“Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.
If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.”
- General Logan, Memorial Day Proclamation, General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868
Instinctually, family members do not take kindly to a guest who comes into their home and sharply criticizes one of their own. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.
Intellectually, thinking persons are quite often stunned when encountering one who lacks the mental capacity to acknowledge the bone-snapping irony of his condemning others for refusing to pay the damages on a catastrophe for which he himself is responsible. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.
Politically, elected officials have rarely endeared themselves to their constituents by associating with a foreign leader sharply critical of sensitive domestic issues. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.
Ethically, one must question the integrity of a leader who would deliberately misrepresent the truth before an international forum for reasons we can only assume involve murky wheelings and dealings with another failing regime. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.
Morally, most find abhorrent the notion of a national leader standing before another nation’s government and demanding they renounce their own laws designed to protect the sovereignty of their own nation. Democrats gave him a standing ovation.
By any measure, congressional democrats are, at best, fools; for standing up and applauding a sock-puppet like Calderone in this instance is what fools do. As for those constituents who continue to support these fools—no doubt believing them to be heroic champions of “social and economic justice,” “racial equality,” or guarantors of a permanently dependent and thus democrat voting majority—they may, in fact, be something worse.
Cheers,
Charlie
A funny thing happened on the way down the slippery slope at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: someone dared utter, “STOP!”
Rare is the occasion we allow another to speak for us. In this case, however, we shall happily make an exception. Our dear friend and colleague Mr. John Derbyshire of National Review has summed up our feelings regarding present-day Britain to perfection. We could add very little if we tried.We have a result in the British general election. David Cameron's Conservative Party has won a plurality of seats in Parliament, but not enough to govern firmly. It's hard to get very worked up about this, as the three parties in contention can fairly be described as Left of Center, Center-Left, and Tree-Hugger Left.Certainly there is nothing conservative about David Cameron's Conservatives. It would be very difficult indeed to name anything they wish to conserve: not Britain's ancient demographic core, not the nuclear family, not restraint in public financing, not liberties of speech or assembly, not public respect for the Christian religion, not Britain's traditional wariness of European entanglements, not Britain's traditional warmth towards and co-operation with the old British-settler nations, not civic order and the suppression of crime by fair policing, not respect for rank and authority, not control over the national debt … There is no subject you can name on which Cameron's "Conservatives" wish to conserve any more than Gordon Brown's Laborites, though I'll concede that neither party would call in the U.N. to force a macrobiotic diet on the population, as Nicholas Clegg's Liberal Democrats would. Cameron and Brown may want to make homosexuals a Designated Victim Class, with special rights and privileges, but Clegg's party would make homosexuality compulsory. In this respect, at least, the Brits have dodged a bullet.Frankly, I'm past caring. The old England I grew up in, the England of stoicism and bitter beer and dry humor, the England in which it was bad form to take public affairs too seriously, the England of puddings and bobbies and weird regional accents, of casual snobbery and dim old churches and the smell of soft coal burning, the England of, as George Orwell famously wrote, "old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning" — that England's as dead as the Wild West. It's been replaced by a multicultural bazaar with a feral underclass and a vast, suffocating public sector, neither of which it can any longer afford. The educated classes are sunk deep in ethnomasochism — hatred of their own ancestors, of themselves really. Teenage girls get pregnant and are given public housing and a dole, while married couples struggle to pay their tax bills. The borders are open to foreign agitators who loudly declare their hatred for Britain, while old folk who survived the bombs and shortages of Hitler's war are sneered at as Nazis. When you come home to find burglars have looted your house, don't bother calling the police; they'll just give you an incident number for the insurance company; but try flying the national flag in your front yard — a squad car full of cops will kick your door down and tase you in the living-room for "racism."I couldn't care less about Britain any more. I'm nostalgic for what used to be, but I don't have any illusions any of it is coming back. These smooth-faced managerial types aim only to drag their country further along the road to perdition, with just minor differences in the speed of dragging. I said my goodbyes to England long ago. Let's turn our attention to a place that is still, in spite of some of the same dismal trends, a real country.
