I want to know what makes a defender of Israel against Palestinians a person on the “right”? Is he also against affirmative action? Is he a member of the NRA? Does he support the “pro-life” point of view? Does he want to lower taxes on the super-rich? Is he strongly in favor of capital punishment? Is he a vegan and supporter of animal rights? Does he despise the “new curriculum” and want to throw out “The history of Africa” and return to the traditional western civilization courses? Does he want longer skirts for women? Do XXX movies make him sick? Does he suppose concern about global warming is just so much hooey?

Have John Boehner, Dick Armey, David Vitter, Sam Brownback, and Jim DeMint saturated themselves in the writings of Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and Russell Kirk? Is that why they are “conservatives”?

Just asking, you know.

Thee is no bureaucracy in Obama’s White House. He runs a mean, lean, no-fat machine. Here is the proof.

469 employees drawing down $38,796,307.00. Average salary – $82,721,34.

26 earn $172,000. Two (Michael Hash and Timothy Love) get $179,700. David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are among those in the $172,000 batch. 23 others earn between $150,000 and $172,000. 13 others are between $140,000 and $150,000. 39 others earn over $130,000. 16 others are over $115,000. 15 collect $50,000. 69 get $45,000. 9 bring up the bottom at $42,000.

The President has a Counsel to the President. There is an army of associate counsels. Under them, there are deputy associate counsels. To be precise, there are five of the latter. Each of these has an assistant deputy. The deputy associates get salaries about $114,000. [Here as everywhere else on the planet, it is a matter of D.O.E. – depending on experience. There are jobs like assistant deputy letter writer for the First Lady and director of flower arrangements.

In short, this is indisputably the Greatest Country on Earth and by the time the Chicago Whiz Kid gets done, the Greatest Country in the Milky Way.

I want to indulge myself by telling you about a man you probably have never heard of although it is just possible he is known to a million or more weirdoes. He is Dr. Leonard Peikoff, a figure from out of my past. My recollection of him was inspired this morning by seeing his name listed among the celebrity graduates of Brooklyn College. Although Lennie is a only a few months older than I am, I did not know him in my B.C. days. We were fellow graduate students at N.Y.U.

Lennie was an object of mirth and hilarity in my crowd. He had what Brownsville kids thought of as a “very cultured voice and diction.” Because of his magnificent voice, he was a favorite of the great philosopher, Sidney Hook. Sidney, himself, spoke with accents that seemed like a caricature of Leo Gorcey, the actor who starred in the Bowery Boys films. For that reason, we reminded him of himself, so Sidney could not abide us whenever it was our turn to stand up and deliver papers we had written. After about only five seconds or so, Sidney would cry out, “Stop! Let Leonard read your paper for you.” Meekly, we obeyed.

As a philosopher, Lennie wasn’t much but honesty requires me to admit that he was among the 400 million brightest persons on the planet. That’s not bad. A number like that places you in the top 5% of the world. In addition to his voice and low intellectual abilities, Lenny was the most pompous of rascals and it took all our self-control not to drop dead laughing whenever Lennie declaimed.

In due course, Lennie’s bombast paid off. Along with Nathaniel Branden and Alan Greenspan, he inherited the mantle of Ayn Rand. They called themselves “The Collective.” Ayn called Natie her soul mate and he proceeded to screw, nail and hump her on every hard floor in her office. Nate’s wife sat on a couch, watching the action. Nate and Alan, like Lenny, are not exactly intellectual giants but Nate cashed in on all the sex and founded the Branden School of Objectivism – a celebration of Ayn’s genius. He made a mini-fortune. Meanwhile, Al, a bumbling, fumbling, inarticulate sort of guy worked his way up into the highest offices in the land and by controlling the Federal Reserve determined who would be super-rich and who wouldn’t be. Because Al managed to snare a fairly attractive young woman known to all TV watchers as Andrea Mitchell, I rank him in the top 300 million brightest people in the world.

The story of Nate’s screwing the old lady is recorded in a movie, The Passion of Ayn Rand which stars Helen Mirren and Peter Fonda. When Nate double-crossed Ayn by returning to his wife, Ayn ex-communicated him. Lennie-boy took over unchallenged first place and founded the Ayn Rand Institute. Better yet, Lennie became heir to the Rand fortune and executor of her literary papers. Those include The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. As bad luck would have it, the Library of Congress got into a duel with Lennie over possession of Ayn’s papers. A lawsuit would have cost golden-voiced Lennie a couple million bucks so he caved.

From time to time over the last few decades, reveries of Lennie intrude into the consciousness of my friends and myself and we laugh our silly heads off at his fame and success. No one – not counting Alan Greenspan – could deserve it less.

So, this morning, after seeing Lennie listed as one of the finest examples of what Brooklyn College is all about, I looked him up on the internet. And now he rises infinitely in my estimation of his political keenness. For here is what Wikipedia has to say:

“In 2004 Peikoff endorsed John Kerry (despite thinking of Kerry as a “disgustingly bad” candidate) against George W. Bush (whom he called “apocalyptically bad”), on the basis of Bush’s religiosity and his refusal to crush Islamic regimes, especially Iran, along with his “doomed” economic policies. In advance of the 2006 elections, Peikoff recommended voting only for Democrats, to forestall what he sees as a rise in influence of the religious right, adding:

Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer [Democrats], and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer [Republicans], it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because “both are bad.” Right on, Lennie, and now for the terrific wind-up:

In 2008, Peikoff refused to vote for either major party’s ticket, saying that John McCain “comes across like a tired moron,” calling Barack Obama a “lying phony” and Joseph Biden “a hilarious windbag,” while saying of Sarah Palin that she is “an opportunist struggling to learn how to become a moron, a phony and a windbag.”

Doggone it, Lennie, I take it all back. You may be dumb as a post but your politics are as solid as the Rock of Gibralter. Welcome home, Lennie.

In early May, I posted two essays on socialism that received a battering from several readers. [Please check the archives.] I readily concede that my arguments were poorly developed but am now happy to report that Professor Michael Green of Hofstra College has weighed in on the matter with what seems to me to be unassailable reasoning backed with plenty of facts. In a sentence: I read his essay as establishing that capitalism is rotten to the core. That, at least, is my interpretation, not necessarily his. In fact, somewhat pollyannaishly, Green thinks the world can be salvaged by throwing out all Republican congressmen and replacing them with Democrats. (Let us simply and charitably turn our faces away from this embarrassing display of naiveté that plays no central role in his formidable essay.)

Here is a link to the article, which I took the liberty of reprinting (without permission) in watchingpolitics.com. Please CLICK HERE.

The following is an actual dialogue that took place yesterday between Generals Petraeus, Ph.D., and Stanley McChrystal. Everything herein related is God’s truth, or may the good Lord strike me dead if I made any of this up.

Stan: Cheese, Dave, what happened? One minute, I’m on top of the world on a high mountain in – what’s the name of that place, Afgoonistan? – and the next minute, I’m out of a job.

Davie: Holy cow, don’t you know the game? What kind of silly goose are you?

Stan: I don’t get it. All I did was call ‘em as I see ‘em, just as I was taught to do by Bill Klem.

Davie: Doggone it, you blew your sure-fire six figure pension. I can’t even feel sorry for you.

Stan: I just called the Illinois Dizkid a dizkid. What’s wrong with that?

Dave: You have to play the game, and you didn’t. You don’t mess with a guy who got to be Head Honcho by telling the world he was a college professor.

Stan: Holy mackerel, did he do that? He was only an adjunct professor. Everybody on the planet gets to be that for awhile.

Dave: That’s a plain untruth. Off hand, I can name 3 guys who never got that far, and if you give me a day or two, I’ll bet I can name 5 more.

Stan: Well, just tell me, is he a dizkid or isn’t he?

Dave: Of course he is. So are you, but only you don’t come from Illinois. That counts for something, you know.

Stan: No, I didn’t know. Now, you are going to take my place. Are you a friend or what?

Dave: I’m a what, Stan. I’ve got a Ph.D. from Princeton and you are a lousy barely-made-it-through from West Point. So, I’ve got you beat hands down as a field general.

Stan: My goodness gracious, Dave. A Ph.D. from Princeton? How much money do you make?

Dave: None of your business, you dimwit. You could look up my public record salary, if you want, but the real bucks are highly classified in the good cause of national security.

Stan: Darn it all! Can’t you help me out? I don’t think I should retire altogether just because I lost that flickendoodle soft gig. I need to lock in a high pension.

Dave: I don’t want to help you because you are not a team player. And the proof that you don’t deserve my help is that you don’t even know that “soft gig” is just a West Point term for “sinecure.” Pack up your bags and beat it out of this office, and don’t take that military chauffeur with you.

Stan: What a revolting development this is. I think I’m a good guy and you are a louse.

Dave: Phooey on you, Stan. Now, I’ve a job to do and you haven’t. So get the flickendoodle out of here.

Stan: That’s my word, Dave. I use it because I’m not afraid to cuss. I resent your taking my word as much as I am sore as hell that you’re taking my job.

Dave: Okay, Stan, you win. I’m going to find a job for you because, when you come right down to it, your only fault is that you are incompetent and very stupid.

Stan: Aren’t they two faults?

Dave: Don’t be a wiseguy. Remember, you ain’t nuttin any more.

Stan: Well, said, Dave. You’ve got a gift for gab. Will I hear from you soon about a new post?

Dave: I can only say this: I’ll be working on it.

Stan: (To himself) Good grief. That’s academic lingo for “I’ve got better things to do right now.” (Aloud): I appreciate your help, Dave. And good luck on the job.

Dave: Yeah.

Obama doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. I have never tried to beat him up, steal his money, rape his children or tried to beat him up a flight of stairs onto an airplane. It is true I think he is very stupid, politically incompetent and lacking in integrity. What of it? Lots of people think that. Why pick on me?

Last night, he resumed his assault. He told us God never promised us a rose garden. He told us God would not directly intervene to make our lives better but he told us to pray. He did not tell us precisely what to pray for but he thinks prayer is part of the package of efforts we need to put forth to stop oil from gushing out all over the Gulf. On other occasions he told us that prayer will help us through our miseries in the Mid East. Prayer is good for everything, even for praying. Praying makes the praying go down even without a little bit of Mary Poppins sugar because the prayer is the sugar.

Obama has prayed with Billy Graham. He has prayed at mosques. Often he has prayed with Jeremiah Wright. He prays at Camp David and even enjoys a prayerful moment at 5.30 A.M. when one of his aides makes sure to zip something to him on his BlackBerry. The President is a very private person, which is exactly what Madonna and Paris Hilton say they are. So, he won’t reveal what he prays for. However, I happen to know. He prays mainly that we will join him in praying, too. Obama enjoys a a National Prayer Breakfast on Thor’s Day.

When he is not offering atheists lies to the effect that our country welcomes all faiths including the faith of atheism, he is getting down low with Rahm Emanuel and building a staircase to Israel. Joshua Dubois, director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships sends him daily devotional e-mails to make sure he is keeping the faith (Baby). Someone sent Obama the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer as a gift at last year’s National Prayer Breakfast.

In order to feel better about slaughtering people, Obama culled work from Reinhold Niebuhr for his Nobel Prize acceptance speech when he said peace is a very bad idea. He sneered at Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other peaceniks. Once upon a time, old Reinhold slobbered on about something he called Just War Theory. Praying for guidance, Obama said it was full of swell ideas.

On a TV show, Terry Moran said: “As you know there’s a lot of curiosity about you and what you do, what you wear, all these things. And where you worship. If I may ask, how has — how have the responsibilities of the presidency affected your spiritual life, if at all?”

The Bright One replied: “Well, I had a habit of praying every night before I go to bed. I pray all the time now…” (laughter) Only his buddy, Our Lord, knows what he was nervously tittering about.

Would it be all right, Mr. President, if you got around to taking a break from prayer and did a little work around the house. You know, like making it a better world? But, if that is asking too much, would you just quit getting on my nerves? Even though you finish each of your prayers with a sotto voce, “Take that, Gendin.” I can hear you, Illinois Diz Kid. And I don’t appreciate your attacks.

I used to regard the Republican Party and the Democratic Party as two faces of the same coin and so I invented the term, “Republicrats” to lump them together. I no longer think this works. The differences grow alarmingly greater almost daily.

Republicans try to filibuster everything except innocuous resolutions such as “Resolved: Rosa Parks is a national treasure.” They are bringing government to a standstill. Congress stinks – that’s for sure – but we’ve got it and we can’t do without it. Since I know so little about politics, (as distinct from international affairs), I rely on the ideas of Charlie Cook = “The Cook Political Report” – and Lou Dubose – “The Washington Spectator”. According to both these gentlemen, the Republicans will gain so many seats in the House of Representatives this fall that they may assume the majority. I am no Democrat but this is very bad news. The Republican Party is loaded with weirdoes: a guy named D”Annunzio, in North Carolina, hopes to gain a seat in Congress and among the things he wants is to abolish the Departments of Education, Health and Welfare (HEW), Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Interior, Treasury, Urban Development, Transportation, and (his one good idea) Home Land Security. D’Annunzio says God is going to drop a 1,000 mile high pyramid on Greenland. Not a bad idea but it ain’t gonna happen. He also thinks he is the Messiah (according to his ex-wife) and will raise his stepfather from the grave. North Carolinians may vote him in. Every state has madmen in Republlcan guise trying to get elected and, according to Cook, they will succeed in large numbers. One Republican candidate says reforming the internal revenue code is stupid; we need to abolish income tax. This is not even good for the rich. Exactly who will take care of those potholes along federal highways?

Hypocritical most Democrats certainly are but they seem models of integrity compared to Republicans. These family value homophobes who pretend they would like to see all homosexuals dead are taking over all the public restrooms in America to conduct their business. I don’t mind a country that screams out “preserve family values” at every opportunity but people who are not crazy know that homosexuality fits in with those values as well as anything you can think of and a lot better than the Boy Scouts do. Nobody is as insanely homophobic than a toilet-inhabiting closeted Republican. Hypocritical homophobia is only one of hundreds of their moral defects. Health care for the poor frightens them. Whatever Obama wants to do makes them mad: reduce troops in the MidEast? Bad idea. Increase them? Awful. Keep troop level steady? No good, either. Obama is a socialist, they say. That’s as likely as as Stalin’s being one. It sends unpleasant chills up and down my side to imagine these whackos may assume control of Congress. I may join the Democratic Party.

And when I say “into the fray,” I don’t mean, as usually used, “into the wars” but into the unraveling edges of my mind. Last night, when I read Ed Erwin’s keen analysis of the Israeli conflicts, I had just come from a hectic evening spent with three of my grandchildren. In my post I said that while the Israeli conflicts seemed to energize a certain one of my friends, (at the time I did not mention it was Ed), they succeeded only in enervating me. But that enervating effect is nothing as compared with going a round or two with or against a squadron of youngsters aged 3 to 8 who put Israeli jet fighter pilots to shame. I could have done a little better but this new post is not an attempt to persuade readers that israel has Good and Right on its side.

The post was more about me than about Israel. It stated, however feebly, that Israel has caused me much grief over the last 60 years, mostly in the nature of cognitive dissonance because I am never sure to believe and, yet, I want badly to believe that Israel is always the good guy. Nothing can succeed in that grandiose aim for “always” is quite a stretch and Ed would slay the dragon who took on that quixotic goal. Ed has two things going for him: he is a master of debate and he makes it a habit to be on the right side. However, before I concede the whole kit and kaboodle, readers should know that on related issues, he did battle against the very powerful Shirley Soffer in an exchange of letters and in my view was bested by her. So, if she has any interest left in the matter, I invite her to plunge in and salvage the Jewish cause.

I take note of the fact that Ed says that while he disapproves of Netanyahu and Likud generally, he is a fan of Israel and the Israeli people. I think I said I am not. For one thing, they reject the Yiddish culture within which I grew up. They even detest the Yiddish language which, in my infancy, was my mother tongue. I said a couple other nasty things. So it is a bit odd that he is on Israel’s side while I am hopelessly conflicted about it all. I don’t like the fact that Jews, especially Israeli Jews, are convinced of what seems to me the crazy proposition that Jews are genetically superior to Moslems and all Arabs in brains and aesthetic talent.

Ed makes much of the point that impartial observers think Israel has behaved reprehensibly in the latest Gaza skirmish, but I don’t find that to be a proof because I am skeptical of their neutrality. Only skeptical, not sure they are not neutral. About all I am sure of is that Israel has faced down giants who are devoted to ending its existence. For that, I think there is pretty good evidence and I think it is natural for any nation to overreact when dealing with such foes.

With that, I take leave of the field. More might be said but this Journal is not about politics except in incidental ways. That being said, I do not intend to cut off debate if Shirley, Ed and others want to continue.

Today is, as I don’t have to remind you, the 579th anniversary of the roasting of the Maid of Orleans. Her story is now one of the best known legends of French history. Under divine guidance, she led a French army into battle during The 100 Years War when she went down for the count at age nineteen after proving herself a superstar.

She was just a peasant girl when she got word from Higher Ups, direct emissaries of God, that she was needed to restore King Charles VII to his rightful place on the throne of France. At first, she was greeted by French generals with, “Are you kidding?” but after a few glorious victories, they saw the light.

The war had raged on and off for about 90 years when little Joan came on the scene. The Brits pretty much had the better of it by then, so Chuck 7 had little to lose by allowing this teenager to take charge of his armies. What the hell. Better to fight like a girl and lose like a man then to fight like a man and lose like a girl. (Or something like that – my brain may be all twisted up.) In any case, the Brits had, (to coin a phrase), laid siege to Orleans, the last obstacle in their path to control of northern France (if that is where Orleans is).

Disguising herself as a lad, Joannie gained entrance to visit the King. She told the King that the voice of God told her she could turn the tide if given the chance. Since Chuck was in dire straits (too often confused with the Straits of Magellan for my taste), he said in a booming voice, “Sure, go for it. Go forth and do good deeds.” She donned heavy armor, a shield and all those things and went forth to do battle with the lousy Brits. Actually, the teenager did not understand. She thought she was commanded to go fourth, and not to rush into battle prematurely. In some way or other that I don’t understand, the delay was the key to her victory at Orleans.

By force of her dynamic personality, Joannie girl (the French like to call her Jeanne d’Arc, but this is patently ridiculous, and I won’t say why), changed the war from a secular conflict over who succeeds whom in the never-ending game of Who Gets to Be in Charge, which is all that wars were about in olden days, into a religious war between ???? Well, I don’t know, because Luther wasn’t born yet. Still, I have read lots of times that, under Joan, the war became a religious conflict.

After a nice round of victories, Joan was finally captured and tried for heresy. She was accused of claiming to have acted under God’s grace and the Brits wanted to know how the hell she had the right to think that. What audacity. What temerity. What gall. WHAT CHUTZPAH!! Thus, the charge of heresy was leveled on her. The Brits kept her under guard by male soldiers although inquisitorial rules specified she should have been guarded by nuns. So it is very likely that, keeping with a time-honored tradition of British soldiers, she was raped repeatedly.

At last, the trial took place and produced the expected result. Joan was tied to a stake and burned for heresy. Officially, Joan was roasted because she galloped around in men’s clothing, but to kill someone for that seems a bit weird. The simple fact is that Joan was a cross-dresser and if that were illegal today, tens of millions would be fried, zapped, gassed or dispatched in special ways only cross-dressers deserve. [I, myself, have a certain predilection for 5" high-heeled shoes - but that's a story for another day.]

What is most important about Joan, from a contemporary perspective, is that she really and truly did have conversations with God. Only crass and stupid atheists are skeptical of this. Almost as important, she really did change the course of world history. She has rightly been made a saint and shines with virtue with resplendent and therefore doesn’t give a rap for having once been a defendant. [And don't lie to people and say I plagiarized the preceding line from Billy Gilbert.] Joan was a hero to dozens of people who wrote biographies of her, all using the unimaginative pseudonym, Anon, to Napoleon, who worshipped the ground she walked on, to G. Bernie Shaw, to Maxie Anderson, to Bertold Brecht, to Pete Tchaikowsky, to Freddy Schiller, and to Lucky Besson. She was an inspiration to the very hot Alida Maria Laura Altenburger, the Baroness von Marckenstein und Frauenberg (a.k.a. Alida Valli). Hmm, hmm, good.

All this gives rise to two of the Four Big Questions that have been bugging the hell out of me since about 1944: Why, on this night, when Joan got all burned up, do we hide and eat the Afikomen? And why are we dipping our food twice tonight? What’s it to her?

Abyss = a seemingly bottomless chasm. Abysmal = the lowest quality of work

Political discourse is often described as appealing to the lowest common denominator. Appealing to it, yes, and appalling, too. The “lowest common denominator” metaphor doesn’t make sense in the political realm because zero is not a denominator. Using the well-regarded Flesch-Kincaid Reading Scale (probably built into your computer alongside the spell checker) to examine the length of words and sentences, the number of paragraphs, and other language parameters in order to gauge the complexity of the debaters’ speech, researchers discovered that the grade level of the language of famous political debates, from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 to current series of presidential debates, has declined from a 12th grade level to a high 7th-grade reading level. Bush allegedly scored a low of 6.3 in a televised debate with Al Gore. Don’t you believe it. Had it been 11.9, you would have noticed no difference.

Just look around you at 7th graders and 12th graders. Do you actually notice a difference in what they can comprehend? The F-K Reading Scale would have us believe that older teenagers have better reading skills than younger ones. Have you noticed that? Have you actually heard much difference in the speech of 7th graders from 12th graders? And just for fun, compare the 5th grade with the 7th, insofar as their comprehension skills are concerned. Do you have to get down lower when you talk with 5th graders than you do with 7th graders?

It all flattens out by the 5th grade for the vast majority of Americans – the elements comprising the “lowest common denominator.” The debaters have no reason to lament the sad state of political discourse because they couldn’t do more than they do do. Beyond the mere level of their own syntactic incompetence is the fact that politicians, due to their unfamiliarity with words, are unable to pronounce words. The letter “w” defeated our preceding president, leading to the hilarious but mean-spirited mocking of his “George Dubya Bush.” When did you last hear anyone on TV properly pronounce “inapplicable”? Never, in fact.

“Stop using ‘big’ words” or “Stop using ‘fancy’ words” is the complaint of the indolent, the stupid, and all those who hold up their ignorance as a badge of honor. Anybody who really has advanced beyond 12th grade English (in some better sense than the Flesch-Kincaid measures) understands there are subtle differences even between words that are thought to be synonyms. To be cognizant of something is not merely to be aware of it. Anybody who has ever had to write a complex sentence knows that commas are not arbitrary things to drive us insane but have many important uses. Chief among them, perhaps, is that they help us differentiate unrestricted clauses from restrictive ones. How else are to distinguish between “The soldiers who came in very late missed dinner” from “The soldiers, who came in very late, missed dinner.” By using paraphrasis, we could get around the need for commas, but why should we? Language has not evolved over thousands of years for no good reason.

Going to college and majoring in Renaissance Poetry, or even Generative grammar under the watchful eye of Noam Chomsky, won’t help much because those who major in these fields already have considerable fluency in language. They are not studying these superannuated, antediluvian topics in order to be able to hold their own in conversation with political hacks. They study them for the joy of studying them.

When I was in high school, or maybe it was college, the language shibboleth of the time was that the study of Latin helped you to learn English. Commonsense tells us it is the other way around. Many times you encounter a Latin phrase and if you have a very good English vocabulary then you may be able to make sense of the Latin. Never in all your life have you been able to take the simplest English sentences and put them into Latin. Try “The cat is on the mat” and see what luck you have.

Let’s face it. There is no point in crying over spilled blood. According to Gresham’s Law, bad money drives out good. According to Gendin’s laws, (1) bad neighborhoods drive out good ones and (2) the habitual practice of bad English drives out your facility with good English. They go hand in hand. I am sorry to say, “We ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.” Pay attention. Really pay attention and observe how many people work hard at being stupid. In thirty years, every neighborhood in cities with over 4 million people will have ALL the kids taking those statewide education assessment tests scoring below average, taking all the humor out of the old joke, “We’re all above average.”