AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
Stand tall, keep your roots in the ground.
Send them deep, into the waters and the earth.
Clean the air, and provide/protect
homes for other creatures.
Last weekend, I stood with the president of a hobby club to which I belong, listening, like him, to a teenaged member brimming with astonishment stories connected to operation of our hobby. The teenager was agog at both accidents and incidents which had touched his experience, as with his reaction to them. He was stuck on himself. Presently he left the president and me for other audiences to regale. I turned to the president and remarked, It takes time to learn how to be a man. He said, Yeah, I’m still learning how to do that. Since his comment mixed true with false modesty, I acknowledged with a side-ways nod of the head. We spoke a bit more, about how much we enjoy our hobby, and went our ways, to get about its re-creational labors.
Americans are frontiersmen. We are happy making something useful that is not present, or, restoring something present to its former glory. Our ancestors came west knowing they would be on their own and having varying degrees of resolve and inventiveness to make themselves prosper in conditions beyond the quick and easy comms available to their ancestors by way of the institutions they had built to cultivate and sustain civilization. The American psyche, our Élan Vital, faces west into the unknown but workable.
We, in our forebears, came west, we had to make do. An abundance of basics blessed us so long as we refined them from their native state, putting them to work for us. This we did, in our forebears. And we did it magnificently. Ours is a prestigious history of wise and virtuous ancestry. More and more wanted to learn from us and shelter in the safety of institutions we, in our forebears constructed for the purpose. They still do.
The phrase New Frontier appears inside Senator John F. Kennedy’s speech of 15 July 1960 in Los Angeles, CA, wherein he accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for POTUS. The phrase and speech made a lasting impression on me, who, at age sixteen, experienced it in real time on TV.
Video and audio of the full speech are here. Its transcript follows:
Here are outtakes of the speech:
And this, from later:
Seeing a glass half filled with water, the optimist is glad that it is half full, while the pessimist is sad that it is half empty. Though both statements are correct, the optimist hopes to fill the other half, while the pessimist gives up in despair. The optimist has faith and hope; the pessimist courts misery without faith. Hence develop faith through steady effort. Faith is essential for human progress in every field. Knowledge, and through knowledge, wisdom can be earned only by means of faith and effort. Equipped with these, you can scale great heights and emerge victoriously. Of course, one has to be warned against cultivating too much faith in things that are merely material! You must have deep faith only in the eternally valid Truth – God! Faith is power. And that faith must be coupled with effort. Faith is the very breath we live by! Without faith, living happily is just impossible!
Sathya Sai Baba — Divine Discourse, Jun 27, 1981
The new frontier is yourself, personally and nationally. Who are you? Who is your nation? Who are you as a citizen of your nation?
Have faith in yourself and your nation. Your nature is divine. You are your nation. Your nation is divine. Be yourself and be your nation, divine. Have faith that this is your condition in life and act accordingly. You will find that faith ever more justified in your direct experience.
God has no need to accumulate money, name, or fame. Neither do you. Let the shoe fit, not too big, not too little. God does want your freedom of devotion and your purity of heart. Those qualities are already yours as an American. Expose them, build on them, sink them ever deeper into the waters of life and the nutriments of earth. Let all marvel at the grand edifice of your faith in God, yourself, and your country.
Your Country is one of your Seven Mothers. The others are:
Natural Mother
Mother Cow
Mother Earth
Mother Language
Mother Scripture
Mother Religion
Restore The Church
If we invite some great saint or scholar to our home, preparations will be made at home, to make it presentable. We clean our house and its surroundings before the guest arrives. A house that is not clean lacks sacredness and is not appropriate for great people. Similarly, if we invited a minister or governor to our neighbourhood, we would clean the road, decorate the path and keep everything bright and proper to receive the eminent visitor. If we care so much when we invite someone with a temporary position, how much more effort is needed when we invite the very Creator and Protector of the world Himself to enter our lives and hearts? Krishna remarked: “Arjuna, you are asking Me to be the charioteer of your chariot. Take Me as the charioteer of your life. Think how clean and how grand your heart should be to make it a seat for Me. As long as Rajo and Tamo gunas [qualities of Excitement and Stupefaction, respectively] are there, the heart is not pure. Therefore, to begin with, remove them.”
Sathya Sai Baba — Divine Discourse, Sep 12, 1984.
A farmer who wants to raise a crop in the field has to remove, at the outset, the weeds from his field. If different types of weeds grow, the crop will be adversely affected. Removing the weeds is an essential precondition for getting a good crop. Similarly, a spiritual aspirant who seeks to realise ‘Atma-ananda‘ (the joy of bliss), must remove from one’s heart the various manifestations of Rajo and Tamo gunas in the form of malice, desire, greed, anger, hatred and jealousy. These six types of enemies of man are the children of Rajo and Tamo gunas (qualities of passionate activity, dull ignorance and indolence). Sri Krishna explained in Gita that sorrow is the fruit of Rajo and Thamo gunas. The entire world is a manifestation of gunas. Only the person who recognises this truth and removes the two qualities from the heart, will be happy.
Sathya Sai Baba — Divine Discourse, Sep 12, 1984.
Americans are purosangue, pure-bloods, thoroughbreds.
The New Frontier (Kennedy era locution/slogan, but deep American intellectual/emotional substrate) is to be yourself, personally and nationally.
The New Frontier is yourself, both personally and nationally. That is strategic sense that contains the germ of tactical expertise and execution.
India and The United States are brother nations. We have the same mother, Freedom, and the same father, Purity. It is fitting that we train together to keep our parents safe.
Other nations admire us for doing this, for protecting our parents, Freedom and Purity. We call it protecting the sovereignty of our family’s home.
And we speak the same language: Self-Defense.
Basic strategic direction is for each of the nations to express their intrinsic nature, through the three assets of statecraft — Diplomacy, Finance, War-Fighting — in dealings with other nations. The nation per se is the relevant actor, the light-bearer through the drama of history. Be free and be clean is the nations’ genetics, really all of them, but some more obviously so than others.
Encourage the Indians to be self-confident, Bharathiyas (Indians), honoring their rich spiritual, cultural, and military traditions. To trust themselves as themselves, as Indians.
Paul Dueffert to Mark
If the [gun] buyback were limited to a certain class of firearms that Congress deemed on balance not to be in the public interest because of prior demonstrable harm linked to use of that class, yes, that very likely would be sustained by the Supreme Court. See the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994-2004.
Elliot1234 to Paul Dueffert
See the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994-2004.
Please, as a lawyer, be a little more careful. That legislation did not ban ownership.
Mt Geoff-Debbie to Paul Dueffert
Not actually comparable. I looked it up and it isn’t what people seem to think.
Alastor to Mt Geoff-Debbie
Now, Mt Geoff-Debbie , you are being unfair! Just because most of us are skilled at ‘looking it up’ doesn’t mean that we don’t have ‘looking it up’-challenged commenters here … our Paul D has been just such a ‘looking it up’-challenged commenter (with only occasional bouts of reference skill) as far back as I can remember …
Mark to Paul Dueffert
Like the “assault weapons ban.” So, just come out with it. A ban on all semi-auto weapons regardless of aesthetics…
Paul Dueffert to Mark
I’m am just addressing the constitutionality of such a ban if enacted by Congress, which is the topic where this post gets unduly murky. I am not expressing an opinion on whether such legislation is wise.
David R. Graham to Paul Dueffert
Congress can enact unconstitutional legislation and has done. Why this insistence on congressional infallibility relative to the constitution? Or judicial infallibility thereunto? The constitution is road signs, fixed so long as you want accurate directions for getting from here to there. The three branches established by the constitution are the living parts of the system.
The difficulty at hand is that of the sub specie aeternitatis. In this regard I quote Bonhoeffer, approvingly:
From all this it now follows that the content of ethical problems can never be discussed in a Christian light; the possibility of erecting generally valid principles simply does not exist, because each moment, lived in God’s sight, can bring an unexpected decision. Thus only one thing can be repeated again and again, also in our time: in ethical decisions a man must consider his action sub specie aeternitatis and then, no matter how it proceeds, it will proceed rightly.
Augustine’s short version is: Love God and do what you want.
Paul Dueffert to David R. Graham
We have a system in this country to determine what is Constitutional. It is called the Supreme Court.
David R. Graham to Paul Dueffert
Hardly, it is called the consent of the governed, and transcending that, the Will of God. It is a pretense of your kin to attribute infinitude to finite structures when it suits them, otherwise not. It is the nature of man to know better than to participate in that malevolent silliness.
If the rulers feel neither loyalty nor empathy toward the ruled, the ruled can be expected to return the favor.
What exactly is a conservative? Someone who says what is going on? Someone who expresses dislike for the wrong people?
There is a moment in Candidate Trump’s speech at the Smith dinner when he says something everyone knows and knows not to mention, especially in public — it was about Hillary, who sat nearby — and everyone gasps and twitters, Bartiromo among them over Trump’s right shoulder, adjusting her plunging red dress, over her cleavage, for the umpteenth time, in her arm’s-length white gloves, and Trump just carries on, moving right through the knowing shock now turning to repressed outrage at the audacity of his frankness.
If that is what a conservative is, pray God dispense an abundance of them, and sooner rather than later.
Theological indeed. Clergy’s drive into politics drives laity’s drive into religion. I am expecting a rediscovery of the blessings of monasticism, to include family monasticism, to include children — a seemingly fresh development in Christian monastic history — that is celibate in re outside its dialectical monad. The chief purpose of monasticism, of course, is the preservation and promulgation of spiritual culture.
BTW, the three enemies of the USA — Chinese Communists, Euro-American Socialists, and Salafi-Shiite Jihadists — operate now both outside and inside the USA, deploying in common the attack module called psycho-tropic drugs. Their main force is clergy, academic faculties, and medical doctors. Their skirmish forces are infotainment nodes. Their spec-ops force is shrinks, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Their logistical trains are so-called NGOs. Their comms are financial institutions.
PDJT has hit their comms with a view to cleaning out their logistical trains, thereby making it impossible for them to deploy their attack module. Unburden the system of that attack module and its primal family-related problems — promiscuity and step-or single-parents — diminish naturally to a status of non-systemic irritants.
Theological indeed, and with the usual physical reflections.
Whatever happened to Villanova basketball star
Shelly Pennefather?
So I made this deal with God.
Habits can be deadly, especially habits of thought, which tend to harden in aging and as circumstances outrun expectations and/or desires. Bacharach and Costello wrote a soul-searing song which comes to mind when I contemplate Heraclitus’ observation that a man cannot step into the same stream twice: God Give Me Strength.
Politicians have to answer to voters, and to a lesser extent, more and less, so do clergy and even doctors and lawyers in the sense that they have to answer to popular opinion to some extent.
Academic faculties and journalists, on the other hand, do not answer to voters, to popular opinion, not in any sense except at an extreme distance for the former, e.g., via politician-controlled funding mechanisms. Academic faculties and journalists essentially self-select and have virtually no accountability to wishes of the generality. Indeed, commonly they preen on being superior to such wishes and those who nourish them.
Were academic faculties and journalists subject to popular accountability — a vote into position, and a recall vote out of it, for instance — rather than merely to their own guild’s crotchets, their pronouncements would reflect more common sense and received wisdom than is usual for them to do.
David R. Graham
Well, I am a Union Grad, ’69, as was my father, ’43, the year of my birth. During the 1968-69 academic year, I warned them and the National Council of Churches Stewardship Section about this misuse of Genesis 1:26-28 in support of the then-so-called ecology movement. They did not listen, hired the Communist Jim Cone and it has been tally ho to the forest primeval — without the benefit of Iambic Pentameter — since then.
The only thing that changes at Union is the pace, and that always faster. Pity. Tillich also grew to feel revulsion at the school’s choices. Niebuhr, another Communist, was always in his element there. He is Obama’s favorite ideologue, which fits the pattern.
An exegesis of the relevant language — in Hebrew, Latin, and English — inside a general discussion of military leader development, is here.
TJM to David R. Graham
must be embarrassing
David R. Graham to TJM
Yes, from some perspectives, yes. From others, quite the opposite. For example, it gives me strength to be able to say that I have lived in the belly of the beast, so to speak, driven such lances as I had into it while being in a vulnerable position, seen my evaluations of the situation verified, and felt my ministrations thereunto confirmed appropriate for the long-term.
It is a difficult lesson to learn, that The Almighty asks not that we do what He wishes, but that we give Him clear and concise orders to accomplish what we wish.
Special Guest Star to TJM
There are very few of us who can still be proud of our alma maters.
David R. Graham to Special Guest Star
Roger that. I have two post-secondary, have never given a cent to either, although at each I was fortunate to have at least one professor who was interested in truth. So many were not, especially at Union. But there were more than one at Union, which probably accounts for my graduating. I did not, however, attend my class graduation ceremonies up the hill at The Riverside Church. And did not announce that I would not. That was my overall statement beyond the specific warning against using Genesis 1:26-28 for coercive socio-political (aka Socialist) purposes.
All understandable thinking, but absent USA grand national strategic goal in MENA, elsewhere. What geographies contain USA interests and why? Europeans snarl at one another and use that as pretext for war. Americans tolerate snarls but do not tolerate blows. And Americans have no territorial ambitions beyond those encountered willy-nilly by force majeure, and even those they keep only if doing so promotes their interests, short-term and/or long-term.
Even more deeply, the analysis omits what is for Americans the frontier they face as a nation. Americans are frontiersmen. What is our New Frontier, now, today?
I submit our New Frontier is our own personal and national freedom and purity. That frontier we have not subdued and that frontier waits before us as an opportunity for land rush, so to speak. India is a good partner in that project, a cynosure of sorts.
Iran is a Russia-Israel-Arab problem, with China pushing in strongly to make Iran her interest as well. USA has no essential geographical, financial, or diplomatic interest in Iran, much less in being the world’s whip. Europe has lots of those interests in Iran. Now, extirpating Iranian sleeper cells in USA . . . now . . . that IS an essential USA interest. And there, as with the Salafi Jihad (CAIR), already USA agencies have purchased protection — by those very sleeper cells — for themselves.
So, the analysis in this essay is upside down and backwards.
When you are able to manifest your own innate noble qualities,
you will experience true and eternal peace.
For Americans, the only containment worth considering is
geography containing USA grand national strategic interests.
With respect, Steven, you miss the cultural point while taking the political one: the new progressivism was a limited, mainly elite phenomenon.
Culture is upstream from politics, said you know who. And that observation of his remains très précise.
This goes to the initial read I offered, in 2015, IIRC, on PL writers’ revulsion with DJT: that it is class-based: DJT is of a class inferior to that of PL writers, and a class inferior to that PL writers insist is required of a POTUS, namely, their own.
Rick Broadman
Many — starting with Newt Gingrich — like to compare the 2020 election to the one in 1972. As someone that was a second time voter in 1972, let me suggest that there is absolutely no parallel to today.
The Federal Government was a fraction of its current size, as was government corruption. Government did not intrude in every phase of an Americans life. TV — from the News to Late Night talk shows — kept some form of decorum, and had respect for the average American . . . even if some participants despised them.
The population was not made up of 12-15% living in the country illegally and getting major government assistance paid for by taxpayers.
Pornography has been available to young people for over a decade from the time they’re in grade school.
When John Lennon sang . . .
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
. . . few were in disagreement. Today, many have been raised to believe that Chairman Mao was a visionary. The Democratic candidate for President in 2016 proclaimed, we can learn a lot from Communist China.
And when you called a major government or business phone number, there was not a recorded announcement stating — Press 1 for English.
History is not repeating itself. The genie is out of the bottle, and will not go back in. It’s up for those that want to preserve American ideals and the Constitution to realize that trying to get through to 330 million Americans will take an up-to-date approach.
David R. Graham to Rick Broadman
Extremely important point. Historians tend to think history repeats itself. This is lazy, self-important thinking. Heraclitus is one historian who notes the inaccuracy of that observation: a man cannot step into the same stream twice.
Nature recycles materials with endless and novel perspicacity. And nature’s interior power guarantees individuality and therefore unique interactivity in each of her creatures.
Americans are frontiersmen. What is our New Frontier, now, today? I submit our New Frontier is our own national freedom and purity. That frontier we have not subdued and that frontier waits before us as an opportunity for land rush, so to speak. India is a good partner in that project, a cynosure of sorts.
Mark to David R. Graham
And yet, Heraclitus also observed that whatever goes up comes down by the same.
David R. Graham to Mark
Almost. What goes up comes down, yes, but not the same way it went up, or in the same place from which it went up, and itself is not the same as it was before it went up, and not only because time, space, substance, and causality have reconfigured operations of their matrixes meanwhile.
Sharyl Attkisson: For the first time in our nation’s history, an inspector general — one appointed by President Obama — has determined that at least two men who sat in the top spot at the FBI committed multiple violations that warrant possible prosecution. That in itself is a scandal with national implications deserving of headlines, congressional hearings, and promises to overhaul a broken system. Of course, the complicating factor in the whole mess is that the government entities responsible for addressing any wrongdoing are the same ones inextricably tied to the alleged wrongdoing.
Valerie Insinna: Instead of trying to hone requirements to meet an unknown threat 25 years into the future, the Air Force would rapidly churn out aircraft with new technologies — a tactic that could impose uncertainty on near-peer competitors like Russia and China and force them to deal with the U.S. military on its own terms.
PDJT has used his career to restore grand structures to grandeur or create new grand structures. He restored NYC. He restored Mar-a-Lago. He restored the Old Post Office in D.C. He restored or made new golf courses and hospitality properties to grandeur. In each case, the result is something grand. His motto MAGA is entirely in character with his entire career, then. America has been grand, great. His career would be, quite naturally, to restore that grandeur, that greatness. Every instinct of his works in this direction, to this end. There should be no surprise about this. It should be expected, and by intelligent people, it is. The man is hospitality incarnate. No wonder he wants to talk with foreign leaders. It is his nature as a hospitaler. His entire career testifies to his success in this direction.
Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, steady stream of competents — including The High Court of Tech — knows most of the top-responsibility personalities around the world, beautiful, clean, accomplished wives and children, perfection in all things seen and unseen.
If this be lack of class, I’ll have another helping, thank you very much!
Paradox, not lack of class. The unexpected, not the boorish. Fulfilling and transcending the rules — which are man-made and of fleeting utility! — not intimidated or oppressed by them. Sounds positively Christian to me.
Show me a man whose family is as loyal to him, through thick and thin, in constant spotlight, as DJT’s family is to him, and I will show you a man fit for the White House.
The end of freedom and purity is sovereignty, for persons and for nations.
Freedom is a result of discipline.
A free person restrains urges for ephemeral savors and channelizes internal energies towards fulfilling reasons for their having existence, reasons — divine reasons — which inhere in them uniquely. Kandinsky calls such reasons inner necessity. They are divine. Personal freedom consists in manifesting personal inner necessity by extirpating thoughts and impulses which drive one away from personal freedom, away from divinity. In addition, a free person has bias for cheerfulness, faith, strength, and discovery.
A free nation restrains urges for aggrandizement and channelizes internal energies towards enriching interior qualities that identify the nation uniquely. Qualities such as compassion, reliability, honesty, insouciance, clarity, indomitability, strength. In addition, a free nation at least does not obstruct and may cultivate the same happy condition for other nations.
Purity is a result of detachment.
A pure person renounces attachment to the siren songs of ego and with that their rights to the fruits of their labors. In addition, a pure person exhibits alignment of thoughts, words, and deeds.
A pure nation protects her own territorial integrity and has no ambition to acquire territory besides her own. In addition, a pure nation removes obstacles to fair and reciprocal trade with other nations.
Who are you? You are your self and your country.
There is The New Frontier.
If you want freedom, increases discipline.
If you want purity, practice detachment.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
Related 1:
Related 2: John F. Kennedy’s presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1960 laid out his ‘New Frontier’ policy. Learn about the speech and the programs, and check your understanding with a quiz.
JFK’s New Frontier Speech
Politicians are often very good at making speeches. Most can hold their audiences and elicit cheers at the right times. Political leaders must of course be adept at explaining their policies and beliefs to the voters. Frequently, the challenge is translating the excitement and promises of speeches into action and concrete programs. This is the precise situation that President John F. Kennedy faced with his New Frontier speech in 1960.
John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1960 set the stage for his presidency, from 1961 until his assassination in late 1963. ‘We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier–the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils–a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats,’ he proclaimed to the crowd in California.
New Frontier Metaphor
Kennedy used the frontier metaphor because Americans were familiar with it. There was an understanding among most Americans that, historically, they had been adventurers, bravely conquering new frontiers. The speech suggested that there would be challenges ahead, but Kennedy was the president to lead the U.S. in those struggles. ‘The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises,’ Kennedy explained. ‘It is a set of challenges.’
Another aspect of the New Frontier speech included the implication that Kennedy represented a new generation of American leadership, one with fresh ideas and not beholden to a stagnant past. Kennedy was, in fact, the youngest president to date at forty-three years old. He used his relative youth to his advantage, positioning himself as a leader with a new vision. ‘Today our concern must be with the future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do,’ he intoned. ‘The New Frontier is here whether we seek it or not.’
New Frontier Program
Like many political speeches, the New Frontier speech was vague enough for Americans to interpret it as they wish. But it did suggest a bold approach — an activist Kennedy presidency characterized by a spate of new domestic programs. Kennedy envisioned his New Frontier program in the tradition of previous major government initiatives: President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, and President Harry S. Truman’s Fair Deal of the 1940s.
Related 3: In the words of Robert D. Marcus: Kennedy entered office with ambitions to eradicate poverty and to raise America’s eyes to the stars through the space program.
Related 4: Most capital is human.
Related 5: Daily, PL writers go to poisoned wells for stories about poisons, doing, in effect, mass spectrometer analyses of their legalese components and thinking that labor serviceable, admirable, and valuable. I think the country would be improved by investigative journalists focusing on antidotes to poisoned pens and keyboards and the wells into which they are dipped.
What, today, does a sovereign USA do and say? What, today, is our New Frontier? What is our path to freedom and purity?
Who, today, are you willing to advance and protect who actually can and would sweeten the nation’s wells and bury her poisoned pens and keyboards?
Related 6: Susannah Catalan: Stanford professor who changed America with just one study was also a liar
Related 7: Sharyl Attkisson: William Barr Has Suddenly Become Chatty—and He’s Provided Quite an Information Dump
Related 8: Matt Vespa: Sharyl Attkisson: The Six Red Flags We Missed Regarding the FBI’s Abusive FISA Witch Hunt Against the Trump Campaign