Ayn Clouter's Blog

THE SMALL VOICE STILLS:

The effectiveness of Fear as a political tool has now been demonstrated again by the many TV stations which have refused to rebroadcast "Saving Private Ryan". The fines Colin's offspring imposed for Super Bowl costume failure related activities have worked, chilling the titillators into tremulous self-castration, without any need for formal censorship. 'Tis a premature emasculation devoutly to be wished.

The most powerful weapon in our arsenal, however, is not fear, but Guilt. Those of us indoctrinated in childhood by straightedge-wielders appareled as penguins learned this the hard way. Sadly, some never got over bleeding-heart concern for those Matthew 26:11 says we will have with us always. One of those who took that left fork in the road was Jeanne D'Orleans, blogging at Body and Soul. For some time she has been flogging her liberal readers with that whip of guilt over the very existence of the poor and oppressed.

What motivated her to see herself as the spiritual reincarnation of the Maid of Orleans may have been the same dark voices in her head which misled her namesake to save the French. As that quasi-commie Lillian Hellman translated Jean Anouilh's L'Alouette:

PROMOTER: Why didn't you say to the archangel, "Vado retro Satanas"?
JOAN: I don't know any Latin, Messire. And that question is not written in your charge against me.
PROMOTER: Don't act the fool. The devil understands French. You could have said, "Go away, you filthy, stinking devil."

The playwright clearly understood what The Adversary's favored forked tongue was. Unfortunately, our west coast blogsister was similarly lured by the First Deadly Sin to serve as a self-appointed conscience for the sinister side of the web. Her wide popularity showed that her carefully considered words did fill an emotional need for such benighted bloggers.

The trauma of Our Noble Lame Duck's election victory seems to have demoralized her. She now appears poised to agree with the views of a cleric later in that same play:

LA TREMOUILLE: Is the Lord in such bad shape that he needs you to do his errands?
JOAN: He has said that he needs me.
ARCHBISHOP: Young woman -- If God wishes to save the Kingdom of France he has no need of armies.
JOAN: Monseigneur, God doesn't want a lazy Kingdom of France. We must put up a good fight and then He will give us victory.

The secular St. Joan of the Redwoods is now pondering retreat from the trenches, and all opponents of spiritually-based liberalism should rejoice at her possible departure from the front lines:

The day after the election, I mentioned that I didn't think I could continue doing the blog because I'm tapped out on ways to write about politics in George Bush's America. ...

At this point, I think my best bet is begging some generous blogger to let me guest post occasionally when the need arises.

In any case, I haven't decided what to do yet, but I just wanted to let everyone know why there will be few if any posts for awhile. I'm afraid the well is empty.

No doubt many lefty sites, such as The American Street, would be happy to let her guest post. Frankly, even I would be delighted to let her on board, because she provides such a useful bad example of confused liberal thinking, to serve as an inspiration to denunciations. If her voice does disappear, I assure you that many of us back on the dexter side will jump at the chance to co-opt her, by claiming her as a new stealth supporter. We have learned well the lesson set forth in another play, Robert Bolt's classic about another martyr, A Man For All Seasons:

MORE: The maxim is "Qui tacet consentiret": the maxim of the law is "Silence gives consent." If therefore you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented, not that I denied.
CROMWELL: Is that in fact what the world construes from it? Do you pretend that is what you wish the world to construe from it?
MORE: The world must construe according to its wits; this court must construe according to the law.

Every hope-dashed Democrat who has been denouncing all those Scarlet state true believers, for trying to impose their Manichean mindset upon the more secular Cerulean ones, should go comment at her site, encouraging her to close up shop. Since she has been a leading light of the shrinking spiritually centered left, her blog is an impediment to the united liberal front against churchly voters. If she departs, liberals will be even freer to ignore such mealy-mouthed other-worldly concerns, and concentrate on their true Marxist underpinnings. That should ensure an endless parade of elephants in the White House, but they need fear not. Before long, their shrinking, but ever more comfortably pure numbers should cause the Endangered Species Act to kick in, and begin protecting them from total extermination. Our grandchildren can go see them in museums, after sermons on Sundays.