The same then and now...

One nice thing about this war is that younger folk have had a chance to see why we despised the Left so much during Vietnam, as they treat bad news for America as good news for them.
-- Orrin Judd

a good month...

For like as herbs and trees bringen forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.

-- THOMAS MALLORY

"as in itself it really is"

Charlene just told me to read this piece by Joseph Epstein in OpinionJournal, on why conservatives ought to be cheerful. The author talks about a very wealthy man surrounded by splendid possessions. But obviously not happy. "Although the sumptuous trappings of his quotidian life gave no clue to this, he was, lifelong, a man of the Left. As such he had certain expectations of the world; and the world--shocking to report--let him down daily."

...But a conservative brings no such expectations to his life. He takes the world as given, a place always full of sin, silliness, and a rich surplus of stupidity--but also much goodness and mirth. The conservative fancies he views the world, as the philosophers say, as in itself it really is. Utopia is not his idea of a good time; it is not, for him, an idea at all but an illusion. If he is sensible, he understands the need to alter social arrangements that are cruel or grossly unfair. But the installation of perfection in a patently permanently imperfect world is not something he has signed on to deliver. This in itself ought to bring a smile to his face.

The barbarians may well be at the gates, but then they always have been. Besides, the gates are a damn good place for barbarians to be. "And now," writes the poet Cavafy, "what's going to happen to us without barbarians? / They were, those people, a kind of solution." Without barbarians, after all, conservatives themselves, in the realm of ideas, would be out of existence. So let us attack our barbarians with wit, mock them with laughter, greet their pretensions to superior virtue with a knowing smile. The duty of a conservative, try to remember, is to be cheerful.

Fun to do...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle just under where their chins would be, if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come up to the surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite all you feel when your head is under water.
-- Wind in the Willows

let's get on with the job

After being drowned in a tidal wave of all who didn't do enough before 9/11, I have come to believe that the Commission should issue a report that says: 'No one did enough in the past. No one did near enough.' Then thank everyone for serving, send them home and let's get on with the job of protecting this country in the future. --Sen. Zell Miller

More disgusting religious stuff from the President...

And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.
-- John F. Kennedy on Jan. 20, 1961

(Thanks to Henry Hanks )

The martyrs of history were not fools...

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing is worth dying for, when did this begin...? ...Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots of Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain! --Ronald Reagan

how swiftly storm clouds can gather

Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats. The Democrats may remember their lines, but how quickly they forget the lessons of the past. I have witnessed five major wars in my lifetime, and I know how swiftly storm clouds can gather on a peaceful horizon. The next time a Saddam Hussein takes over a Kuwait, or North Korea brandishes a nuclear weapon, will we be ready to respond?

In the end it all comes down to leadership. That is what this country is looking for now. It was leadership here at home that gave us strong American influence abroad and the collapse of imperial communism. Great nations have responsibilities to lead, and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile, because they might just wind up lowering our flag.
--Ronald Reagan

idealism is with those who serve, rather than bash, their country

Rocket Man has said that today, unlike in our youth, "the fun is on the right." I think we can also say that today (even more so than in our youth) idealism is with those who serve, rather than bash, their country. -- Deacon, at Power Line

Quote for today

David Carr, at Samizdata, on The Guardian's showing us the "Yassin we never knew."

"Yassin the wise, Yassin the benevolent, Yassin the humanitarian. He was a gift to mankind. It was said of Yassin that he could light up a room, though he generally preferred lighting up buses and cafes."

A quote for today

...For thirty years we've been told that patriotism was shameful. We were told it was a demonstration of mental retardation or of ignorance about the world. People who were patriotic were heartless racists. For thirty years we've been pelted with the message that there was nothing about America that justified any pride.

And for thirty years the majority of Americans have ignored that message. It bounced off them like raindrops on a duck's back. Americans treasure their freedom of expression, and they treasure even more their freedom to ignore what other people say..

.Stephen den Beste

"but mostly because it was free..."

He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its advancement, prosperity and glory, because he saw in such, the advancement, prosperity and glory, of human liberty, human right and human nature. He desired the prosperity of his countrymen partly because they were his countrymen, but chiefly to show to the world that free men could be prosperous.

Abraham Lincoln, from a eulogy for Henry Clay

The whole world a labyrinth?

...In short, if youth is not quite right in its opinions, there is a strong probability that age is not much more so. Undying hope is co-ruler of the human bosom with infallible credulity. A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right. Mankind, after centuries of failure, are still upon the eve of a thoroughly constitutional millennium. Since we have explored the maze so long without result, it follows, for poor human reason, that we cannot have to explore much longer; close by must be the centre, with a champagne luncheon and a piece of ornamental water. How if there were no centre at all, but just one alley after another, and the whole world a labyrinth without end or issue?

-- from the essay CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Happy birthday, George...

My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.

--George Washington

It's "Superbowl Sunday"

Baseball is what we were,
Football is what we have become.

-- Mary McGrory

Mississippi evaporates, bears and raccoons hardest hit...

Jay Random found this quote:

In the space of 176 years, the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of 1,300,000 miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.

– Mark Twain, with an early example of a failed model in the earth sciences

May the New Year be good to you ...

A New Year's resolution is something
that goes in one year and out the other.
-- anonymous

New Year's resolution: To refrain
from saying witty, unkind things,
unless they are really witty, and
irreparably damaging.
-- James Agate

Drink no longer water, but use a
little wine for thy stomach's sake
and thine often infirmities.
—I TIMOTHY 5:23

anguish and despair

...At every stage of the growth of the debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair....[After the Napoleonic Wars] the funded debt of England...was in truth a fabulous debt; and we can hardly wonder that the cry of despair should have been louder than ever. Yet like Addison's valetudinarian, who continued to whimper that he was dying of consumption till he became so fat that he was shamed into silence, [England] went on complaining that she was sunk in poverty till her wealth showed itself by tokens which made her complaints ridiculous....The beggared, the bankrupt society not only proved able to meet all its obligations, but while meeting these obligations, grew richer and richer so fast that the growth could almost be discerned by the eye....

Macaulay, History of England

Too true, Martha ...

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not our circumstances.

--Martha Washington

Tone and tendency ...

The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress."
--Benjamin Disraeli, Speech In London, June 24, 1872