Category: SubscribeStar Saturday

SubscribeStar Saturday: Reject a Dictator’s Peace

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address for 1941 has come down to us as “The Four Freedoms” speech.  In it, Roosevelt envisioned a world in which all people would enjoy freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

In the context of the Second World War, which had already been raging in Europe for two years (and much longer in Asia), these freedoms may have seemed like a distant dream for anyone outside of the United States.  Indeed, many Americans took the attitude (one with which I am broadly sympathetic) that Europe’s problems were for Europeans to handle, not Americans.  After all, we’d gotten embroiled in the First World War—ostensibly because “the world must be made safe for democracy,” as President Woodrow Wilson put it in his address to Congress requesting war with Germany in 1917—only to see authoritarian regimes rise throughout Europe and Asia.  Why should we get involved in another mess on a continent an ocean away?

Even with Hitler and Stalin sweeping through Poland, and with the former on the cusp of invading France, Americans were reluctant to get involved in another of Europe’s conflicts.  Roosevelt knew that Americans had little appetite for war, but he made a compelling point in his speech:

No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion–or even good business.

Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement.

In other words, a Europe—not to mention Africa and Asia—in which Hitler reigned supreme would provide no real peace for Americans.  It would be “a dictator’s peace,” one in which Americans, while ostensibly independent, would constantly have to negotiate—and even bend the knee—to a powerful Old World hegemon.  Our own peace and liberties would be forever contingent on Hitler’s mercurial whims.

So it is that the United States today once again faces those who yearn for “a dictator’s peace.”  The enemy is not abroad—not North Korea, not Russia, not even China (although the Chinese are certainly a threat)—but at home.  Our national government, many of our State governments, our universities, our museums, our most important cultural and economic institutions:  all have been infiltrated and co-opted by an enemy within our gates, the enemy of Cultural Marxism, or “progressivism.”

A regular, albeit whispered, refrain in 2020 was, “maybe if Biden wins, we’ll finally have peace.”  These were words uttered by conservatives as much as progressives.  The relentless attacks on President Trump—easily the best President of the twenty-first century so far—were wearying.  Apparently, many of his supporters grew “tired of winning,” as candidate Trump cheekily predicted.  Even when people knew they were shams—like the two ludicrous impeachments—they secretly wished for some return to normalcy, which presented itself in the form of a geriatric octogenarian with a penchant for sniffing little girls’ hair.

Mind you, most of the people wanting “peace”—no more cities burned down by Antifa and BLM, they hoped—weren’t enduring even a fraction of what President Trump endured—still endures!—on a daily basis.  Mostly, their feathers were ruffled by a few cheeky Tweets and a great deal of hostile press coverage.  Oh, my, what a hardship—we have to hear Rachel Maddow squawk boyishly about how bad we Republicans are!  The terror!  Never mind that as their feathers ruffled, they feathered their retirement accounts with 20%-plus annual returns for their 401(k)s.

Now, here we are facing down 2024.  Markets are frothy at best.  Inflation is still through the roof, albeit it cooling slightly.  Grown men are increasingly emboldened—in no small part by our institutions and our own “President”—to espouse sexual relationships with minors.  Young people are mutilating themselves permanently in a vain quest for meaning.

Yet, the same voices yearning for “peace” are back at it, cooing over anyone but the one man who is equipped—and hardened—to take on the system.  Indeed, I was distraught to read this analysis from one of this site’s major contributors:

I don’t think I could vote for [Trump] were he to win the nomination. Another four years of the crap we endured in his first term? Count me out. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matt 6:34) 2025 will have its own evils and I want those evils to be faced with a singular determination and not as an item amongst many items that are causing charges to be brought against a sitting president. You know they’ll never stop – they will hound him to the grave and then put up a neon hate sign where a headstone should be.

It is precisely because “they’ll never stop” that we must support President Trump.  Anything else is a dictator’s peace, which we must reject.

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MAGAWeek2023: James Madison

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This week is MAGAWeek2023, my celebration of the people and ideas that MADE AMERICA GREAT!  Starting Monday, 3 July 2023, this year’s MAGAWeek2023 posts will be SubscribeStar exclusives.  If you want to read the full posts, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for as little as $1 a month.  You’ll also get access to exclusive content every Saturday.

Another shamefully neglected figure in the annals of MAGAWeek is that of James Madison, the fourth President of the United States and the so-called “Father of the Constitution.”  While Madison has graced the digital pages of this blog a number of times, he has yet to receive the biographical treatment—until today.

James Madison is one of the most fascinating of our Founding Fathers.  He was among the youngest of the major Founders—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, et. al.—but his contributions to political and constitutional theory were profound.  Indeed, his contributions to the Constitution were so significant, some political writers refer to our constitutional order as the “Madisonian order” or the “Madisonian system.”

It was Madison, for example, who argued that the sheer, physical size of the United States (which, at that time, extended to the Mississippi River) would preserve national unity, rather than undermine it.  That insight was completely contrary to all of the wisdom of the ancient and early modern worlds, both of which argued—with a great deal of evidence—that a republican form of government could only exist on a very small scale.  Eventually, the theory went, the rise of factions would rend a republic of any substantial size apart.

Madison argued the opposite:  because of the nation’s massive size, it would dilute factions, preventing regional parties from forming.  Through a system of federalism, in which each State would maintain significant local rights while enjoying representation in the national government, the States could make important, State-or-locality-specific decisions locally, while sharing the strength of a unified nation in foreign affairs and national defense.

Well, he was half right, anyway.  National parties did emerge, and they enjoyed broad support across all regions.  But regionalism set in regardless:  the High Federalists in New England during the War of 1812 (which they derisively called “Mr. Madison’s War”); the Democrats in the South from the 1850s until at least the 1970s; the rural-urban divide between the modern Republican and Democratic Parties today; etc.  That regionalism tended to be strongest, though, when the national government was overstepping its boundaries, or acting to the detriment of one region for the benefit of others (a key complaint of Southerners leading up to the American Civil War, for example, was that the Whig regime of extremely high tariffs was explicitly a national policy that benefited one region [New England and the Upper Midwest] at the expense of another [the South]).

But who was James Madison, this short (at 5′ 4″, Madison is our shortest president), shy nerd living in his parents’ home when he wrote the Virginia Plan for the Constitutional Convention?

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MAGAWeek2023: Benjamin Franklin

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This week is MAGAWeek2023, my celebration of the people and ideas that MADE AMERICA GREAT!  Starting Monday, 3 July 2023, this year’s MAGAWeek2023 posts will be SubscribeStar exclusives.  If you want to read the full posts, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for as little as $1 a month.  You’ll also get access to exclusive content every Saturday.

In looking through the extensive TPP archives, I’ve apparently only written the name “Benjamin Franklin” in a single post—9 May 2020’s SubscribeStar Saturday: Liberty and Safety.  Much like Franklin’s classic canard about trading liberty for safety and losing both, the lack of Franklin’s presence on this website is shameful.

That’s especially true considering that Benjamin Franklin is one of my personal heroes.  He was a skilled writer, editor, printer, inventor, politician, diplomat, wit, international playboy (seriously), statesman, and citizen.  He was the king of the nerds, at a time when nerds were celebrated not because of their weird Japanese body pillow fetishes, but because they were strong, smart, witty, and curious.

No single man’s life better exemplifies eighteenth-century colonial America.  Born in 1706 and passing in 1790, Franklin’s long life extended nearly the full breadth of that eventful century—eventful in large part because of him!

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MAGAWeek2023: George Whitefield

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This week is MAGAWeek2023, my celebration of the men, women, and ideas that MADE AMERICA GREAT!  Starting Monday, 3 July 2023, this year’s MAGAWeek2023 posts will be SubscribeStar exclusives.  If you want to read the full posts, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for as little as $1 a month.  You’ll also get access to exclusive content every Saturday.

America is a Christian nation.  At least, it was.  The Christian roots of the nation run deep, not just to the Founding (if we take “The Founding” to be in or around 1776), but far back into the colonial period.  Most readers will know the well-worn story of the Pilgrims—a group of Puritan Separatists who, while not seeking religious freedom for others, at least sought it for their own peculiar version of Christianity—and their arrival in Massachusetts in 1620 (the Southerner in me will be quick to note that, despite the Yankee supremacist narrative, permanent English settlement began in 1607 with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia—the South; the earlier, albeit failed, attempt to settle Roanoke was also in the South, in what is now North Carolina, in 1585).

But there is more to the history of Christianity in America than the Puritans—much more.  The colonies of British North America struggled through some fairly irreligious times (colonial Americans were much heavier drinkers than we are), and while denominations abounded—Tidewater Anglicans, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and Catholics, New England Puritans, and Mid-Atlantic sects of various stripes—the fervor of American religiosity was at a low ebb in the late 1600s.  Economic prosperity following difficult years in the 1670s—King Philip’s War in New England, Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia—led many to move away from the church.  In Puritan New England, where voting rights and citizenship required church membership (and church membership was not as easy to obtain as it is today; it required proof of one’s “election”), the Puritan-descended Congregationalist churches began offering “half-elect” membership, as there were so few citizens who could prove their “election.”

Into this void stepped the revivalists of the First Great Awakening.  In the 1730s and 1740s (give or take a decade or two), a series of religious revivals swept throughout England and British North America (the colonies).  These men—Charles Wesley, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitefield, among others) took difficult, strenuous tours throughout England and the colonies to deliver the Gospel in a powerful, compelling way.

Their impact was immense:  preaching salvation and a personal relationship with Christ, these men united the profusion of denominations and theologies in the colonies with the universal message of Christ’s Gospel.  Granted, denominational and theological differences persisted—indeed, they proliferated, with John Wesley’s Methodism among the plethora of new denominations—but the grand paradox of the First Great Awakening is that, even with that denominational diversity, Americans across the colonies developed a unified identity as Christians.  Protestant Christians, to be sure, and of many stripes.  But that tolerance of denominational diversity, coupled with the near-uniformity of belief in Christ’s Saving Grace, forged a quintessentially American religious identity.

Most readers will be quite familiar with the Wesley Brothers, especially John, and we probably all read Jonathan Edwards’s powerful sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in high school.  But most Americans know precious little about the revivalist George Whitefield, whose prowess as a speaker and evangelist brought untold thousands to the Lord.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2023

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It’s that time of year again:  summer!  That means we’re due for The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2023!

For new readers, my criteria is pretty straightforward.  To quote myself from the 2016 list:

The books listed here are among some of my favorites.  I’m not necessarily reading them at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t!

Pretty vague, I know.  Additionally, I usually feature three books, plus an “Honorable Mention” that’s usually worth a read, too.

For those interested, here are the prior installments:

With that, here’s The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2023:

1.) “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Other Stories from The Sketch Book, Washington Irving – There are dozens of compilations of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.  The book has been in continuous print since its first publication in 1819-1820, which is remarkable:  at the time, American literature was in its infancy, struggling to differentiate itself from the flood of European novels, poetry, and short stories coming out of the Old World at the time.  Irving, along with his contemporary James Fenimore Cooper, launched American literature beyond our own hardscrabble frontiers into the wider world, and both authors became the first Americans whose works were read widely in Europe.

I picked up this Signet Classics edition (ISBN: 0-451-5301-8) approximately fifteen years ago, largely on the strength of its two most famous short stories:  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”  These tales account for the vast popularity of the collection, but aside from a few other essays on American life, the vast majority of the collection takes place in England.

One of the most memorable essays from my first reading was “Westminster Abbey,” about the impressive abbey near London.  Here’s the first very first paragraph:

On one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of autumn when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together, and throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours in rambling about Westminster Abbey. There was something congenial to the season in the mournful magnificence of the old pile, and as I passed its threshold it seemed like stepping back into the regions of antiquity and losing myself among the shades of former ages.

How’s that for setting the scene and the mood?  There is something mystical about that period in late autumn that is “rather melancholy,” and everything seems to have a certain shadowy gloominess cast over it.  I’ve always thought that the best time to learn about colonial American history—especially the history of New England—is in late autumn, when that damp crispness enters the air.  It feels like Plymouth Rock, or Salem Town, or the backwoods of New Hampshire.

This summer, I hope to reread this collection for the first time in fifteen years.  The essays on Christmas—“Christmas Eve,” “Christmas Day,” and “Christmas Dinner“—are instantly charming, and explain much of the more ancient English traditions of celebrating Christmas, including ghost stories around the fire (which became more popular in the Victorian era).

Needless to say, The Sketch Book has had an immense influence on my own writing, particular my travel writing.  I’m no Washington Irving (or Geoffrey Crayon), but my second book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures clearly illustrates Irving’s influence upon my writing style.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Zero Trust Society

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Even the most casual of observers will have recognized that social trust is at an all-time low.  Our faith in our political institutions has long been rocky at best, but we increasingly have no faith in any of our institutions—cultural, academic, social, religious, etc.  Beyond that noticeable decline in institutional trust, we’ve increasingly stopped trusting each other.

That erosion did not occur in a vacuum, nor is it surprising that as trusts in institutions—which are made up of people, after all—erodes, so does our trust in our fellow citizens.  The same people debasing our institutions are the same people failing to fulfill the duties of those institutions to protect and guide us.

Sure, the conservative will say, “I don’t need some intellectual telling me how to live my life,” and that’s true.  But that intellectual’s ideas and proposals are making your life much worse, whether you realize it or not.  In a time of high social cohesion and trust, that boogeyman intellectual would be making decisions or proposing policies that would help or support his fellow citizens, or at least would seek to do no harm to them.

A major hat-tip goes to the blog The Most Revolutionary Act, which reblogged an excellent piece from American Thinker entitled “The GOP is Losing the Vote Fraud War” by Steve McCann.  To quote liberally from McCann’s piece:

A Rasmussen poll taken in October of 2021 found that 56% of all likely voters believed that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  Another Rasmussen poll dated April of 2023 revealed that 60% of all likely voters believed that cheating affected the outcomes of many 2022 midterm elections.  Unsurprisingly in a Rasmussen poll published on June 14, 2023, 54% of all likely voters believe that cheating will determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Those are shocking numbers; that a whopping 60% of all likely voters (not just Republicans) believed that cheating affected the midterm elections is massive.

I would number myself among those 60%.  But even if we’re all wrong, and the 2020 and 2022 elections were totally above board (and, come now, who can honestly say that with a straight face?), the fact that we believe rampant cheating is taking place is an indication of an extreme distrust of our political institutions.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Noise

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A perennial saw pastors love to buzz is how in our modern age, we face such a deluge of constant stimuli, we never have quiet time with God.  Indeed, we sometimes seek out noise to distract ourselves from God.

The pastors are right.  There is so much noise—audible, of course, but also visual—that it’s easy to go an entire day without much quiet time at all.  I often fall into the trap of flipping mindlessly through my phone in bed instead of reading a book, or cranking up a podcast the moment I wake up.

I think the problem of constant, buzzing, inane noise is more than a spiritual one, even if that is chiefly what it is (after all, aren’t most problems, at least beyond the merely technical ones, ultimately spiritual?).  It certainly distracts us from keeping our spiritual “ears” open to God’s still, small voice, but it also prevents us simply from thinking.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Tinkering

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When I have the time, I enjoy tinkering with things.  By “tinkering,” I broadly mean “messing around with something to see how it works,” which can include the mechanical process of opening something, or simply reading about a process.  It can also include digital tinkering, which I have been doing a great deal of lately.

I spent the better part of Friday attempting to get an ancient version of Cakewalk 3.0 (originally designed for Windows 3.1) to work on my computer, which runs Windows 10 64-bit.  As I’ve recently released three of my older albums—Electrock Music, Electrock II: Space Rock, and Electrock EP: The Four Unicorns of the Apocalypse—for digital distribution, I’ve been inspired to get back into digital composing.  I realized that I wrote a ton of great stuff between 2006 and 2012, and arranged extensively for my old band, Brass to the Future, around the 2010 and 2011.  I did all of that in this old version of Cakewalk.

Naturally, I could just get a newer, more feature-rich bit of composing software, but that would require learning its quirks.  I’ve tried at various times to learn other composing/engraving software, and I find that I lack the time or patience to figure out a new program.  I’ve been using Cakewalk since 1998—twenty-five years!—and while I haven’t used the software in years, I’d like to go with what I know.

As of the time of this writing, my efforts have failed.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Jam 2023 Review

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Subscribers:  the annual TPP Summer Reading List will be posted soon (sometime this month—maybe next weekend!).  I’ll also be getting back to my series on Washington, D.C., this month as well.

Another Spring Jam is in the books, and I think it was the best one yet.  I should probably write that behind the paywall, but I’d like everyone to know.

Regular readers will know that in October 2020 I launched the TJC Halloween Spooktacular (I’d done a “Spooktacular” at a coffee shop in 2019, but that was a very different event), a Halloween concert on my front porch.  That first front porch Spooktacular featured two opening bands, followed by a couple of sets from my friend John and myself.  It was a rousing success, but in retrospect, it was too long (three hours!) and needed some streamlining.

Of course, in The Age of The Virus, everyone was starving for live entertainment and social interaction after being cooped up inside with Netflix and takeout for (by that point) seven months, so I could get way with a bloated bill.  It was a success, and most folks stuck around until we wrapped up sometime after 9 PM.

While I don’t think I’ve ever repeated the success of the first Spooktacular in terms of attendance and cashflow, I do think I’ve improved the formula somewhat.

The biggest change came when I made the Spooktacular and the spin-off Spring Jam into a recital for my private music students.  Following the doldrums of Summer 2020, when I had just one piano student every week, my private lessons empire ballooned to around twenty lessons or so each week (occasionally fewer, often more).  That has been a major financial and musical blessing, but it also means I have enough students to put on a pretty good recital, even if some students can’t attend.

With this latest Spring Jam, I think I have gotten it down to more of a science—but a fun science, like playing with magnets in the seventh grade.  There’s still the fun, relaxed, DYI-spirit of the event, but everything seems to be running more smoothly.

Like playing an instrument, practice makes perfect.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Even More Graduation Day Wisdom

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Another graduation ceremony is upon us, signaling the end of the school year and the beginning of another summer vacation.  The grand cycle of the academic calendar continues, coming to a stately close after a hectic few months.

I never anticipated being asked to speak at graduation, and I long doubted I ever would.  I still have not—lest the last sentence come across as misleading—but after delivering the baccalaureate sermon this past Sunday, I suspect the odds of being asked to speak at commencement at some future date has increased, even if only slightly.  What was hovering at around 1% might be up to 5% right now, but I possess no special insights into the vagaries of my administrations hive mind.

Regardless, if I did get to speak before our graduating seniors, I’d offer up some of my dubious wisdom, such as it is.  The first time I wrote on this topic I offered mostly financial advice; last year, after experiencing the effects of The Age of The Virus, I revised my wisdom to include more spiritual concerns.

This year, my advice is a grab-bag of plainspoken wisdom—take it or leave it.

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