Here’s a bit of historical background from Professor Taki of the University of Texas: In 1846, ten years after the Alamo, President James Polk took office with the intention of seizing all Mexican territory between Texas and the Pacific, including California. He sent General Zachary Tailor to grab land north of the Rio Grande, provoking a shoot-out with Mexican troops. War was declared by Jimmy Polk (I call him Jimmy because I once slept in his family bed in Virginia, hence the familiarity) and he invaded Mexico. A bit like looking for WMD’s in Iraq 157 years later, but what the heck. Although the Mexicans fought bravely the Gringos prevailed, and in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico gave up—get this—all claims to Texas and what is today California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, and New Mexico. No wonder Mexicans are known to mug Gringo drunks and steal their wallets. They feel entitled. And now to the Alamo. It’s the American Thermopylae and San Antonio’s prime attraction. Texas being Texas, there are two of them. The real one and that of John Wayne. The real one and its walled-in, landscaped grounds are a green oasis in the heart of busy downtown San Antonio. The city of 1.2 million was built around the old Spanish mission known as the Alamo. All that remains of the original fort are the church and part of the walls of the convent. The guns used to repel Santa Ana are there, the same guns which were turned against the gallant defendants once the Federales had overrun the outer walls. When John Wayne came down to shoot his film, he realized the original mission was no good. You couldn’t very well have Mexican troops in plumes charging up through skyscrapers and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, which surround the real thing. So he went out to the desert some fifteen miles and threw up the Hollywood version. It outdraws the original by three to one I am told.

I loved the Duke’s movie, but then I love all lost causes. President Monroe had given up any claim to Texas during Mexico’s war of independence from Spain, the latter giving permission for some 300 Americans to settle there. The new Mexican government went along with it and the new Texans swore allegiance to Mexico. Which in a way is like swearing allegiance to Brussels. The Gringos were too pro-U.S. and General Santa Anna marched on San Antonio with 2,500 troops to teach them a lesson. 189 Americans, most of them recently arrived, decided to fight in the Alamo. Santa Anna’s troops were tired and had obsolete weapons. The Gringos were sharpshooters and had better cannons and arms. After a 13-day siege, the Mexicans breached the north wall of the fort and in a 90-minute fierce hand-to-hand battle every defender was killed. William Travis, of South Carolina, died early on from a bullet to the head. James Bowie of Tennessee died in his sickbed, fighting to the last with his famous Bowie knife, no one knows how the great David Crockett fell, but fall he did. 600 Mexicans died, one, Jose Maria Torres, while raising the Mexican flag after tearing down the Texan banner. His hand was still on the flagpole when Santa Anna came in to review the massacre. One slave, one Mexican, and a few women were allowed to go free and spread the word. Remember the Alamo became the slogan for the Mexican-American war that followed ten years later. Santa Anna died a pauper, and not a billionaire, probably the only Mexican president (as he became later) to do so, .

The names of Bowie, Travis, Crockett and the rest are all carved on the monument in front of the mission. They are all Anglo-Saxon and German names, with two Hispanic ones. In the speech I gave to the Rockford Institute, I mentioned the fact that they died in vain, because they were fighting for Texan independence, not for the Union. If Texas was independent today it would be an even greater state and far richer than it is. In fact I would move there tomorrow and even wear a ten gallon hat and date a cheerleader. But it was not to be. Like Britain in the EU, Texas is being slowly strangled by the socialist monster of DC.

In a ranking of 50 states and D.C. by how much each spent per pupil in public schools in 2005, New York ranked first; D.C. third. The state spent $14,100, and New York City just a tad less.

And the bountiful fruits of this massive transfer of taxpayers’ wealth?

In D.C., nearly half of all black and Latino students drop out. Of those who graduate, nearly half are reading and doing math at seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade levels. D.C. academic achievement ranks 51st, last in the U.S.

Yet last week came a report from New York that makes D.C look like M.I.T. Some 200 students, in their first math class at City University of New York, were tested on their basic math skills.

Ninety percent could not do basic algebra. One-third could not convert a decimal into a fraction.

If this was a representative sampling, nine in 10 CUNY students not only do not belong in college, they do not qualify for their high school diplomas. As for that third who can’t do decimals and fractions, they should not have been allowed into high school until they could do sixth-grade math.

As 70 percent of all CUNY students are graduates of city schools, a question arises: What are the taxpayers of New York getting for the highest tax rates in the nation?

If a private business annually turned out products that were of inferior quality than the year before, management would be thrown out by the board. Yet, the education racket has been shaking us down for four decades, and turning out graduates that know less and less.

Scholastic Aptitude Test scores peaked around 1964. Ever since, the national average has been in an almost unbroken descent.

So embarrassing did it get that, a few years ago, the SAT folks retooled the test to produce higher scores. Now there are more 1600s. But the national average continues its decline, and the gap between blacks and Hispanics, and Asians and whites, endures.

Is it not a time for truth?

Just as there are many kids who do not have the athletic ability to play high school sports, or the musical ability to play in a high school band, or the verbal ability to recite poetry well or star in debate, not every kid has the academic ability to do high school work.

By the end of the first two months in first grade, an alert kid can tell you who are the smart ones and who are the athletes.

No two kids were ever created equal—not even identical twins. The family is the incubator of inequality, and God is its author. As the parable teaches, each of us is given different and unequal talents.

Given equality of opportunity, the brightest will inexorably rise, and the less talented—athletically, artistically, academically—will fall behind. All things being equal, the fastest kid will always win the race.

This campaign to equalize test scores among unequal students is utopian and unattainable, and amounts to a scam by the education industry.

How many times have they promised progress? And how many times have they delivered?

It is time to look not only skeptically, but cynically, on further demands for billions for education.

Rather, follow the money. Look for who is getting the jobs, the TV appearances, the consulting contracts, the grants, the titles, the limo drivers. Because, at bottom, that is what it is all about—the transfer of wealth and power from those who earn it and those who produce it, to those who produce little or nothing.

The city colleges, now the City University of New York, were once municipal jewels. They nourished an intellectual elite from the ethnic groups that came in the great immigration wave before 1924. As open admissions—letting in every high school graduate in the city who applied—was being debated, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew weighed in against.

“If these quality colleges are degraded, it would be a permanent and tragic loss to the poor and middle class of New York, who cannot afford to establish their sons and daughters on the Charles River or Cayuga Lake. New York will have traded away one of the intellectual assets of the Western world for a four-year community college and a hundred thousand devalued diplomas.”

Agnew quoted historian Dan Boorstin:

“In the university, all men are not equal. Those better endowed or better equipped intellectually must be preferred in admission, and preferred in recognition. ... If we give in to the ... demands of militants to admit persons to the university because of their race, their poverty, their illiteracy or any other nonintellectual distinction, our universities can no longer serve all of us or any of us.”

The limousine liberals knew better.

Now, they have CUNY students who can’t handle fractions.

Of course, we should note that, unlike the “Octomom” whom Mandolyna rightly excoriates, the Gosselins did not engage in in vitro fertilization but in fertility treatments, which resulted in the release of multiple eggs, with their subsequent fertilization through entirely natural means. The only way to “select” a single embryo, then, would have been through the abortion of the other five.

Whatever I may think of the Gosselins’ later actions—and I agree with Mandolyna that “They sold their souls, and their children’s souls” in going on TV—I find it hard to criticize a woman for not being able to bring herself to end five tiny lives growing in her womb. Her doctors advised “selective reduction,” but she chose to carry all of the children to term at great risk to herself. If only she and her husband had continued to put their children’s welfare ahead of their own, their story might well have turned out differently.

Yet despite the situation in which their parents have placed them, Jon and Kate’s eight will always have one another. Which is why I must disagree with Mandolyna when she writes, “No child could possibly get what he or she needs in a two parent family with seven other siblings.”

Let me admit to having a certain interest in that statement. My wife, Amy, and I are the parents of seven beautiful, happy, and healthy children, and we have an eighth on the way. (I’ll let the reader pause and recall his favorite Catholic joke here.)

As hard as it may be for some readers to believe, every last one of those children was expected and welcomed—not just by Amy and myself, but by their older siblings. As late as ten years ago, when our third child was born, we would have laughed if someone had told us that we would one day be expecting our eighth. But our willingness to have more children has as much to do with our children’s openness to life as with our own.

This is the point at which the reader might expect me to insert some words about how, of course, we go without certain things, or how the quality of our time with each child makes up for any lack of quantity. In our case, though, that would be pure rubbish. Though I work for a nonprofit and Amy stays at home (and homeschools), our children have all that they need and probably too much that they don’t. Yes, it may be hard at times for them to find a little quiet time for themselves, but that was true in my own home, and I had only two sisters.

And our children have certain things that those in smaller families lack, such as the constant presence of friends and companions. Perhaps more importantly, they have a sense of hope for the future, an optimism that I remember having as a child (though there were only three of us in my immediate family, I had many cousins, most of them close by) but that I find missing in too many children today. In the desire to provide children with everything that they “need,” too many parents today schedule every last moment of their children’s lives, unintentionally smothering the sparks of spontaneity and creativity and individuality. No parents of eight could have enough control over their children’s lives to do the same.

There is something more, too, something deeper and more lasting.  Amy and I believe in our Catholic Faith, but our children simply naturally live it. Hope is a theological virtue, infused by grace, but such grace flows through our home in abundance. It is the duty of Christian parents to pass the Faith on to their children, and particularly of the father to model Christ for them. But seeing the love of our children for their brothers and sisters and the sacrifices that they make for one another sometimes puts me to shame.

I am no sentimental lover of childhood for childhood’s sake, but I love children (especially my own). The size of our family is no accident, nor is it a reflection of some selfish desire, but rather of faith, and of hope, and of love.

When I look at my children gathered around the table at night, I cannot help but think that God knew what He was doing when He told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth, and subdue it.” If there is hope for our civilization, it lies in those who take His words to heart.

I could just sit back and enjoy the show.

You can, too, with these highlights. 

The everlasting Brady-Manning controversy reminded me of an epistemological insight that Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker suggested when I interviewed him in 2002 during his book tour for his bestseller The Blank Slate. It didn’t fully register upon me at the time, but what has stuck with me the longest is Pinker’s concept that “mental effort seems to be engaged most with the knife edge at which one finds extreme and radically different consequences with each outcome, but the considerations militating towards each one are close to equal.”

To put it another way, the things that we most like to argue about are those that are most inherently arguable, such as: Who would win in a fight, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning?

Sunday’s final score, 35-34, is symbolic of how comparable the two men’s achievements have been. Yet, their records are different enough to give each side strong arguments. Thus, we find fascinating each round of their ongoing duel.

The game’s outcome hinged upon the fingertips of each quarterback’s receivers. Manning beat Brady because on fourth down and two yards to go with 2:08 left on the clock, the Patriot’s Kevin Faulk momentarily bobbled Brady’s pass, costing the crucial first down. In contrast, with 13 seconds left, Reggie Wayne made a superb grab of Manning’s bullet pass for the Colt’s winning touchdown.

The next day, Wayne’s fingertip snag was forgotten in the hullabaloo over Patriot coach Bill Belichick’s decision not to punt on fourth down. As Vox Day sagely pointed out in Belichick’s defense, however, “I’d much rather bet on Brady than against Manning.”

As Pinker observed, this notion of the most evenly matched being the most interesting “seems to explain a number of paradoxes, such as why the pleasure of sports comes from your team winning, but there would be no pleasure in it at all if your team was guaranteed to win every time like the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals.”

On the other hand, scientific knowledge is that which tends to become increasingly less arguable (which might help explain why Nielsen ratings are higher for football games than for chemistry documentaries).

Despite the intensive efforts that the two quarterbacks’ partisans have invested in arguing their respective cases over the years, it’s not clear that there are all that many larger lessons to be drawn from the Manning-Brady debate. If some disputant were to conclusively prove that one player is better, what would that teach us about, say, the optimum size for an NFL quarterback? Brady is listed at 6’4” and 225 pounds, while Manning is 6’5” and 230.

This doesn’t mean that these interminable debates are all sound and fury signifying nothing. Just because Brady and Manning have been (more or less) similarly excellent in the past doesn’t mean they will continue to be. Both could become free agents after next season. Tens of millions of dollars ride on forecasts of their future performance.

The most famous quarterbacking example of the importance of this kind of imponderable decision stems from 1998, when Manning entered the NFL draft out of the U. of Tennessee.

That year at work, I was on a task force choosing a new email system for our corporation. We quickly narrowed the plausible candidates down to the industry leading products from Microsoft and Lotus. At that point, though, decision-making bogged down for weeks. Years of competition had made the systems quite similar, except that one appeared to offer more upside while the other promised less downside. We indulged in many long Microsoft v. Lotus debates, but we couldn’t reach a consensus over which would prove better for our specific needs.

After awhile, I noticed that the newspaper debates over who should be picked first in the upcoming NFL draft were eerily similar to my corporate concerns. The consensus was that Manning was less risky, but that strong-armed Ryan Leaf of Washington State had more potential.

That there didn’t seem to be any terribly objective way to choose between the two quarterbacks afforded me a certain philosophical tranquility over our email travails: we had eliminated all the obvious bad decisions. Yet the football analogy offered no practical consolation because history suggested that though Manning and Leaf projected out as roughly equal, they probably wouldn’t turn out that way. Drafting pro quarterbacks is a troublesome business, with a wide variance in outcome. One of the players would likely become a star and the other a disappointment.

But which?

To move up merely from the third draft pick to the second in order to be assured of getting Leaf, the San Diego Chargers traded “two first-round picks, a second-round pick, reserve linebacker Patrick Sapp and three-time Pro Bowler Eric Metcalf.” Leaf’s career proved a debacle, as he finished with only 14 touchdown passes versus 36 interceptions. (Manning now has 353 touchdowns and 172 interceptions.)

Does that mean that quarterback performance in the NFL “can’t be predicted” as Malcolm Gladwell flatly asserted in The New Yorker? Blessed with the first pick, the Indianapolis management calmly settled on Peyton Manning, and—at least as of last report—remains satisfied with their decision. Not surprisingly, the data support Pinker’s statement in his New York Times review of Gladwell’s latest book, “It is simply not true that a quarter¬back’s rank in the draft is uncorrelated with his success in the pros.”

(In response to Pinker’s review, Gladwell wrote a letter to the Times pointing out that I engage in crimethink.)

Yet, if I were in charge of player personnel for all the NFL teams, Gladwell would no doubt be right about the futility of the draft in forecasting quarterback outcomes: I, personally, would have chosen Leaf over Manning.

As you may have noticed by now, I’m like that: clueless about most subjects that most people are most desperate to discuss. Who will win the Super Bowl? Will the stock market go up or down tomorrow? Will the health bill pass? Which party will win the next election?

Don’t ask me.

Those questions concern competitive institutions that are structured in ways that make their outcomes hard to foresee … and therefore captivating.

The NFL has become the top spectator sport in America in part by contriving its affairs so that the winner of the next Super Bowl is very much in doubt. (No NFL team is allowed to dominate financially, as the Yankees and Red Sox do in baseball; last year’s best teams get this year’s hardest schedules; and the worst draft first.)

Paradoxically, that means that my being profoundly ignorant about these concerns wouldn’t keep me from making quick predictions that would be almost as accurate as if I did nothing else but study the subject.

Who will win the Super Bowl? Well, two minutes on Google leads me to a betting site that says the New Orleans Saints are +360, while the Indianapolis Colts are +385. (I don’t even know what those numbers are supposed to mean.) Here’s another site that has the Colts at 3:1 and the Saints at 4:1, which at least I understand.

So, there you have my fearless forecast: the Saints will meet the Colts in the 2010 Super Bowl, and one of them will win.

You heard it here first.

If you want political predictions, I can check the Intrade market to see that … hey, what do you know? Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty are neck and neck for the 2012 GOP nomination.

So, that’s my 2012 conjecture: taking a page from the late Roman Republic, the GOP will nominate Palin, Romney, and Pawlenty to run against Obama as a triumvirate.

Do you have a better guess?

I suppose I could obsessively study the political tealeaves to learn the minutia of upcoming elections (such as who this Pawlenty person might be). But how much would I be adding to the sum total of human wisdom?

Not much, I suspect. One thing the press does well is cover political horse races.

Instead, I’ve spent time studying other fields, such as the social science behind educational and economic achievement. That way I can generate a higher return on my investment by being able to make more accurate predictions than the conventional wisdom about the effects of crucial public policies such as immigration. (That’s my metaphorical ROI I’m talking about. My financial ROI? Eh …)

In contrast to more popular subjects, in which what you learn is as ephemeral as the mood of the Tennessee Titans, what I’ve learned about school test scores over the last 37 years doesn’t become quickly obsolete. For instance, Chinese students are still averaging higher math scores.

Moreover, it’s not a terribly competitive market niche I’ve selected, since many people don’t ever want to think about it, and get angry at those few of us who do. Others just find these huge swathes of the social sciences as boring and depressing as if I specialized in being a bookmaker on Globetrotter v. Generals games. (Krusty the Klown explained after losing his fortune on an imprudent bet, “I thought the Generals were due!”)

Still, as Pinker told me in 2002:

Well, sure, but … Who do you think is better, Manning or Brady?

First, Stein introduces us to Thomas Naylor, a man of the Left who learns that even leftists are dangerous “extremists” so long as they support political decentralization. Naylor, a 72-year-old professor emeritus of economics at Duke University, runs the Second Vermont Republic, which takes the position that the United States has grown so large as to be politically and socially dysfunctional. Politics needs to be returned to a human scale, he argues, and in his mind that includes an independent Vermont.

To a normal person, that’s a debatable, if infrequently considered, question. To an automaton who enforces Acceptable Opinion, it’s grounds for burning the heretic.

Now how about actually letting Naylor speak for himself?  He recently wrote:

We have slept through the annihilation of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, a war with Islam, the rendition of terrorist suspects, prisoner abuse and torture, the suppression of civil liberties, citizen surveillance, corporate greed, pandering to the rich and powerful, global warming, full spectrum dominance, imperial overstretch, and a culture of deceit. Massive military spending, multi-trillion dollar deficits and Wall Street bailouts, mounting trade deficits, and a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar have gone virtually unnoticed.

During our long period of slumber the United States government has lost its moral authority. It is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street and Corporate America. The United States has become ungovernable, unfixable, and, therefore, unsustainable economically, politically, militarily, and environmentally. It has evolved into the wealthiest, most powerful, most materialistic, most racist, most militaristic, most violent empire of all times.

Sammy, just so we can all be sure we’re saying precisely the things you and the other Enforcers would like us to say, can you explain to us exactly why this opinion is to be forbidden?

We will never receive an answer to that question. It is not the job of the Enforcer to answer questions. It is only his job to enforce. And according to the bloggers who have picked up on Sammy’s story, the exceedingly kind and gentlemanly Thomas Naylor, whom they do not know the first thing about, is hateful for refusing to believe we live in the best of all political worlds.

Not Sam Stein, though. Stein, who smears a 72-year-old retired college professor who never uttered a hateful word in his life, is full of nothing but love, baby.

Then it’s on to Tom Woods, who is normally attacked in this kind of context on the grounds that he once went to an event at which some guy in the bathroom was on the phone with his cousin who said something offensive. It’s crazy and “radical” for Woods to claim there really wasn’t a “Civil War,” says Stein, and to argue that more inflammatory names for that war are, strictly speaking, more historically accurate.

Naturally, Stein makes no attempt to explain what Woods means. Enforcers don’t explain. They enforce.

Woods’ simple point is that if a Civil War involves two or more parties engaged in a contest over control of the same government, then the American Civil War was no such thing. Even Sam should be able to understand that.

The other, related problem with Woods—and yes, his entire career is indeed summed up in a couple of unexplained, out-of-context sentences—is that the conclusions he draws about that war are not of the customary angels-and-devils variety.  There is, I trust I need not remind the reader, but one acceptable interpretation of American history, in which the learned experts at the Huffington Post will instruct us until the end of time.

The Internet is the great equalizer, though, and any fair-minded person can find out about Tom Woods for himself. This bio doesn’t really sound like the person being described at HuffPo, does it?  Lots of “extremists” (whatever that means) getting reviews like these?  How about the antiwar anthology Woods wrote with left-liberal Murray Polner, the $50,000 book prize he won, the books he’s published with Columbia University Press, Basic Books, and Random House, his two New York Times bestsellers, the 11-volume encyclopedia of American history he co-edited, the dozen foreign-language translations of his books, the dozens of mainstream outlets in which he’s been published, or his degrees from Harvard and Columbia, including the Ph.D.?

How about Woods’s treatment of Lysander Spooner’s antislavery interpretation of the Constitution? How does that square with Stein’s absurd version of things? Or how about this essay?

Then there’s the slight problem with Stein’s smear of Woods—who, it is insinuated but not directly stated, is probably racially insensitive—that most white supremacists don’t have black godchildren.

But the Enforcer doesn’t like complicating factors. Woods bad.

My favorite attack is the one on radio host and author Charles Goyette, who is taken to task and condemned as a “9/11 truther” simply for observing that the government’s official 9/11 story is “worse than Swiss cheese.” Oooh! Off to the Memory Hole with him!

Um, Sam, no one (and I include here the majority of the American people who, like me, do not describe themselves as “truthers”) thinks the government has told us the whole 9/11 story.  But good for you—how refreshing to encounter a progressive with such confidence in George W. Bush and our elected leaders! Why, they’d never withhold information from the people. I mean, Dick Cheney, withhold information?

So those four words are why we should never, ever listen to a word that radio veteran Goyette says. Here, on the other hand, is what a normal person would have noticed and reported about Charles Goyette: five years ago he was dumped from the Clear Channel radio network for his opposition to the war in Iraq. They expected their right-of-center hosts to toe the so-called right-wing line. He refused, and lost his job.

That’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? To a normal person, yes. But we’re talking about Sam Stein the Automaton here. What you find interesting, he just finds distracting. To him, one phrase Goyette uttered on one program—surely you haven’t already forgotten those awful, unforgivable four words!—over the course of years in radio is pretty much all you need to know. Disclosing Goyette’s antiwar stand that cost him his job would only confuse Sammy’s delicate readers at the Huffington Post, who need their character assassination in the simplest comic-book style—Goyette bad.

Here’s Stein’s problem, and motivation. The decentralist ideas, including state nullification of federal laws, that these people promote are on the march. There is no doubt about that. State nullification of federal laws, in the Jeffersonian tradition, is being openly discussed—and carried out—once again. Right now it is the job of the Sam Steins of the world, who do not want us entertaining such unauthorized thoughts, to start throwing things. His stupid and libelous article is an example.

But mark my words: within five years nullification will be a regular feature of American life.  We’ve already seen dozens of states nullifying federal legislation pertaining to various aspects of civil liberties. That’s only going to grow, what with increasing frustration among Americans regarding the one-party regime that rules them: no matter who gets elected, it’s the same bailouts, the same police state, the same spending, and the same wars. Add to that the growing realization that nothing else has worked, and you will start to see Americans looking to other methods.

This is absolutely forbidden, from Sam Stein’s point of view. Sam Stein wants us to carry on with all the ineffectual things we’ve tried for decades now. That’s the way he likes it. Anyone proposing anything different can expect the Enforcer routine: He’s an extremist! Avert your eyes, citizens!

Sam, it isn’t going to work. No one cares about your opinion. If HuffPo dismisses someone as an extremist, normal Americans consider it a badge of honor.

Note that no neoconservatives are attacked in the Stein piece. So it’s all right, or at least within the range of acceptable opinion, to favor (as many neocons do, some quite vocally) preemptive war, the deliberate targeting of civilian areas, lying to the population to win their support for war, and the killing of at least hundreds of thousands of innocents while displacing millions more. That’s all right.

On the other hand, people who oppose all these things on moral grounds, but who believe that a system in which the perpetrators of these atrocities enjoy monopolistic control of all political decisions for 300 million people might not be the most humane form of social organization—now these people need to be smeared.

Surprise us, Sammy, and write us a column someday whose every thought we couldn’t predict in advance. I bet you can’t, and I’m sure you won’t. What would an Enforcer of Acceptable Opinion be without exquisitely conventional opinions?

As usual, peel a so-called progressive and what do you find? Another dime-a-dozen automaton shilling for the regime.

The lecher is played to skin-crawling perfection by Peter Sarsgaard, a young American actor with an eerie resemblance to John Malkovich. His character, David, spots wide-eyed Jenny waiting for the bus in the rain. Immediately, he does his best to assure her he is trustworthy: he shows off his wealth. For any young girls reading out there, this is the first sign of a cheat. If he’s rich, he must be decent. Au contraire ma cher, pas du tout! Jenny dazzles David with her knowledge of music, art, and her good French, and he, in turn, draws her out of her boring life in Twickenham, showing her a spot of fun and adventure.

Carey Mulligan is absolutely irresistible as 16-year-old Jenny, a star pupil. Her father, played by Alfred Molina, is a fearful man who does his best to protect her. But, he, too, falls victim to David’s lies and manipulations, as well as to his own bourgeois mentality. (Molina’s Jack is always launching into moralizing tirades, which are amusing at first but go on much too long; thankfully, piety is trumped and Molina’s relents after a while.) Alongside her dad, Jenny struggles against the patriarchal paradigm that somehow, even now, stunts so many men and women.

We all know that education is important, but the “education” of the movie’s title isn’t academic and cultural but one that, unfortunately for most, can only be acquired from humbling and painful experiences. 

Jenny’s best ally in the film is her teacher, played by Olivia Williams, who also played the teacher and object of desire in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Though in this film, she is not the love object, but the one who lives an enviably independent life. Her character is so very English, but Williams’s performance is too severe. And why would the director choose to down play her good looks? On the other hand, Emma Thompson, who appears in a few short scenes, is excellent portraying the elegant but humorless headmistress.

Jenny is exceptionally clever and quick to question her teachers. But in reality, no quick-witted teenager could ever dream of challenging a grown up so articulately. Perhaps Hornby is too eager here to write what many of us would liked to have said to our own teachers. Nevertheless, the scenes between Jenny and her instructors don’t cease to be engaging. On the contrary, they are the most accurate and interesting moments in the film because they show how a young woman, with the sweet taste of freedom in her mouth, acts to take charge of herself.   

By the time David is exposed as a lying cheat, Jenny is forced to reckon with the consequences of her naiveté. She goes to see David’s partners in crime, played by Matthew Beard and Rosamund Pike. Beard’s character, Graham, points out that Jenny chose to ignore the signs that David was no good—forcing Jenny to be as critical with herself as she is with her teachers. Graham is tortured by his own complicity and complexity. And Pike’s performance as the dumb blonde girlfriend is absolutely brilliant, glamorous, and, ironically, witty. With such good writing, it would be tough not to be.

The picture itself is visually enticing. The styles and mores of 1960s London compliment the story well. The production designer, Andrew McAlpine, who won a BAFTA for his work on The Piano, has what the principal characters in the film have: a cultivated sense of taste. Indeed, the costumes and props make one long for another time. It seems that even the poor of the mid-20th century were more distinguished than the average person today. It’s too bad a typical movie-goer probably won’t get much of an education in style from their 10 buck movie ticket. Nevertheless, Barber and Hornby get it right in this well-presented and upbeat coming-of-age romp.       

For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies—that he may not be guilty.

And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.

When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.

Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs.

We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is KSM doing in a U.S. court?

Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.

When Maj. Andre, the British spy and collaborator of Benedict Arnold, was captured, he got a military tribunal, after which he was hanged. When Gen. Andrew Jackson captured two British subjects in Spanish Florida aiding renegade Indians, Jackson had both tried and hanged on the spot.

Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.

When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?

When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, alleged collaborators like Mary Surratt were tried before a military tribunal and hanged at Ft. McNair. When eight German saboteurs were caught in 1942 after being put ashore by U-boat, they were tried in secret before a military commission and executed, with the approval of the Supreme Court. What makes KSM special?

Is the Obama administration aware of what it is risking by not turning KSM over to a military tribunal in Guantanamo?

How does Justice handle a defense demand for a change of venue, far from lower Manhattan, where the jury pool was most deeply traumatized by Sept. 11? Would not KSM and his co-defendants, if a change of venue is denied, have a powerful argument for overturning any conviction on appeal?

Were not KSM’s Miranda rights impinged when he was not only not told he could have a lawyer on capture, but that his family would be killed and he would be water-boarded if he refused to talk?

And if all the evidence against the five defendants comes from other than their own testimony under duress, do not their lawyers have a right to know when, where, how and from whom Justice got the evidence to prosecute them? Does KSM have the right to confront all witnesses against him, even if they are al-Qaida turncoats or U.S. spies still transmitting information to U.S. intelligence?

There have been reports that in the trials of those convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing, sources and methods were compromised, weakening our security for the second attack on Sept. 11.

If the trial is held in lower Manhattan, how much security will be needed to protect against a car bomber who wants the world to see a mighty blow struck against the Great Satan? And if, as some suggest, the trial should be held on Governor’s Island, would that not make the United States look like a nation under siege?

What do we do if the case against KSM is thrown out because the government refuses to reveal sources or methods, or if he gets a hung jury, or is acquitted, or has his conviction overturned?

In America, trials often become games, where the prosecution, though it has truth on its side, loses because it inadvertently breaks one of the rules.

The Obamaites had best pray that does not happen, for they may be betting his presidency on the outcome of the game about to begin.

The United States has many bizarre policies, but perhaps the two worst are what some have dubbed “invade the world, invite the world.” We invade and occupy countries to impose American values on people who do not want them and then we invite these people into our country via mass immigration. We bomb people and expect them to love us, and when they arrive on our shores we are often shocked to learn they don’t.

The Washington Post reports that “The Hasan family was large and had deep roots in Roanoke Valley.” Hasan might be a religious military man born and bred in Virginia, but Robert E. Lee he is not. Writes Chronicles Magazine editor Thomas Fleming, “So in the world of The Washington Post, immigrants to the US have ‘deep roots’ wherever they choose to settle. Hassan’s family had deep roots in Palestine…” Fleming is right, and not surprisingly it has been reported that Hasan often told others that his first allegiance was to his Islamic faith, not his American identity.

Mainstream conservatives who believe there exists a religious dimension to Islamic terrorism are correct, but are fools when they ignore the glaringly obvious motivating factor of US foreign interventionism. Does anyone really believe that if the US was not in Iraq and Afghanistan-something Nadal complained about constantly-he would have gone on his rampage? Like Osama Bin Laden, Al-Quada and the 9/11 hijackers, without massive US presence in Muslim nations, Nadal the Islamist would have had much less inspiration to commit murder.

Liberals who believe Islamic terrorism is mostly due to US occupation of Muslim nations are correct, but foolish to believe there does not exist a religious dimension. As Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and other European nations are now learning the hard way; Islam en masse is simply incompatible with the West in so many uniquely frustrating ways that is not true of other cultures and religions.

All cultures or religions are not equal, and while it should be none of America’s business how the rest of the world conducts its business, we should be the sole arbiters of how we conduct our own. That the US did not drastically cut back on immigration from Muslim nations in the weeks and months after 9/11 was indicative of just how deeply multicultural philosophy has corrupted our better senses. Even worse, that a follower of Islam could remain in the US Army while telling anyone who would listen that he had effectively joined the other side, shows that political correctness has pretty much erased our common sense altogether.

When Gen. Casey says, with a straight face, that “it would be an even-greater tragedy” than Fort Hood “if our diversity becomes a casualty” his stubborn multicultural outlook reflects a prevailing, establishment PC orthodoxy that virtually insures future tragedies. Rightly notes Taki’s Magazine editor Richard Spencer: “That Hasan acted according to his faith… must be obvious to everyone whose brains haven’t yet been rotted out by PC.”

Saying Islamic terrorists just “hate our freedom,” is a childish and dangerous fantasy that has already led to thousands of deaths, both American and foreign. Saying Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is a fantasy that is just as childish and just as dangerous, which led to the deaths of 13 innocent victims in Fort Hood last week. Nidal Malik Hasan may have been a soldier for the US, but in a sane world, his outspoken, admitted preference to be a soldier for Allah would have gotten him immediately thrown out of the Army. Unfortunately, “diversity” prevailed, and according to Gen. Casey, will continue to prevail, as the “war on terror” continues to create more terrorists, and multicultural ideology promises to harbor them—both domestic and abroad.

What fools Americans are. Almost as foolish as the Brits, that is. Immigration will bring both countries down, and for proof all one has to do is look at the reaction of Obama and of Beltway insiders to the massacre down in Texas. Unwilling to use the words Islamic terrorist, the Afro-American via Hawaii warned us not to rush to judgment. Here’s a Muslim fanatic known as a fan of suicide bombers and as an opponent to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bum in the White House asks us not to call a spade a spade, pun intended. But imagine if the massacre at Fort Hood had taken place at a mosque in Detroit, or in Londonistan for that matter, carried out by some harassed Christian. The country would shut down in mourning and make the post-Diana death period seem like a jamboree. Instead, we’ll now hear and read a lot about the harassment Hasan suffered as the media toe the line laid down by the vile New York Times: The mass murderer had been made fun of and he snapped. The Times does not differ greatly from Youssef al-Khattab, a revolutionary imam from Queens, right across the bridge from me, who declared, “An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a preemptive attack. Get well soon, Major Hasan.”

Let’s get real on this. Radical Muslims believe that killing infidels—us—is honky dory, and many black prisoners in American jails have converted to radical Islam. Mosques in Britain do not exactly preach turning the other cheek, yet our leaders are pussyfooting and refuse to pass Draconian laws against these vermin. I once wrote here that the only man I know of that entered Parliament with true intentions was Guy Fawkes, and that still goes. Maggie was the only woman. I’m thinking of that shortstop Cameron. A shortstop is a baseball position between third and second base, but in Brooklynese it means someone you can’t count on, a man who will welsch on a debt,  a Tony Blair. Yet here we are about to elect Cameron, a man who shirks his duty to protect Britain’s rights by accepting the transfer of power to Brussels. Blair did us in for profit. Cameron’s jib is cut from the same cloth. These people take us for fools because we are fools. I once had an interesting discussion with some Belgian diplomats while dining at my friend Baron Lambert’s house. Philippe Lambert is a gent of the old school as were his diplomat friends. When I praised King Leopold for not playing Britain’s game and remaining in Belgium under German occupation, they poo-pooed my argument in the manner a grandfather ignores the pleas of a five-year-old for more candy. Now, now, young Taki, don’t speak about things you know so little about. In 1984 a book written by an English admiral justified Leopold’s conduct and exposed Churchill’s vindictiveness toward someone who had dared put his people first by disobeying him.

Today’s bunch in Brussels has nothing in common with the polite people I argued with, except the attitude is the same. British people have to be shown the right way because we know better. The fact that the Belgians, Dutch, French and Germans are about to lose their countries to Islamists is immaterial. Follow the leader is the name of the game, and Cameron is playing along. We need a Guy or a Maggie. The last thing we need is a Dave.       

A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent is Robert Merry’s brilliant biography and history of that time. Merry goes far toward righting the injustice done by historians who have denied this great man his place in the pantheon of presidents, because they believe “Jimmy Polk’s War” to have been a war of aggression against a Third World people.

As Merry relates, the problem is not with “Young Hickory,” the protege of Andrew Jackson, but with historians who ever allow political correctness to blind them to true greatness.

The Mexican War was as just a war as we have ever fought.

In 1836 at San Jacinto, Sam Houston had won the independence of Texas with his defeat of Santa Anna, butcher of the Alamo and Goliad. In eight years, Mexico had not tried to recapture Texas. For eight years, Houston and Texas had sought admission to the Union.

In 1844, Polk, twice defeated for governor of Tennessee, was seeking the Democratic vice presidential nomination on a ticket with ex-President Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s vice president.

But when the issue of annexation of Texas caught fire in the country, Van Buren opposed it, losing his patron Jackson. Polk rode the Texas issue to victory in Baltimore as the “dark horse” in the most dramatic convention in history. His opponent that November, the Whig Henry Clay, running a third time, was also fatally wrong on Texas.

Lame-duck president John Tyler, however, stole a march on Polk by annexing Texas by joint resolution of Congress.

But where was the southern border of Texas?

Santa Anna had signed Texas away to the Rio Grande. Mexico said the border was the Nueces River, far to the north. In dispute were thousands of square miles. To enforce America’s claim, Polk sent Gen. Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande.

A Mexican army arrived on the south bank, and an American patrol, north of the Rio Grande, was ambushed and cut to pieces by Mexican troops. When word reached Washington, Polk sent Congress a message: “The cup of forbearance” has “been exhausted.”

Congress voted a near-unanimous declaration of war.

And as ever in wartime, bold men rise to immortality.

Col. Stephen Kearny set out from Kansas with 1,500 troops, marched to Santa Fe, claimed New Mexico for the Union and, with 300 dragoons, rode on to Los Angeles, into a clash with Capt. John C. Fremont, son-in-law of Polk’s mighty Senate ally, Thomas Hart Benton.

Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready,” routed Santa Anna at Buena Vista in a victory that would make this Whig general Polk’s successor as president. Bayoneted to death at Buena Vista had been the young hero Henry Clay Jr. His father had bitterly opposed the war.

To Gen. Winfield Scott, Polk gave command of an army that was to land at Veracruz and take the path of Cortez to the capital to dictate terms if Mexican diehards rejected a negotiated peace.

Leading an invasion force half the size of the defending army, Scott never lost a battle on his six-month march to Mexico City. The Duke of Wellington called Scott the world’s “greatest living soldier” and said his campaign “was unsurpassed in military annals.”

Riding with Scott’s army was Polk’s agent, Nicholas Trist, who would bring home a triumph rivaled only by the Louisiana Purchase. Trist was the chief clerk of the State Department under that devious secretary of state and future president James Buchanan, who ever had his eyes on the prize.

Given specific instructions by Polk on what he could offer Mexico, the cantankerous Trist ran afoul first of Scott, then of Polk, who ordered him recalled.

But Trist rode on to Mexico City, reconciled with Scott, seized the opportunity of a peace party in power, negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, came home and was sacked.

But under Trist’s treaty, Mexico had agreed to the Rio Grande as the Texas border, ceded all of New Mexico, which included half a dozen future American states, and signed away California, for $15 million and forgiveness of Mexico’s debts.

The renegade envoy had come home with half of Mexico. They ought to rename the State Department for this great American.

Some urged Polk to break his pledge and run again. He refused. He had done what he came to do: annex all of Texas, acquire California and settle the Oregon Territory dispute with Great Britain on terms favorable to the United States.

Polk went home to Tennessee and, in 100 days, was dead.

He lacked the character of Washington, the brilliance of Jefferson, the charisma of Jackson, but James K. Polk belongs with the immortals. None gave more or did more for America. Bob Merry has made a major contribution to historical truth and written one splendid book.

I’ll use my seasoned veteran status in an attempt to explain why this seemingly unorthodox subject keeps returning to Takimag. In fact, I’ll use it shamelessly, because I don’t believe that these recent pieces did a particularly good job justifying the importance of Heavy Metal to an uninformed audience.

Love it or hate it, Metal has been contributing to a European cultural revival of sorts. This focus on the West, including (gasp!) the classics, makes this genre’s youthful demographic—the largest constituent group of fans is, indeed, in their late teens and 20s—an asset. You and I both know what kind of culture, or lack thereof, youth is normally subjected to at academic institutions and through popular media.

Speaking of which, it is the North American media that largely bears the responsibility for your negative perception of heavy metal. Individual exceptions notwithstanding, metal is depicted in the States as a sex-drugs-and-rock’n’roll genre that peaked during the exuberant 1980s and then pretty much died. The only scholars of the genre are Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar of Aurora, Illinois. 

By contrast, European popular culture acknowledges that metal, with its multivalent genres and intellectual themes, is alive and well (and not necessarily in hell, either, officially.) Take Dimmu Borgir’s and Enslaved’s wins at Norwegian Grammys, for example. This broad cultural acceptance is the reason why dozens of European, particularly German, metal festivals offer something for everyone: middle-of-nowhere underground events with a couple a hundred people, the ones I prefer, like United Metal Maniacs, and mainstream ones like Wacken, with tens of thousands in attendance.

What attracts all these people to heavy metal? The beer? The rocking out? The girls dressed in black leather? All of the above. But recently sociologists have revealed a few surprising facts about metalheads, at least with regard to the European scene. In Hard rock, heavy metal, metal. Histoire, cultures et pratiquants, for example, Fabien Hein writes that a significant percentage of metal fans are not the “Beavis and Butthead” types, but rather successful people who pursues post-secondary education and beyond. Of course, I don’t need a professional researcher to tell me how many of my friends and acquaintances all over the world manage to combine day jobs and/or college with bands, sometimes fairly well known ones.

In addition to the social aspects of heavy metal, its fans are, of course, consuming the product of creative autonomy. There are certainly well known bands like Nuclear Blast (though it would be a stretch to compare them to popular music giants.) However, self-produced, self-distributed works have always comprised a significant component of this subculture, which largely functions on the word of mouth. More importantly, this autonomy lets metal bands—the worthy ones—delve into a variety of forbidden subjects both lyrically and musically, whatever their dark hearts desire!

And what they desire often happens to be European cultural survivalism. For example, Norway’s Kampfar, the Iceland’s and Germany’s Falkenbach, and Russia’s Temnozor write about ancient pagan pride, Nordic and Slavic, respectively. You may be turned off by the fact that many of such bands are either anti-Christian or, at least, pagan. However, this direction is always and necessarily linked to indigenous European traditions. “It’s been more than a thousand years, but still I am proud, still I am Norse,” in Kampfar’s case.  There are certain exceptions, like the Christian band Horde. More important, these musicians inspire a general interest in the Death of the West. Canada’s Thesyre, for example, advocates against the “welfare state protect[ing] the weak” in order to “save our culture and heritage.”

What I find more worthwhile and an intellectual step above local European mythologies is the fact that certain bands “cover” literary classics: Britain’s Iron Maiden has done Tennyson’s and Coleridge’s poetry, Norway’s Ulver, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Australia’s Destroyer 666, various Nietzsche works, and Russia’s Aria, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, to name just a few. Have you ever stood in a large concert crowd which chanted direct quotations from such works? It’s a powerful experience. Many fans, particularly younger ones, admitted to me that they would not have shown an active interest in pursuing literature if it were not for their favorite band.

Is it really a surprise that heavy metal is popular gateway to classical music as well? Finland’s Alexi Laiho shreds Vivaldi, while his mentor of sorts, Sweden’s Yngwie Malmsteen, “does his thing” with a bouquet of Classics. Good American boys aren’t exempt from this phenomenon either: how about Jason Becker and Paganini?  And neither are girls: Beethoven meets jaw-dropping Great Kat.

Metal is so Eurocentric that even Japanese bands pride themselves on emulating old-school German thrash. And others like to sing about Russians and Germans in World War II. In fact, when I was in Japan this year, I wanted to hear all about “German power!...Russian power!” so much that I caught Sex Machineguns’ performance in Morioka, Japan. And just like the band’s leader Anchang, “I believe heavy metal power”!

Why not?

Matthew Weiner’s show about Madison Avenue in the early 1960s is so meticulously detailed that it’s worth using it as a spur to consider what has and hasn’t changed in the Zeitgeist over the last half century.

• The overall impression Mad Men gives of 1960 is that of a less crowded, less expensive world before we swarming hordes of Baby Boomers escaped our playpens and ruined everything.

• In a fecund era, when most families had heirs and spares to spare (the Total Fertility Rate peaked in 1957 at 3.77 children per woman per lifetime), kids could have more fun and parents weren’t as obsessive about safety. Thus, they didn’t bother to lock their kids down into car seats.

Don Draper’s small daughter happily plays astronaut by wearing a transparent dry-cleaning bag over her head, and her mother merely admonishes her for knocking her garments on the floor. (The dry-cleaning bag joke, however, is a slight anachronism: In the late 1950s the plastics industry has already started its public service campaign to terrify kids about the plastic bag peril, a fear that forms one of my wife’s most vivid memories of her childhood.)

• Don Draper, we learn, is 36-years-old. The male protagonists of movies and TV shows are usually described as being about 35. Indeed, 36 is more common than 34, which audiences evidently find rather callow for a leading man.

• In 1960, however, there weren’t actually a lot of 20something babes throwing themselves at guys born in the 1920s, even ones as handsome as Don Draper, because there just weren’t that many babies born in the 1930s. There were 2.95 million live births in America in 1925, but only 2.38 million in 1935. Because supply and demand favored younger women, they were picky.

The real sex mismatch happened with the sexual revolution in the later 1960s, when a flood of Baby Boom babes born from 1946 onward came on the mating market and immediately set about stealing prosperous husbands away from their wives.

• People had deeper voices in 1960 from smoking so much. And not just the men. In a mid-1960s article, Tom Wolfe describes the voices of The Ladies Who Lunch as:

the dah-ling voice, a languid weak baritone, not a man’s voice, you understand, but a woman’s, The New York Social Baritone, like that of a forty-eight-year-old male dwarf who just woke up after smoking three packs of Camels the day before…

• Another theme of the show is the luxury—the privacy, the irresponsibility—of not being expected to carry a cell phone everywhere. In one episode, Don Draper sneaks out to a foreign movie during business hours (hey, his job as Creative Director requires him to stay hep). When he gets in trouble for missing a meeting, he dismisses his new secretary back to the switchboard for failing to artfully cover for him while he was at the art film.

• Something that Mad Men misses is that in the mid-20th Century the consensus of the most artistic and insightful souls was that American life was plagued by gender oppression. Men, in the view of social commentators such as James Thurber, Robert Benchley, Groucho Marx, and W.C. Fields, were relentlessly oppressed by women, who refused to sleep with them without a legally binding promise of lifetime support and fidelity.

The contemporary notion that women rose up as one to wrest from men the privilege of bringing home the bacon is one of the more curious myths in folklore.

• Transportation hasn’t sped up at all. The cruising speed of today’s Boeing 777 is no faster than that of the 707 that entered domestic service in 1959, and it probably took Dan Draper less time to get to La Guardia Airport from his home in Westchester Co. than it would take his son driving from the same house today.

• People dressed more formally then. The popularity of the expensive clothes on Mad Men reminds me that, like a lot of viewers, I unthinkingly approve of people in the past spending a lot of money on how they dressed, while I’m generally annoyed by people in the present who do the same. Logically, it would make more sense to resent our ancestors wasting so much money on clothes, wealth that they could have left to, say, us. But that’s not how we feel. We don’t feel competitive with the dead, but we do with the living.

For example, my wife enjoys historical novels about the Tudor era, in which Queen Elizabeth I’s elaborate attire is elaborately described. Yet, when, at a weekend conference in the 1990s, my wife met one of Elizabeth I’s two closest living equivalents, Margaret Thatcher, she was pleased that the Right Honorable Baroness wore the same discreetly patched dress two days in a row. The other ladies at the symposium appreciated that this world-historical figure didn’t feel it necessary to compete with them over couture.

Of course, the decline of formal clothing has not reduced competition within each sex, just refocused it upon the underlying body. Sure, Don Draper looks great in a suit, but, then, most guys look better in business attire than in whatever they choose for themselves nowadays.

• The depiction of advertising in Mad Men is underdeveloped. One reason is that Baby Boomers can’t remember it accurately. Sure, the television commercials that ran on Gilligan’s Island were lame, but that’s because A) nobody knew much about how to make TV spots then, and B) they were aimed at Gilligan’s Island fans.

In contrast, the magazine advertising of 1960 was a mature art form, probably more readable and certainly more legible than today’s overly art-directed print ads. It doesn’t make for exciting television, however. Thus, the competition between the reigning style of detailed text perfected by the most celebrated Madison Avenue guru of that era, the Brit David Ogilvy, and the soon to be dominant high-concept imagery exemplified by the Marlboro Man icon dreamed up by Chicago’s Leo Burnett and his creative director Draper Daniels, is only vaguely delineated in Mad Men, which emphasizes adultery over advertising.

Weiner likes to depict 1960 WASP advertising men as indolent but decorative as they elegantly lounge about in their offices, cigarette in one hand, whiskey glass in the other, waiting patiently for an idea to finally pop into their well-shaped but largely empty goyishe kopfs.

In reality, advertising was created then, as now, through hard work. Ogilvy advised aspiring account executives,

Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products.

The magazine advertising of the day exuded intense study of the product. Ogilvy defined advertising as “salesmanship in print,” and magazine ads of the day were stuffed with laboriously researched reasons for buying the gizmo.

In that pre-ironic age, when ads featured headlines such as “The amazing story of a Zippo that worked after being taken from the belly of a fish,” ad men felt comfortable making long, fact-filled pitches. For example, Ogilvy’s renowned headline for his Rolls-Royce ad, “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock,” is only one of 13 sales pitches in the 607 words of copy. Ogilvy found his famous factoid while doing three weeks of reading about the car.

Similarly, Bill Bernbach’s “Lemon” ad for Volkswagen (which the Sterling Cooper boys debate for 15 minutes in one early episode) includes lines like, “There are 3,389 men at our Wolfsburg factory with only one job: to inspect Volkswagens at each stage of production.”

Sadly, nobody has yet figured out how to do on the Web what the Ogilvys and Bernbachs were doing in the pages of Life fifty years ago: making advertising noticeable, interesting, and persuasive without being irritating.

As I pointed in my previous article on Black Metal, and as Devin iterated a few days ago, much has changed in the world of Metal since its inception in the 1970s. Not only did Heavy Metal beget a variety of more extreme music genres during the 1980s, including Black Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, and Doom Metal; but those genres, in turn, begot even more extreme—and this time much more serious—variants during the 1990s, and became greatly refined during the 2000s. It’s a shame that Mr. Stove saw no need to update his knowledge on the topic of Metal music before commenting on it, because I am sure that if he had, he would have discovered that, irrespective of personal preferences, some of the best modern popular music being recorded and released today is coming from extreme Metal musicians.

I rate this music highly not only because it is technically accomplished, artistically honest, and multifarious in style, but also because both in form and content, it is as European as Beethoven, Berlioz, Holst, and Wagner. I would even go as far as to say that many musicians who would have become Beethovens, Berliozes, Holsts, and Wagners in the past, are today opting to follow their muses within contemporary musical forms, where they feel they can break new ground using novel sounds and technologies—just like what we nowadays call “Classical” composers did in their time. I am certainly not the only one to make this claim—this argument was rehearsed some years ago by none other than Charles Murray in Human Accomplishment.

Because it is sonically extreme, the uninitiated tend to assume that Metal music is the province of youth, and that defection to more middle-aged forms of music will almost inevitably accompany a fan’s transition into adulthood. In Keith Dunstan’s words, “Something very strange happens to the eardrums at the age of about 30.” But as the owner of an extreme Metal record label, I have found this assumption to be incorrect. Never mind that I am 39 and neither apologetic nor about to tire of this type of music: some of our customers are well into their middle age—three years ago I met one of them, an avid and very knowledgeable female collector, who at the time was 53; another, who began ordering from us at 67, is now 73. While it is true that defections occur, this is not a phenomenon exclusive to Metal music, and neither is it one that is necessarily linked to age: people change, choose new identities, or find themselves. Those who choose new identities often do so out of weakness, buckling under the social pressure to conform, and become virulently contemptuous of Metal music while harboring a guilty, secret, suppressed passion for it. Those who find themselves are typically individuals who, as conformist teenagers, followed their peers into a music scene, simply to belong, while never genuinely being interested in the artform per se.

This lack of age correlation results perhaps from the fact that the themes of contemporary extreme Metal have little to do with those that are commonly associated with traditional Heavy Metal. While the latter is largely defined by a youthful preoccupation with rebelling against parents, the former is largely defined by a young generation’s yearning for the values of their grandparents—or, perhaps more accurately, the values of their great-great-great-grandparents. On a symbolic level, Heavy Metal fans think that their parents are too conservative; Black Metal fans think that their parents are nowhere near conservative enough. The parents of Heavy Metal fans feel betrayed by their sons, whom they regard as embarrassing hooligans; fans of Black Metal feel betrayed by their parents, whom they regard as embarrassing liberals. Heavy Metal fans want to drink beer, have sex, and smash hotel rooms.

Black Metal fans want to smash the system—but not out of a brainless, juvenile impulse. They believe the system is rotten; they have an elitist contempt for mass society; and they desire a new order, one founded on radically traditional, heroic, spiritual, or mystical values. This is not uniformly evident across the whole spectrum of Black Metal, of course, for in some cases artists adopt Satanic or occult imagery and lyrical themes, while in others, they cultivate an image of complete nihilism and suicidal depression. Even these strands of Black Metal, however, can (and, in my opinion, should) be interpreted from a neo-Romantic perspective, from which they emerge as metaphors for, again, a rejection of mass society. This is because, in common with critics of modernity, liberalism, and industrialism, mass society is perceived by Black Metallers as superficial, banal, self-deluded, soulless, mechanistic, hedonistic, and materialistic. Hence, the cultivation of intense—and especially dark—emotion, and the search for transcendent, authentic, ancient spiritual meaning, serves as a negation of that mass society. (We must not forget that the Romantics cultivated similar sentiments, with a similarly Gothic sensibility.) Without a doubt, such negation is more explicitly and intelligibly found in some of the genres closely linked to Black Metal, such as Folk Metal and Viking Metal.

Maybe Mr. Stove is correct in that Heavy Metal seeks to shut down frontal lobe cognition, but he would be wrong to assume the same about Black Metal and its derivations, for Black Metal seeks to shut down a system that has resulted from the absence of frontal lobe cognition.

As to the socio-economic status of Metal fans, this needs to be discussed as well, for IQ pre-determines socio-economic status (not, as Leftists argue, the other way around), and Mr. Stove seems to believe that all Metal (and by extension its fan base) is “as dumb as three boxes of rocks.” The socio-economic status of the average Metal fan has varied over time. As Deena Weinstein has pointed out, Heavy Metal was originally a male, White, working class phenomenon. Later on, however, it acquired a middle class, and more gender-balanced audience. Subsequent offshoots of Heavy Metal, and particularly the extreme Metal forms of the 1990s and beyond, have been the domain of a mainly White, middle class constituency, living quiet lives and holding respectable jobs in provincial towns.

In my travels I have encountered not only magazine editors and leaders of university political organizations, but also authors, rare booksellers, computer scientists, accountants, graphic designers, academics, and civil servants, often working for large organizations. Of course, there are also decorators, police officers, bakers, deliverymen, and farmers—the latter (at least the ones I have met) all very pleasant and thoughtful people with comfortable lives. Fans on the upper echelons of the social pyramid, however, are also either present in our mailing list or among my personal friends (or both). Of the two that come immediately to mind, one is a scholar of material culture and the other a surgeon.

I’m certainly not saying that Black Metal is the musical equivalent of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. It is not. It is, when all is said and done, still modern popular music. But this is not to say that it is not worthy of intellectual investigation. This type of music appeals to individuals from all walks of life, who, nevertheless, share a common turn of mind: one that is inegalitarian, neo-pagan, non-manichean, neo-Romantic, and anti-modern; one that is, in other words, Nietzschean and Darwinian, or, perhaps more accurately and succinctly, völkisch. I submit that in times when the liberal project has proven itself a catastrophic failure; when it is increasingly obvious to many that its premises are false, its scholarship a fraud, its politics a sham, and its utopia impossible; when it is revealed that the only possible future it leads to is political oppression and a managed descent into universal poverty, manifestations within popular culture of an anti-liberal, counter-cultural current are of particular interest. They may, after all, point to what could one day replace our present liberal establishment, once it comes crashing down around our ears.

For these reasons, I believe that Mr. Stove is right to call for further research on the overlap between Metal fans and readers of Taki’s Magazine.

I’m especially impressed by those young people who are here. To say they have embraced the non-authorized Right indicates more than simply an ideological address. It betokens their willingness to become non-authorized dissenters, that is, to turn their backs on the characteristically stale conversations of media debates and the allowable differences of opinion within the Beltway.

Turning one’s back on this prescribed discourse means forfeiting the perks that flow from those in power. It also means being labeled as a troublemaker or extremist—and for those who persist in their orneriness, this choice may also mean being pushed out of magazines for which one previously wrote and having one’s books snubbed by the arbiters of acceptable political concerns.

A question I sometimes hear from my Republican son is this: Why do we believe that what we discuss here could not be discussed at conservative foundations or, say, on FOX-News? Presumably our conversation would be welcome in such outlets, unless we did something as shocking as badmouthing ethnic minorities. But there are two problems with this contention. One, the fact that we, or at least most of us, are kept from these outlets would suggest that whatever we discuss most definitely does not suit Republican- or neoconservative-sponsored forums or publications. This is the case even though we do not seek to insult any ethnic or religious group.

Two, we are obviously raising issues that for ideological or social reasons movement conservative organizations do not engage. A few illustrations might help make this point. Arguing that democracy and freedom are on a collision course, that modern liberal democracies, which combine universal rights with massive welfare states, necessarily undermine communal and family authorities, and that character and intelligence are largely fixed by heredity are not positions that neoconservative Beltway foundations would be eager to take on.

And if one considers the tight connection between movement-conservatives and the Republican Party, having authorized conservative organizations think outside the two-party box becomes even more problematic. After all, GOP partisans and clients do not want to hamper Michael Steele and the Republican National Committee from reaching out. And “reaching out” in this context means frantically trying to raid the other party’s base. Although GOP operators don’t hesitate to put down Democrats, what this amounts to is railing against the high costs of Democratic programs, while ignoring those incurred by the GOP in power.

Movement conservatives have assumed the task of airbrushing positions that GOP politicians are taking or would like some people to think they’re taking. Movement conservative publicists, for example, tried to convince us that Republican presidential candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney had shifted their social views, shortly before the presidential primaries in 2008. These supposedly genuine conversions had occurred on such delicate issues as late-term abortion, gay marriage, and the treatment of illegal immigrants. Nonetheless we were urged to take these timely shifts seriously, because someone at National Review or Weekly Standard has a thing for Rudy or struck up a friendship with Mitt. We were assured that Rudy was solid on the war and that he had once stiffed some Arab leader who came to New York. I would also call attention to a law prepared by Heritage, and introduced in 2005 by Governor Romney in Massachusetts, making sure that every Massachusetts resident had health insurance. Although this measure has contributed to towering state deficits, former Governor Romney, we are told, had nothing to do with this folly. It was supposedly altered by a Democratic legislation beyond recognition. Thus movement conservatives proclaimed, after they had tried to explain away Romney’s earlier support for gay marriage and other positions identified with the social Left.

Conservative journalists have done the GOP establishment other noteworthy favors. They scolded black civil rights leaders and more recently, former President Carter for suggesting that opponents of Obama’s health care plan are driven by racism. But this torrential indignation was almost entirely absent from GOP congressional leaders. Republican whip in the House, Eric Cantor of Virginia, pointedly refused to respond to the charge against his party. Cantor side-stepped the question when it came up in a press interview. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell became equally taciturn when confronted by the same charge.

What speaks volumes about how the GOP is handling Carter’s reproach is what GOP National Chairman Michael Steele said at a black institution Philander Smith College, in Little Rock, on September 22. Steele stressed his party’s urgent need to win over the black vote, and he denounced “the subtle forms of racism” that blacks encounter in both employment and college admissions. The GOP would take steps to deal with these subterranean forms of prejudice, and this audience should have no trouble figuring out what these countermeasures are. At last we can see the real value of movement conservative outcries against Democratic accusations of Republican racism. The apparent outrage is a mere diversionary noise for Republican politicians who are trying to make nice to the civil rights lobby. Some movement conservatives may have noticed this but are too ambitious or too comfortable to point out what is taking place.

Also illustrating the difference between us and movement conservatives, especially those who are joined at the hip with the GOP, are the differing ways in which we and they would react to something that recently happened at my college, which was the introduction of an elaborate plan for diversity training among students and faculty. This is something movement conservatives and the alternative Right may conceivably agree about, but here first impressions can be deceiving. Of course, we and they might scoff with equal disdain at our “Five-Year Plan for Strengthening Campus Diversity”—entitled “Embracing Inclusive Excellence”—which talks about the malice being vented against the handful of Jews, Muslims, and Hindus on campus. There is no evidence of these malicious outbursts, and the only evidence for discrimination cited is a methodologically dubious survey answered by 5 students, who were asked if they noticed white Christian students “glancing” suspiciously at them.

We and the neoconservative establishment would recognize (I hope) that these reports were invalid; and even if they were not, the solution offered, recruiting inner-city populations and providing them with scholarships, would not likely end the marginalization of Hindus. We might also have objected with equal annoyance to the plan for sending our faculty to affirmative-action training sessions; finally our two sides might have ridiculed the lop-sided 5 to1 majority by which the diversity plan passed the faculty—without any expectation that this document would be amended to conform to reality.

But having noted this conceivable area of agreement, I would also stress the divergence between our sides when it comes to extricating ourselves from the multicultural fever swamp. Possible neoconservative alternatives to what I’ve described, by such characteristic advocates as Lynne Cheney, David Horowitz and Bill Bennett, might include a compulsory course on the American heritage. This course would showcase our country as a self-perfecting global democracy; and it would take students on an inspirational journey from the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “All men are created equal” through FDR’s Four Freedoms down to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This and other similar measures would be used to teach students of all races and creeds “democratic values,” the spread of which, we would be told, is the high moral end for which the U.S. was brought into existence.

We might also hear a recommendation from neoconservative social commentator Dinesh D’Souza, calling for extraordinary efforts to integrate college students of all different ethnic backgrounds. D’Souza would accuse our administration of not going far enough to commit students and faculty to a universally exportable democratic way of life. We would also likely be told that recruiting minorities for the wrong reasons would create islands of separateness on our campus instead of making everyone into a member of the world’s first global nation. Finally we might be warned, perhaps by Cal Thomas or David Horowitz, that lurking behind calls for diversity is a hidden plea for anti-Zionism or a defeatist response to the War On Terror. Such hidden agendas characterize the advocates of diversity; who in any case are deviating from the goal of the saintly Martin Luther King, a firm opponent of all forms of quotas, even for black Americans.

Needless to say, I couldn’t think of anyone on the Alternative Right who would take any of these stands. Our side would stress that not every adolescent can do college work. Colleges that are serious about traditional disciplines might appeal to, at most, 20 percent of the young, which is the percentage of those who have the cognitive skills for doing college-level study. Given the fraudulent product that now passes for college education, it is not surprising that most students and faculty can neither learn nor teach what was once deemed appropriate as college subjects.

One could easily point to speakers at this conference who have taken the positions outlined. These fearless critics have questioned the transformation of American higher education into a devalued consumer product, made available to those who are incapable of real learning. Small wonder that colleges are turned into centers of multicultural social experiments and diversitarian gibberish! What better use could one find for a falsely advertised institution that is trying to entertain young social work, communication and primary education majors while taking their parents’ money!

Neoconservative educationists, we might also hear from the Alternative Right, have their own fish to fry. They are seeking to defend their version of the democratic welfare state as the best of all governments. They also have another far-reaching goal that is explicit or implicit in their college outreach. Neoconservatives, to speak about them specifically, wish to limit any disagreement on campuses generated by their aggressively internationalist foreign policy. In pursuit of this end, they happily falsify or obscure certain embarrassing historical facts, e.g., the massive deceit applied to pushing the U.S. into past foreign wars, and the published views of such neocon heroes as Churchill and Wilson dealing with racial and ethnic differences.

Neoconservatives and their defenders would accuse our side of taking positions that have no chance of being accepted. And they might be right on this last point. Our positions would infuriate the educational establishment and much of the public administration apparatus. Many of us, moreover, are strict constitutionalists, who would argue, to the consternation of the political class, that the federal government is excessively entangled in state and local education. It should be of no concern to public administrators whether a private college has or has not been recruiting designated minorities. Academic education should not be an occasion for government social planners to impose their vision on the private sector. Indeed private colleges, if they were truly concerned about being independent, would reject federal and state aid, and they would do all in their power to keep our managerial government from interfering with their institutions.

Note I am not defending “our side” in these debates. I am only making clear that we and they do not hold the same views about American education or about how its problems are to be engaged. I would also concede the obvious here, namely, that some people on our side of the divide may occasionally work for those on the other side and that the GOP out of power will occasionally get behind books and authors presenting arguments that would not please Republican administrations. Not all who make the arguments of the alternative Right have been subject to equally oppressive sanctions or have been uniformly denied a place in the sun. There are disparities in the ways that the GOP-movement conservative establishment has treated individual critics on the right. What seems beyond dispute however is that we and they disagree fundamentally on a wide range of questions, far more than we in this room would disagree with each other. The conventional conservative movement is therefore justified in recognizing that we are more different from their movement than establishment conservatives are from those on the center left. Movement conservatives and neoconservatives dialogue openly with the liberal Left while ignoring or ridiculing us—and this happens for a very good reason. The authorized version of the conservative movement understands that we and they are not of the same spirit. Unlike them, we do not serve the GOP; nor are we obliged to go along with neoconservative whims and fixations lest we lose our jobs or media outlets.

Most of us have already been confined to outer darkness; and there is no way we can change this unless we force our way, screaming and kicking, into the neoconservative-liberal conversation. The reason we must exist is that we dare to raise the questions that are anathema to the conventional media. And this is the reason that we lack corporate money and that our devotees are not writing for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Washington Post. We stand outside the egalitarian, managerial-state consensus, a consensus that in the end moves in only in one direction, which is leftward.

Those who opposed this trend were long an isolated minority, but now dissenters can be heard on talk radio, some of whom are even gaining a widespread popular appeal. This for me is a heartening development, despite the sad fact that most of us remain excluded from this turn of events, and although what is being described lacks any deep intellectual content. Note that nothing in these remarks would question the shallowness and histrionics of what I’m characterizing as the conservative talk-show phenomenon. As anyone who knows me can testify, it is hard for me to listen to Limbaugh or Beck for a protracted length of time without suffering an upset stomach. But what I’m noting here are long-range trends. There are forces on the American Right which have attracted mass-democratic attention, forces that the neoconservative media do not entirely own and which they can only provisionally preempt. This may bedevil our adversaries, especially if such populist heroes as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Mike Savage strike out on their own, that is, decide to go after the GOP and the neoconservatives with the same fury that they’ve vented on the Democrats.

As the onetime isolated Right continues to gain adherents and visibility, what increases apace is the possibility for a breakthrough. And as one observes the sudden rise of our group, it seems to me that those who were once marginalized have become like lilies in a junkyard. Let us hope this junkyard, which is the conservative movement of programmed party-liners and GOP hacks, will eventually become something else. Perhaps the lilies that have sprung up amid the trash and debris will come to replace the present movement conservative wasteland—together with its FOX-News contributors.

What brought Hasan’s identities into fatal conflict was his belief that Iraq and Afghanistan were unjust wars, and his shock that he, a Muslim, was to be sent to serve in one of those wars, against fellow Muslims—a sin against Allah meriting damnation.

Hasan was conflicted by a dual loyalty—to the country he had sworn to protect, and to his perceived duty as a Muslim. When Hasan told his neighbor that morning, “I am going to do good work for God,” the call of jihad overrode his oath of loyalty as an American soldier.
Hasan proceeded to shoot, wound or kill 44 U.S. soldiers, and die on what he saw as the side of right, the side of Islam, against America. “Allahu Akbar!”—“God is great!”—Hasan shouted as he began firing.

An Internet posting by “Nidal Hasan” compared suicide bombers to medal-of-honor winners who throw themselves on grenades to save fellow soldiers. Hasan had decided to become a suicider for Allah.

Though this was an act of treachery against his fellow soldiers, of treason in wartime, of terrorism and mass murder, Hasan must have seen himself as a hero and martyr.

Few ever commit atrocities like this. But conflicts in identities and loyalties are common in the cauldrons of war.
“Let none but Americans stand guard tonight,” said Washington at Valley Forge. Irish Catholics deserted the Union army to fight beside Mexican Catholics in the San Patricio battalion against what they thought was American aggression. Honored today by Mexico, the San Patricios were hanged when captured by Winfield Scott’s army.

In Scott’s march to Mexico City was Robert E. Lee. The hero of Buena Vista was Col. Jefferson Davis, who had married the daughter of his commanding officer, future President Zachary Taylor. Davis went on to serve in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce and the U.S. Senate.
Yet, in 1861, Davis and Lee would depart the service of their country to wage war against the United States on behalf of their new nation and the kinfolk to whom they belonged and whom they believed had a right to be free of the Union. Were they traitors—or patriots?

This is not to compare the deeds of the San Patricios, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, all of whom declared themselves openly and fought heroically and honorably, with the crimes of Maj. Hasan.

But it is to raise the issue of conflicting loyalties in the hearts of men in a nation that has declared religious, racial and ethnic diversity to be not only a national good but a national goal.

Whence came this idea? No previous generation believed this.

In World War I, Wilson feared that if he went to war, German-Americans might march on Washington. FDR was so fearful that the blood ties of Japanese citizens and residents would trump their loyalty to the United States he ordered 110,000 transferred from California to detention camps for the duration of the war.

In Arkansas last year, a Muslim opposed to the U.S. wars shot two soldiers at a recruitment center, killing one. In Kuwait, before the invasion of Iraq, a Muslim soldier threw a grenade into the tent of his commanding officer, killing two and wounding 14.

This is not to suggest that all American Muslims or Arabs should be citizens under suspicion. Muslims have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, as German-Americans died fighting against Germany in two world wars. But it is to say this:

America is unraveling. No longer are we one nation and one people. Tens of millions have come and tens of millions are coming whose first loyalty is to the kinfolk and country they left behind, and to the faith they carry in their hearts. And if, in our long war against “Islamofascism,” we are seen as trampling on their nation, faith or kinsmen, they will see us, as Hasan came to see us, as the enemy of their sacred identity.

There is no American Melting Pot anymore. It was discarded by our elites as an instrument of cultural genocide. Now we celebrate America as the most multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural country on earth, the Universal Nation of Ben Wattenberg’s warblings.

And, yet, we are surprised by ethnic espionage in our midst, the cursing of America from mosques in our cities, the news that Somali immigrants are going home to fight our Somali allies, and that illegal aliens march under Mexican flags to demand American citizenship.

Eisenhower’s America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then. And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 millions, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth, what holds us together then?