KELLY PRESTON, RIP

In For The Love Of The Game, Kelly Preston uttered this immortal line to Kevin Costner: "You can win or lose the game all by yourself. You don't need me!" Thank you, Kelly, for reminding us that we do need you, but you can only help us once we realize that we do. Your smile made us whole and you leave us more than we were when you came, but less than we were yesterday. Go in peace, back to Heaven which sent you to us as a precious gift. As for us, we can only mope... and rent Holy Man one more time!

Extract from ‘Politico’

Josh Gerstein, Trump poised to run out political clock on emoluments suits, Politico (July 9, 2020, 11:34 PM EDT), <https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/09/trump-emoluments-suits-355787>:

One legal expert who has submitted amicus briefs challenging the legal theory behind the suits faulted all sides in the litigation and the courts for allowing the cases to drag out for years.

‘The attorneys general [for Maryland and DC] filed their case 5 months after [the] parallel Foreign Emoluments Clause action in a federal court in New York ... They never sought a preliminary injunction, which would have been likely to push the litigation forward on an expedited schedule,’ said Seth [Barrett] Tillman, a lecturer in law at Ireland’s Maynooth University. ‘Their complaining about delay, at best, shows a lack of introspection.’

FYI: Tillman’s original e-mail to the Josh Gerstein, reporter:

It is a bit much for plaintiffs, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, to “complain about the continued delays in the case.” They have caused delay in this litigation from the beginning. The Attorneys General filed their case 5 months after plaintiffs filed a parallel Foreign Emoluments Clause action in a federal court in New York. 

Then, 8 months later, they filed an amended complaint. They never sought a preliminary injunction, which would have been likely to push the litigation forward on an expedited schedule. They initially brought this action against the President exclusively in his official capacity, but later, they added a claim against the President as an individual—they then litigated this latter claim—and, afterwards, they sought to drop this claim. During this entire time, the Attorneys General action was paid for by the taxpayer, but the President was paying for his own defense out-of-pocket, and then, after they litigated this claim, they dropped their claim against the President—all without a word of explanation to the press or public.

Finally, they consistently filed their papers on the due dates, as opposed to in advance of the due dates—again, doing absolutely nothing to move this litigation forward expeditiously. Their complaining about delay, at best, shows a lack of introspection.

Seth Barrett Tillman, Extract from ‘Politico,’ New Reform Club (July 10, 2020, 1:22 PM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2020/07/extract-from-politico.html> (quoting Tillman’s e-mail to Gerstein);

Herb London, RIP

[NRC welcomes back our blogbrother Jay Homnick and his notes on the passing of founding blogbrother Herb London two years ago.—Ed.]

Well, my youngest son turned 18 on July 9, so the only dependents I have left are co-dependents. But as years tick by, the losses mount up alongside the gains.


Back when Herb London and I were both regulars here, we had never met each other in person. Eventually we not only met but shared some lovely times, after he invited me to be a Senior Fellow at his London Center for Policy Research, the rare think tank where folks a) think and b) are not in the tank for anybody.



Herb was among the last of the old school of independent thinkers in New York City, like Norman Podhoretz, who eulogized him beautifully at his funeral.

Attending the funeral cost me a Manhattan parking ticket for $125, money well spent. Herb the singer with a Top Ten single, Herb the college basketball player, Herb the political gadfly, Herb the public intellectual were all celebrated, alongside Herb the husband and Herb the father of three remarkable daughters. (Plus I got to schmooze with Ann Coulter for the first time.)

His wife Vickie continues to helm the Board of the think tank, along with a cast of public-spirited characters like actor Tony LoBianco and his wife. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, best-selling author and Fox commentator, is the President. Our big project right now is creating an Accountability Project to push back against abusive prosecutions by the Justice Department.

Herb, the Reform Club lives! I hope you are smiling down at us from Heaven...

Dear NFL: Sure, but what about the White National Anthem?

The NFL is considering opening the season with what the NAACP designated in 1919 as the "Black National Anthem," a spiritual called "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

In the current environment, anything remotely associated with race is a political statement, so some wags, reactionaries, and assorted social commentators have not unfairly asked whether a "white national anthem" shouldn't be played as well.

But there is no white national anthem! is the retort. Well, of course there is, at least unofficially--and I say the answer to music is more music. Music is the universal language, and the brother hears it just fine. Go for it, America! You have nothing to lose but your blues!

Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but ...

Take me back to Constantinople

No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

What does a people do with monuments from a fallen state? And, whose business is it?

On the one hand, monuments are a part of history, and in general we seek to preserve history for its own sake. On the other hand, we also should not like to elevate bits of history that we find repugnant. So a common suggestion is that monuments be placed in a museum.

The people of Bulgaria have had occasion to consider this suggestion. Bulgaria's communist government fell shortly after the 1989 fall of the Soviet Union. Bulgaria is littered with communist-era statues, many commemorating Soviet soldiers and leaders, as well as Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Understandably, many Bulgarians strongly prefer not to honor the violence and horror of communism by keeping these statues in the public space. But they would also not erase their history, even such a dark chapter of it. Perhaps, then, they may be put away in a museum?

Yet here are the perspectives of two Bulgarians about their monuments:

"What kind of museum? Who are going to be the curators? Who are going to be the people who collect the memorabilia or artifacts and how are they going to present them? Because those people are ashamed of their own past. How are they going to put something in a museum?"

("Buzludzha: A crumbling reminder of communism," The Economist (Oct. 20, 2014) at 3:50 (available at https://youtu.be/62Qvp4y031k.)

"I don't think that people should be ashamed of anything related to its history because that's the meaning of history. We should learn it, and if it was a mistake or something, we should make sure that we don't repeat the mistake. So maybe it could stay there as a monument of the shame of our past, but in order to make us think better about the future."

(Id. at 4:20.)

I am inclined to adopt the perspectives of these Bulgarians, coming, as they are, from people whose ears are still trained to hear the foul notes of totalitarianism. Monuments are interactive history. In a museum, they are merely an exhibit -- static, dead. In a short time I expect with a virtual-reality headset one will be able to get the same experience by browsing the exhibit on Wikipedia. A monument is different from an exhibit. A monument shares a people's space. They pass it on the way to work. They pass it on the way to school. They might meet friends at a monument. That may protest a monument -- or celebrate it. Detractors might scrawl on a monument. Supporters may knock the scribblers down. And people might decide to dress up the monuments. Through these joint activities, a monument takes on new meaning, and its history merges into the present. A people finds a way to bring past values it abhors up to date with present values, without erasing its history, or losing its identity. Only by conserving one's past is progress possible.

Other people, living far away, even in different countries, may have an opinion on another people's monuments. For example, Bulgarians in Sofia apparently enjoy painting and dressing up the Monument of the Soviet Army for different occasions. After one such incident, Russia tendered a stern statement to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, issuing a "demand for taking measures to prevent such incidents in the future." Russia's wish, obviously, is to impose its view of monuments in Bulgaria upon the Bulgarian people who live with the monuments. Perhaps the treatment of the Sofia monument is vulgar. But that's nobody's business but the Bulgars'.

Here in the U.S., some House Democrats released a funding bill that calls for the removal of any statues “depicting any individuals who served as members of the Confederacy” or of “military forces of a State against the United States.” These statutes are predominantly in southern states. The House Appropriations Committee that released this bill is headed by a representative from New York, and only a very small minority of the Democratic membership are from southern states.

Like Russia's pronunciamento in Bulgaria, these House Democrats wish to impose their view of southern monuments upon southern people who live with the monuments.

In response, the White House released this statement:

“These statues are silent teachers in solid form of stone and metal. They preserve the memory of our American story and stir in us a spirit of responsibility for the chapters yet unwritten. These works of art call forth gratitude for the accomplishments and sacrifices of our exceptional fellow citizens who, despite their flaws, placed their virtues, their talents, and their lives in the service of our Nation."

The White House response is very Bulgarian in outlook. I am inclined to think that is a good outlook to have when it comes to monuments.

Wilt thou break this statue because it is not wholly composed of gold and diamonds?

Voltaire tells how an angel sent Babouc to report on whether the city of Persepolis should be destroyed; Babouc goes, and is horrified with the vices he discovers; but after a time “he began to grow fond of a city the inhabitants of which were polite, affable and beneficent, though they were fickle, slanderous and vain. He was much afraid that Persepolis would be condemned. He was even afraid to give in his account. This he did, however, in the following manner. He caused a little statue, composed of different metals, of earth and of stones (the most precious and the most vile) to be cast by one of the best founders of the city, and carried it to the angel. ‘Wilt thou break, said he, ‘this pretty statue because it is not wholly composed of gold and diamonds?' The angel resolved to think no more of destroying Persepolis, but to leave “the world as it goes.” After all, when one tries to change institutions without having changed the nature of men, that unchanged nature will soon resurrect those institutions.

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926).

We must try our level best to understand our history, including -- perhaps even especially -- its ugly moments. We must not let the good deeds blind us to the bad. But neither should the bad deeds of some of our forebears blot out the good and even great deeds of others. A statute, though a mere hulk of rock or metal pulled from the earth's crust, masquerades as a patient philosopher, a heroic soldier, a noble leader. Does the statue, then, pretending at more than it is, tell a lie?

Surely not. We wring the good from base and ordinary things, even vile things. Neither the world nor we its inhabitants are composed of gold and diamonds only, but of things base, and ordinary, and even vile, yet mixed in with something precious. That which is precious is small in amount. And we may wish for more. But history shows we are not likely to get it.

Shall we break, the establishment media and politicians ask us, these pretty statutes because they are not wholly composed of gold and diamonds?

No, must be our response. We will not let you break them.

Renewing the Pledge

A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.

—G.K. Chesterton

A man learns to love his country who has learned to love his family. A man cares for his family first—and not because of strong feeling merely, but because he has sworn an oath to God and his neighbors to stand by his bride, and to protect, with his very life, the offspring of their union. And to those before whom he swore the oath, he owes also a special duty to protect them from such harm that it is in his control to avoid. For these, a man's first, tiny platoons, he has fought and won heroic victories. In memory of these victories, and of his fallen brothers, he has erected monuments, and taught his children to remember them and to honor them.

Chief among these monuments is the flag under which they fought, and died. The flag is a symbol of first loyalties. A man will fight and even die for his own country, but he owes no supererogatory duty to equate the interests of foreigners with those he is sworn and bound to protect. The world is God's charge, not man's, who, frail and impotent, is charged instead with the modest task to care for those around him. For he who will not be satisfied with saving less than the whole world, would make himself God—and in so doing would he not only defy the creator of the world, but would commit acts of treachery against his fellow man: by casting those in his charge out of their homes, away from their friends, and into strange lands who know them not.

No man learns to fight and die for his country from some head of state. If ever such a thing has happened in history, it was an unnatural thing. For no one ought to persuade anyone to fight and die, for any country or for any person. Yet, one who is not willing to fight and die for his own country is a refugee; one who would not die for his family is an orphan. It is in the fortress of the family, and through campaigns with friends, that one learns the parent of all virtues, which is love. For greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. He who loves, fights.

And so it has come to pass that those who detest fighting, detest love also.

Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans, my friends!

Franklin Roosevelt addresses a nation on the verge of a great war

"There is, moreover, another enemy at home. That enemy is the mean and petty spirit that mocks at ideals, sneers at sacrifice and pretends the American people can live by bread alone. If the spirit of God is not in us, and if we will not prepare to give all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our own land, we shall go to destruction."

FDR, September 2, 1940 at the Dedication Ceremony of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Newfound Cap, Tennessee

John Roberts' first loyalty

As has become his judicial custom, such as voting with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc in upholding Obamacare's constitutionality with a tortured argument about it being a "tax," Chief Justice John Roberts today joined the liberals in striking down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law via form, not substance.



Since his wife is a devout Catholic who once worked as an attorney for Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion feminist group, many reasonably questioned his impartiality when it comes to abortion. But they needn't have worried.

The Chief Justice's first loyalty is to the Supreme Court as an institution. Not to the truth, not to what is right, not even to the Constitution. Here he admits that precedent—even a bad one—is more important than any of those things:

Roberts said he thought the court was wrong to strike down the Texas law, but he voted with the majority because that was the binding precedent. "The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana's law cannot stand under our precedents."

Stare decisis is for suckas, and John Roberts is the biggest one of all.  Roberts is so concerned with the appearance of the Supreme Court as a trusted, apolitical arbiter of constitutional truth that he'll vote with the four liberal ideologues who make no attempt to hide their blatant disregard for it.

Liberals: Then and Now

Liberals from November 2016 until June 2020: The Department of Justice enjoys independence, both legally as well as normatively, from the White House and President. The President should only supervise investigations and prosecutions at the broad policy-making level (via statutes and regulations) and by appointments in the normal course of rotation in office, through retirements and resignations. If the President wants to know the details of ongoing investigations and prosecutions, he can read about them in the newspapers like anyone else. The unitary executive theory is alien to our legal system—a phony doctrine made up by the Federalist Society.

Liberals after June 2020 Publication of the Strzok Memorandum in the Flynn Matter: Of course, the President should be apprised of the details of all ongoing investigations—even if they involve the opposition party’s candidate and his confidantes. No one is above the law! The President is supposed to comment about how to staff those investigations. And the Vice President is supposed to put forward novel legal theories (e.g., the Logan Act) in order to help the investigation/prosecution (of his future opponent). These are not disqualifying conflicts: such conflicts are built into the Constitution. The Vice President is part of the Executive Branch and has a role in active Justice Department investigations—even if that involves the opposition. The unitary executive includes the Vice President. The Unitary Executive …

To put it another way ... the active involvement of the Attorney General and Main Justice in overriding the decisions of subordinates and career civil servants is bad, particularly if all the facts are known and when it is done in public. But the Vice President’s putting forward novel legal theories to move an investigation of the opposition forward is ... perfectly normal ... especially when done in secret. Makes complete sense.

Seth

Seth Barrett Tillman, Liberals: Then and Now, New Reform Club (June 26, 2020, 5:40 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2020/06/liberals-then-and-now.html>; 

Found Poetry

"Found Poetry" is a something I was taught about in school. The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. And tenement halls. And there's something to that.



School principal terminated. You poor fool. You poet, you. See my correction below. Tiffany Riley, hit me up.

'I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point. While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race. While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all? Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.'

If only you'd have punctuated like a poet
You'd be getting an award right now instead of a pink slip:



While I want to
by Tiffany Riley


I firmly
believe

that Black Lives Matter,


but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken
to get to this point across;

some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point.

While I want to get behind BLM, 
I do not 
think 
people should be made to feel
they have to choose 
black race 
over human 

race.

While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all?

Just because
I don’t walk around 
with a

BLM sign

should not mean 
I 
am 
a 'racist.'


Well done, Tiff. No need to thank me. Next time, run it by me first.

God bless the name of Washington, that name this land reveres

When the Prince of Wales came o’er, and made a hullabaloo,
Oh, everybody was turned-out in gold and tinsel too;
But then the good old sixty-ninth they didn’t like lords or peers,
They wouldn’t give a damn for Kings, the Irish volunteers!
 
We love the land of liberty, it’s laws we will revere,
“But the devil take the nobility!” says the Irish volunteer.
We love the land of liberty, it’s laws we will revere,
“But the devil take the nobility!” says the Irish volunteer.
 
Now if the traitors in the south should ever cross our roads,
We’ll drive them all to blazes, as Saint Patrick did the toads,
Well give them all short nooses that come just below the ears
Made strong and good from Irish hemp, by Irish volunteers.
 
Then here’s to brave McClellan, whom the army now reveres,
He’ll lead us on to victory, say the Irish volunteers.
Then here’s to brave McClellan, whom the army now reveres,
He’ll lead us on to victory, say the Irish volunteers.
 
Now fill your glasses up, me boys, a toast come drink with me,
May Erin’s harp and Starry Flag united ever be;
May traitors quake, and rebels shake, and tremble in their fears,
When next we meet the Yankee boys, the Irish volunteers.
 
God bless the name of Washington, that name this land reveres,
Success to Meagher and Nugent and the Irish volunteers.
God bless the name of Washington, that name this land reveres,
Success to Meagher and Nugent and the Irish volunteers.

Excerpt from The Irish Volunteer, by Webster, J. P. (composer) and Bennet, S. Fillmore (lyricist), H. M. Higgins, Chicago, 1862.

Mordor, USA

All the ruffians do what he says; and what he says is mostly: hack, burn, and ruin; and now it’s come to killing. There’s no longer even any bad sense in it. They cut down trees and let ’em lie, they burn houses and build no more.

My children's favorite chapters from Tolkien's The Return of the King did not make the cut for the blockbuster film adaptation. After the simple hobbits saved Middle Earth by defeating the evil of the stinking, smoking land of Mordor, they returned home to find the Shire terrorized by the wizard Saruman's ruffians, who had knocked down the hobbits' buildings, trees, and monuments, for no other reason than to remove all markers of memory. For a people without pride of place is less likely to defend that place. The trees of the Shire were not just bark and branches, they are where children climbed and hunted, and under whose leaves the people gathered to enjoy warm August nights. A homeland denuded of monuments is just a zip code, and its people mere names in a phone book. "‘This is worse than Mordor!’ said Sam. ‘Much worse in a way. It comes home to you, as they say; because it is home, and you remember it before it was all ruined.’"

A little bit of Mordor is coming home to us in America. The list of our monuments defaced, displaced, or destroyed in this riot season alone is long and still running, but already includes such figures as Thomas Jefferson (who wrote the Declaration of Independence), George Washington (the father of our country who freed his slaves upon his death), Junipero Serra (who founded the California missions), and Cervantes (who was himself held as a slave). They have toppled Ulysses S. Grant, whom Frederick Douglass eulogized as “a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.” The first American progressive president, Teddy Roosevelt, is no longer welcome. Across the pond, even Winston Churchill is far from safe.

The message is clear. It is not the monuments they hate. It is the people who revere them.

Scanning the comments of this campaign, some of the ruffians -- most of whom appear to be young, white college graduates -- still attempt to justify the monument toppling on the basis that the monuments represent historical figures of impure virtue. Though at the above examples, the strain of this exercise becomes too great. Instead, more radicals are adopting the breezier stance of rejecting the very idea of statues. Why should we have statues at all? they proclaim. In this they are hitting rather closer to the spirit of Mordor: That a people should love their homeland is itself contemptible. It stands against the ruffians' will to rule us. The ruffians slash and burn not because they love something, but because we do.

Our monuments are us. A people who will not object to their monuments being toppled and erased will not very strongly object to themselves being toppled and erased.

Our ruffians and their wizards, produced at our elite institutions, have been miffed at our statues for a long time. In the 1980s, the first prize for a competition to create a monument to the perished soldiers of the Vietnam war was awarded not to an artist, but to an architect, Maya Lin, who had chosen to honor our country's dead with an enormous phone book -- a flat surface coldly listing the names of dead soldiers. The work is a surgical deconstruction of the soldiers' lives and sacrifice: their deaths are worth nothing, and so their lives are worth nothing. For Lin, art was an act of destruction, a gash in the ground, an open wound.

Veterans were so upset by the ghoulishness of the work that sculptor Frederick Hart was commissioned to contribute his work, Three Soldiers, for display at the memorial as well. Lin reportedly was annoyed at having to share the memorial with a sculpture. Amusingly, upon seeing Three Soldiers, Lin asked Hart if his models had complained of any pain. Pain? asked Hart. Yes, when you removed the plaster from their bodies. Apparently, Lin had assumed he'd used wet plaster to cast his models, rather than to actual sculpt the works. Lin was incapable of imagining that remembering a person should require the artist to care about him.

Hart posing with the three soldiers depicted in Three Soldiers.

The statue topplers of 2020 carry on Lin's contempt, and with nearly as much skill.

Americans love their statues. They love their history. They love their country. They love it not because it is perfect, but because it is theirs. The conceit of the monument topplers is that a country is just another consumer product. "The assumption," G.K. Chesterton once put it, is that one may criticize a place "as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments." This is nonsense, because:

no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.

And because we love our country, we love those who founded it, and those who defended it. We love them not because they are perfect, for if they were perfect, they would be imposters -- or we would. They were not some alien race. They were flawed humans, as are we. When we condemn the imperfections in others, we condemn ourselves.  We accept these flaws, Chesterton said, not out of optimism, but out of patriotism. "It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it." In the final chapters of The Return of the King not depicted in the film, Merry and Pippin, who had been louts and miscreants before following Sam and Frodo into war merely for the sake of friendship, returned skilled and courageous warriors, capable of raising their Shirefolk into a successful campaign to rout the ruffians and run them out of their homes. Through their love of their friends and their homeland, Merry and Pippin attained marshal virtues, and became unlikely heroes.

Not only do we not turn out our monuments, we do not even turn out our topplers. And for the same reason. For in them moves the same spirit, though twisted and corrupted by vice and viciousness, that moves in us. As our monuments teach us, moments of honor shine even through sinful and wretched creatures, and just as the attainment of virtue does not secure against decline into vice, even one who is mired in vice may yet be saved, and bring honor to himself and his people. In The Return of the King, when the hobbits overthrow Saruman and turn him out of the Shire, Frodo stops his angry Shirefolk from killing him. For "[h]e was great once," Frodo tells them, "of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against. He is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it." If we reject the possibility of redemption in who helped create and shape our country, do we not reject the possibility of redemption in the country itself?

To keep the great deeds of our history alive was the last charge Frodo gave to Sam: to "keep alive the memory of the age that is gone, so that people will remember the Great Danger and so love their beloved land all the more."

Leading up to his first inaugural, President-elect Barack Obama said, "What is required is a new declaration of independence," through "an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels." He went on to implore: "Let's all of us do our part to rebuild this country." But our heroes are created out of flawed mediums. And that flawed medium is the message. Obama would write our ideals on lifeless stone, as Lin wrote the names of our war dead, while frowning at the statue of the soldiers who remind us of the flesh and blood who lived, and who fought, and who died, for their country, and for us. If you wish to destroy the message, start by destroying the medium -- the stories and images of the lives who saved us from the Great Dangers to secure our beloved land.

Those who topple our statues have in mind to topple us. We must rouse ourselves against them.