Your weekly dispatch
TGIF. . . It’s Margarita Time!
Read about my adventure at the Atlanta Occupation last Friday. The article was “most popular” for two days on Pajamas Media and was linked in InstaPundit.
Here are some of my own photos from the scene on Friday, October 14, 2011.
Welcome and Information Center
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has graciously allowed the Occupiers an extension of their lease until November 7-- after they stomped their feet and said they would not leave by last Monday’s deadline. Oh, wait! It’s not his property, you say? It’s the property of Atlanta taxpayers? Then how can he do it?
In lovely weather. Wonder how these businesses like them?
Mayor Reed was with pal Barack Obama at the dedication of the Martin Luther King memorial on Sunday, and then issued a statement saying that “civil disobedience is an appropriate form of expression.” So I guess that from now on city princes (er, mayors) have the authority to grant favor on groups they deem having a righteous cause.
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Well, I’d like a camp-out and teach-in with the Tea Party. Do you think his High Highness would grant a dispensation?
I wonder if they love the Tea Party too?
My mother would like Heather MacDonald. She tells occupiers to "Get a Job!" in her article in City Journal. It’s kind of hard, though, when “performance art” is taught in school instead of Aristotle and grammar. I mean what are you equipped to do? Maybe that’s why these protestors have to resort to drum-banging and defecating on police cars.
But I have an idea. Why not send all these whiners (college students, college professors, real winos, SDS veterans, the homeless) to the fields to the “do the jobs Americans won’t do”? Cut off the food stamps, housing allowances, welfare payments, etc. Purportedly, there is a labor shortage in the Georgia fields right now. If these hardy souls can camp out in downtown parks, surely they can pick crops.
Oh, well, speaking of occupations, I’d like to occupy just a few rooms of the mansions of some of the celebrities helping to take over public places or lending their support. I wouldn’t mind a garage apartment or some guest cottage in the back. Just a place for my cat and my books. I mean, if the homes of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers are fair game, why not theirs? Great listing at Breitbart of all moguls at OWS who seem to be the 1 percent instead of 99 percent.
Know this guy? Hint, he's not one of the homeless.
If you listen to the October 11 conference call of the Communists planning the nationwide occupations, you will hear one of them mention an Occupy Hollywood but then have that idea rejected because of fears of bad publicity. Interesting. I found this on Trevor Loudon's blog, essential everyday reading.
An old filling that finally made one of my back teeth explode so that a considerable portion fell off on Sunday night also got me to thinking about all the drummers and chanters in Woodruff Park. How many of them would be capable of going through dental school? “Social Justice 101” or a workshop on “Expressive Empathy for the Masses” won’t prepare them for doing what my dentist can do. Nor can their “collaborative learning experiences” recreate hundreds of years of dental science so that I will not be consigned to toothlessness, or to the agony of having teeth pulled out with pliers.
After my dentist told me that I needed a root canal and a crown, he eased the pain of the forthcoming bill by telling me that he read and liked my essay about empathy in education in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As expected, the editor of that page, Maureen Downey, let the Muslims have the last words, first by posting a column on the blog by a Muslim woman who claimed her kids were being persecuted in school. Of course, that completely misrepresented my original column, but when you have to expose the persecutions of Muslims you take whatever you can distort. Then Downey published another column on Monday about how the original lesson on Ahlima misrepresented Muslims. The author was in a monogamous marriage, wore only modest dress, etc. Okay, then, probably no one knows you're Muslim, so why all the attention to Muslim "persecuton"?
But as I said, hooray for modern science and civilization. I think the shaman manning the First Aid tent at the Occupation only had dirty Band-Aids and an empathetic ear for "your pain."
Yeah, rich orthodontists who straightened all your teeth.
Right after the root canal I went to teach my classes and then went to hear David French speak at the Areopagus Forum at Perimeter Church. You should read David French and if you get a chance to hear him speak go and listen. An interesting point he made about the defense of Orit and Ruth's Georgia Tech free speech case: Christians were reluctant to come to their defense publicly for fear of alienating those they wanted to minister to. Plus, there is a general desire to not offend, especially as the circle of acceptable speech becomes smaller and smaller. Christians practice self-censorship too. French talked a little about his experiences in Iraq; he volunteered a few years ago. After his talk, I tried to hear a story he was telling a small group of people but couldn't for the godawful "praise music" that was piped in. A steady diet of adolescent guitar-strumming and wailing "I love you, Jesus" can't do much for the intestinal fortitude that is so much needed these days.
As I made the long drive home, I heard Michael Savage condemning the killing of Moammar Gadhafi. He called the Obama regime a rogue government. As I read this morning's front page article about the killing, about how much glee the rebels expressed in torturing and killing Gadhafi, all broadcast on Al Jazeera television, I remembered Savage's words on the night time air waves. Gadhafi's death by public torture seems to be welcomed by the same media that caterwauled about airing footage of a doctor examing Saddam Hussein's mouth. That back then was criticized as an affront to dignity.
The BIG question remains: Who will take Gadhafi's place? A chance for democracy? Things aren't going well for Christians in Egypt.
Sad News: A local young man, Lance Cpl. Scott Harper, of Douglassville, was killed in Afghanistan last week.
The local paper did a feature a story in the Metro section. Usually these fallen heroes are all but ignored, while the riff-raff occupiers are heralded. One can't help wondering.I'll never forget the feeling upon hearing of the death of a former student of mine in Iraq. Noah Harris was like a shining star in my class, the most hard-working, the most polite, and he stood out in my increasingly crowded professor's memory. These are the best we have, folks. Rest in peace, boys.
The drum major for the racism meme, Leon Pitts, psychoanalyzed presidential candidate Herman Cain and diagnosed him as being full of racial self-hate because he does not admit the racism that STILL goes on (and will forever more). Proof? Young black men suffer higher rates of unemployment and incarceration. Of course, none of this is in the slightest bit related to the behavior of the young men themselves (who in the liberal logic cannot help the way they act because of centuries of racism). Did you get that oxymoron?
Wish I could attend America’s Survival exciting conference next week in Washington, "The Soros Files." Lots of skullduggery exposed by researchers extraordinaire Tina Trent and Trevor Loudon.
Hmmm. I think I'll need to deconstruct
that sign from Occupy Wall Street.
I am not making the connection. Does not
compute.
Well, to wrap up things for the week: I see lawlessness all around, from our mayors who treat public property as if it were their own to the White House where decisions to go to war are not made by Congress but by an international entity. Communists fearlessly coordinate "occupations" that are intended to overthrow our form of government.
Revolutions all around us, folks, but when you start violating the law (or remain silent on violations of the law), you never know where things will end up.
It has gotten cold, so cold I had to turn the heat on this week, very unusual for Georgia.
I wonder how long the Occupiers will stay. Will they demand heat? In any case, I'm sure they've got expensive camping equipment, and they are taking turns camping. I wonder if Mayor Reed will open his home to them.
Reminds me of visiting an old castle when I was in the Czech Republic in 2005. After the communists had taken over, the castles were given to the gypsies to live in. Of course, you know they trashed the place. As they say in this country, a man's home is his castle. Well, for Democratic mayors, Hollywood celebrities. . . some political animals are just more equal.
I hope you stay warm and safe. I’ll be reading On Tyranny by Leo Strauss.
I did not dare write on this wall in Occupied Atlanta.
Somehow I don't think they care about my story.
But the Soros-supported Cop Watchers make sure
we're safe from all those cops directing traffic and
making sure hospital entrances are clear.
Have a relaxing weekend!
Mary
