One farmer debates the entire Ivy League ("THIS WON'T TAKE LONG")

By Curtis Dahlgren

"There is no shortage of lawyers in Washington, DC. In fact, there may be more lawyers than people." - Sandra Day O'Connor

THE COUNTY I GREW UP IN HAD MORE DAIRY COWS THAN PEOPLE. Not all farm boys were big, but none of us were pushovers and, one year, my small-town high school football team had a heavier line than the University of Wisconsin. The small town next door, our rivals, had four NFL roster-members who had played together on the same small high school basketball team (not all farm boys, but you get "the point": It was a typical "red state" small town).

And I'm not saying it was a "redneck" town. It produced David Keene, who worked for the Vice-President's office, and founded the American Conservative Union. A local architect designed the victims-of-Communism memorial in the capital of Estonia. Towns such as this didn't produce many Students for a Democratic Society members ["Eat leaden death, you Business Administration majors"]. You get the idea; we tried to hold the FORT.

The farmers and descendants of farm families were "big picture people." Today's Ivy League graduates — even some of the MBAs — can't seem to see the Big Picture anymore, and the Blue-blood RINOs seem to need a little assistance in slowing down the run-away train wreck in Washington that the P.R. people call "hope and change."

Over-educated people often can't tell the difference between a "wave" and a RIP tide. Over-specialized "scholars" come to know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing (as someone said).

Anyway, someone once told me a true story about a farm kid who was at the local dance hall on a Saturday night with his girl friend, and a city kid much bigger starts to come over to impress the girl friend. To make a long story short, I guess the city kid started trouble, which led to some words, and the city kid says, "You want to go outside and settle this?"

The farm kid just turns to his girl friend and says, "I'll be right back; this won't take long!"

In a few minutes, the farm kid is back and the city kid is on his way home with a sore jaw and a black eye, and his tail between his legs. But what's the point?

Well, in those "TWO AMERICAS" (red counties vs. blue counties), we're not about to wave the white flag out here! The Ivy Leaguers tell us, "Roll over and play dead, because the issues are too complex for you and the arguments have all been settled."

Rural America says, "IN YOUR DREAMS!" I live in a township in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that voted for John McCain, and I'd love to challenge the "winners" from the Ivy League to a debate right now, and "this won't take long."

In a mental duel, horse sense always trumps political correctness, so if they're afraid to take on a guy like me — who made his living in the real world getting his hands dirty and calloused — let them name the game: basketball, arm wrestling, sheepshead, or baseball (hard or soft, I don't care, and I'm 67 years old almost). How about a game called "Are you smarter than a fifth-grader, you Ivy Leaguers?"

They have no idea what they're doing (or doing TO us).

If the Ivy Leaguers are so smart, why are the endowment funds of Harvard, etc., going into the toilet? If they think they're now smart enough to micro-manage a centrally-planned economy, you'd think that they would've seen this coming, wouldn't you? Doesn't Harvard have a school of business? You'd think that if they're so smart, they'd have put their assets into T-bills like we expect the Chinese to keep doing!

I live in the U.P. of Michigan, and we don't have very many Rhodes Scholars, but we have dirt farmers and dirt roads that are symbolic of our "better days."

The Ivy League has "metrosexuals" and we have "het'ro-sexuals." It's less like Peyton Place than Mayberry RFD. We're not angels, but we still have standards. We can't walk on water, but on the first day of spring I drove across the lake on the ice. We're not afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, Virginia Woolf, nor "global warming." We're in favor of that!

The Ivy League has Peter Singer, and we'd like to remove Singer's you-know-what (metaphorically speaking of course). The Ivy League has "political scientists" who promise to take care of you; the U.P. has people who can fight their own battles.

My adopted hometown has one bar and seven or eight churches. The local theater never shows R-rated movies. The only "Red carpet" we've ever seen is the one to the altar. The word "Christ" isn't just an epithet up here. We are "STUCK IN THE FIFTIES" (which is why I moved up here).

I live so far north that the star on the end of the handle of the Big Dipper is a bit to our south on the first day of winter. Spring comes a little late, but you don't want to rush into these things anyway. Groundhog Day up here is the first day of the rest of your winter. Our groundhog comes out on the second of May, meaning six more weeks of the stuff.

We don't produce many major league baseball players, but the Upper Peninsula did produce a Glen Seaborg, a Scandahoovian who helped America win the second World War with the Manhattan Project (quit yer complaining, you Ivy Leaguers — we haven't had a World War since the first atomic bomb was dropped). The only people we Yoopers envy are those who live in Alaska (I could heat my house with junk mail from Ivy League Blue-blooders asking for political contributions).

I wouldn't take a scholarship from the Ivy League if they paid me. I have nothing to prove. An economics professor at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) once urged me to stay in college, but I preferred to work out of doors. One of the things people who have had a real job just understand about economics is the difference between "equity" and "equality."

EQUITY IS WHAT YOU'VE WORKED FOR, AND "EQUALITY" IS THE EQUITY YOU'VE STOLEN FROM SOMEONE ELSE WHO WORKED FOR IT.

We work hard on our jobs, and in the event we're without one, we work even harder. It's called "fishing," "hunting," and "chopping wood." Whereas the average square mile in the U.S. has about 44 residents, the U.P. has over 340,000 acres for every square man, woman, and child. My relatives couldn't understand why I retired up Norte. I couldn't understand why they can't understand.

That last sentence just about sums up the "Two Americas." Never the twain shall meet, I guess. It's like the difference between Green Acres and green-with-envy. The High Life versus "high-class." But don't talk to us about "global warming" until about August first. As of March 24th, I still have almost a foot of solid ice on my front sidewalk.

Speaking of "green," I've mentioned an article in the July-August issue of "Fast Company" magazine, "Tree Huggers Corner a Trillion Dollar Market." The sub-titles say:

"Legal limits on greenhouse-gas emissions are coming fast, with a $1 Trillion carbon market emerging. At the core: a cadre of young, idealistic Yale forestry grads. But will carbon offsets do anything to slow global warming? . . Yale forestry-school grads and professors dominate the emerging carbon market from finance firms to the World Bank." [AHA! Follow the money; "solving" a non-existent problem pays Big Bucks!]

"I love trees," says Yale forestry grad Radha Kuppalli. "They're so tangible. You can go somewhere and say, 'There's my forest! There's my carbon!'"

OH — BTW: I just read that that Tongan undersea volcano blew its top, followed by the one in Alaska. Volcanoes are so "tangible." And so "TOXIC."

There goes the "idealistic" clean-up job on the greenhouse gases, eh? Water vapor already was the main component of the "greenhouse effect." Now the Yalies and other Ivy Leaguers want to tax American businesses TWO TRILLION dollars with their "idealistic" cap-and-trade scheme? R.U.KIDDINGME?

When these "idealists" can no longer afford corn or corned beef, we Yoopers will be eating lake salmon, brook trout, and wild turkey. Maybe these "Yalies" will be asking us to teach them how to fish and cut a tree down (I've done a lot of that in my life, and you have to be a "tree hugger" to shinny thirty-five feet up the trunk of a tree. Man, I love trees).

These stupid Ivy Leaguers not only want to burn Christian books, but they would ban the printing press if they could — never mind the fact that this continent has more trees today than when those 'Dead White Males' came here (thanks to planting projects by the paper industry, nursery companies, Christmas tree farms, etc.). I've personally saved more trees as a tree surgeon than most "Deep Ecologists" ever will save. And that in private business, without a Yale forestry degree!

"SAVE THE PLANET" MY BUTT!

They say that things happen in threes, and should that volcanic dome building under Yellowstone Lake ever blow, there goes the stratosphere! But who knows, though? Maybe that would save the planet by creating some shade between us and the sun's rays, and by reflecting heat back into outer space, eh? Environmental "experts" may be the death of America as we know it, if the politicians don't beat them to it. Because these "experts" don't even know what they don't know.

One thing I do know is that the very same people who want "separation of church and State" are using their OWN religion to cram stupid ideas down your throat. It's the religion once known in ancient times for the worship of the goddess Cybele or Gaia. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition, says:

"She was also known under many other names, some of which were derived from famous places of worship: as Dindymene from Mt. Dindymon, Mater Idaea from Mt. Ida, Sipylene from Mt. Sipylus, Agdistis from Mt. Agdistis or Agdus, Mater Phrygia from the greatest stronghold of her cult; while others were reflections of her character as a great nature goddess; e.g. Mountain Mother, Great Mother of the God, Mother of all Gods and all Men.

"As the great Mother Deity whose worship extended throughout Asia Minor she was known as Ma or Ammas. Cybele is her favourite name in ancient and modern literature, while Great Mother of the Gods, or Great Idaen Mother of the Gods, the most frequently recurring epigraphical title, was her ordinary official designation. . .

"Her best-known early seats of worship were Mt. Ida, Mt. Sipylus, Cyzicus, Sardis and Pessinus, the last-named city, in Galatia near the borders of Roman Phyrgia, finally becoming the strongest centre of the cult. She was known to the Romans and Greeks as essentially Phrygian, and all Phrygia was spoken of as sacred to her.

"It is probable, however, that the Phrygian race, which invaded Asia Minor from the north in the 9th century B.C., found a great nature goddess already universally worshipped there, and blended her with a deity of their own. The Asiatic-Phrygian worship thus evolved was further modified by contact with the Syrians and Phoenicians, so that it acquired strong Semitic characteristics.

"The Great Mother known to the Greeks and Romans was thus merely the Phrygian form of the nature deity of all Asia Minor. From Asia Minor the cult of the Great Mother spread first to Greek territory. It found its way into Thrace at an early date, was known in Boeotia by Pindar in the 6th century, and entered Attica near the beginning of the 4th century."

[Quoted by the Britannica from Grant Showerman's The Great Mother of the Gods, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 43, Madison, 1901]

CONCLUSION:

Environmentalism in the extreme, or "Deep Ecology," by any other name is pure paganism — a CULT WITH DEEP ANCIENT ROOTS. The "green movement" is not a "secular" one, but is deeply religious in the pagan sense.

That this cult-movement now has one-party monopolistic control of our nation means in a very real sense, that Christians are battling wicked spirits in "High" places (and I don't mean Mt. Ida).

Anyone who wants to debate me fair and square is welcome to do so. Otherwise, we could always go outside and "settle" this argument. That wouldn't take long!

P.S. I could give you more facts next time about this "Mother Nature" or "Mother Earth" that the greenies worship, but I need to recap some of the craziest headlines of the week:

- "Family of suspect in Oakland cop deaths say he feared jail" [don't you mean "cop-killer" was a coward — in a nation of cowards?]

- "Protesters visit homes of AIG executives" [don't you mean "harass"? If a man did that to a female, he'd be in jail.]

- "Ececutive bonus reform bill passes the House" [don't you mean Bill of Attainder passes the House — in explicit, arrogant ignorance of the plain warnings of the Constitution?]

- "Toxic asset loans now called Legacy Assets by the Politburo" [Don't you mean P.R. "spin" isn't everything — it's the ONLY thing now — to paraphrase Vince Lombardi?]

- "Administration proposes executive pay controls on all businesses, not just banks and insurance companies" [Don't you mean "Fascism"?]

PPS:: My grandpa Dahlgren once farmed 500 acres with horses, and my dad had a lot of experience with runaway horse teams — and a few broken fingers to prove it. This White House is acting like a runaway team of 10 Clydesdale horses. To stop a team of runaway horses, you first have to get out in front of them. The media-based Blitzkrieg on the Constitution is like a runaway freight train, though that's not the picture you're getting from the mainstream news media. They still portray the new President as a White Knight on a White Charger.

And the MSM actually believe that they are doing the job of the Fourth Estate. They over-estimate protests against private citizens, and under-report protests against the government, so they think that they are being accurate — "on the average" (to borrow a phrase). The number of media "reporters" outnumbered the protesters by 3-to-1 at the infamous Connecticut "protest." One bus full of ACORN members outweighs all the Tea Party protests put together. In their own minds, media "reporters" are legends in their own time, and especially for "fairness."

Rush Limbaugh says that the war on Obama [and his agenda] is a "war on ignorance." And the media people know that. "Ignorance is such a valuable thing to waste," they figure.

Only the British media, and talk radio, are being honestly "objective." Kudos to James Sensenbrenner for voting against the unconstitutional Bill of Attainder (the change-of-heart by Congress, which originally approved explicitly the bonuses to AIG employees). Kudos also to Representative Boehner for his statement on the Obama Administration's "unprecedented power grab."

Other than that, it's hard to find an Ivy League educated "Republican" who has the guts to get out in front of this runaway train wreck, and I can't think of any business-experienced members of this Administration — and few who have had a real job in the real world. As Rush says, even Ivy League MBAs don't seem to understand [how the laws of economics work].

In "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama wrote, "I owe those unions . . When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don't mind feeling obligated."

That's how school choice gets taken away from the "poor" even in Washington DC. I'm not sure President Obama feels "obligated" to the unions, or if he's afraid of them.

I'm not so confident that he could say NO to the Chicago mob, let alone a teachers' union!

We have a bigger problem in this country than Republicans who say "no"; it's politicians who can NEVER SAY NO.

[But speaking of crazy headlines, I'm sure there's "more to come" next week!]

© Curtis Dahlgren