The American Spectator : America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution

An astonishing bit of anti-elitism and faux-populism. The American Spectator reinvents Tea-Partiers, Fundamentalists, and ultra-right wingers as a naive and guileless "Country Class." Victimized by the left and the Democratic party, and unrepresented and therefore magically freed from sharing in the culpability of the Bush Republicans, the Country Class are entirely good, distinguished by their "non-orientation to government and its members' yearning to rule themselves rather than be ruled by others" which is nonsensical to the point of meaninglessness.

Despite the author's protests, what this so-called "country class" wants is not self-rule but freedom from self-awareness and uncertainty. What they really object to are not the orthodoxies of the left, but the collapse of their own traditional relationships to God, country, race, labor, and family.

This is not about the evils of the non-existent "ruling" class, but the crisis of a Boomer-led majority who long ago sacrificed civility for anti-social contrarianism and consumer individualism, while simultaneously retreating into the soft therapy of God, guns, and military "honor." All the while the economy collapses, the earth warms, and the gulf fills with oil. But rather than accept responsibility for the mess they've created, their dysfunctional value system, they seek solace in blaming others, and particularly the great villainous Other - college educated, progressive, feminist, spiritual but agnostic, and now laughably caricatured as the "Ruling" class. As if.

In short, the history of the US is the history of this very class running amok, and those of us who actually care about and understand the implicit values of American Democracy being forced to clean up after them.

Can Church Be Hip? Ctd - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

It's an obnoxious question, but Neutral Milk Hotel has enough complexity and authenticity going for it to give it a little weight. For the most it's not about Church or religion, it's about faith and affirmation and connectivity and openness, and all that great Milch-ian romantic existentialism. The pain of the past being transformed into the future tense of joy. And so forth.

What people fail to understand is that the church is a political institution. Religion a sub-genre of art. Faith is the willingness to give oneself over to artistic invention. God is metaphor; the organizing principle around which a community can form.