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True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world

His understanding of love is at least half the problem. Cf. Chesterton’s discourse on Pimlico (an ugly London neighborhood) in Orthodoxy:

It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

How can you not love America and the genius of its founders… and all of the defenders of their brilliance, ever since… profoundly?

profitsbeard on December 27, 2008 at 1:19 AM

Because liberalism is an incurable Utopian derangement.

As immigrants pour in, native Swedes pour out. How long before Sweden becomes a Sharia state?

That may be a good thing long term for America.

As Sweden, Holland, Denmark, France and of course the UK become majority Muslim, millions of native Europeans will flee to the US. And just like ex-E. Europe Americans would rather eat glass than go back to communism, so will these new refugees be loathe to let the same thing happen here. So assuming we can get through the next 8 years with BHO – a big, big assumption – the 2020s and beyond might have a bright spot.

There’s the door…………….. don’t let it hit you in the A#s on the way out.

Seven Percent Solution on December 26, 2008 at 9:48 PM

+1

Please leave, Joel. I hear there’s an opening in Time’s Tehran Bureau. People are dying to share their opinions there. And don’t let the screen door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.

…countries with more relaxed attitudes toward sex, that would have been fine with me too”

Why is it with liberals everything comes down to sex? And they talk about us conservatives being obsessed with it.

God (through moral relativism)….fathers (through nanny state welfare)….husbands (through feminism)….male procreation (through sexual relativism in the form of gay activism)….the protector of the family (accusing men of being war mongers)…..

They encourage behavior and ideals that work toward castrating the role of men.

And to whom do so many of these other “wealthy democrac(ies)” owe their very existence? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

cinnabar on December 27, 2008 at 12:28 AM

If it were not for the USA not a single one of them would exist as democracies today, let alone wealthy democracies.

Like most “progressives” Joel Stein is clearly a myopic moron.

Certainly not the USA as we are a Republic not a Democracy.

You did know that right?

DSchoen on December 27, 2008 at 2:49 AM

They really don’t know. The party names tell the whole story, in a nutshell. We are for the Republic that was built and they are for a Democracy, instead. I have to say that George Bush was no help, at all, in this respect – and neither was McCain with his “League of Democracies” … sheesh.

What’s stopping ya?

Seriously, what’s stopping you?

Is this an example of your own “intellectual laziness”?
Or have you actually talked to say 50 million folks, face to face, so you know everyone of them thinks exactly the same?

Joel Stein
“absolute conviction can lead to dangerous extremism”

Yes it does, and that’s true on the left or the right, strange you don’t see that.

Then again when ya think about it, all those Europeans at that time looked around their own European countries, with their European cities, cultures, homes with 4 walls and a roof, infrastructure and said “dang I’d rather sail thousands of miles across an ocean, set up camp with nothing! than hang around these Europeans”

Strange, even today more folks want to get into the USA than want out of the USA.

Guess those early settlers weren’t “liberals or progressives”

So what “wealthy democracy” did you grow up in?

Certainly not the USA as we are a Republic not a Democracy.

You did know that right?

And in 3 weeks these people will take the US on a magical mystery tour into the abyss of Joel Stein’s cognitive dissonance on a grand scale

katy on December 26, 2008 at 10:30 PM

+10.

This is Hall of Fame material. How about it, Allah? Got room on the server for a virtual museum of top quality comments?

I will have to see if their is some kind of drug to treat their malady otherwise electroshock therapy will have to do.

Sigmund on December 26, 2008 at 11:07 PM

Actually, cigarettes would be very effective in smoothing out their daily behavior (due to, both, the psychoactive effects of nicotine and the liberal’s need to never feel “left out” of any group) so they would be much less annoying in public.

But … since they have set out to kill cigarettes (because their parents were cigarette smokers and anything that would take away some of daddy’s pleasures must be a good thing) that only leaves the electroshock. Liberals are always their own worst enemy. Juice ‘em up, and let me know if you get any positive results.

I always loved America, but that love grew when I saw more of the rest of the world. There are some real armpits out there, you can barely turn around without sticking your face into one.