanese. Where Americans would say, "Meeting with leaders of the arts and sciences," the Vatican has the Pope "meeting with the world of culture." At any rate, here's what he told 'em. It's lengthy but will repay careful attention.

Society continues to respect and appreciate [the Church's] service to the common good but distances itself from that “wisdom” which is part of her legacy. This “conflict” between tradition and the present finds expression in the crisis of truth, yet only truth can provide direction and trace the path of a fulfilled existence both for individuals and for a people. Indeed, a people no longer conscious of its own truth ends up by being lost in the maze of time and history, deprived of clearly defined values and lacking great and clearly formulated goals. Dear friends, much still needs to be learned about the form in which the Church takes her place in the world, helping society to understand that the proclamation of truth is a service which she offers to society, and opening new horizons for the future, horizons of grandeur and dignity. The Church, in effect, has “a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. […] Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce” (Caritas in Veritate, 9). For a society made up mainly of Catholics, and whose culture has been profoundly marked by Christianity, the search for truth apart from Christ proves dramatic. For Christians, Truth is divine; it is the eternal “Logos” which found human expression in Jesus Christ, who could objectively state: “I am the truth” (Jn 14:6). The Church, in her adherence to the eternal character of truth, is in the process of learning how to live with respect for other “truths” and for the truth of others. Through this respect, open to dialogue, new doors can be opened to the transmission of truth.

He is not saying the Church is open to relativism, under whose tyranny we all currently labor. He is saying that the Church is at one and the same time both the guardian and teacher of Truth and herself learning how to present that truth to the current age. She does not, in other words, stand above the culture in judgment as if her members were not themselves part of their own culture, but seeks and is willing to be enriched by it. Love this line:

Given the reality of cultural diversity, people need not only to accept the existence of the culture of others, but also to aspire to be enriched by it and to offer to it whatever they possess that is good, true and beautiful. 

In other words, the Church is not afraid of what science and the arts have to offer that is true, good and beautiful, and he challenges artists and scientists not to be afraid of what the Church has to offer. Have a little courage, folks!

Ours is a time which calls for the best of our efforts, prophetic courage and a renewed capacity to “point out new worlds to the world”, to use the words of your national poet (Luís de Camões, Os Lusíades, II, 45). You who are representatives of culture in all its forms, forgers of thought and opinion, “thanks to your talent, have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. […] Do not be afraid to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves, consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history towards infinite Beauty!”

He has just told a roomful of artists and scientists that they are not necessarily the open-minded ones in our time. Heh. 

Now, keeping that in mind, look at how he delivers that same message --courage in pursuit of the true, good and beautiful-- in his meeting with bishops.

the times in which we live demand a new missionary vigour on the part of Christians, who are called to form a mature laity, identified with the Church and sensitive to the complex transformations taking place in our world. Authentic witnesses to Jesus Christ are needed, above all in those human situations where the silence of the faith is most widely and deeply felt: among politicians, intellectuals, communications professionals who profess and who promote a monocultural ideal, with disdain for the religious and contemplative dimension of life. In such circles are found some believers who are ashamed of their beliefs and who even give a helping hand to this type of secularism, which builds barriers before Christian inspiration.

Courage is needed, and the bishops are to encourage the brave souls at work in all those fields --but fire and brimstone and anathemas are not what's called for:

The courageous and integral appeal to principles is essential and indispensable; yet simply proclaiming the message does not penetrate to the depths of people’s hearts, it does not touch their freedom, it does not change their lives. What attracts is, above all, the encounter with believing persons who, through their faith, draw others to the grace of Christ by bearing witness to him. The words of Pope John Paul II come to mind: “The Church needs above all great currents, movements and witnesses of holiness among the ‘Christifideles’ because it is from holiness that is born every authentic renewal of the Church, all intelligent enrichment of the faith and of the Christian life,

Simply going back to the way things once were, to some imagined golden age of Churchdom is insufficient --the Church has to find its way of touching men's hearts today. This made me laugh:

One could say, “the Church has need of these great currents, movements and witnesses of holiness…, but there are none!”

Oh yes there are, he says: new movements, and you bishops must walk the delicate path of truly being open to them and to learning from them, while at the same time correcting their defects and slapping down their excesses. 

we must feel responsibility for welcoming these impulses which are gifts for the Church and which give her new vitality, but, on the other hand, we must also help the movements to find the right way, making some corrections with understanding – with the spiritual and human understanding that is able to combine guidance, gratitude and a certain openness and a willingness to learn. 

This seems to signal the Holy Father's attitude about troublesome movements --don't be quick to shut them down, correct the problematic elements. Then he gets to priests and to their own ministry: begone, bishops-as-administrators model!

In this Year for Priests now drawing to a close, rediscover, dear brothers, the role of the Bishop as father, especially with regard to your priests. For all too long the responsibility of authority as a service aimed at the growth of others and in the first place of priests, has been given second place. 

He has already, at the start of the speech, told us what ought to have first place:

fearing nothing except the loss of eternal salvation for your people

He also asks for renewed attention to the poorest of the poor --again, thinking anew about the methods, not just doing the same old --the Church has to find its way:

I would like to ask you, in your role as leaders and ministers of charity in the Church, to rekindle, in yourselves as individuals and as a group, a sense of mercy and of compassion, in order to respond to grave social needs. New organizations must be established, and those already existing perfected, so that they can be capable of responding creatively to every form of poverty, including those experienced as a lack of the meaningfulness in life and the absence of hope [emphasis added].

B16's address to people working for charitable organizations is instructive both as to the nature and the limits of works of charity. I love this definition of charity:

You have heard Jesus say: “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). He exhorts us to imitate the example of the Good Samaritan, which was just now proclaimed, when approaching situations which call for fraternal assistance. And what is this example? It is that of “a heart which sees.” “This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly.”

He is there to praise and encourage their work, but adds some subtle cautions as well:

Conscious, as the Church, of not being able to provide practical solutions to each concrete problem, and lacking any kind of power, yet determined to serve the common good, you are ready to assist and to offer the means of salvation to all.

The Church doesn't think she has political solutions to offer, in other words, and is suspicious of efforts to do everything for everybody. Be sure you are acting out of love:

The pressure exerted by the prevailing culture, which constantly holds up a lifestyle based on the law of the stronger, on easy and attractive gain, ends up influencing our ways of thinking, our projects and the goals of our service, and risks emptying them of the motivation of faith and Christian hope which had originally inspired them. The many pressing requests which we receive for support and assistance from the poor and marginalized of society impel us to look for solutions which correspond to the logic of efficiency, quantifiable effects and publicity.

Never forget that the defense of genuine human liberty --including resisting abortion and defending marriage-- is indispensable to charity. (The Pope's repudiation of same-sex marriage was the only other headline to come out of Fatima --all the press got the vapors at the Pope being Catholic once again.)

The services you provide, and your educational and charitable activities, must all be crowned by projects of freedom whose goal is human promotion and universal fraternity. Here we can locate the urgent commitment of Christians in defence of human rights, with concern for the totality of the human person in its various dimensions.

And there you have it: Pope Benedict remakes the world in the image of Christ. This is so long I think we'll forgo the potpourri this time around.

Excellent pix of the whole pilgrimage here, and all the addresses are gathered here.

Photo credit

Further Cuts Will Follow

Curtsy to my spy in NY for sending me Mark Steyn's take on the Attorney General's... discomfort, shall we say, with pinning recent terrorist activity on radical Islam. He seriously behaved as if he'd never heard the term. RTWT as it's important to know who this Administration's friends are, and you'll find nuggets about the Islamic Conference's wild success in recent UN elections:

to my liberal friends who say, "Hey, what's the big deal about the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Lighten up, man," try rolling around your tongue the words "Organization of the Christian Conference." Would you be quite so cool with that? Fifty-seven Prime Ministers and Presidents who get together and vote as a bloc in international affairs? Or would that be a theocratic affront to secular sensibilities? The casual acceptance of the phrase "the Muslim world" – ("Mr. Obama's now-famous speech to the Muslim world" – The New York Times) – implicitly defers to the political ambitions of Islam. And, if there is a "Muslim world," what are its boundaries? Forty years ago, the OIC began with mainly Middle Eastern members plus Indonesia and a couple more. By the Nineties, former Soviet Central Asia had signed on, plus Albania, Mozambique, Guyana and various others. In 2005, Russia was admitted to "observer" membership.

It's not radical Islam that is the threat described in the piece, however: it's multiculturalism.

Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, "immigrant communities" were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo "female genital mutilation." So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They're not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a "ritual nick" to young girls.

Great. So now the AAP is going to lobby for US doctors to be able to mutilate girls. When are they going to lobby on behalf of the actual girls?

This is of course the exact logic of making abortion "safe, legal and rare" because "they're going to do it anyway," so at least we can help them do it safely.

And  where, may one ask, are the Womyn's Groups? (What would be the white feminine counterpart for the term "house negro"?)

I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at "FGM." After all, it's a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don't demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Which reminds me I saved an article in my reader for comment when time permitted -- a must-read piece on how we're abandoning the women of Afghanistan.

As Patricia [commissioned to write some US AID success stories] prepared to leave, the women fluttered around her like moths, touching her sleeves and speaking all at once. "What are they saying?" Pat asked the young Pashto-speaking interpreter. "They are telling you to go back to your country and to ask your people not to abandon them. The women of Afghanistan don't want you to leave. They will quite literally die if the Taliban return," she said. 

And:

the current administration, despite its female secretary of State and its new Office of Global Women’s Issues, appears to be ditching the women of Afghanistan like a blind date gone bad. You have to go back 10 months to find any sustained rhetoric from President Barack Obama about the importance of assuring the security of women in Afghanistan. Since then, and especially since last year’s Afghan election, those fine words from a sitting president have all but disappeared. Many of the fine actions are gone, too. Push local shuras into including women in 2002? Yes. Push local shuras into including women in 2010? Forget it.

This Administration's foreign policy is precisely analogous to the AAP's outrageous capitulation to FMG.

But who the hell cares? It's only women. 

Cigarettes In The News

These are mostly for the benefit of my spy in New York, but I note that in serious situations, folks still like to have a smoke. To wit:

 Shamelessly pinched from The Big Picture, Flooding in Tennesee

 Shamelessly pinched from The Big Picture, Afghanistan, April 2010

Ocean On Fire

Awesome pictures of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico -- and fascinating pix, too, of the various rescue efforts. Check 'em out at The Big Picture.

I suggest, however, you spare yourself the comments, which do not represent man at his finest.

Gramma Says: Never Be Over Budget Again!

Each year Mr. W. & I have a discussion about our finances and priorities, and carefully craft a budget to meet our family's needs and as many of its wants as we can prudently afford. We've definitely felt the pinch in recent years --with the stock market collapse of 2008 doing deep damage to our kids' college funds-- rising energy and food costs, inflation, taxation, I had to give up chef and limousine service, yadda-yadda, same as everyone.
But after two years of belt-tightening, which is just so stressful, we've had enough. You know what we've decided to do from now on as the task of paying for things we want has grown more difficult? Not budget at all! From now on we're just going to appropriate funds on an ad hoc basis as needs arise. I'll never worry about living within my means again! And who can worry about meeting a budget that doesn't exist! My worry lines are just melting away!

(We learned this new technique from Nancy Pelosi, by the way.)

I Am In Love With The Fat Man

Curtsy to American Digest Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Update: In comments, Brett McS writes: He's the anti-Crist!

Just When I Think The FGL* Can't Get Stupider

Columnist Robert Wright compares al-Alwaki to Jesus.

Even leaving aside the constitutional questions (al-Awlaki is an American citizen), doesn’t Obama see what a gift the killing of this imam would be to his cause? Just ask the Romans how their anti-Jesus-movement strategy worked out. (And Jesus’s followers didn’t have their leader’s sermons saved in ready-to-go video and audio files; al-Awlaki’s resurrection would be vivid indeed.)

Sigh. Do you agnostics have any idea how hard it is to exercise Christian love toward this brother of mine when reading such tripe?

Curtsy: Matt&Pat

*Formerly Gray Lady

Give The Costume Lady A Raise

"Gandalf" Mistaken For Homeless Man

Sir Ian McKellen on break from rehearsal:

During the dress rehearsal of Godot, I crouched by the stage door of the Comedy Theatre, getting some air, my bowler hat at my feet (and) seeing an unkempt old man down on his luck, a passer-by said, 'Need some help, brother?' and put a dollar in my hat.

I Guess Harry Potter Is Anti-Christian After All

American Digest's onto them.

The Crony Capitalist Nominee

If the rumors are true that Elena Kagan will be the prez' SCOTUS pick in a few hours, here's a preliminary reaction to that from Ed Whelan.
On the plus side, she's not a hater.

she deserves considerable credit for her tenure as dean of Harvard law school, including for her generous treatment of conservatives, which has earned her considerable goodwill.

However:

There is a striking mismatch between the White House’s populist rhetoric about seeking a justice with a “keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people” and the reality of the Kagan pick.  Kagan is the consummate Obama insider, and her meteoric rise over the last 15 years—from obscure academic and Clinton White House staffer to Harvard law school dean to Supreme Court nominee—would seem to reflect what writer Christopher Caldwell describes as the “intermarriage of financial and executive branch elites [that] could only have happened in the Clinton years” and that has fostered the dominant financial-political oligarchy in America.  In this regard, Kagan’s paid role as a Goldman Sachs adviser is the perfect marker of her status in the oligarchy—and of her unfathomable remoteness from ordinary Americans.

Well, I don't know that the GOP can have anything to say about oligarch SCOTUS picks, having pitched a hissy at the thought of Bush nominating someone who didn't go to an ivy league law school or attend the right parties (there may have been other reasons to oppose Harriet Miers, but they did not show up in columns or talk radio). But it would be nice to have a SCOTUS pick relatively free of the crony capitalism paradigm.

I Hate These Child Star Gone Wrong Stories

The Times Square bomber turns out to be Corey Feldman

Demography Is Destiny

Here's a startling bit of footage from Belgian tv about a Catholic church "sharing" space with a Muslim mosque. Yes it's all perfectly civilized and friendly, but the message is unmistakable, in spite of the multi-culti back-patting. Someone should fill in al-Qaeda that if they make love not war, they'll have the thing won in about five years or so.


Curtsy: Mark Steyn

You Don't Say

According to Zeljka Buturovic and Dan Klein, people who self-identify as “progressive” have low levels of economic knowledge whereas those who self-identify as “libertarian” or “very conservative” rank very highly. 

Matt Yglesias and commenters argue the poll is silly, the results bogus. Nevertheless:

—67% of self-described Progressives believe that restrictions on housing development (i.e., regulations that reduce the supply of housing) do not make housing less affordable.
—51% believe that mandatory licensing of professionals (i.e., reducing the supply of professionals) doesn’t increase the cost of professional services.
—Perhaps most amazing, 79% of self-described Progressive believe that rent control (i.e., price controls) does not lead to housing shortages.

The Pride of East Oakland

Low-rider Benz with trailer: awesome!

I Totally Want This

Get Darth Vader voice for your GPS

Han Solo would be good, too. Every time you miss your turn it could say, "I have a bad feeling about this" instead of "re-calculating."

You & Me Both, Baby

Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal...an enlightening essay about many things, but especially how regulation is destroying family farms. It caught my eye because I've just been reading Small Is Still Beautiful, which places the blame for mega-corporate ugliness on "capitalism," a premise I think is dead wrong. The massive corporation begins as a way for business to pool risk and manage regulatory burdens in a hyper-regulated and litigious age, with crony capitalism the inevitable result (first we comply with the regs, then we ourselves lobby government to support them as a means of stifling competitors). The way to get the beautiful small the author wants is to go after bureaucracy. Exhibit A.

I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I’ve coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.

...because that's how they can best be inspected. Which is one thing, but the result is that after he loads up his cattle, trucks them up the interstate to mix with cattle from who knows where, have them slaughtered and packaged, he's then not allowed to sell his own meat:

When I return home to sell these delectable packages, the county zoning ordinance says that this is a manufactured product because it exited the farm and was reimported as a value-added product, thereby throwing our farm into the Wal-Mart category, another prohibition in agricultural areas. Just so you understand this, remember that an on-farm abattoir was illegal, so I took the animals to a legal abattoir, but now the selling of said products in an on-farm store is illegal.

Also, he can't give tours of his farm.

Because our land is zoned as agricultural, we cannot charge school kids for a tour of the farm because that puts us in the category of "Theme Park." 

Or sell anything he didn't raise himself.

Our community is blessed with all sorts of creative artisans who offer products that we would love to stock in our on-farm retail venue. Doesn’t it make sense to encourage these customers driving out from the city to be able to go to one farm to do their rural browsing/ purchasing rather than drive all over the countryside? Furthermore, many of these artisans have neither the desire nor time to deal with patrons one-on-one. A collaborative venue is the most win-win, reasonable idea imaginable — except to government agents.

As soon as our farm offers a single item — just one — that is not produced here, we have become a Wal-Mart. Period. That means a business license, which isbasically another layer of taxes on our gross sales. The business license requires a commercial entrance, which on our country road is almost impossible to acquire due to sight-distance requirements and width regulations. Of course, zoning prohibits businesses in our agricultural zones. Remember, people are supposed to be kept away from agricultural areas — people bring diseases.

Even if we could comply with all of the above requirements, a retail outlet carries with it a host of additional regulations. We must provide designated handicapped parking, government-approved toilet facilities (our four household bathrooms in the two homes located 50 feet away from the retail building do not count) — and it can’t be a composting toilet. We must offer x-number of parking spaces. Folks, it just goes on and on, ad nauseum, and all for simply trying to help a neighbor sell her potatoes or extra pumpkins at Thanksgiving.

It's also illegal to raise another generation of farmers.

Any power tool — including a cordless screwdriver — cannot be operated by people under the age of 18. ...

And:

A host of government regulatory paperwork surrounds every "could you come over and help us . . . ?" By the time an employer complies with every Occupational Safety & Health Administration requirement, posts every government bulletin requirement, with-holds taxes, and shoulders Unemployment Compensation burdens and medical and child safety regulations — he or she can’t hire anybody legally or profitably.

And:

The government has no pigeonhole for this: "I’m a 17-year-old home-schooler, and I want to learn how to farm. Could I come and have you mentor me for a year?"

What is this relationship? A student? An employee? If I pay a stipend, the government says he’s an employee. If I don’t pay, the Fair Labor Standards board says it’s slavery, which is illegal. Doesn’t matter that the young person is here of his own volition and is happy to live in a tee-pee. Housing must be permitted and up to code.

Et cetera.