While waiting to get online recently at the City Library of the town I have just moved to (my old home town, in point of fact; after many years of living abroad), for my daily, hour-long fix checking my emails and doing some surfing (of the indoor kind; the real thing going on just blocks away from where I sit in downtown Long Beach, CA), I noticed nearby a revolvable stand of 'Recent Periodicals', and decided - as is my wont - to take advantage of the double opportunity being afforded me: the time and the convenience to do some browsing of the reading kind. And lo and behold, there amongst the lesser - at least to me - offerings was a fairly recent (the most recent, in library terms??) issue of an old friend, the NR. Though, as friendships can, ours had waned, over just this very issue - the issue, not just of the liberalism of Obama (which the publication, as given its very nature, continued to 'give him stick' for), but of his ineligibility even to hold - no; not descriptive enough, Call it to occupy - the office in the first place. After waiting patiently, month after month of my (long-range; over the sea to quite near Skye) subscription, to see the NR - that prestigious voice of conservative thought in America - address this extremely critical constitutional issue - critical especially to such constitutional pedants as occupy the pages of that intellectually formidable publication - I came across -
nothing.
Zip. Zilch.
Nada.
And with a blistering letter of reproach to their subscriptions computer, I canceled my support for their - its - faithless rag.
So, there.*
But in the scheme of things that we have to work with in life, it was something I could do. And the least I could do; to demonstrate my unhappiness with the state in particular of opposition-party, conservative affairs in the U.S.
A word about those affairs. For there is an interesting sub-issue here. And it has to do with, in a word, class.
There is a 'scruffy' lot of conservatives in America - think Tea Partiers; think John Birch Society members - and there is a, well, classier lot. Think The Hamptons. Think William F. Buckley, Jr. on his boat. Think graduates of prestigious Catholic universities, for whom the closest they have come to getting really angry about something is to say, 'I want the Mass said in Latin, dammit - not the vernacular!'
America can have a constitutionally ineligible person occupying the highest office in the land. The rule of law is, if not outright null and void, at the least hanging by a thread, and the ship of state, to all intents and purposes, is dead in the water. The American Republic is on the verge - well on the verge - of slipping over into the historically declining state of Empire. Precisely as happened in and to Rome; as the academically inclined would well and truly know. And the NR crowd can get worked up - really heated up - apparently only over the issue of the majesty of the Mass being celebrated in Latin.
A dead language.
For a reason.
A reason that has to do with one thing, one trait in particular:
Not paying attention to detail.
I do understand that many conservatives feel that many acts of Congress, and decisions of the Supreme Court, have been and are unconstitutional, and so one more misreading of words in our national contract is, or may be, in the grand scheme of things, no big deal. But a word for the august and honorable office of the presidency of the United States of America, if I may.
The insertion into the Constitution of the fledgling American Republic of the requirement for a prospective candidate for the office of the president - and putative Commander in Chief of the military forces of the Republic - to be a "natural born Citizen", is no small thing. Is not a minor detail, a mere technicality, to be passed over lightly in the grand scheme of things. It is a major constitutional issue. And it is a live one now - in our time - as we speak - because the person currently occupying the presidential office, Barack Hussein Obama, is not eligible for it - and by his own admission to boot; albeit obliquely. But still in the clear light of day; if words still hold their original meanings, and are not subject to the royal prerogative of the likes of Humpty Dumpty, who declared, in all his majesty on the wall (before he had a great fall, let us recall); quote: "Words mean what I say they mean." A recent historical version of which was Hitler's declaration, upon being given the keys of the German Republic, that, quote: "I am the law." And that was the signal of the end off that republic.
What does that term mean - I mean the NBC one - and what did it mean to those who put it in the nation's legal document? There has been some dancing around with this matter - like an unwelcome guest into the country club party being gently escorted towards the exit, in order not to make too much of a scene - but at a bare minimum it means the main intention for it: that the person in that office - that single, particular federal office - must not have, by birth, the possibility of dual loyalties/allegiances. Must, then, be born of two U.S. citizen parents.
Unlike other federal offices for whom the same requirement does not apply.
And so what does the NR have to say these days, about the state of the nation, from a - their particular - conservative viewpoint?
I note a couple of articles attacking Obama - in a genteel, upperclass way, of course - for his comments regarding the issue of 'ObamaCare' being currently up for constitutional consideration before the Supreme Court. And it is all kabuki theatre. Because he knows what 'the conservatives' know, too - at least, those who like a dead language spoken in their church; and therefore seem to be a bit partial to dead things. And to form for form's sake.
Because the Constitution is a dead thing.
Oh, it may be able to be taken for a turn or two around the floor, still. As the band plays on, a little longer yet. The night is still young, after all.
But the night has definitely, now, set in.
For one main reason. And one main reason only:
A lack of attention to detail.
The lady is not only for turning. She has stopped breathing. Is mere putty in the hands of master potters. And spell that with an 'l' in there as well.
All form. And no substance.
What a sad epitaph, and ending, for a once vibrant entity. A living, breathing thing. Before it became a play thing. A shell, on a beach of sand.
And what is that, whispering in it?...
I can almost make it out...
Can you???
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* In the interests of accuracy - as this essay is - I must confess that that wasn't the whole reason that I canceled my subscription. The other main reason was that, in the wake of the lamented departure of WFB Jr., the new editing team, as part of their new-look broom sweep through the pages, employed a font type for its contributors' biographical information so faint as to drive me up the wall. Change? No thanks. I'm very conservative on that reckoning of the definition of the word.
Indeed, some words have different meanings.
So you have to go to intention, to have a clear communication process.Anyone else for the Founding Fathers' intention, regarding the meaning of the NBC phrase?? Since the NR doesn't seem to be up to the job.
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Tomorrow: The State of the Nation - Part 2
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