The Old Colony Democrat, Sept. 15, 2012

                        The Old Colony Democrat                         

                                                                                                                          Vol. II, No. 2

                                 A Newspaper for The People

          Published at Old Mattakeesett, in the County of Plymouth

                                                                                                                    Sept. 15, 2012

World News: American Embassies Attacked; Dignified Response of the President, Sec. of State

     More dreadful news was brought to this County today of continued assaults on American diplomatic outposts in the Mediterranean, Near East, and South Asia. The Boston papers as well as word brought via the Providence coach to Plymouth tell of attempts to storm embassies in multiple Muslim capitals, from the Atlantic in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the East. However, the crowds are reported for the most part to be small, unrepresentative of local opinion, and even in some places -- such as Benghazi -- opposed by pro-American demonstrations.
    Meanwhile, to the strains of "Nearer My God to Thee", the bodies of those Foreign Service personnel murdered in the attack Tuesday in Benghazi returned home today. The President and the Secretary of State greeted them at Andrews Airforce Base in Delaware, and, after making remarks by turns somber and affecting, were moved to a rare moment of public affection -- a clasp of hands between long rivals, embraced alike, as is the Nation, by grief.
     Significantly, in Egypt -- after President Obama's description of the country as neither ally nor enemy in an interview with Telemundo -- the government of Muhammad Mursi reigned in raucous Salafist crowds and effectively defended the embassy in Cairo. Mursi himself, travelling in Brussels, was at last moved to denounce the attacks after initially hedging between the competing demands of Egypt's secularist military, the Islamist Right, and the government of the United States.
 Demonstrations against the embassies of Great Britain and Germany have also been reported.

The View from Buttermilk Bay
    
     A Ploughman from WAREHAM writes:

     Today friends I thought fit to write to the Old Colony Democrat to speak words of truth to certain of mine neighbors, men inclined to tipple early and often in the day, men, as they say, fortified with that liquid courage.

     For today, going to Charlie's to eat a fish sandwich, a few miles past the mouth of Red Brook, I was treated to the insalubrious and damnable foolish rantings of these "summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots" as they sat to their strong beer, and I thought I would publish them to all the world -- or, failing that, to you, the readers of this paper.

      These braggarts of the barroom thought it the finest kind of bravery that they -- in response to the deaths of actually brave men in the Foreign Service -- should call loudly, and without consequences, for the burning to death from the air of people they didn't know, and who hadn't harmed us a whit, on the other side of the Ocean. Ah! what martial skill! What students of military science! Indeed, so devoted must these men be, that they must be constantly tending temples to Mars (and sacred offerings burn't to the image of Megyn Kelly) -- for they were nowhere to be found when their country called them in 1970, having taken the pledge as VESTAL VIRGINS to their false and bellicose idol, and are nowhere to be found today as the call goes forth once more.

      Mark ye well, O citizens! Never trust a man who, never having heard the frightening song of musketry himself, endeavors so bravely and beerily to send other, braver, more worthy men into that unholy din.

                    -- PLOUGHMAN

 News From the Middle West: Rahm the Wrong Kind of Democrat

   A clergyman, known well to the publisher of this paper, sends word from CHICAGO on Lake Michigan of the bravery and decency of the Teachers of the public schools in that City, and of the perfidy of Corporate Democrats determined to rob of them and the community of their ancient and hard-won liberties.

    Chief among this latter clique of ambitious and designing men (well, let us not forget that there are some ladies among'st them) is Rahm Emmanuel, the Mayor of Chicago and a friend to the Banks and The Money Power. For indeed, it is widely and infamously known that Rahm is no friend to the honest workers of this and other lands, but rather to the men of soft hands and clean collars who believe they were set to rule over all us plain joggers of ploughs as MASTERS over a nation of SERVANTS. Men who never work a day in their lives, but rather engage in merest jobbing, growing fat off the accumulated moneys that other hands gathered: men such as these dare to tell a common schoolteacher that she is a layabout and a shirker. Yes, they really do say this, to the men and women who teach the nation's children not only the useful arts, reading and writing and figuring, but also the sublime Arts of Citizenship which turn us from beasts and creatures merely into reasoning humans and Citizens. Yes, these mere Stock-jobbers propose that, rather than their own malfeasance, it is the greed of the teachers, the greed of the Firemen, the greed of Policemen and Constables, that has mired the Nation in such Panic and Recession.

    Have you ever heard of anything more plainly absurd?

    For Mayor Rahm endeavors, not even with stealth, to undo the public schools themselves, on the grounds that they have yet to create that Earthly Paradise which evidently only the denizens of Business Schools may deign to bring us poor homely farmers and mechanics. A man might as well burn down his house because the roof has sprung a leak! 

    As every New Englander knows, the Common School is one of the crowning achievements of our civilization; and for men of avaricious and scheming minds to aim to Enclose upon it, as was done to our forbears in Old England, and give it away to the great and powerful private interests: this will not do. This was not what was bled for at Gettysburg and on the beaches of Normandy. This is not what Rahm's old boss OBAMA was elected for. And we shall be damn'd if such cowardly hearts as are men of finance will ever dare speak as a superior to those Hearts of Oak, the teachers of the Common Schools.

    Indeed, the superiority -- moral and intellectual -- is entirely on the side of the Teachers. It is only Filthy LUCRE which gives The Money Power any power.

            

                     -- Novanglus.