For example, some years ago, suddenly it became all the rage to refer to public spending reductions as “taking a hair-cut“. Everybody from Chris Dodd to the detestable Dame Pelosi were talking about “hair-cuts”. I started to feel like I was in some vast federal Barber Shop. Of course, who can forget Barack Obama’s Tourettes-like non-stop parroting of “a balanced approach“. Soon, everyone was talking about “balanced approaches”.

Now, where I come from, an “approach” can mean everything from an “8-iron shot” to a “drive-way” to “walking slowly”. Likewise, “balanced” can mean everything from “this side equaling that” to “being sane”. Of course, Barack Obama was speaking about none of this when he was prattling on about Balanced Approaches, and everyone knew it; he was speaking in chic, up-to-minute political jargonese for “tax increases”. No matter, –anybody who was anybody was suddenly referring to “tax increases” as “a balanced approach“.

“Fighting for Working Families” is another hit on the Hot 100 List of unctuous political jargon. It really means “iron-fisted union control“. “Reproductive rights” means “the ability to kill your offspring”.

One must be careful not to use political jargon after it’s Sell-By Date. Nothing is so passe and transitory as Trendy Political Jargon: When was the last time, for example, that anyone sought to “woo the Perot Voter“? And yet, this exact term was uttered dozens of times during the Presidential Debates in 1992.

Political Jargon is a lazy way of communicating in a weird, hip-hoppy shorthand to provoke a visceral response amongst the In-Crowd. To use a bit of, well  –jargonese–  Political Jargon is a “dog-whistle”. It is supposed to be a substitute for critical analysis and thoughtfulness. Barack Obama is masterful in his use of Political Jargon. And, with good reason: It at once makes him sound intelligent and chic all at the same time, when he is, in fact, neither.

But, no matter. It is a weapon conservatives can weild against the authoritarian left with deadly effect, if it chooses to deploy it.

When the C-PAC was meeting for only the fourth time in the bitter snows of early 1977, Ronald Reagan spoke to them of a “New Republican Party”. The term “New Republican Party” thus entered the vernacular, and it became an effective tool for him to describe what he sought to do in only three words: Keep the muscle, the sinew and bone of the existing Party, but reshape the party into a new, fighting force for the American people.

Hence a “New Republican Party“.

It resonated very effectively. I offer another verbal short-cut to communicate in a similar fashion. Some savvy Republican operators would be wise to start referring to “Republican: The American Citizen’s Party“. Given the recent public revulsion to the term “Republican”, it might be wise  to drop the “Republican” entirely at whiles, and refer simply to “Our American Citizen’s Party”.

“Republicanism” seems to conjure images of country-club locker-rooms, and badly-coiffed student organizations that meet in the community rooms of the Comfort Inn and Suites. “Republican” has been so befogged by the political maestros that the name is now a mish-mash in the public mind: A faceless political bureaucracy that stand for everything — and nothing, at the same time.

In this simple word path-way –the American Citizens Party–, we are saying: We stand for the average Citizen. Not only that, we highly esteem “citizenship” and guard against any assault on the bedrock American principle of citizenship. We are the political home for the Average Joe, the Average Citizen. Citizenship has deep roots in American antiquity, and we cherish these roots. We are not part of a collective, but are a gathering of Citizens that adore our American Heritage, our cultural traditions.

We must stop communicating in the short-hand jargon-laden gibberish of the Left, and start adopting our own vernacular. Words are very powerful. One of the first things Winston Churchill (one of the greatest wordsmiths of the twentieth century) did when he became Prime Minister was change the name of the Domestic Defence Bureau to the Home Guard. Let’s take a page from Winston’s book:

Republican: The American Citizen’s Party.

Tomorrow marks the 10th Anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War.

At least, that is how we blandly refer to it –if we refer to at all: The Iraq War.  The years seem to flicker by, like an old misaligned Super 8 movie reel, where each frame is momentarily visible.

Then it is gone.

Such were the early years of the brand-new century. The Year 2000 now seems so long-ago, so quaint. The Two Thousands began with a manufactured panic that the grid would collapse on “Y2K”– but, soon the angst devolved into the butt of late-night TV jokes. And life went on apace.

Of course, we were slapped into cold, hard reality on September 11th, 2001. It was a day that at once changed everything, but exposed a paralyzing stasis all at the same time.

In the early weeks that followed that numbingly horrific day, it seemed there were boogie-men and goblins around every gloomy corner: Right after the attacks, letters dusted with anthrax spores showed up in Post Offices in New Jersey, in the newsrooms of the big networks, and even in Tom Daschle’s office. Five folks died in rapid succession.

The toxin and it’s substrate seemed to point to Saddam Hussein.

A plane dropped out of the sky in early November into the streets of Far Rockaway New Jersey, and nearly 280 people in the plane and on the ground died in the ensuing fire. The NTSB ruled it “pilot error”, but questions remain to this day. Less than a year later, John Allen Mohammed started randomly shooting at people around suburban Washington in an attempt to kindle a chaotic Jihad in America, and managed to kill ten innocent people before he wast stopped.

And, Saddam was stonewalling the UN, poking the eyes of The West. He continued to shoot at our planes in the humorously-named “no fly zone”.

The world has changed so much. Islamic Extremism was isolated to CNN and Bruce Willis movies. Now it was everywhere. And everyone that voted for Al Gore suddenly seemed very relieved that their man lost the election a scant ten or twelve months before. George W. Bush climbed atop the rubble of the World Trade Center, with his Radio Shack bullhorn, and his presidency was never the same. His approval rating hovered above 80%. And it stayed there for months and months.

Many sentient observers thought the whole damned Middle-east was a swirling cauldron of violence and ignorance and petty, centuries-old grievances that ought to be turned to glass, and quickly. Plus, it was a target-rich environment for the world’s lone super-power– a super-power that was now searching for bloody-handed culprits. Even that old villain Yasser Arafat started sweating when we looked in his direction, and headed for the local Red Cross to have his picture taken giving blood for 9-11 victims.

Nobody was impressed.

Saddam Hussein, of course, was hiding out in the sands of Araby, looking more and more like the conniving liar the world know him to be. He said little when the Towers collapsed; but, he seemed pleased that it took only a few box-cutters and ballsy, jacked-up Saudis to give Uncle Sam a bruising.

Of course, it had been official Policy of the  United States Government to remove Saddam from power since 1998 with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, (which had been signed by that notorious John Wayne-impersonator President Bill Clinton). Suddenly, it seemed that “regime change” might really morph from a pansy-ass parlor-discussion to active consideration under Cowboy Bush.

Still, Saddam chested his cards, and bided his time. With nearly 70% of the American People in at least partial favor of invading Iraq, though, George Bush knew speaking softly to all the transnational gab-fests might well yield to the big stick of Donald Rumsfeld’s DoD soon enough–and with the righteous anger of the People he led.

And thus it did.

On March 20th, 2003, after two Congressional authorizations –and much endless twaddle at the United Nations– The United States 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit broached the Iraqi frontier. In matched bookend-style, a little over a year later, United States Army Task Force 121 stuck its long arm into a spider-hole near Tikrit, and yanked the hilariously un-coiffed visage of Saddam Hussein out into the bright desert sun.

The regime had indeed been “changed”.

The effort of our mighty armed forces, our grim warriors, our National Heroes, was enormous. Hundreds of thousands of lives and families were disrupted, loved ones yanked from Home and Hearth. Dust and mud and fear and privation was tempered by Duty and Bravery and Training. The United States, once again, called upon it’s fighting men and women to pull up stakes, pack a few things, and head to another third-world hell-hole half-way around the globe. They fought magnificently, and once again, America owes them a debt it cannot repay.

But, also once again, Politics trumped Honor, and the wheels started to fall off.

After 4,486 gold stars, over 35,400 Purple Heart citations, and nearly $1 trillion in American treasure, though, what was accomplished? Recently, the newly-minted Secretary of Defense Chuck Hegel called the Iraqi Invasion the most “serious foreign policy blunder in fifty years”. Not that Chuck Hegel is a foreign policy genius, mind you. And any SecDef that says such things about the sacrifice of the warriors whom are now his sworn charges is utterly un-worthy of the office. But, there he sits.

Of course, the fact that now this absolute moron– a loathsome anti-Semite who saddles cozily with the Islamo-Nazi regime in Tehran– sits in the office of the Secretary of Defense, DOES beg the question: Was Iraq a Foreign Policy Blunder? If all of the effort to establish a sane nation-state that nominally thinks of itself as self-determinative in the very heart of the Middle East… only results in Harry Reid in charge of the Senate, John Kerry in as Head Hippie at Foggy Bottom, Chuck Hegel running the Defense Department, and Barack Obama in the White House, one must ask:

Was it worth it?

After being self-consciously whip-sawed by the nation and the Republican majority in 2002, many Democrats voted for the Iraq War Resolutions (in fact, the second such vote was conducted mostly as a fig-leaf for recalcitrant Dems to pound their chests about what tough guys THEY were on National Defense, too!)– but, at the first whiff of “quagmire”, the reflexively American Military-hating bubbled to the top of the Democrat Party, and they soon were in full Jane Fonda mode. It should be noted that Chuck Hegel himself voted for the foreign policy he now defines as a “blunder”. So, too, did Hillary Clinton and John Edwards

The weirdly strident Governor Howard Dean (who most people didn’t know from Howard the Duck at the time) started making a name for himself as the over-caffeinated Eugene McCarthy of the 2004 Presidential Season: This War Sucks, George Bush Sucks, America Sucks. Old Howard hit all the right notes for the patchouli-oiled and grizzled community-college professorial-set that makes up the core of Democrat primary voters, and soon his campaign coffers were stuffed with cash.

Democrat Presidential Primary Candidates, being a creative lot, soon joined the Howard Dean chorus. And the American Media, lapdogs forever for the statist left, joined in on the refrain: This War Sucks, George Bush Sucks, America Sucks…

Instead of subduing Iraq in a few short weeks, giving it some obedience lessons like MacArthur did in Occupied Japan, we thought we’d be hailed a liberators, rather than as fair-weather warriors. Iraqi memories being rather longer than American ones, they recalled with anguish how quickly we’d bugged out of Iraq in 1991, and left Kurdistan to the tender mercies of Saddam. Americans, liberators..? Really? And Iraq slowly decended into chaos.

Now, in former years at about this stage of a war, Teddy Roosevelt would have said “Bully!”, the boys would have joined up, we would have kicked some butt, taken some names, and told the world to go eff itself. Instead we sat at home, listened to John Kerry drone on and on about Haditha, and knitted wool over Abu Grab and Iraqi Men in pink panties. Yeesh.

And some Illinois back-bencher state senator no one had ever heard of (beyond, that is, his immediate circle of domestic terrorist friends, assorted coke dealers and pot-heads) found himself in high dudgeon.

So, I ask again: In the context of Barack Obama, was Iraq worth it?

We often talk about the unintended consequences of a larded-up piece of Gawd-Awful legislation, like Obamacare, or Dodd-Frank. But, what of the unintended consequences of war? If I had tapped many of you on the shoulder and said, ten years hence, that George Bush would leave office in disgrace in 2008, leaving Iraq barely stable and the economy in free-fall, and that his departure would result in the election of the most radical leftist president ever, would you be as supportive of the invasion as you were? I have my doubts.

And this is the damnable fruit of the foul Obama harvest: The awe-inspiring sacrifice of our Mighty Warriors — the blood, the steely determination in the face of unspeakable horror and fear, the life-altering wounds, the familial burdens and loneliness– all for what, exactly? We owe our Warriors so much more than this bitter, disgusting legacy: That we should have such flip disregard for their efforts that we send them to fight our wars, while we go shopping, and only turn our backs on them when we tire of seeing their blood on ABC News.

And then, to top it off, we replace their Commander in Chief with the most disgusting, cowardly, self-satisfied, lazy leftists we can find– a leftist that stuffs a tyrannical health-care law down our throats for our cheek. He’ll teach us a lesson for thinking America is so strong, so great.

On this, the 10th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq, I invite each of us to consider the war in the context of our Time. Pause and say a heartfelt, loving prayer for our warriors and their families. They have sacrificed so much. And, on their behalf, think of them the next time we seem so eager to send them to war– and remember the fight is just as crucial for them back here at home. If I were them, and I thought of how it all devolved into the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, I would be sickened. I would be sickened by how little regard the American people had for their own nation that I’d sacrificed so much to defend.

Sickened.

It isn’t difficult to figure out, really; For example, judging by the number of “Scooter Store” and blood glucose meter,  Polident, and Colonial Penn Life Insurance ads on Fox News, it would seem that it’s core audience is senior citizens that have eaten their teeth down to the nub on rock-candy and can’t move around the house any longer and are about to die. Likewise, judging by the commercials,  ESPN is funded by beer drinkers, those in search of “male enhancement” and DISH network consumers. History Channel seems to appeal to people that need all sorts of insurance and drive pickup trucks.

And, now, evidently my favorite cable channel –Food Network (of all things)– is the destination for male homosexual of the techie persuasion. Or, techies of the male homosexual persuasion. Whatever.

There I was, innocently watching Restaurant Impossible, when what appeared to be a standard-issue bromide for the e-reader Kindle glared out from my TV screen. You know the sort of Madison Avenue pablum: Hunk of a man sitting next to a smokin’ hot chick on the beach– trying to read their little tablets; She can read hers, because it’s a Kindle; he can’t read his because it’s Brand X. Blah, blah, blah.

The twist comes at the end, when the smokin’ hot chick makes allusion to her husband at the tiki bar– but then the Hunk does the same thing. HIS “husband” is at the bar, too.

I’ve never had the sort of visceral reaction to an advertizement (– and I’ve been in a lot of truck stop bathrooms, too). I was (and I remain) furious. I will never buy a Kindle. Never, ever: Not after this ad. Nope.

I get it: Our culture gets a kick out of Gay Chic, and it has my whole life. I remember watching an episode of All in the Family back in the early 1970′s when Archie Bunker finds out that one of the guys down at the bar, one of his old time pals, is a male homosexual. We’ve been plowing these cultural furrows a very long time now. There is nothing avante garde about male homosexuality. It’s a big yawn-a-roo.

It is one thing, though, to grudgingly tolerate homosexuality in our cultural midst. It is quite another to normalize it to the point of changing the definition of the English language, and worse yet, to promote it. And nothing screams “promotion” more than advertizement on main-stream cable television.

We ignore in wholesale the tawdry, foul underbelly of male homosexuality in this sort of banal, material treatment. Selling Kindle’s with hunky homosexuals? Really? Really? Anal sex (and its close cousins domination and humiliation) fits in this equation where, exactly?

The founders of Exodus International estimate that probably 90% of all male homosexuals are first exposed to male homosexuality at a young age by way of assault from other male homosexuals. Does Amazon really want to discuss this as it regards the selling of their electronic gizmos?

Of course not. It wants us to consume Male Homosexuality as glibly as we consume, say, baseball. And that is as sick as it gets.

The very fact that most male homosexuals become homosexually-oriented only after degrading or brutal assault is something that our culture –despite it’s flirtation with all things Gay– refuses to tackle. It is a subject that remains taboo; and yet, it is the very reason that for so many centuries, Western civilization frowned on public exhortations of gay sex: It protected its children to keep it closeted.

There is nothing open-minded about assault. There is nothing compassionate about normalizing sexual humiliation of children. And yet these are basic elements of male homosexuality. And certainly a commercial enterprise like Amazon wouldn’t want to be connected to such depravities if the broader culture was sickened by it.

But, we’re not.

Now, with a culture that treats its dogs better than it treats its children, with a culture that impugns traditional family life with back-of-the-hand arrogance, our children are societal petri-dishes swirling about to see what ultimately kills them. And, even as the cultural tsunami threatens to engulf my family, I will do what I can to protect them.

And I will start by not allowing a Kindle into my house.

But, another old aphorism is: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So, does knowledge eventually corrupt?

Don’t blithely answer that. In my view, it is a rather profound query. Adam and Eve had a snack from which tree again?

Knowledge can be a tricky thing, actually. And it often trips up those of us on the right who hold that the allure of knowledge is an animating thing to most people. Conservatives tend to make their arguments based on the belief that most adults are not only persuadable, but are actually desirous of being persuaded –by knowledge.

Conservatives, by nature, look to knowledge –and to it’s cousins Reason and Experience and Observable Science– as touchstones to personal growth. They tend to revere history, to relish folklore, and hold in high esteem those that likewise understand these things, and sacrifice to ensure their growth in perpetuity.

But, I posit again: Does knowledge eventually corrupt?

For example, one of the taproots of modern conservatism is the correctitude (at least in reference to governmental policy) of lower marginal tax rates because they bring in more revenue, and expand the economy. This is what history and experience and observable economics teaches us. It simply isn’t open to debate. The proof is as wide and deep and broad as it is that, say, the sky is blue. Lower tax rates balloon the federal coffers.

Now– remind me again why is this desirable? This is a crumb of knowledge that has corrupted, and grotesquely so.

If there was a failing of Ronald Reagans (and I say “if”), it was couching the morality of lower tax rates in the framework of good governmental policy. The left, you see, NEVER (and I mean NEVER) does this.

Everything the left proscribes is sculpted in moral terms. They want to “make things fair”. They want to “level the playing field”. They want to make sure “no one falls through the cracks”. They want “marriage equality“. They never say “Lowering marginal tax rates from a high of 90% to 25% increased revenues to the federal government by over 7 trillion dollars between 1982 and 1989.” Those with busy lives start turning the channel by about the word “marginal”. Even when the left veers off into something that requires a bit of minutiae to explain, they always follow it up with heart-rending appeals to false morality: “When amounts of atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons are increased from 2,500 parts per billion to 2,750 parts per billion, it increase overall liklihood that the earth’s ozone layer is depleted by .0007%. And that increases cancer deaths by too many to calculate.”

Pace Barack Obama, lowering the oceans plucks much more deeply upon the heartstrings than Mitt Romney’s appeals to put on the green eye-shade and pore over the books. Snooze-a-rama.

I suggest: From now on, the Right should couch their arguments in such moral terms. The difference, of course, is that our knowledge of what is moral, and right, and correct is informed by thousands of years of experience, of knowledge, and observable science. It is not based on the left’s false morality of a phantom nirvana over the next horizon. Again, the appeal is to the morality, not the knowledge behind the morality.

For example: Tax Cuts shouldn’t be sold as a funding mechanism for an insatiable federal monster.

Tax Cuts should be sold because they are good. They are fair. Plain, simple.  Likewise, Taxes should be explained as a legalized form of theft, and everyone knows stealing what doesn’t belong to you is wrong; which is why, by the way,  those in Christ’s day had such a low opinion of tax collectors.

Taxes are just as wrong, I will add, as being “unfair“, or “unjust“, or “uncaring“, or “unequal“. Getting money you simply haven’t earned is wrong, and most people know this intrinsically…  including those with enormous trust funds who sit on beaches listening to Jimmy Buffet.

Likewise, our goal ought not be to sluice more “revenue” to the Federal Monster. It is wrong to give more money to institutions which have proven manifestly incapable of handling it responsibly, just as it is wrong to give an alcoholic a shot of vodka. Our goal, again (–couching our arguments in moral terms) is to be “good”, and “thoughtful”, and that means –not just tax cuts– but “government cuts”.

“Government Cuts”. That ought to be our rallying point in the years to come. And they should be explained in moral terms, about how corrosive government is, how dehumanizing it is, how coercive it is, how horribly arbitrary and pernicious it oftentimes is. How ugly it is. Knowledge tells us this.

But, you can feel it, too.

A Diary would entrap my attention, and I’d be compelled to join in on the conversation. I’d feverishly type, and edit, and compose, until verily I had masterpieces of reason and logic and substance to add to the emerging epistles. That, or maybe a limerick.

Then, I’d notice after typing these brilliant bits of prose (nay, poetry!), I’d go to the “post as conservativecurmudgeon” button, and it wouldn’t work. Or, more likely, the button would disappear, or it wasn’t there at all. Or, the field would turn gray, and the post would never, well, “post”.

Soon, I learned to cut the comments to the clipboard, and repost them in a new window, or open Explorer, and do it there.

That worked all of one time.

And, of course, there have been times when I wished I could help blast a diary out of the darkness, and shoot it to the top of the “Popular” diaries, but, alas, these diaries are nowadays only the front pagers, or ones with links to other sites. We poor RedState Peasants must now eat our thin gruel, and enjoy the tastiness of being allowed to post, I guess.

Anyway, it’s all rather discouraging. It seems the “bugs” in the new layout that were going to be fixed are now “features”…

Yep, what a gully-washer of public opinion.

Even if our first reaction is one of nauseated revulsion, or outright scorn at the source –Pew?–, we must remember how wrong we were about similar reactions to all the polling data in the election just passed: Obama couldn’t be winning, could he? Rasmussen couldn’t be wrong…

But, this single poll, which is likely much more accurate than I can emotionally admit, has me more dispirited, more empty,  –more sad– than any single moment since the horrific night he was re-elected.

The stark reality is that the America that so many of us loved, revered, and defended is quite gone. Like Brigadoon in the mists, it has faded, probably never to be seen again. If a majority –even a razor-thin one– approves of the governing philosophy of this petulant, angry, diabolical and loathsome man, the bridge back to an America I recognize has been blown up, it’s moorings ripped from the bedrock.

Oh, we may find another road back from the dark and dismal future ahead– but it won’t be on highways or footpaths with which we are familiar.

In 1970, 1 in 42 Americans was on Food Stamps, or other forms of nutritional assistance from the federal government; now, as we all know, it is 1 in 6. In 1950, 1 in 365 citizens of Detroit (proper) was on any form or social welfare. Now, it is 1 in 3, and if you include Detroiters who derive their livelihoods from the government, it is 2 out of 3. The private sector, which used to be the crown jewel of Detroit, has withered and collapsed.

The maximum length of unemployment insurance in 1980 was 36 weeks. It is now 99 weeks and counting — and if that runs out, you can become a ward of the Social Security system, as some 12 million new enrollees in the SSI disability ranks this year alone have discovered.

The fact is, if you are a non-productive member of society now, unlike any other time in our nation’s history, you simply don’t feel the effects of your lack of contribution. You can have a cell-phone, with a pre-paid plan. You can bunk up in Section 8 housing. You can get a free car, or free interurban or heavily subsidized transportation. Meals are free at free public schools for your children, as are “after school” programs. You don’t even have to stand in line for these benefits: They are mailed to you in the form of Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, so you don’t even have the stigma of looking poor. You can even live the life of a high-rolling Players Club Las Vegas gambler by using your EBT card at casino ATM’s.

Hard work, diligence, thrift, frugality, honesty, and  humbleness are no longer virtues. Why should they be? You can completely avail yourself of all the appurtenances of our hyper-modern society, without contributing one iota to it. So, why bother?

Even worse, why support governmental leadership that suggests otherwise? It would be counter intuitive.

So, folks, it’s over. The Rubicon has been crossed.

We can –we must– pray for events to swallow this reality. John Boehner can’t fix it. Nor, for that matter can Ted Cruz.

America has been transformed. It is done.

Oh, we must fight the good fight, and we must engage– most appropriately at the local and grass-roots level, where our very families and lives are the most effected. But, the broader culture is lost, and it slipped away like a thief in the night, when no one was looking.

When one doesn’t feel the effects of unemployment –because employment holds no particular benefit– and where the public treasury has been blown wide open in order to enslave the productive, the old order of things is utterly, utterly irrelevant.

No: at the time,we were too focused on defending Bain Capital, and tax havens in Bermuda, and whether Mitt Romney gave some kid a haircut in 1965. Barack Obama, and his band of despicable toadies, set out to fundamentally transform America, and their goal has been achieved. Reaganism is utterly vanguished, and appeals in his name are useless utterances against the bitter cultural winds.

And now, we have so heavily indebted the wage-creators that there is no way out. Taxes will balloon: and that’s been the goal all along.

The peaks and valleys of the business cycle have been removed: Mediocrity has replaced it. 15% real unemployment is the new normal: There is no reason for it to be otherwise, for there is no pain associated with joblessness. There will be no more “busts”– nor will there be “booms”. Stocks may rise, but what difference will it make when fewer and fewer people are part of the investor class?

The oceans didn’t recede, the lands didn’t begin to heal with the election. But, like he told Joe the Plumber all those gray and dismal years ago, Barack Obama spread the wealth around.

And he took away to tools to scoop it up again.

For I was insured…

Then they came for the Corporations, and I did not speak out–

For I was not a Corporation…

Then they came for the Rich, and I did not speak out–

For I was not Rich…

And, then they came for me,

and then there was no one left to speak for me…

I believe it is of paramount importance, especially in this age of instantly disposable news, to never forget tragic, heartbreaking and innocent victims such as those in Bath, Michigan– and now in Sandy Hook, Connecticut–  and to pray to God and thank Him for the well-being and safety of our own little ones. Life, after all, can change so unalterably so quickly…

————————————————————————–

Springtime in Mid-Michigan is a many-splendor’d thing.

My old neighbor, Mrs. Taylor (who died in 1987 at the age of 83) once told me her remembrance of hitching up the carriage and horses as a youngster to go to the high school baccalaureate. It was late May, and she passed the freshly-planted fields, the equipment still in the furrows… covered with a freshly fallen snow.

My remembrance, though, of May in Mid-Michigan is rather different: Hot and sweating in the aluminum stands in the unfiltered noon-time sun to watch the Special Olympics, which were played on our High School track field every May. The Special Olympics are a very heartwarming, and very engaging, event to watch. The year I was a Junior in 1980, the temperature was in the low 90′s, and there was a great deal of concern about the athletes, and dehydration.

Mid-Michigan in May: One year, there’s snow, the next there’s a heatwave. Sometimes one follows the other in the span of a day or two.

The Spring of 1927, though, was a fine one, as fine as Mid-Michigan has to offer. The lilacs were in full, glorious, odoriferous bloom. The currant blossoms were heady in the mild and comforting air.  In those days, the school year often ended before “Decoration Day” (“Memorial Day”, as it became blandly known, here in these afteryears), and the children would soon be let out for the summer, to help around the farm.

Mid-Michigan was very largely rural back then. Lansing was the bustling urban center of State Government, and, of course, Fisher Body, Oldsmobile and Motor Wheel Corporation. But, the far flung hamlets, that today are bypassed by the sizzling, double-barreled Interstate Highways, were, in those years, a days’ journey by dray, or a 45-minute, 30-mile-per-hour odyssey by automobile. Towns that are now barely a spot on the map, like Wacousta, and Eagle, and Clinton are now a mere 12-minute drive into downtown Lansing. But, in 1927, they were a world apart.

One such village was Bath. Fewer than 10 miles from the State Capitol, mostly north and then a tad west, Bath would be called, in the modern era of commuting, a “bedroom community”: A place where the state bureaucrats, the Michigan State University professors, the autoworkers, would sleep, but their daytime hours were spent “in Town”. In 1927, though, Lansing was a journey you made only when you’d planned it in advance.

Like most of Mid-Michigan towns, Bath was quite prosperous in those years of Calvin Coolidge. Some of the roads had been graded, and some even paved. In the spring of 1927, Consumer’s Power Company was stringing the first electrical power-lines to the village, their crews hauling enormous wooden poles and spools of wires. And Bath, Michigan enjoyed it’s own newly-finished jewel, right near the confluence of Webster and Clark, the two main roads:

The Bath Consolidated School.

The “consolidated school” was a touchstone of the era: The improving roads, the advent of the school bus, and other modern bric-a-brac, made the large, centrally-heated, well-appointed rural school not only a possibility, but a reality . The days of having a one or two-room school every eight or ten miles were coming to a close as school districts formed, and they consolidated the little neighborhood farm schools into one big modern, up-to-date educational facility. And Bath was very proud of theirs.

Emory Huyek, the thirty-three year old Superintendent of the Bath Consolidated School was particularly proud, especially in the glorious early morning hours of that bright and delicious spring day. His staff was industriously working on the end-of-year pageant, field games, and a class picnic for some fifth graders. Most of the upperclassmen were absent, enjoying some time away in advance of Final Exams.

The town was resplendent that morning with all that bespoke small-town midwesternism at the late dawn of the 20th century. Most folks were farmers, some were businessmen and shopkeepers. There was a druggist, and a doctor or two. And all the names were familiar, and solidly Midwestern:  Medcoffs and Zimmermans, Cochranes and Claytons. Strangely, there were Harts and Hartes .

And there was little Ralphie Cushman.

Ralphie was a third grader at Bath Consolidated, and he loved his teacher, Miss Weatherby, and he stopped at his mother’s flowerbeds that morning as they were walking to school. “Momma”, he said to her as they walked along, “Can I bring my teacher a tulip this morning?” No, she replied. They were running a bit late, and Ralphie’s mom wanted to enjoy the flowers for a day or two before she started picking them. “Ralphie,” she said, “You can bring her some tomorrow”.

Ralphie, at eight, was a tad young to be a third grader. He was an inquisitive, but quiet and shy boy, so his sister Josephine offered to sit with him that morning– he’d had a rough time the day before. But, it was springtime, and there was no better place to be a third grader than in Miss Weatherby’s class at the Bath Consolidated School in May of 1927. It was an American idyll. Ralphie told his sister that the other pupils would make fun of him if his older sister stayed at his side that morning, so Josephine left him alone with his classmates. His mother, Nellie Cushman, waved at him as he disappeared into the gaggle of other students jostling for entry into the building. Ralphie turned and looked at his mother. “Don’t worry momma,” he said, “I’ll be good”. He didn’t have his tulips, but Ralphie was ready for the day.

Nellie returned home, walking the same course alone, without her children. She began tending to the household chores.

There was a sudden, sharp, tremendous blast and explosion somewhere north of  her house that actually cracked the windows in the kitchen. She ran outside to see where the explosion came from, and saw others running in the same direction. Almost immediately, another explosion rent the peaceful May morning air. There was a plume of dust and smoke coming from the direction she’d just left.

The Bath Consolidated School had exploded.

In what became known immediately that day as the “Bath School Disaster”, some 30 children, primarily in the second, third and fourth grades died during those first two quick and horrendous explosions. Miss Weatherby was crushed beneath the ceiling of the floor above her. Children were hurled from windows, blown like rag-dolls against cruel and unmoving brick walls, crushed beneath joists and rafters and shingles. Suddenly, the air of the mild spring morning was agog with the horror of screaming, injured and terrified children, and the plaintive wails of grief-stricken mothers who’d rushed to the school.

Within minutes, help was pouring in from the neighboring homes and farms. The men from Consumer’s Power line-stringing crew was already there, attempting to shore up the portions of the school that hadn’t caved in with the mammoth pine poles they brought that morning; Some were used as levers. Superintendent Huyek was moving about like a madman, directing here, ordering there, diving in over here to rescue the shocked and dying children.

What, in the Lord’s Name had happened? An earthquake? Piped natural gas was years away. It didn’t make sense: The sky was nearly a faultless blue. There couldn’t have been a tornado. Or lightning. As these thoughts fired rapidly in his mind, Huyek’s attention was grabbed by a waving man out near the road who had just driven up in his model “T”. It was one of the members of the School Board (the treasurer, in fact), 55-year old Andrew Kehoe, and clearly he’d driven up to help in the rescue.

Oddly, though, Kehoe didn’t immediately get out of his Ford; He was known in town as a smart and technically gifted man (-in fact, he performed much of the mechanical maintenance on the new Consolidated School), but he was odd, and a bit of a malcontent and a thorn in the side of the young Superintendent– as treasurer, Kehoe needled the Superintendent constantly about expenditures.

Kehoe and Huyek seemed to be arguing, if that was possible, at this most critical time, out by the road. A shotgun was seen briefly, brandished by Kehoe, and he turned and fired it into the rear of his Model T. There was a bright flash, and a third explosion tore through the schoolyard…

Kehoe’s truck blew five or ten feet straight into the air. His body was mangled into five or six gory chunks that rained down amongst the smoldering wreckage. Superintendent Huyek was also torn to bits. Several bystanders who witnessed the exchange were also hit and mortally wounded by the deadly shrapnel, including the town postmaster and one of the children who had survived the first blast. Kehoe had packed his Ford with dynamite and every bit of old iron and implements and nails and sawblades with every intention of firing it off, and killing anyone nearby. Especially Huyek.

Bath, Michigan, in less than fifteen minutes, had descended into the madness of waking nightmare, and all reality began to fall away, and became muted in the face of fragrant lilac, and the mutilated bodies of tender, innocent children. Pandemonium reigned.

Some three miles away, almost unnoticed, Andrew Kehoe’s farm and home had also exploded, and now were ablaze. When investigators began piecing together the grisly series of events, and poured through the charred remains of his property, they noticed a small sign that Kehoe had stenciled on a board, and attached to his wire fence: “Criminals are Made, Not Born”, it said.

Kehoe’s farm was left to burn. Back at the Bath Consolidated School, as soon as he’d self-detonated, and taken his supposed nemesis with him into eternity, it was clear to everybody that Kehoe was the diabolical culprit and lone mastermind of the incredible bloodshed and carnage that was unfolding.

But, the story only starts with Andrew Kehoe. It ends (if, indeed, it ever ends) on May 18th, 2009, when Josephine, at the age of 92, went to Bath’s Pleasant Hill Cemetery and placed the last tulips she took to her little brother Ralphie Cushman’s grave, as she had done nearly every May 18th since 1927.

The Bath School Disaster remains both the largest single, lone act of mass murder, and the deadliest attack on a school in American history. In all, 38 school children were murdered, along with 4 adults, including Miss Weatherby and Emory Huyek. 58 people were injured, some life-alteringly so. Oklahoma City had it’s conspirators, but Kehoe acted alone.

The events at Bath, Michigan remain largely forgotten today. On the day it happened, the Disaster was front page news in America’s dailies, including the New York Times. But, by the next day, the follow-on stories in Bath were “below the fold ” , being crowded out by the triumphant landing of Charles Lindbergh in Paris that day. But the mourning, the tireless rescues, the hour upon hour of selfless work continued apace in Bath.

In those days, there was no Federal Emergency Management Agency. The only real government presence was the Michigan State Police, and a few local volunteer fire departments. At the scene, the MSP later devolved to traffic control, as the tiny village was overrun by tens of thousands of people wanting to help, wanting to be part of history, or just wanting to gawk. Eventually, the State Police found hundreds of pounds of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol wired to the east and south wings of the school, which hadn’t exploded. If Kehoe’s long-planned and intricately executed mission had worked as he thought it would, the entire school would have blown up, and most of the children would have died.

I mentioned my neighbor, Mrs. Taylor. Her future husband was living that day in Lansing, and worked for the Lansing Arctic Dairy. He was instructed by his boss to take a truck-load of ice and refreshments up to the bombing scene to offer them to all the volunteers who worked without rest through the long first night under the glare of searchlights that Consumer’s Power had trucked in. A local bakery did the same things, as did a local brewer and several grocery stores.

Local hospitals, including Lansing’s Saint Lawrence Hospital sent entire squadrons of nurses and doctors and ambulance attendants, along with their Sisters of Mercy. Farmers sent their equipment and tractors. Local undertakes and ministers volunteered their time to conduct dozens of funerals, most of them in the family homes. Everybody, everywhere, wanted to help.

Including Michigan Governor Fred Greene, who drove out to Bath from his home in Lansing, and began hauling bricks and lifting timbers like everyone else. He stayed most of the day, as did his wife, who worked with the bereft parents, and helped to bind up wounds.

After the additional explosives were found in the crawl spaces and basement of the undamaged wings, several boys volunteered to retrieve it, no questions asked. Kehoe had evidently installed lengths of wire and dynamite inside long lengths of eavestrough, and slid them under the floor in several locations, where only smaller, wiry boys could retrieve it. And thus they did.

There were many other small stories of great heroics that day: Hazel Weatherby, for example, clung to life for hours, shielding the great weight of the floors above her from the two small children she held, until she was discovered, and was able to release them– at which point she finally gave up her own life. Bath’s only doctor toiled without sleep for nearly three days.

On the anniversary of the disaster, let us remember: Bath, Michigan was in the pit of despond that May day, all those years ago. But, as befit a solid, strong, faithful mid-western American town, it got to work.

What is the significance of this story? Why am I telling it today?

Modern life tends to pore much significance onto the Events of the Day. Last week it was bin Laden. The week before, it was the Royal Wedding. Before that, Trump. Before that, Gadahfi. The week before that it Egypt. And so forth. The headlines change, the passions swell, and we move on. Very quickly. Yes, time has always moved for mortals at a break-neck speed. As Solomon taught: There is nothing new under the sun.

In 1927, though, there was a crucial difference. The lack of federal, or Presidential, response.

Calvin Coolidge is not mentioned in any account of the events in Bath, even as a passing reference point. There was no general castigation that Coolidge sat in Washington, and didn’t wring his hands in public, or take the first train to Bath to hog up the atmosphere, and the searchlights, and add to the bewilderment of the grieving town. He didn’t go on the Radio and blame anybody for anything, in the uber-vain hope of taking some sort of weird political advantage.

There was no call to have the Federal Government ban dynamite, or pyrotol, or Model T’s.  There was no federal legislation creating “Bomb Free School Zones”. There was no immediate reportage on how this public policy or that public policy might have created Andrew Kehoe. No one wondered if it was a political gain for the Republicans, or a diminishment for Democrats.

No, neighbors simply dived in, hugged their loved ones in loss and sorrow, and even in the joy of life continuing. They mopped up, they sorted the bricks. They provided succor in the knowledge that evil exists in the world, and that the government wasn’t there to make it go away; God and Church? Maybe. Not Government.  Government, if it was there at all, was to provide traffic control, and deliver justice. Not much else was needed from them. Certainly not more regulation, or more overseeing. Looking to Washington for surcease from the devastation wrought in the anguish of a madman’s diseased mind was as foreign to Bath in 1927 as looking to the Moon for cheese.

The government, generally speaking in 1927, was inobtrusive, in the background. A fund was started by Governor Green to help rebuild the school, but it was soon discontinued after the Chairman of Ford Motor Company, James J. Couzens, wrote a check for $75,000 to cover it.

Couzens, in fact, is the unsung hero of Bath. He made millions as an original investor of Henry Ford’s last, and successful, attempt to build an automobile manufacturing company. He eventually sold his stock back to Ford for some $20 million dollars. He and his wife donated millions and millions of dollars to good works all over Michigan from endowed schools to hospitals, and yet he remains today as unknown as the Disaster in Bath. Government didn’t rebuild the Bath School; James Couzens did.There was no millage vote, no campaign to raise taxes “for the Children”. Private, selfless, honest, hardworking, charitable folks queued up and took care of things..

But other, less wealthy benefactors took it upon themselves to provide relief, as well, without taxation, without Federal Disaster Relief. The Red Cross was a truly efficient and magnificent organization then, and they moved into the breech on the day of the explosion. They remained in Bath for many weeks. Lastly, children from across the country donated pennies to create a Monument to those killed, who were innocently endeavoring to learn that bright, mild May morning. Some months later, a sculpture, entitled, “Girl With a Cat” was dedicated to the victims, and the sculpture remains in Bath to this day.

The Good Old Days weren’t always good. Evil,–pure, unbridled evil — lurked in the shadows as it does today, eager to snuff out innocence and life, goodness and joy. That’s nothing new– as it was in 1927, so it is today. How we respond, though, has changed.

As the lilac blooms, and the sway of Ralphie Cushman’s tulips dance in the mild May breeze, I will leave to those reading this to determine how it’s changed, and if it’s for the better.

The United States Department of Education spent over $87 Billion last year.

If you confiscated the entire revenue stream of 3M Corporation ($29.6 billion in total revenue for FY 2011), America Express ($29.7 billion) and McDonalds ($21.3 billion) to pay for it, you would still need over $7 Billion to pick up the tab. The United States Department of Education –which runs no schools, employs not one active teacher, and teaches not a single child, spends more than these three companies generate– combined.

Maybe the Department of Education is a bit pricey for your tastes.  So, if you stole all the sales and revenue generated from the Travelers Insurance Company ($25.45 billion), and Honeywell ($36.50 billion), you could pick up the Department of Energy –which is a bargain for the US Taxpayers at a mere $47.80 billion.

At $66.20 Billion, you would need to swipe Boeing in it’s entirety ($68.73 Billion) to pay for the Department of Transportation.

Similarly, the Department of Treasury ($114 Billion) would require more than the entire revenue stream of Bank of America ($110 Billion) to cover it’s monstrous bills. Of course, this only pays the overhead at Treasury, and doesn’t include the Principle and Interest payments on the debt, which is yet another line in the laundry list that is the Federal Budget.

Now, these all are mere triflings compared to other Federal Departments and outlays. For example, if you were feeling generous, and wanted to cover the interest costs on our borrowing instruments, you would have to steal the entirety of Merck Pharmaceuticals ($48.07 Billion) AT&T ($110 Billion) Intel ($54.0 Billion) and Coca-Cola ($46.50 Billion) to pay off the $234.784 Billion in interest payments the Fed hemorrhaged last year.

$57.0 Billion is an ocean of money, and could be had from seizing everything at Kraft Foods ($54.40 Billion) to pay the bills at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. To pay for the Department of State (again, at $62.82 Billion, this is only for the bricks and mortar and copier paper), you could confiscate Microsoft ($73.72 Billion), and still have enough left over to to snatch up the National Science Foundation ($7.89 Billion).

In Truck Stop vernacular, though, this stuff is all a mosquito on an elephant’s ass.

It would take all of the revenue from Wal-Mart ($446.9 Billion), and Verizon ($110.8 Billion), Proctor & Gamble ($82.55 Billion), and General Electric ($147.30 Billion)  to pay for the United States Department of Health and Human Services. This agency is the true multi-headed hryda of the Federal Leviathan, costing the good citizens of America over $787.63 Billion last year alone.

Now, HHS is out-done only by the Social Security Administration. At $817 billion, you would have to purloin Exxon/Mobil ($486.55 Billion) Chevron ($253.75 Billion) plus Caterpillar Equipment ($60.13 billion) for the quid you would have to cough up to pay for SSI.

There are, naturally, a few legitimate functions of the Federal Government; the Department of Defense, for example. At $693.56 Billion, I think we can all agree they have enough money at the Pentagon to keep things together without having to sell the spare parts on ebay. But, you would have to steal everything at EI DuPont ($36.7 Billion) Cisco Systems ($46.16 Billion) HP ($120.7 Billion) IBM ($106 Billion) Pfizer Laboratories ($67.43 Billion) and United Technologies ($58.10 Billion) and Alcoa ($25.9 Billion)….

…and still be $257.66 Billion short in covering the bills at DoD.

And, because we’ve now swiped the entire gross receipts of the Dow Jones 30 Industrials, we’d have to move on like locusts to other places, like maybe the NASDAQ, or something. And, this is all for just Fiscal Year 2011.

We’ve still not covered the Department of Agriculture ($129.9 Billion), Department of Veterans Affairs ($121.9 Billion), Homeland Security ($58.8 Billion) Department of Justice ($27.8 Billion), NASA ($17.7 Billion), Department of the Interior ($12.95 Billion) Departments of Labor ($121.1 Billion) and Commerce ($12.7 Billion), along with the Small Business Administration ($1.67 Billion) and something amorphously called “Other Spending” at $97.3 Billion.

Please, please, please: Don’t even START with the tax increase chatter. We could outright rob the entire gross receipts of the DJI to cover the grotesquely mind-boggling spending of the Federal Government, and still come up $601.82 billion short.

Does anyone in congress even squint when they see this? Maybe a little sweat on the upper lip? Out here in fly-over country, we call this being a little ”upside down”.

In congress, they call it “Thursday”.

John Anderson. Phil Crane. John Connolly. George H.W. Bush. Bob Dole. Howard Baker.

Ronald Reagan.

Notice anything? I mean, other than the fact that it was an exceptionally good year for voluminous heads of hair (–especially John Anderson and Phil Crane), what stands out in this crop of Presidential Aspirants?

It isn’t immediately apparent, unless you happened to live through it (which I did), and were politically cognizant:

A moderate Squishy Representative. Three or four Squishy senators. A former Democrat big-government Governor fighting corruption at every turn. Establishment, Establishment, Establishment.

…And one Goldwater traditional constitutionalist Conservative.

Juxtapose the 1980 Republican Field against the 2012 Republican Field. Whatever you may think of the personalities of the candidates in 2012, they were, by and large, conservative. Oh, sure, Ron Paul is a whack-job libertarian neo-confederate, but, his starting bid is usually the Constitution. And, I don’t really count candidates on silly little vanity campaigns underwritten by their billionaire fathers, like John Hunts-his-name.

When you watched the 2012 candidates on the hustings, though, they mostly were arguing for less, not more, government. They were properly invoking the constitution and the government’s relation to the sovereign individual. Only one candidate among them had been a strong advocate for activist government in his public background.

And he got the nomination because of that fact. The conservative vote was not only divided amongst the entire field, it was sliced, diced, filleted, and julienned. And, more importantly, Mitt Romney was there, vacuuming up the monetary spoils as the “electable” of an otherwise divided field.

Therefore, I posit a simple, yet cunningly effective theorem: We need to encourage every big-government, RINO moderate Squish of any repute to run for President in 2016. I want every Chris Cristie and Rick Snyder and Tommy Thompson and Mitch Daniels and Linda Lingle and Linsay Graham and Saxby Chambliss and Jon Huntsman and John Boehnor, hell, even Mitt Romney to run for President.

…And I want ONE conservative: One Ted Cruz, one Jim DeMint, one Sarah Palin, one Scott Walker. Looking back at 1980, it is just as interesting to see who didn’t run, as looking at those that did: Remember, Reagan was coming off nearly unseating Gerald Ford, and everyone knew who the bonafide Conservative would be in 1980: Jack Kemp, Paul Laxalt and Bill Simon  and other movement conservatives conceded the field before the campaign had even begun.

 Let the damnable squishes fight over crumbs in 2016. Let THEM self-destruct, one by one, fighting off the allegations of the New York Times and Drudge. Let them spend the bazillions on stupid negative advertising. And finally, let them clear the field for the one conservative constitutionalist.

Just like 1980…