The Left Hates Exercise And Grooming

WANT TO KNOW what President Bush has done now? According to liberal writer Jonathan Chait he is exercising too much. Apparently it is scandalous that the president takes an hour or two out of every day to get exercise. “What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy,” he writes.

“Really?” asks Tammy Bruce.

Not according to the medical establishment and the Surgeon General’s office, which notes the benefits of exercise. Such as? Better sleep; reduced tension and stress; reduction of high blood pressure; reduction of anxiety and depression; reduced risk of colon and breast cancer; healthy bones, muscles, and joints; improved self image; and generally improved physical health.

Bruce goes on to recall her days at the National Organization of Women, and how the members seemed to have an aversion to taking showers and running a comb through the hair.

Then she adds her voice in defense of the Roberts family, who came in for some criticism from the Washington Post’s Robin Givhan for being too perfectly turned out at the announcement of Daddy’s nomination to the Supreme Court. But she understands why Chait and Givhan don’t like the personal habits and grooming of Bush and his nominees. President Bush and the Roberts family

insult the Left by reminding intellectually lazy Slaves to Decay like Chait and Givhan that class, decorum, and respect still exist. Tradition, caring for one’s family, and caring for oneself are still values that prevail.

When Chait writes: “It’s nice for Bush that he can take an hour or two out of every day to run, bike, or pump iron. Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does,” you have to ask what planet he is living on. How could he not notice how Bush has aged in office, from the almost adolescent look of 1999 to the careworn father of the nation that appears before us today. Does Chait have so little experience of responsibility, of being the guy that makes the tough decisions, that he does not have an inkling of what it means to be president?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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