Golf In The 21st Century

Golfing terms and traditions are ever so slowly moving into the 21st century.

The Rock Hudson shot  -it looked straight, but wasn’t.

The James Joyce - a putting green that’s impossible to read.

Shooting Saddam Hussein - hits from one bunker into another.

The Yasser Arafat shot - butt ugly and in the sand.

The Kate Winslett drive - a little bit fat but otherwise perfect!

The Teddy Kennedy slice- didn’t quite make it over the water.

The Rodney King- too much club.

The O.J. Simpson - a killer drive.

The Princess Di - should have used a different driver.

The Princess Grace - should have used any driver.

The Rush Limbaugh - a bit too far to the right.

The Nancy Pelosi - too far to the left.

The Dick Cheney - ball in an undisclosed location.

Expanded Thinking

Some food for thought:

Take some time and travel down a fascinating and insightful road.

Shrinkwrapped, The Arab Mind, Part I:

Everyday the incompatibility of the Western world view and the Arab (Islamist) world view becomes clearer.  Read the newspapers, watch the talk shows and the news readers, survey the blogs, and you can only come away with the impression that we do not understand our enemies (and this doesn’t even include all those who do not even realize we have enemies) and our enemies, though they manipulate us well at times, do not understand what makes us who we are.

Culture is the sum total of the character traits of the people who constitute that culture.  Character evolves from an infantile neurological set of tendencies through a complex interaction with the primary caregivers, usually the Mother, later expanding to include the Father… and finally shaped by interaction with the greater, existing culture.  As a result, cultures typically evolve slowly.  In the West, most notably in Europe, we can see how the culture that has been brought into their midst by Muslim immigrants has interfered with assimilation… and is increasingly asserting itself in muscular and often violent ways…

Only by understanding those forces which shape the Arab Mind and, in complex interactions, are shaped by and shape the greater culture, can we hope to find ways to help (or force) the Arab world come to terms with their myriad failures.  Cultures change slowly because people change slowly, yet certain ideas can reach a critical mass and lead to rapid change, on the order of one or two generations.  By tolerating, and effectively enabling, the worst aspects of Arab culture to be established in the West, we are doing a terrible disservice to the Arab cultures and to our own culture.

From The Arab Mind, Part II:

A culture’s Child rearing practices transmit the culture from one generation to the next.  Because of the complex interplay of child rearing, character formation, and culture (the sum total, and emergent characteristics, of the character of the members of the culture), child rearing practices and the culture so engendered evolve slowly.  Contact with a new culture often accelerates evolutionary change in cultures that are relatively open to such change; at the same time such contact often provokes significant reactionary movement, but without such encounters, culture is very stable…

Traditional Arab child rearing starts with the overvaluation of the infant boy and the utter devaluation of the girl.  It is complicated by the high value placed on discipline and obedience to the authority of the father.  It can come as no surprise, considering how women are treated in the most religious Muslim communities, that a women’s status is based almost exclusively on her relation to the men in her life.  She is subservient to her father and brothers early in life, then to her husband, and once married her value depends on her giving birth to a boy.  The birth of a daughter is treated as a disaster, shameful, at best ignored by all, while the birth of a son is met with celebration and joy.  With each pregnancy, the stakes are raised for the woman who has not yet had a son…

Thus, from the moment of birth a child in the Arab world is given a positive or negative valence.  And from that moment, their experiences are quiet distinct in ways that would shock even the most sexist of American parents…

In addition, we now know that insufficient frustration in early life, ie imperfect and occasionally delayed gratification, is an essential component of a healthy character.  Children who receive too much gratification, just as those who receive insufficient gratification in early life, are prone to developing narcissistic and borderline character traits, such as, among others, poor frustration tolerance, poor affect control, and over-reliance on the environment to help regulate internal mood states…

This series by Shrinkwrapped promises to be an outstanding example of how politics, culture and society are defined by who we are, no matter where we are.

Speaking of identity, it isn’t just Hirsi Ali that wanted to leave wet feet, clogs and red light zones behind. More on that in a moment.

Dr Sanity opined on Hirsi Ali’s move to America and offers up a few but succulent bons mots. Referring to Ms Ali, she says,

She is, as Hitchens notes a true menace to the cult of multiculturalism in the same way that Condi Rice is an apostate to the cult– a female of color who dares to defy the rigid leftist rules regarding victimhood. Doesn’t she know that she can’t possibly be oppressed by Isalm, whose culture is superior by definition to western culture?

Once again she is defying those rules by refusing to be a victim of Islamic oppression and western dhimmitude; and choosing instead to be free and move to the U.S. As I commented in this post, The Dutch loss is America’s gain.

Once more, this country will be enriched by Europe’s ‘wretched refuse.’ In fact, it is not only Holland that loses out. Islam will be the poorer, too, with the loss of Hirsi Ali’s voice.

In the history of the civilized world, the voices of reform that endure are the voices that challenged the status quo. Equally true is that in the history of mankind, the voices that are most reviled and ignored, are those that would take away freedom from those who aspire to it.

Those that sweep Hirsi Ali away now, will leave no lasting legacy for themselves. That truth is already being borne out.

The Dutch are leaving Holland in droves because their country, in their eyes, has capitulated- not so much to evil, but to indifference. The Dutch government does not believe they have a country, culture or society worth defending.

From the Sunday Express

But beneath the surface, Dutch society, hailed for many years as a model of liberalism and racial tolerance, is in crisis.

And there are some disturbing lessons for Britain in the alarming breakdown in the social order of a European nation just a one-hour flight from London or Manchester.

Rising religious and ethnic violence has erupted across Holland, with attacks on immigrants and revenge attacks by them in response.

Half a dozen Dutch politicians accused of being “enemies of Islam” have received death threats. Two are deemed to be in such danger they are living in police safe houses.

The Speaker of the Dutch parliament, Jozias van Aartsen, said: “Holy war has come to the Netherlands.” Holland’s educated, white middle class fear for the future, despite having an income per head that is higher than in any major country in Europe, and they are leaving their homeland in droves.

“There is clear evidence from a recent survey by the London School of Economics that people are moving out of London at the rate of 100,000 a year, and people are leaving other city centres, ” said Sir Andrew.

“It could be that this is a pattern similar to that developing in Holland.

Read the entire article- now.

See this, from The Telegraph:

Lawyers, accountants, computer specialist, nurses, and businessmen are lining up for visas to the English-speaking world, looking to Australia, New Zealand and Canada as orderly societies where people have the space to breathe.

The new wave of “middle-class flight” has quickened this year following rising ethnic violence and crime committed by and against immigrants, and in response to fears that social order is breaking down. In the first six months there was a net outflow of 13,313 people.

They are disengaging from a multicultural experiment once hailed as the model for the world but now stretched to breaking point.

The New York Times minces few words:

This small nation is a magnet for immigrants, but statistics suggest there is a quickening flight of the white middle class. Dutch people pulling up roots said they felt a general pessimism about their small and crowded country and about the social tensions that had grown along with the waves of newcomers, most of them Muslims

There is more than the concern about the rising complications of absorbing newcomers, now one-tenth of the population, many of them from largely Muslim countries. Many Dutch also seem bewildered that their country, run for decades on a cozy, political consensus, now seems so tense and prickly and bent on confrontation.

“Our Web site got 13,000 hits in the weeks after the van Gogh killing,” said Frans Buysse, who runs an agency that handles paperwork for departing Dutch. “That’s four times the normal rate.”

Conservative Moroccans and Turks from rural areas are accused of disdaining the liberal Dutch ways and of making little effort to adapt. Immigrant youths now make up half the prison population. More than 40 percent of immigrants receive some form of government assistance, a source of resentment among native Dutch.

Welcome to the real world.

Confusion And The Crumbling Nation

America and Americans are confused.

Since our inception as a nation, we and our allies have been confronted by adversaries and antagonists, all easily identified by perverted agendas designed to thwart democratic values or ideas that would subjugate millions. There was a time when our nation had great clarity. Now, we are confused. It seems we cannot identify  those ideas and leaders that ought to be repulsive and immediately rejected.

Our adversaries take offense when we point out blatant examples of outrageous, repressive, oppressive and murderous behavior. We back away, chastising our own ‘insensitivity.’ We are told that we are hated for our very existence- and we cannot or wil not refute those absurdities. The good we have done, the gifts we have brought forth mean nothing.

When we are taken to task by brutish and cruel leaders of failed nation-states, we are ashamed. We are laughed at because of our confusion and how easily we can be manipulated.

In a way, this confusion is a part of the human condition. We defy our realities so that we might be something we cannot be, someone other than ourselves. We will deny truth, logic and even our own collective nature in that pursuit. We live in the here and now, dealing with our realities and our lives. All the while, we want to be elsewhere or to be someone else in a place and time, where and when our ‘inner greatness’ is immediately recognized and appreciated. All that is missing is the road map, the American Idol competition that might recognize our magnificence. Many will fight with great ferocity to defend our ambiguity and refusal to take a stand and many care little who gets hurt in the process.

The struggle with the tentative ‘would have, should have,’ that so aptly defines a cultural malaise is played out every day. Those who sure of themselves and their beliefs or take comfort in them, are suspect outsiders. What is wrong with them?

Rather than seek real solutions to real problems that affect real people that can be addressed and solved with hard work, there is a collective lemming-like drive to find ‘inner peace.’ Myopic New Age religions, Yoga, mystical expressions of faith have all supplanted the need for good works.  Anything that does not demand commitment and accountability is good. Any expression of faith that requires accountability and real commitment is bad. We do not need to answer to God. It his He/She/It that needs to answer to us. God, the Master Of The Universe And Creator has no business making demands on us.

The only clarity is that we must be tolerant and forgiving of those who say God told them to kill us (See We’re The Problem And Other Fantasies for the absurdity of such thinking).

Free societies and civilizations are distinguished by how they see the world and in how they problem solve. They value life, knowledge and morality, in that order.

Life is understood in the finite and infinite expression. When we encounter death in our lives, we realize that our infinite existence is not a possibility. Intellectually, we know this to be an absolute truth. With greater knowledge, our understanding of our finite selves is increased. Nevertheless, we seek immortality. We look for ways to extend our physical existence and we are willing to do just about anything to find that elusive fountain of youth.

Our quest for that fountain does not really represent a quest for longevity. Despite our intellectual awareness and an ever increasing body of knowledge, what we really seek is immortality. We want to defy and deny the truth about ourselves and about the finite creatures we are. Even as our longevity has increased, so has our obsession with immortality. Medicine and lifestyle can indeed give us a few more years and cosmetic surgery can create all kinds of illusions. Still, no matter all our efforts, we cannot defy nature. We are not meant for immortality.

How tragically confused one must be to believe that longevity is the mark of a quality life.Western nations measure the quality of life in terms of age and lifespan. There is no measure of the meaningfulness of life.

In addition to the pursuit of life, western man seeks knowledge. In addition to immortality, he wants to be in possession of all the mysteries of the universe.

Next to life itself, man seeks infinity in the field of knowledge. He wants not only to be immortal, but to have boundless knowledge. It is true we have made great strides in our knowledge base, but we are barely scratching the surface of the secrets of the cosmos. Those for whom longevity and the obsessive search for knowledge are paramount, will be long forgotten.

The final human endeavor in which man seeks to leave a mark is in his expression of morality. It is in this arena that our failures are greatest.

The incongruity of our efforts are almost comical. On the one hand, we seek immortality. On the other hand, some seek to terminate the lives of those they feel have no quality of life. The same people who speak of moral and cultural relativism are often the very same people who believe that those who are a burden to them may be removed. They will go to great lengths to accommodate and make room for others, yet they will not tolerate those near and dear who might be a ‘burden.’

If man put as much effort into seeking a moral immortality as he does in seeking a physical immortality, the world would be a much better place.

Mankind can essentially be divided into two camps: One camp (western society) has come to see no morality other than the kind that serves the self. The other camp sees morality in imposing one set of beliefs over another, be they religious or political at any and all costs and force if necessary. That is why Communism and religious fundamentalism are so appealing to many: They require self discipline and commitment, two very human desires. The western pursuit of pleasure is counter intuitive (we want immortality and uber morality but we aren’t willing to rid ourselves of the pleasurable behaviors and adopt the necessary discipline and commitment to achieve that immortality and morality. Then, we blame others for our weaknesses and bad behavior). ‘We are doomed to fail’ is a mantra instilled in children today.

America’s participation in the first World War was predicated on the belief that we were making the world safe for democracy. In the second World War, we saw our participation as necessary to save the world from real slavery and oppression. As we and our allies pushed the Nazi forces back, we were seen by those we liberated as saviors. There was no moral ambiguity whatsoever. The Cold War was not fought for sovereignty of Siberia, but rather, to maintain the sovereignty over our beliefs.

Today, America is not so sure of herself. When faced by oppressive and repressive regimes that are no different than those evil regimes of the past, we falter and hesitate.

We are in a word, confused.

There was a time when China was understood to be among the most oppressive regimes in the world. Today we trade with China and break bread with them as if they were our moral equals. Political oppression is still rampant, tens of thousands of state sanctioned murders occur every year, prisoners are shot so that their organs might be harvested and Chinese miners are not given safety equipment because the regime has done the math. Replacing coal miners is cheaper than keeping them alive.

There was a time when African Americans were invisible in this nation. Now, universities have entire programs that dwell on ‘blackness.’ We went from fighting to include minorities into our nation to fighting to exclude minorities from our melting pot. The pendulum swings are extreme.

The American nation has much to be proud of and very little to be confused about.

Our greatest moments as a nation and people have always been the result of not caring about our personal longevity, not caring about what the books said what and wasn’t possible and about not caring about a morality that was self centered.

We built a nation with wretched refuse that made this country their home (see Culture Character And Cheese and Democracies Don’t Care). They may have come from elsewhere, but America was the place millions wanted to make home. They saw this nations certainty and commitment to freedom as another kind of Rock of Ages. They saw a nation that while not perfect, was a nation ‘whose best days were yet to come.’

Immigrants came- and still come-  with the express desire to participate, to have his opr her voice heard. Immigrants can be active participants in whatever political party or organization they desire. They are free to passionately argue their beliefs with neighbors who speak their language and other neighbors who don’t, free of the fear of retribution. Immigrants are not confused about what America stands for and for whom she will stand up. America is not a terrible place as the lines for residency visas attest. No one in those lines really sees what America stands for as ambiguous or confused.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to symbolize America to the world. He was a not perfect and certainly flawed. Nevertheless, when the Nazi threat to Europe was at it’s darkest, Roosevelt behaved in a way that was quintessentially American. At great personal risk to his political career, he lied to Congress outright so that Europe might be saved from Nazi tyranny. He cared little about his physical limitation. He cared less about what his diplomats (including Joe Kennedy) said about not getting involved and he cared least of all about the self serving isolationist morality that enveloped the nation.

FDR represented American moral certainty to a fearful world. Had the American president been Woodrow Wilson or Herbert Hoover- two fine men- the swastika would have flown over the capitals of the Continent and Europeans would have been enslaved.

World War Two was FDR’s second victory. He stemmed the tide of Communism on these shores during the depression by feeding the poor and hungry. He tied the nation together with roads, electricity and national parks. demonstrated in front of the White House, but their pleas fell on empty ears. The secret answer was that the Jewish situation should not be brought to prominence because it would hinder the war effort, and a conference between Roosevelt and Eisenhower rejected the plan to bomb the concentration camps. Thus, the Jewish confidence in people was shattered.

Confusion can be helpful when it inspires a cathartic experience. We can find meaning, clarity and direction. Those liberating results come about only when we seek a higher purpose. We have to seek not more confusion, but less so that our lives however long or short have meaning. We have to seek knowledge that enhances our meaning and existence and we have to seek a morality that elevates ourselves and others at the same time. We cannot allow a pretend morality to immobilize us. We have to be sure of ourselves, of we are, in what we stand for and in what direction we must forge ahead.

America is not a perfect place, of course. That said, it is incumbent on us to make it better. That is the real legacy of the ‘wretched refuse.’

We wrote

Of the almost 7 billion people on this planet, only 300 million are Americans. To put that in perspective, less than 5% of the population of this planet are Americans- and yet, the world is obsessed with our existence and what we represent. In the course of just over 200 years, we have provided the world with ideas, contributions and realities that are in the consciousness of every human being on the planet. Given our numbers and short history, we should not have had this profound influence on history and mankind- and yet, we have. The secret to our our successes and influence can be attributed to one powerful word: Freedom.

That is a truth we ought never be confused about.

For a terrific- and related-  look at the America we have become, see Dr Sanity’s superb Beyond Parody, posted today.