Kevin Phillips, author of "American Theocracy" just spoke to SRO in KY ...

[Imagine My Surprise]

I just left one of the best lectures I've ever heard. Kevin Phillips was to have spoken at Cralle theatre on the Bellarmine University campus in Louisville, Kentucky...but they moved him to a larger venue and he still had standing room only. Not bad for a so-called Red State.

[saltpoint]

1. This is good news. Phillips' last few books have been a lot bluer

than his first several, and his interviews lately have been great, too.

I'm glad he's in Kentucky and that so many people came to hear him.

[Imagine My Surprise]

2. As I told a reporter after the speech, I would say that Phillips' grasp of

...the inter-connectiveness of oil, religion, and debt truly transcends partisan politics. He made a few swipes at the "liberals" but given his context, you couldn't even disagree with him. He's great.

[saltpoint]

4. Yes. He's in the big picture, big panorama of ideas these days,

and that's not good for Dubya.

I just love it that there was a standing-room-only audience there in Kentucky. Terrific.

[Donna Zen]

3. My reading of Phillips

I think he's at a different level. He knows the critters up close and personal well enough to know that partisianship has its intellectual limit...he just wants to save the country.



Daniel Webster on the occassion of the one hundredth anniversary of George Washington’s birthday.

Other misfortunes may be borne or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation my renew it. If it exhaust our Treasury, future industry may replenish it. If it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars would fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No. If these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Colosseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than were shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art. For they will be the remnants of more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw: the edifice of constitutional American liberty.

If there was not one Democrat I could support, I'd still fight. Fortunately, there are still a few I trust.

[saltpoint]

6. I think Bush's horrendous administration sets the dark example of

how not to be a public servant, and that combined with the zeal we have of replacing that bunch with true public servants, is going to make for a very good November for our side.

Not such a happy one for theirs!

When Kevin Phillips draws SRO audiences in red states, I think it's one more indication that the hunger for true public service in the spirit of the Constitution is real and is not going to take 'no' for an answer.

A recent nationwide survey shows only Nebraska, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah votes approving of the job Bush is doing, and none of those states' percentages of approval were much higher than 50%.

All the other 46 states have him under 50, and at least one under 25%.

[Roland99]

5. OH CRAP!! He was here tonight?!?!? DAMN IT!!

Saw Hersh here last year and they had to move that to a larger venue at Bellarmine, too.