Robert Roy MacGregor (1671-1734) became a Scottish folk hero by fighting English perfidy.  In 1817, Sir Walter Scott wrote a historical novel about his life, entitled with the name he is known to history:  Rob Roy.  In 1995, Liam Neeson played the hero in a movie based on Scott's book, Rob Roy. It's a terrific action flick, with the climactic duel between Rob Roy and the villain Cunningham (Tim Roth) one of filmdom's greatest sword fights.  But that's not why I remember it.  The scene that has always stayed with me is when Rob Roy's wife Mary (Jessica Lange) tells him that she is pregnant as a result of her being raped by Cunningham, and asks him apprehensively what to do.  In tears, she admits, "I could not kill it, husband." His response:  "It is not the child who needs killing."  He steps outside the dark cottage into the daylight.  Mary knows he is off to challenge Cunningham to the death, who is a far better swordsman than he.  "What if you do not return to us?" she asks with fear in her eyes. With a tender smile, he answers, "If it's a boy, call him Robert.  If a lass, name her for my love - Mary MacGregor." This is possibly the most touchingly pro-life scene in motion picture history.  If Todd Akin had recalled it to explain his pro-life position, rather than his crackpot "legitimate rape" irrelevancy, he'd still be an unknown politician beyond the borders of Missouri.

Chuck Berry on American Bandstand, 1959:  {youtube}BCEOlID6gqk{/youtube} Take the lyrics to heart: Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today, We just touched ground on an international runway Jet propelled back home, from overseas to the U. S. A. New York, Los Angeles, oh, how I yearned for you Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge Let alone just to be at my home back in ol' St. Lou. Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway? From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U. S. A. Looking hard for a drive-in, searching for a corner café Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day Yeah, and a juke-box jumping with records like in the U.S.A. Well, I'm so glad I'm livin' in the U.S.A. Yes. I'm so glad I'm livin' in the U.S.A. Anything you want, we got right here in the U.S.A. The Anti-American infestation in the White House is presently giving speeches and airing campaign ads threatening that his Republican opponent wants to "drag us back to the 1950s." That's a threat?  More like a promise.  Yet again, Zero demonstrates his total cluelessness about America.  Far, far more Americans are nostalgic over the 50s, rather than fearful.  Chuck Berry's Back In The USA epitomizes why. 

Catalysts are funny things - especially historical ones.  For close to a half-century, America has been in steady decline due to the Left's Cultural Revolution of the 60s (although Ronald Reagan temporarily slowed it down, even he couldn't reverse it).  Who would have ever guessed that its demise and America's revival would be sparked by a chicken sandwich? For decades, year after unrelenting year, drip by never-stopping drip, the Hate-America Marxists of the Scumbag Left infesting our schools, media, and cultural institutions perpetrated one outrage after another to damage America's founding values and wound America's soul. Then finally it happened, the over-the-top act of total hubris that precipitates a fall from power.    By attacking with hysterical viciousness a decent moral man over his views that up until recently any sane person would have considered as obvious as the sky is blue, the Scumbag Left exposed itself as irretrievably fascist and inhuman.  A chicken sandwich caused people to realize the Left hates what makes us human.  Actually, what made us human, what enabled us to become human in the evolutionary first place.

A giant fat German guy (six-foot-six, 300 pounds of blubber) with a decidedly sketchy background (pleading guilty to embezzlement is just one of many examples) and a goofy artificial name would seem an outlandish candidate for a catalyst of Democrat Megadeath - but you know what truth is stranger than. Kim Schmitz grew up in Kiel, Germany, where he dropped out of 9th grade and became a criminal child prodigy like the kid Leonardo DiCaprio played in Catch Me If You Can.  After an endless series of scrapes with the law (including two convictions both with 2-year probations), in 2005 at age 31 he founded a company in Hong Kong called Megaupload, a "file-hosting service" with an elaborate array of websites for video sharing, music sharing, and online commerce. By this time, Schmitz had legally changed his name to Kim Dotcom, and moved to New Zealand.  Because Megaupload made it super-easy for members to share anything video including full-length movies and anything audio including the latest rock hits and albums, it exploded in popularity with 50 million visitors a day, $100 million in annual revenue, and accounting for 4% of all internet traffic worldwide. For this, Hollywood declared him Enemy #1 and ordered Zero and Holder Justice to destroy him.  Big mistake.  He's now going after Zero's jugular and that of the Dem Party.  As a result, both will bleed to death on November 6th.

It's hard to fathom why John Roberts would murder the Constitution today, but his mental contortions don't matter.  The reality is that America no longer has a Constitution, thanks to his vote and that of the four other loony-left libs on the No Longer Supreme Court. Without a Constitution providing a coherent rule of law, America is now a thoroughly lawless nation.  There are many consequences to this, and among them is that no one is obligated to obey the law because the law no longer exists.  What exists now in place of law are threats - hundreds of thousands of threats issued by federal bureaucrats who call them "regulations," and enforced by gun-toting federal goons. The threats of a federal agent are not morally different now than those of a mugger in an alley.  When either one sticks a gun in your face and yells, "Your money or your life!", it is a purely pragmatic decision to give the thief your wallet - but you are under no moral obligation whatsoever to do so. What happened today in the No Longer Supreme Court's 5-4 upholding of ZeroCare is an ultimate expression of Airhead America. 

It's not just that the Dems are going to lose the White House in November.  Control of the Oval Office regularly flips back and forth between them and the Pubs over the years. It's not just that the Dems are going to lose big ("rrreally big, rrreally big" as Ed Sullivan would say) in November.  Zero will be lucky to carry 10 states in a Romney Landslide, while the Pubs will take the Senate and gain seats in the House.  Yet the Reagan Landslides of 1980/1984 were far greater than anything Romney can hope for - and the Dems were back in the White House saddle four years after the Gipper. No, what is going on is much - as in much - bigger than mere electoral loss.  What the Dems are going to lose in November is about as big as it gets.  They are going to lose their raison d'être - their "reason to be," the basic justification for their existence. This is why they are panicking, why most everything they do now is doltish, for panic makes you stupid.  This is why Zero is making moves of ever-increasing desperation - Amnesty EO's, Executive Privilege merely to protect his corrupt AG.  This is why the Moonbat Media is in a state of foaming hysteria.  For all of them, their fear and fury is existential.

If you want to trace back all America's woes caused by the pathologies of liberalism to their original source, you'd focus on the inception of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. True, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism places the blame earlier, on "America's first fascist presidency," that of Woodrow Wilson.  But much of Wilson's assault on our Constitutional freedoms didn't last, and was reversed by his successors, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge chose not to run in 1928, resulting in the debacle of Herbert Hoover, the Dems gaining the House in 1930 (first time since 1916), and the complete entrenchment of the Dems at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in 1932.  FDR became America's first president-for-life (he finally died in office in 1945), while the Dems held a monopoly of power in the House for the next 62 years (with two irrelevant interregnums, 1946-48 and 1952-54; the Pubs finally got the House back, 1994-2006). Yet the FDR/Dem victory of 1932 was far, far more than an electoral victory of one political party over the other. It was transformational, so deeply altering the fundamental relationship of Americans to their government and to their Constitution that the alteration lasts to this day - and is now, in fact deeper than ever. For conservatives, FDR's transformation was and remains disastrous for America's freedom, America's culture, and the integrity of America's Constitution.  Today, as we reach the final economic consequences of FDR's transformation, it has proved to be equally disastrous for America's prosperity. What we need is a president who can not only reverse FDR, but who can generate a transformation of his own, altering the relationship of Americans to their government that restores their freedom, their culture, their prosperity, and their Constitution.  We need our own FDR.  The question is: will Mitt Romney be that president?

Repeatedly, TTPers at the Seascape Rendezvous last weekend raved about how ravishing the setting was, on a flower-filled bluff overlooking the Pacific with gentle waves rolling onto a beach that went on for miles. It was captivating, as was the sunny, blue-sky weather.  After the Rendezvous, Rebel and I drove down the California coast through the Big Sur - one of the world's most breathtaking coastlines - past towns and farms, cities and countryside on the way to see her folks in San Diego.  The beauty and bounty of California was simply overwhelming.  It's called the Golden State for good reason. Not just for the 1849 Gold Rush, but for how the sunlight magically transforms the landscape into a Renaissance painting of ethereal light.  Yesterday (6/06), flying back to the East Coast, I was transfixed looking out the window at America The Beautiful as it passed in boundless variety beneath me.  And again, it hit me.  No place on earth has been more blessed by Providence, in both natural resources and in the moral values and political principles that make freedom and prosperity possible.  How could it be that so many Americans would choose to trash both their freedom and their prosperity?