_Apologia pro Methodo Suo_

Dear Dr. Bones,

Paddy and Eye take for granted that when the LLBU, "little lady from the Big University," drooled memorably

of Intellectual Bottom not long ago, why, Her Beatitude must have meant at least a little bit more than the following type of shameless cheapjackery:

[new] I’ve actually never had a problem with calling SS and Medicare ‘entitlements’. Specifically, if I pay into something it seems I am in fact entitled to receive from it as well. More generally, as a citizen of the richest nation on the planet, yes, darn it, I AM entitled to a share of that wealth! christopher @ Sat 11 Aug 3:39 PM Reply

(( Reply?  Don't mind if Eye does! ))

"As for the insane doctrine ... (( fold here )) ... that being born in a country gives some right to the possession of the soil of that country, it hardly requires notice. Happy days.

It just occurred to me that here Eye is, about to yimmer-yammer of "intellectual foundation" on the basis (sic -- ¡hah!) of a gloss on an original text--one composed by our esteemed e-cquaintance, the Patron of Public Transport, as it happens--of which there is no sign at all, apart from the customer being bound to come across it if she follows up all the hyperlinks scrupulously. As naturally she will not.

Ah, well, like the one-eyed Rev. Farragut signaled at the Bay of Worms: "Here I stand. ¡Damn the torpedoes!"

’Ammâ ba‘da, "but seriously" . . . .

The ability to think of a reasonably presentable membrum disjectum like St. George of Orwell picking on the late Mr. Saintsbury when some, er, villainous, Blue Blazer casually whacks one’s mental knee with a little hammer like "I AM entitled to a share" is really pretty trashy, ¿is it not? One’s mind is so full of a number of things, that I am sure some sort of comeback will bubble to the surface of the stream of discourse in all but the rarest occasions.

(( Relish, sir, the notion that shares of Ponzi Security and LyndonCare™ are not only insanely demanded, they are insanely demanded AT, BY, and FOR Somerville, Massachusetts: "¿After that, who is safe?" ))

As often happens, I fear, this rapid McSponse is not as congruent with the Challenge that evoked it as the ideal wisher would wish ideally. His freelordship of Saintsbury was indeed what his juvenile delinquent assailant called "born too early," in the sense that his open skunkery referred to "the possession of the soil" in a landlordly way that was already obsolescent, at least, on the Airstrip One of 1937, and so extinct as to be quaint in the Somerville of 2012.    Give Comrade Tom a share of that sort, and Eye betsya he would try to exchange dirt for EBT in a flash, probably without even looking into the frackin’ potential of the rock under the dirt. ¡Tusk, tusk!

(( Also fun would be to imagine Comrade Tom expostulating with the Lottery Commissariat that, after all, he "paid into" that official Certificate of Specuvetment he is brandishing, the document unelected bureaucrats were pleased to stigmatize as "a losing ticket." ))

(( To be continued.  Maybe.  ))

Happy days.
--JHM