"... hold our elected officials to minimum standards ..."

Q. "If we’re not going to hold our elected officials to minimum standards of tolerance and respect for differing religions, races, and ethnic backgrounds, why should we expect the rest of us to behave any better?" A. Wombschoolin’ has much to answer for! Please add "inability to ask a straight question" as Item 318(b), everybody.

Meanwhile, what is the brat after, exactly? Does it really not want to be good and wash behind its ears personally unless or until Senators and Representatives are compelled to do so also? I find it inconsistent with the theocratic pretensions of this brand of brattiness to hang one’s ethical hat on Prince Cæsar and the Second Estate like that. Does the "Moran, R." specimen propose to plead to its Judge in horâ novissimâ "How could You seriously expect me to be a good boy, Sir, in a Lake Woebegone full of Franken voters and now represented by the Chief Clown in person?"

I'm willing to believe a lot of negative poop about the WNU, Wombschool Normal University, folks, but there are limits, and it strikes me as probably well out of bounds that the sweet puppies they keep crankin’ out nowadays were formally taught anythin’ so antitraditional as that. I betcha Moran, R., was at least exposed to the notion that it would be saved (or perhaps not?) imitatione Christi and sanctorum meritis with Mr. Franken not enterin’ into the matter at all. Not enterin’ in even virtually or figuratively or allegorice, except insofar as the new junior Senator from Minnesota can be classified with several trillion other persons and things under the rubric "all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil." [1]

The "Moran, R." specimen may or may not have allowed itself to be deceived, that is no business of mine. [2] If its fellow pajamatarians wish to make it their business, ditto. [2] So let us turn from gossip about individual wombscholars to a critique of neoteric wombschoolin’ as such.

I guess the racket must have commenced out of a sincere wish to protect little kiddies and sweet puppies from (more or less) the WFD Complex, world and flesh and devil. Of course there must have been some antecedent Niederdümmung before such a parochial and provincial project could get off the runway: a close reader of the Old Euro books most pertinent can only conclude that the WNU scheme is so impossible as to border on bein’ demented. The soundbite borrowed from the misbelievers of Canterbury makes the point nicely: why, the WHOLE WORLD is number one on the enemies list! The idea that kiddies and puppies are to be sheltered from that is plumb dotty.

In addition to being dotty, the idea is (on Old Euro presuppositions) actually harmful to the kiddies and maybe to puppies also: Beati estis cum maledixerint vobis et persecuti vos fuerint et dixerint omne malum adversum vos mentientes propter Me. [3] Thus Wombschool Normal University is--by its own alleged lights, not yours or mine--actually deprivin’ its customers’ children of an opportunity to gain merit. Tusk, tusk! [4]

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On the other side of the Great Wall of Jefferson, the implications of "Moran, R." for statism as opposed to religionism are naturally of more interest to an outsider to First Estatism like the present keyboard. Bein’ a pajamatarian, the specimen may be safely assumed to be illiberal and antidemocratic. As well it might be! For la démocratie en Amérique has obviously let it down seriously. Under the current Homelandic™ system, that odious mob régime that has obtained since (say) 4 March 1829, the only place where citizens can do anything much to "hold our elected officials to minimum standards of tolerance and respect" is the polling place. Minnesota has just flunked the Moranic litmus test, obviously. [5]

And poor Moran, R., cannot do anythin’ about it worth mentionin’!

Were it not for a few minor disagreements about Eastern Mediterranean Monotheism, the poor lad would be happier in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where, needless to say, disrespectful clowns like Mr. Franken could never get on the ballot.

That raises a point remotely, but I think distinctly, connected with the Moranic wombscholarship. The evil Qommies have an enforcement mechanism, one that is actually written into their Constitution in a thoroughly Madisonian fashion. Desiring to "hold our elected officials to minimum standards," they made specific institutional arrangements to accomplish it. But Moran, R., is a sweet puppy and a kiddie konservative and an alumnus of WNU: it craves somethin’ not very unlike the Persian version, but it wills its First Estater end without willin’ any means thereunto. Hence it winds up just lyin’ in its Pajamastání kennel and whimperin’ because the America of 1430/2009/5769 happens not to be a place where Al Franken is unelectable.

Now one does not have to be a dupe of America’s Otherparty to find "Senator Franken" a slightly disagreeable expression. The present keyboard thinks about Homelandic™ politics in the venerable tradition of Cook County and Tammany Hall and therefore finds it troubling whenever some Mr. Franken or Neocomrade R. W. Reagan cashes in an extraneous type of celebrity for exalted public office. They should both, of course, have begun as wardheelers and then progressed through the standard cursus honorum -- (say) state rep, state senator, Fedguv Rep, Fedguv Senator, governor, POTUS -- instead of cutting themselves in way up towards the head of the queue.

However, all illiberalism and antidemocracy once excluded, one can scarcely whine about such human events à la R. Moran. The only absolutely indispensable requirement (beyond what is in Mr. Madison’s document and its equivalents in inferior jurisdictions) is that the Frankens and the Reagans should somehow hornswoggle the electorate into electing them. Which they did.

Fiat electio, ruat cœlum! The great thing is to know and accept *in advance* what one will probably have to put up with. [6]

Happy days.

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[1] The verbal formula comes from the Anglican heretics, admittedly, but I trust it remains still a reasonably current scrap of Old Euro culture here in our holy Homeland™. "World, flesh and Devil" is the sort of thing that Sen. Franken might make a tasteless joke about, don’t you know?


[2] Tu quis es qui iudices alienum servum? Suo [D]omino stat aut cadit! [Ep. ad Rom., XIV:4]


[3] Ev. sec. Matt. V:11. Observe how beautifully the quotation fits Senator Woebegone, at least if one diagnose him as mentiens. I should not do that myself, but wingnutettes and wingnuts are bound to.


[4] Pater, dimitte illis! Non enim sciunt quid faciunt [Ev. Luc. XXIII:34]


[5] Actually, at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh that point is not obvious at all. They all think their Neocomrade N. Coleman got more votes.

Still, from a pajamatarian viewpoint it presumably does not make much difference whether Minnesota be 50.0001% Moranically incorrect, or only 49.9999%. At issue is not how public officers are to be designated, but who or what gets to set le ton publique. If the Naked Public Square (Pat. Pend.) is ever to be tarted up to suit Moranical and pajamatarian tastes, a great deal more than a bare majority of local support for the redecoration effort will be required. Unfortunately (?) current demographic tends are such as to make it unlikely that anythin’ of the sort will happen. The holy Homeland™ is pretty obviously moving away from rather than towards the sort of Beulah Land that the late Neocomrade Rev. R. J. Neuhaus was always pinin’ for. (But Father Zeus knows best about professional First Estaters!)


[6] Everybody is stuck willy-nilly with the "Life is unfair!" problem. However, when one is the fruit of a wombschool, there is the aggravation that Life is forever surprisin’ly unfair.

De sanctâ simplicitate, libera nos, Domine!