Rear-Guard Action

The war is going well, despite the most fervent wishes of the moonbat far left.

The economy is improving - perhaps even shaping up into a boom.

After a year of wondering whether to run on the economy or the war, the Democrats are faced with an answer: Neither.

So -as Hugh Hewitt notes today, they're reverting to the one approach they still have: sliming everyone.

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First, He's Dishonest. Next, He Lies

Michael Moore's dishonest editing of MN Congressman Mark Kennedy's comments during an ambush interview are back in the news.

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Between the Uprights

The media - in conjunction, witting or otherwise - with the Kerry campaign, keeps moving the goalposts in Iraq. They move them left, they move them right, they set them in the parking lot, they spin them around.

The President keeps hitting field goals. The media is in the press box watching footage from J-Lo's wedding.

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WWII Books, Movies You Haven't Seen

A few days ago I write about a David Gelernter piece on the cynicism behind so much baby-boomer genuflection to "The Greatest Generation"...

...but that's a subject we've already been over.

Here's a question: What are the best WWII books and movies you've read or watched, that nobody else has?

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Compare and Contrast

At Reagan's funeral, do you suspect we're going to see, say, Alexander Haig stand up, turn to the assembled Democrats and demand that they drop everything they believe to continue the Reagan legacy?

Do you think in two years we'll be seeing bumper stickers like:

Never Stop the Bombing

or

What Would Reagan Do

or

Reagan's Death - Natural Causes, or...?

Do you think we'll hear about people who are still depressed about the death of Reagan, the way we still hear about people whose live were gutted and filetted by Wellstone's death (tragic as it was)?

No. And that's a tribute to Reagan in and of itself.

Make no mistake - from the beginning, I've sought to separate my criticism of Wellstone the person, and my genuine sorrow for his tragic death, from my criticism of both his policies and the endless, mindless, cult-like caterwauling of his supporters. To his supporters, Wellstone embodied what they wanted to see in government - that is, government that served as a sort of surrogate mother, doling out care and love and (government) cheese sandwiches to her adoring children. Those children devote themselves to that vision with the kind of fervor Republicans devote to...I dunno. Running businesses? Earning money? Golfing?

Reagan's supporters will indeed mourn - as we indeed are. And when he's buried, we'll go on. We'll acknowledge Reagan's influence on us, as Joe and James and Michele and many more people have.

And then we'll move on. And I think that's the way Reagan would have wanted it.

For that matter, I can't help but think Wellstone might have preferred it, too.

Fair Comparison

Andrew Sullivan got me into blogging. He also got me to think a lot about my assumptions about gay marriage. I still oppose it - but for different, and thanks to Sullivan, better, reasons.

It's a shame watching him descend into irrelevance over his monomania over gay marriage.

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Pro-Forma Attack On Rall (With Thoroughly Age-Appropriate Zinger), Part Number 2293-4492D

We all remember one kid in high school who throve on hatred - the kid who'd insult people on purpose, perhaps out of misplaced masochism, perhaps because he just got off on people's hatred of him.

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Watch for This

The NYTimes notes the impact of Reagan on the various campaigns.

To summarize the Times' obviously unbiased view - Bush is wrong either way.

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Painting Party

After weeks of weather-related delays, it looks as if I might have a Saturday free that has decent weather.

Next week - 6/12 - the extended forecast calls for sun. So the painting party - my attempt to at least get all the walls of my rather largish house painted in one glorious day - is on the ticket for this coming weekend.

More details tomorrow, after (hopefully) the long-range forecast firms up.

In Their Own Words

Rocketman at Powerline tips us off to a magnificent article by David GelernterToo Much, Too Late, a paeon to the cynicism of so much of the Baby Boomer generation's response to their parents.

You need to read the whole thing, of course.

But the most interesting part came near the end.

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The Reagan Speeches

I've said it before - my dad taught speech. Great political oratory is a nearly-lost art, especially in the US. I appreciate it immensely when I hear it.

And so the loss of Reagan was a loss, not only of a link to a great moment in our history, but to the great tradition of true excellence in speech - speech in the Lincolnian manner to bring people together, in the FDR motif to console and encourage a shocked and grieving nation, like the speech after the explosion of the Challenger...

...and my favorite - the Churchillian call to action.

I love great political oratory - speeches that change the world, like Churchill's "Dunkirk" speech, or Kennedy's "to the Moon!", speeches that rouse men and women from despair to change history for the better.

Such was Reagan's 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall.

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Duckspeak, 2004.

In Orwell's 2004, one of the ruling party's end goals is to reduce the language of the proles to the very minumum needed to carry out party business - "Duckspeak", a circumscribed gibberish sufficient to carry out instructions and parrot simple dogma.

Orwell understood the importance of seizing and holding control of the language.

So does the left today. They started big; the word "Liberal" got hijacked; it no longer means "supporting democracy" - it stands for big government, endless entitlement, institutionalizaton of special interests...

Now, they're trying to change the word "Conservative.

Continue reading "Duckspeak, 2004."

D-Day

Blackfive presents a fairly comprehensive list of Milbloggers' tributes to D-Day.

Of particular interest - this piece about the Scottish involvement in D-Day - which BBC Scotland, perhaps even more blinkeredly liberal than its English corporate cousin, has not deemed fit to over.

There's another group to which I'd love to pay tribute; the men of the Norwegian Navy in Exile, especially that destroyer HMNoS Svenner, which was sunk at D-Day by a U-Boat while screening the beaches, killing much of a crew that had already had a long war; nearly all of the men had escaped from occupied Norway since 1940, served on various cast-off ships from the US and British navies, serving on convoy patrols and hunts for surface raiders.

I say I'd love to pay tribute to them - but very little information is available on the web. Maybe I'll have to work on that...

The Larger Tribute

Steven Green has an observation on the Reagan Legacy from back when it was still being formed:

One thing I did understand, and remember vividly today, was his visceral reaction to the name "Reagan." His eyes lit up at its mention, and he spoke in great animation of the portrait of a former American President that hung in a place of honor in his home. "People say, ‘he was just actor,'" he said, "but I know—WE know. Reagan..." his English failed for a moment, and finally he pounded a fist into his other hand in pantomime.

"Beat?" I offered.

"Beat! Yes, beat!" He cried. "Reagan BEAT Communism! We know! And we will never forget!"

In the mid-nineties - when the geniuses who make up the entertainment community were too busy laughing about Reagan's incipient Alzheimers to read any recent history - I worked with a Ukranian gentleman. We different in many ways - I the conservative American, he the new-agey socialist European in many ways. But on the topic of Reagan, he was clear and as effusive as his fragmented English allowed; "Reagan Sefft Ze Verelt vrum Kommunissem" punctuated his observations. He noted the number of families in Poland that kept photos of Reagan near that of Karol Woytyla.

For The Gipper

Ronald Reagan passed away today.

I grew up in a fairly left-of-center house; my dad was a teacher who would have described himself fairly accurately as a moderate Democrat; I'm convinced that if my mother hadn't been married with three kids by 1968, she'd have been a hippie.

There was a time, in my teens, before my conversion to conservatism about 20 years ago, when I'd have probably agreed with this rather infamous piece of hate-speech by Village Voice, ahem, theatre critic Michael Feingold:

o U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren't immediately appointed to it, you'd know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.

Reading this today, I realize what a wondrous rejoinder Reagan's classic "Well, there you go again" was to the impotent, bilious sputterings of his, and our, enemies.

As to the imagination? I refute Feingold thus: with the ordinary life and extraordinary legacy of Ronald Reagan.

When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, I was a senior in high school. The seeds of doubt in my left-of-center upbringing were already there; Jimmy Carter's "national malaise" speech had already affected me with a deep sense of "how dare you?" But I couldn't quite see becoming a Republican. I coudn't quite see myself supporting that man, that being so reviled by so much of my family's social circle, and so many of my own in college.

But over time, when juxtaposing the worlds and the Americas envisioned by Reagan with that of his opponents - a world of malaise versus a world of hope; a world of coexistence with the threat of nuclear oblivion versus victory over it; a world of self-abnegation before tyrants and murderers versus a world where they were negated - my resistance to the idea of being one of those people faded as I tripped upon one of the key ideas of my life:

Ronald Reagan's imagination was better than that of his opponents.

And it still is. I doubt that George Bush would say he were another Reagan - but he's carrying on that same struggle today. The struggle between those who think America whose horrors must be managed by the larger world, and those who see us as a shining city on the hill, embodying still for all our faults the best that humans can strive for in a self-government. The struggle between those who think life is best served as an unquestioning cog in a soulless machine versus spent uplifting the dignity of man the individual at home and abroad.

The struggle between perpetual snivelling versus proud acceptance of, and living up to, our nation's singular historical mission.

Quick - who were the congresspeople, authors and media figures who attacked Reagan? Answer: Who cares? Their contributions are of no more value to this world than month-old newspapers. We remember only Reagan's deft, self-effacing and yet devastating rejoinders...

...and of course, his legacy: No USSR; the greatest butchers in history, erased from the pages of history. No Berlin Wall. The threat of nuclear annihilation eliminated in less time than it took to develop the MX missile.

The twenty years since my college conversion to conservatism and today's sad milepost are littered with the intellectual corpses of many Alexander Cockburns and Michael Moores and Michael Feingolds - all left, sputtering and impotent in the wake of a movement that is, Feingold be damned, a movement of the imagination, through and through. A movement of people who dared to imagine, who dared to rip away the mental cobwebs and sweep away the dust of despair that covered the great, exceptionalist dream. And Ronald Reagan sparked that imagination.

Rest in peace, Ronald Reagan. You were the greatest president of my lifetime.

Things That Would Get Me Thrown Out Of A GOP Meeting

I've joked in the past that I have beliefs that'd get me drummed out of any party caucus.

And by any, I mean "Republican, too".

Let me explain.

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Five O'Clock World

Slow blogging day today - lots going on.

More later.

Powerquote

Re: Tenet, courtesy Powerline:

So the very people who neutered the CIA are now gleeful because George Tenet, who did his best to repair the consequences of their folly by rebuilding the intelligence-gathering and operational capabilities of the agency, was left holding the bag for September 11.

My lefty friends ask "Whaddya think about Tenet bailing?" (or, as Flash says, "What did the RNC tell you to say?").

I think it's about time. Tenet held the job a VERY long time, did a creditable job in some ways - hamstrung all the way by the very people who are trying to make hay against the Administration with the resignation.

Wait'll Nick Coleman Finds Out

James from California writes in regard to my post yesterday about my reservations about the design of the Ventura Trolley:

Sure, maybe the body count was high when it opened, but Mitch, it is for the greater good, isn't it? Except that body count will most likely consist of homeless drunks and drug addicts.

Whoa! The "big cheeses" are going after the down-and-out!

Nick! Will you stand for this?

Trolley Dead Pool

The Ventura Trolley - the light rail line connecting downtown Minneapolis with the Airport and the Mall - will be opening in the next couple of weeks.

I predict blood flowing through the gutters. Unlike Wes Skoglund, my prediction will be correct.

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Pick Your Marks Carefully

Laura Billings has discovered one of the key facts of life in...

...Saint Paul?

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Self-Defense

Joel Rosenberg's LiveJournal site has the best coverage of the ongoing story - or non-story - of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, our celebrated concealed carry reform law. The law turned a year old in April.

I occasionally get an email asking - civilly or as a tart challenge - if I know of any defensive uses of handguns.

It's for sure you'll rarely hear about them in the Strib or the PiPress - but if you monitor Joel's site, the truth is out there.

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Don't Confuse Us With The Facts

Read today's Strib piece about the fraud investigation of Pat Forciea, longtime political consultant.

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As Long As We're Focusing On The Important Stuff

Ladies night is toast in New Jersey:

The state's top civil rights official has ruled that taverns cannot offer discounts to women on "ladies nights," agreeing with a man who claimed such gender-based promotions discriminated against men.

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Here's a Shock

Isn't this what conservatives have been telling you all along?

At a time when schools and teachers' unions insist that hiring good new teachers is critical to education, schools must instead choose between the connection young teachers often have with students or the skills and experience of older teachers. Because state law requires districts to cut newer teachers first, there is really no choice. Young teachers lose.

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Posted by Mitch at 04:24 AM | Comments (1)