Shows what a poisonous effect corporatism has had on popular culture.

Where are the successors of the Greats of the sixties, now? There are none, so we have to wheel out wizened, grey-haired, old septuagenarians and octagenarians (such as my good self, though bereft of their talent).

How long before they'll have to bring down the curtain early so their zimmers/walking-frames can be brought on stage for them?

So will I, when I'm President, Mr Walker. We'll show 'em!

I wonder if John Dickerson is related to the New England 'toff' lady who

used to send my mother food parcels during WWII. He looks a WASP type, doesn't he.

She'd been a captain in the RAF, herself, commissioned with Wavell's daughter, so my leaving the army as a kind of Duane Doberman-career doppelganger, Private II Class in the Motor Pool, must have been a disappointment to her. I aimed low and didn't quite get there, I suppose. But I think she must have got most of her disappointment out of her system though, when she read one of my school reports. Well, she quite tearfully reproached me for it, and I felt pretty bad about that.

PS: Ho Chi Minh being my cousin was in another incarnation. When his mother hissed at me really venomously and told me that I'd be the last person she'd consult about her son's future career prospects. She'd set her heart on him becoming head waiter, or even Maitre D at that French hotel he'd been waitering at. But you know... And the cream of the joke was she was convinced I was always the one who led her Little Lord Fauntleroy into trouble! How about that! The big, bad guerrilla leader being led by the nose by Duane!

Why, even if he has written an encyclical on goldurned tree-huggin',

Papa Francesco is not a dirty, 'pinko' Commonist, but merely iterating the Church's teaching from as far back as the early Fathers, indeed, Moses and the Decalogue.

Below, is a brief excerpt from an article by Mark Shea, entitled, The Catholic Church and the Common Good: An Unbroken Line of Tradition. It featured the other day in The Catholic Exchange, and seems to me a very knowledgeable and insightful - not to say, topical, conspectus - of the issue. Below it is the link.

"The guiding principle here is simple:

“Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and untouchable: ‘On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: The right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone.’”

Systems that make water available at a profit are fine, just as long as those who cannot pay for this elementary and fundamental right are not cut off. In such cases, some other way of covering the cost must be found.

Does the Church, then, teach that a perpetual welfare state of parasites should be established? Of course not. The principle way the poor are to have a share in the common good is, as we have already seen, through work at a living wage. And what is a living wage?

A living wage fulfills four criteria:

1. Families, in general, seem to be living at a standard of decency appropriate to their society;

2. They do so without working undue hours;

3. They do so without wives being forced to work outside the home or children forced to work inappropriate hours or under inappropriate conditions (if they choose to do so, that’s another story);

4. They do so without undue reliance on government support or consumer credit.

That is the goal. But in this fallen world, the goal is often not met. Therefore, the community must help those who cannot find the means to access necessary goods such as food, shelter and water."

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http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-catholic-church-and-the-common-good-an-unbroken-line-of-tradition/

Not the slightest hint of a sense of chivalry normal to men in the presence of a woman. They

might as well have been women, themselves. Imagine becoming unnerved because this lone woman was yelling at them. There is the fact, I suppose, that they had acted like lunatics, taking a sledge-hammer to crack a nut, and could not have given the lady any justification for their completely gratuitous vandalism.

Are they in the right profession, even - without a brain-cell between them?

Professor Wolff, like Bernie, is 'just what the doctor ordered', but it

was disappointing to hear him lump in Adam Smith with the likes of the Baroness Lady Carboard, whose 'bon mot' - which, inadvertently, it evidently was - that there is no such thing as society was apparently a quote from none other than Inayn Rand.

The fact is that Smith's disparagement of the merchants of his day seemed to know no bounds. Today, he would have said that they should be electronically tagged and bugged, because as he said, even when enjoying a cup of coffee with each other, they couldn't resist conspiring against the common good, e.g. by fixing prices.

So, evidently, that business about the Hidden Hand Prof Wolff alluded is a misinterpretation, at least an over-interpretation, of his words. What he meant was surely that just as street-fighters are used as infantry and shock troops in wars, in the commercial wars - which they always are - you don't get rid of merchants because many are animals (not meant a a slur against street-fighters or grunts) ; you use their dubious skills, albeit ensuring they stay within the law. What you do do, also, is keep a very, very close eye on them and their activities, as they are natural recidivists.

It is the precept framed by St Augustine of Hippo, that grace builds upon nature. A crucial weakness of atheist Communist ideologues, (ensuing inevitably from their failure to acknowledge their debt to Judaeo-Christian scripture), who wanted to collectivize everything, while people understandably could not trust politicians at any level sufficiently to hand over what little they and their parents had managed to scrape together.

In fact, Smith's attitude to income tax, perfect common sense, was just short of communist in nature. He asserted that people should pay according to their income. If that happened, few people would pay any tax at all just the billionaire class and the like. (ALL taxes other than tax on income should be abolished, imo, and, by the sound of it, he would have thought the same).

The effects of the historic civil rights campaign in the sixties seems to have

been petering out, with innocent AA' s being shot daily by the very police who are suppose to be upholding law and order.

Fortunately for AA's - though that sound never so patronizing - they are now being accompanied in their marginalization and persecution by the poorer folk among the white population. The persecution, in the US mysteriously dubbed, 'white privilege', is becoming increasingly generalized - hence the fear felt by the authorities and the militarization of the police. See it as a great opportunity, not an irrelevance.

I can't believe that AA's, who in my opinion are potentially more intelligent than any other race, could shoot themselves in the foot so obviously, as if the wicked have eve been or ever will be vulnerable to their minority and marginalized victims' outraged fury, alone. As Churchill once put it, 'There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!'

Poor old Ike had a job on his hands in that regard, as well. Monty was a narcissistic monster, but for the sake of Allied success, he continued to tolerate him and prefer him, when the situation called for it. War, as Barbara Tuchman put it, being 'the unfolding of miscalculations', Monty was, on occasions, the least worst choice. That is the perspective that disaffected Dems should take, whatever their colour. A major factor in the Russians beating the Nazis was precisely their numbers. Noise and emotion, alone, won't cut it.

Yet another female whistle-blower! They're like a terrier with a bone, once they suspect

corporate villains are not playing according to Hoyle. And I bet it wold be just as difficult to separate her from her handbag. Looks like it from that photo with JFK, anyway.

I wonder how many notches they've scored in terms of bringing down crooked corporate chiefs and their malfeasances - while perhaps saving their companies a large amount, if not the company, itself.

ROFL! They probably treated those guys better

than American police treat their own family members.

I found it quite moving, actually, reflecting on the contrast between the way those young Swedish coppers went about the task they had freely undertaken, and the murderous thuggery shown by some of your home-grown police, day after day after day, these past few weeks.

Those young Swedes had self-respect to spare - and it showed in the respect they showed for others, and for their job, if it comes to that. I find it doubly sad, as I have this lingering notion that a lot of Americans, like the Aussies, particularly in days gone by (everything has been deteriorating in every country), have kind of old-fashioned Christian values, however informally held.

I had thought Sweden was desperately secular, but quite the contrary, seemingly, despite some, on the face of it, bizarrely conflicting statistics. But have a look under Religion on the Wiki site for Sweden, and make up your own mind. One paragraph in particular 'knocked my socks off'.

'Sociology professor Phil Zuckerman claims that Swedes, despite a lack of belief in God, commonly question the term atheist, preferring to call themselves Christians while being content with remaining in the Church of Sweden.[197] Other research has shown that religion in Sweden continues to play a role in cultural identity.[198] This is evidenced by the fact that around 70 per cent of adults continue to remain members of the Lutheran Church[199] despite having to pay a church tax; moreover, rates of baptism remain high and church weddings are increasing in Sweden.[198]'

The Church of Sweden (Lutheran) was separated from the State in 2000..

He does have

a bit of a problem with his eye-sight though.... a bit dangerous as a partner on a pheasant shoot.