Hooray!

This blog began one year ago today.

Government-backed warranties.

h/t - Glenn Reynolds

George Bush’s Fault

A Frenchman criticizes the “irritable patriotism” of Americans:

There is nothing more annoying in the habits of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner would indeed consent to praise much in their country; but he would want to be permitted to blame something, and this he is absolutely refused.

America is therefore a country of freedom where, in order not to wound anyone, the foreigner must not speak freely either of particular persons, or of the state, or of the governed, or of those who govern, or of public undertakings; or, finally, of anything one encounters except perhaps the climate and the soil; and still, one finds Americans ready to defend both as if they had helped to form them.

Dominic de Villepin? Jacque Chirac? John Kerry?

None of the above. This passage is from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, published in 1835 (Volume II in 1840). (I quote the Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop edition.)

It appears that the image of the self-assured, cocky American began just a little bit before George W. Bush became president.

But he supports the troops!

Obama cancelled his plans to visit wounded U.S. soldiers in Germany with the excuse that “it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign.”

 

Please. Since when have liberals had any compunction about spending other peoples’ money?!?!?!

The real reason, I suspect, is that Obama couldn’t turn the visit into a photo-op.

Embarrassed by His Countrymen

The presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States is embarrassed by his fellow countrymen:
 
“It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup.”
 
Liberals castigate everyone for being Eurocentric, but whose approval do they seek?
 
Bush’s popularity in Africa is something like 80%, they love him in Colombia, etc. But since Europeans don’t like him (except for Blair, and Sarko, and Merkel, and Berlusconi, and…), Bush is unpopular. Q.E.D.
 
Even if any of this actually mattered, as Charles Krauthammer hilariously pointed out, Obama himself can’t speak French - or Spanish.

Facts Are Meaningless

A history professor of mine once told the class that “facts are meaningless.” (Never mind, of course, that in order to actually believe this, you must concede that at least one fact as meaning….)

Barack Obama agrees:

ABC’s Terry Moran asked Obama whether – “knowing what you know now” – he would reconsider his opposition to last year’s surge of U.S. troops in Iraq.
“Well, no,” Mr. Obama replied.

He even ignores facts in prepared speeches, as Jeff Jacoby points out:

“People of the world,” Obama declaimed, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.” But the world didn’t stand as one during the Cold War; it was riven by an Iron Curtain. For more than four decades, America and the West confronted an implacable enemy on the other side of that divide. What finally defeated that enemy and ended the Cold War was not harmony and goodwill, but American strength and resolve.

And John Bolton:

Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because “the world stood as one.” The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator’s own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik – “eastern politics,’ a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance – continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative. 

 

The Families of the Fallen

George Will’s column on notifying the families of the fallen is excellent.

Yea!

The Pope is here.

Welcome

The title of this blog comes from Edmund Burke:

“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”

Burke wrote this passage in Reflections on the Revolution in France, a classic critique of those who have no patience for tradition and who presume to create civilization anew. As the quotation above suggests, Burke believed that the little platoons that citizens belong to (family, churches, schools, etc.) help to form good citizens. This development of citizenship is preferable to the alternative – the active involvement of government. If these little platoons fail to maintain social order, then something else – much less personal and much more authoritarian – will replace them.

Further, these little platoons carry on those traditions that have maintained the ordered liberty that we now enjoy. The phrase “ordered liberty” may sound like a contradiction in terms. It is in fact a great paradox. Absolute freedom is neither possible nor desirable. Some rules – those that have stood the test of time – actually enhance liberty.

G.K. Chesterton (a great fan of paradoxes) reaches a similar conclusion. In his classic work, Orthodoxy, Chesterton explains how the Catholic Church’s rules allow people the freedom to enjoy their lives:

     “Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”

The ideas that have protected our liberty have stood the test of time. People adhere to these traditional ideas and practices because they are good ideas and practices. There are exceptions, of course. Not every old idea is a good idea, and not every new idea is a bad idea. Burke recognized this as well, but he insisted that new ideas be used to improve (and not replace) the great civilization that has been bequeated to us: ”A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.”

It is with these ideas in mind that I venture into the world of blogging.  (There may be a comment or two on my beloved Cleveland Indians along the way. Go Tribe.)