Monday, November 17, 2008

THURSDAY'S CHILD

THURSDAY’S CHILD

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child that's born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny, blithe, good and gay.


I arrived on this planet on Thursday, November 3, 1932, within a few days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election to the first of his unprecedented four Presidential terms. It was the depth of the Great Depression and my father struggled to pay the $10 it cost for my mother and I to spend our first seven days together in Manhattan’s Park Lane Hospital.

I celebrated my 76th birthday on the day before Barack Obama’s historic election, another unprecedented piece of Presidential history and, though it was not the depth of a depression, the market had lost over 30% of it’s value since my 75th birthday and was still sinking. I won’t even try to guess how much 10 days in a hospital would cost today.

Being born on November 3, 1932 made me Thursday’s Child, indicating that I had far to go. Now that can be interpreted in two ways, either that I was destined for greatness or, more likely, that there was significant room (if not an absolute need) for improvement. After 76 years, I can testify that it was the latter circumstance that prevailed then and still obtains.

In the same vein, October 24, 1929 (3 years and 1 week prior to my arrival) also produced a Thursday’s Child. That child was christened Black Thursday, the day when stock prices on the New York Stock Exchange fell sharply, beginning the week-long crash that gave birth to the Great Depression. Hopefully, there will be no further parallels between then and now.

There are many other miserable Thursdays, but I will not belabor the point. Obviously, there are many good Thursdays, such as the one on which Thomas Edison was born. Suffice it to say that, of the 6,722,810,033 inhabitants of this planet (yes, I counted), it is statistically sound to posit that approximately 960, 401, 433 (1/7) are Thursday’s Children, split pretty evenly between good and bad, male and female, acceptable and annoying, but very few destined for greatness.

However, there is one very special Thursday’s Child to whom the circumstance, destined for greatness, most certainly applies. She’s a bit older than I, having been born on Thursday, July 4, 1776. She’s indeed destined for greatness, already having achieved a great deal of it in the relatively short historical period of her existence. Right now, she is under attack from many quarters, within and without. The attacks from without have been there for all of her existence and, whether sneak attacks or frontal assaults, she’s been able to handle them. The only exception was Vietnam, where her internal enemies were able to force her to turn victory into defeat, leading to the slaughter of untold millions in Southeast Asia and the opening of a permanent, festering wound in her bosom. That festering wound keeps trying to heal, but the same anti-war, anti-American crowd from the 1960’s keeps picking at the scab.

So, it’s the attacks from ‘within’ that are most worrisome, whether they are the frontal assaults from the liberal/progressive factions on either of her coasts, from every level of her educational system where the concept of Akademische Freiheit is interpreted as the academic freedom to express only liberalism, from the overwhelming majority of her mainstream media and, most disturbingly, from within her own government.

The potentially mortal blow she has received from her own Congress in their criminal misuse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has severely damaged her and, by extension, the entire globe. Their manipulation of these two pillars of her mortgage market turned home-renters into home-owners into homeless while bringing the world’s financial system to its knees. Barney Frank and his accomplices have succeeded where the 9/11 terrorists failed, they’ve crippled her economy, debased her reputation and caused her to empty her Treasury in an attempt to stop her citizens’ bleeding.

As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin put it, “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.”

Now, with the party of Barack Obama in control of all three branches of her government, you can be certain that there will be no effort made to punish those responsible for this debacle. But you will see everybody else dragged before endless committee hearings to be harangued and browbeaten by the posturing Poo Bah’s of what is jokingly referred to as her ‘The House of Representatives’. You can also look forward to her Congress spending an inordinate amount of time and effort to criminally prosecute members of the outgoing administration.

Yes, this ‘Thursday’s Child’, this blessed nation, has far to go, just to get back to where she was. She can only pray that her new President will be wise and strong and take good care of her. That her new President be more Harry Truman (another Thursday’s Child) and less Jimmy Carter. That her new President remain vigilant against the outside threats while bandaging the wounds caused by the insiders. That she can keep smiling.

For, as proclaimed Gabriel Syme (G.K.Chestertons’s “The Man Who Was Thursday”) ,
"Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?"

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

MEMO TO SELF

WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU
AND HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET THERE?


You’ve lived through a depression, several recessions, 12 presidents (6 of whom you voted for), a world war, a ‘cold war’, several other declared and undeclared ‘hot’ wars and a ‘police action’ in which you participated. You’ve witnessed the space race, men walking on the moon, little man-made vehicles traversing the Martian landscape as well as little Japanese-made vehicles traversing the American landscape. You’ve seen the malevolent influence of the drugs and sex driven zombies of the 1960’s anti-war, America-hating left, the crowd which dragged this country through the disgraceful retreat/defeat in Vietnam, and whose influence and progeny will continue to pollute our politics for generations to come. You’ve watched the rise and fall of communism and its related collectivist ideologies all over this planet and you now sense the very real possibility of their rebirth, in the United States, of all places. You’ve no way of knowing what else may be in store, but nothing really surprises you anymore.

Now, two days after your 76th birthday, and one day after casting your vote for John McCain and watching him lose to Barack Obama, you sit there pondering the future of America under President Obama. You sit there wondering what the hell has happened over the last two years and, more importantly, what might happen in the next four. Has your country become a place where emotion has completely replaced reason, where respectful disagreement has been replaced by harangue, where all the failed collectivist ideologies of this planet’s history will find a new home?

You’ve given up analyzing this presidential campaign, trying to understand why a thoroughbred with the track record and credentials of a John McCain was unable to win the race against an untried and unproven individual with no track record and a long list of questionable relationships. You feel you know the four reasons for McCain’s loss. First, the liberal-oriented mainstream press has been telling the country for almost eight years how George W. Bush is a disaster, a stupid man, the worst president ever. The fact that he was re-elected 3+ years ago means nothing to them. Is it any surprise then, with the constant battering of the media, that Bush is held in low regard? All Obama had to do is wrap Bush around McCain’s neck, even though McCain often disagreed with Bush. Secondly, the Republicans behaved like Democrats for the past six years, helping to spend us into the deficit mess we now enjoy. Thirdly, and very importantly, about seven weeks before the election, the economy tanks as a result of the Democratic Party’s meddling in the mortgage market, using Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac to pollute the market with sub-prime mortgages. The Democrats, in effect, converted home-renters into home-owners into homeless as the mortgage market tanked and took the rest of the economy with it. The fact that it happened on George Bush’s watch, along with the fact that the Democratic controlled congress had neither the desire nor the will to address the problem at its source and endanger their presidential candidate, was a killer for McCain. Finally, and most importantly, the Democratic candidate proved to be one of the most capable and adroit politicians ever to seek the Oval Office, was able to raise and spend unheard of amounts of money and ran a masterful campaign.
However, you now hear esteemed members of the mainstream media admitting that they are hard-pressed to predict what our new President will do because they just don’t know the man, have no sense of who he really is.

Perhaps, you think, if they hadn’t spent all their time and effort pulling Obama’s bandwagon and avoiding any examination of the man, his associations, his voting record or his campaign promises, they might have attained some knowledge of the man behind the charisma. If they had replaced some of their adulation with the slightest bit of journalistic integrity and curiosity they might have achieved some sense of what they were enabling.

Perhaps, on reflection, you really can’t blame the young for voting the way they did. It is no surprise that the young are idealistic. It is also no surprise that many have been influenced by their teachers and professors and, to a large extent, by peer pressure. But, they voted honestly and in great numbers. And if, as they mature, they are able to maintain some of their idealism and factor in some degree of wisdom gained from experience, it could auger very well for our future.

Perhaps the overwhelming number of blacks voted along racial lines. That shouldn’t surprise you or distress you. If you were black, you very well may have done likewise. Human nature is an integral ingredient of the political process.

Barack Obama was not your choice but he will be your President. So, pray for him and his family, pray that the Lord give him wisdom and strength to lead us through the current financial and economic mess. Pray that he fully recognizes the need for us to be strong in the face of our enemies. Pray that he sees the wisdom (if not the necessity) of governing from the center. Pray that he adheres to his campaign promises to do just that and does not allow the far left faction of his party to drag him (and us) closer to socialism or into the self-destructive sewer of capitulation, recrimination, retaliation and vengeance.

So there, self. I hope that closes the book for you on this election. Go on with your life, fight the good fight and do whatever you can to help your party reclaim its principles, if not its very soul.

Regards,

Me