Stranger in a Strange Land

So, the Speaker of the House wants to sneak through a monstrous health care bill (that would take over one sixth of our economy) so we can find out what is in it!!! It gives one pause...
Future, unfunded programs and a national debt so staggering the interest alone won't be able to be paid.
The near certainty that, before mid century, most retirees will have little or no income. (Of course, by then mandatory euthansia will be the law of the land for those no longer contributing to society, and most will be herded to the gas chambers to be put out of their misery 'for their own good and the good of the country'.)
Over 50,000,000 babies aborted since 1972 (and counting), and our leaders wonder why there won't be enough workers to support the system.
Unaffordable and doomed wars for democracy and nation building in places that have been ruled by blood letting tribes for ten thousand years and who despise Western Civilization.


I look about and am stunned with what I see. We have forgotten our heritage. We have forgotten those who went before and sacrificed for us, and in the process, we have forgotten how to sacrifice. Socrates spins in his grave and laughs. Was it he who said the wise man laughs at what fools cry over and cries at what fools laugh at? I am no wise man, but I find myself laughing a lot lately at what others are taking seriously and crying over what others are mocking.

Things once good, are now bad and things once abhorred, now welcome. We accept deviancy in the name of toleration; we dumb down education and equalize results in the name of fairness; we celebrate failure and moral depravity and condemn those who have the courage to judge good and evil and discriminate between what is right and wrong. We scandalize our children and pauperize our grand children.

On the funny farm, Americans are consumed with the NCAA basketball tournament and American Idol and Lindsey Lohan's latest stumble. Who cares? Tomorrow will take care of itself.

As the witches said in Macbeth "Fair is foul and foul is fair."



What has happened?

Somewhere in time, the world turned upside down, (as Cornwallis' band played when the bloody British surrended at Yorktown.)Now we have another surrender, only it's Americans going wobbly.

I had the great good fortune to grow up during the 1950s and '60s, when last the world was right side up. I grew up with loving parents who taught me the value of family and loyalty, and an extended family encompassing three generations and many friends, in which that love and loyalty was ever present. We shared a common bond, founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition, and exercised daily at home, in school, and at work. The tradition, and the values it gave us, were respected.
And, while all men are sinners, American society as a whole was at least in agreement about what was right and wrong. As a rule, there were such things as common courtesy and respect for authority-including elders. Such things as self respect and shame over bad actions. Such things as a sense of propriety and public manners.

In grammar school, I was educated by Ursuline nuns and Sacred Heart brothers who taught me the value of believing in God and the importance of hard work.

In high school, I was taught by the Irish Christian brothers in the classical tradition and received a better education than many Ivy League college graduates receive today.

In college, I was taught by the Jesuits, grounded in philosophy and theology, and prepared to deal with the business at hand in the city of man.


All the while, through all those years, I took for granted the way it was, never dreaming someday it would be mostly gone.


Now-the world fully upside down-I find myself (like the Martian in Robert Heinlein's great work) a stranger in a strange land. Over the past forty plus years, something happened. A lot of little somethings and a few big somethings. And I am as a stranger in my own land, which has indeed " become as a strange land of death and destruction."


Is it time to head for the hills and prepare for another last stand at the Alamo?

I recall of lines from W.B.Yeats' great poem The Second Coming http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/


"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
The blood- dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony ofinnocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

It is later than you think, brothers and sisters. Don't be caught laughing when you should be crying.

Hold the Cheese

After two hundred illustrious and bloody years, the annual cheese rolling contest held just outside London in the quaint English countryside has been cancelled.

A concern for the safety and health of contestants and onlookers was cited as the reason for cancellation.

There they go! Can you spot the rolling edible?

As can be seen, the British take their cheese rolling seriously.

The proud winners of last year's contest hold their trophies aloft.

I am not sure why this story caught my attention. Yes, I enjoy eating cheese. Yes, I had been involved in cheese rolls in my younger days. Yes, the snow has finally melted and I can venture forth into the outside world, cabin fever having passed.

Maybe it's just this. Since most Americans are catatonic over the Oscars or the latest celebrity to slip on a banana peel and silde into the sewer; since most Americans are anxiously awaiting their next government fix and will stand by mute as the abomination in washington dc rapes and plunders the country's wealth and posterity; since we can expect a cataclysmic natural/ or man made phenomena in the not to distant future which may wipe out life as we know it.. maybe it's time to just chill out and start laughing. Now where did I put the cheese?