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The Global Museum of Communism website is finally up. It's a good start.
Greggums' Blog
The Blog of Greggums
A good speech. Also known as The Speech. Titled, A Time for Choosing, it launched Reagan's political career. In it, he lays out his case against the Johnson administration's economic policies. And yet, though it may be a dry topic, the speech itself is anything but.
It's pretty amazing that Reagan's critics insisted in calling him an "amiable dunce" while he was president. Fortunately, thanks to recent publications like Reagan: In His Own Hand, such criticism is now impossible to sustain in public. It's reassuring to hear this speech now, and remember that leftist economic theories have been pushed and implemented far more extensively in the past than today. If anything, we may need such pushes in order to muster the enthusiasm to reform policy. Radical changes are the least stable. It's the slow steady encroachments that are the real threat.
It's pretty amazing that Reagan's critics insisted in calling him an "amiable dunce" while he was president. Fortunately, thanks to recent publications like Reagan: In His Own Hand, such criticism is now impossible to sustain in public. It's reassuring to hear this speech now, and remember that leftist economic theories have been pushed and implemented far more extensively in the past than today. If anything, we may need such pushes in order to muster the enthusiasm to reform policy. Radical changes are the least stable. It's the slow steady encroachments that are the real threat.
Look at the size of that thing.
I just watched The Dark Knight on DVD, and it occurred to me that it was very appropriate that the the movie's crime spree begins with a broken window.
From Jonah Goldberg's column:
According to the various Obama-as-Lincoln narratives, including those from the president-elect himself, Obama is a new Lincoln because he is a “uniter.” In several of his most famous speeches, Obama insinuates that he wants to bring the country together the way Honest Abe did. Newsweek and others tout his fondness for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals, in which Goodwin argues that Lincoln displayed his political genius by inviting adversaries into his Cabinet.
There are real problems with this model; it didn’t work too well for Lincoln. Moreover, who looks at how Lincoln staffed his Cabinet as the defining feature of his presidency? Saying Obama is the next Lincoln because the two men share staffing styles is like saying George Bush is Thomas Jefferson because they both liked chicken soup. If I wear a pointy hat, can I call myself John Paul II?
Lincoln was Lincoln because he fought and won the Civil War and freed the slaves. News flash: That ain’t what America is like today — and thank God for it.
I think Lincoln was just about the greatest president in American history, but I sure don’t want to need another Lincoln. Six hundred thousand Americans died at the hands of other Americans during Lincoln’s presidency. Lincoln unified the country at gunpoint and curtailed civil liberties in a way that makes President Bush look like an ACLU zealot. The partisan success of the GOP in the aftermath of the war Obama thinks so highly of was forged in blood.
Likewise with FDR. Listening to liberals gush over a “new New Deal” and Obama’s call for us to emulate the “Greatest Generation,” you’d think they want another Great Depression and World War.
Indeed, liberals have long idolized the 1930s as a decade of great unity. It wasn’t. The 1930s was a miserable decade of poverty, domestic unrest, labor strife, violations of civil liberties and widespread fear. If liberals really loved peace, prosperity and national cohesion, they’d remember the 1920s or 1950s more fondly. And yet they don’t. Why? Because liberals didn’t get to impose their schemes and dreams on the country in those decades. Behind all the talk of unity and bipartisanship and shared sacrifice lies an uglier ambition: power. The audacity of hope behind all this Lincoln-FDR-Obama blather is the dream of riding roughshod over the opposition, of having their way, of total victory.
The Chinese curse and cliche “may you live in interesting times” is on point. Liberals (and a few conservatives as well, alas) seem desperate to live in interesting times. Not me.
You know what I hope? I hope Obama is another Coolidge or Eisenhower. But I’m not holding my breath.
Lincoln was Lincoln because he fought and won the Civil War and freed the slaves. News flash: That ain’t what America is like today — and thank God for it.
I think Lincoln was just about the greatest president in American history, but I sure don’t want to need another Lincoln. Six hundred thousand Americans died at the hands of other Americans during Lincoln’s presidency. Lincoln unified the country at gunpoint and curtailed civil liberties in a way that makes President Bush look like an ACLU zealot. The partisan success of the GOP in the aftermath of the war Obama thinks so highly of was forged in blood.
Likewise with FDR. Listening to liberals gush over a “new New Deal” and Obama’s call for us to emulate the “Greatest Generation,” you’d think they want another Great Depression and World War.
Indeed, liberals have long idolized the 1930s as a decade of great unity. It wasn’t. The 1930s was a miserable decade of poverty, domestic unrest, labor strife, violations of civil liberties and widespread fear. If liberals really loved peace, prosperity and national cohesion, they’d remember the 1920s or 1950s more fondly. And yet they don’t. Why? Because liberals didn’t get to impose their schemes and dreams on the country in those decades. Behind all the talk of unity and bipartisanship and shared sacrifice lies an uglier ambition: power. The audacity of hope behind all this Lincoln-FDR-Obama blather is the dream of riding roughshod over the opposition, of having their way, of total victory.
The Chinese curse and cliche “may you live in interesting times” is on point. Liberals (and a few conservatives as well, alas) seem desperate to live in interesting times. Not me.
You know what I hope? I hope Obama is another Coolidge or Eisenhower. But I’m not holding my breath.
More and more, global warming alarmism is looking like outright fraud. This Telegraph article reports on the latest revealing revision of the data released by NASA's Dr. Hansen, who is becoming an embarrassment to his organization.
An excerpt:
"GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
An excerpt:
"GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
"The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year."
Some people... are loons.
This article in the International Herald Tribune about the "Pax Romana" reign of the Emperor Hadrian punctures one of the more annoying popular misconceptions about ancient history (and modern history, as well): that governance through naked force works. Some choice excerpts:
"Few political commentators ask what lies behind the thinking of those expressing boundless admiration for the Roman Empire in almost every quarter of present-day Western society..."
"Coming to Hadrian, the author goes on: "The empire needed to gain strength and cohesion in order to be able to face the many threats to its prosperity and peaceful existence [my italics]. Hadrian's achievements in these areas were outstanding, his legacy immense." Exactly what was peaceful about this empire bent on constant expansion is not specified. The historian then proceeds to recount in some detail a story of genocide and ethnic cleansing on a grand scale..."
"Permanent aspiration to domination over unwilling populations meant permanently perceived threats. In the westernmost "province" of the empire (roughly corresponding to modern England and Wales), which had been finally occupied in 43, the situation was shaky. Hadrian appears to have waged not just one war, but two. In 122, the construction of Hadrian's Wall, running from east to west, was undertaken to keep out the "Barbarians" farther north..."
"Statues of the emperor were erected across the empire. A marble head from a figure that must have been 4.5 to 5 meters high, or about 16 feet, was discovered last year in ancient Pisidia, in what today is southwestern Turkey. Technically impeccable, it uncannily heralds the hollow art of 20th-century totalitarian states..."
That last point hits the nail on the head. And explains the distortion, I think. Some people will always believe the hype.
Good article on conservatism in Hollywood. Read the whole thing. An excerpt:
"Whenever I raise these issues in public, someone says, "Well, Hollywood's all about money. They just make what sells." That sounds like cynical wisdom, but it's only half true. Artists want love, praise and respect, which money represents but which can also be found in reviews, awards and good publicity, almost all of which encourage leftist distortions and teach us to respond to plain speaking with outrage."
This movie is going to be incredible.
The Acton Institute has created two documentaries that look worth checking out. If the trailers are any indication, the quality is top-notch.
It has been quite the tumultuous week-and-a-half. My uncle is found dead of a heart attack alongside the highway, my father finds out he has cancer, my boss quits in the middle of a two week internal audit (unrelated to the quitting), and my first nephew is born. I wonder what next week will bring.
I've been looking forward to seeing HBO's John Adams miniseries ever since I heard it was going to be made. I don't have HBO, so I'll have to wait for the dvd, but the more I see and read about it, the more that looks like a wait worth making. (And, having read the book, I can only hope that the show is faithful in it's depiction of that bastard, Thomas Jefferson.)
"To sum up and avoid any misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an atheist."
The world is a little less astonishing today.
The world is a little less astonishing today.
Lifted from NRO's The Corner:
Gorbachev at the Tomb of St. Francis [Peter Robinson]
Whenever Ronald Reagan would mention his suspicion that Mikhail Gorbachev was a secret believer, everyone on the White House staff would scoff, thinking the president naive. When I had the opportunity to speak to Gorbachev a couple of years ago, however, I found myself concluding that Reagan had been onto something after all. Why, I asked, had Gorbachev refrained from putting down the revolution of 1989, just as Khrushchev had put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Brezhnev had put down the Prague Spring of 1968? "Because of something I shared with Ronald Reagan," Gorbachev replied. "Christian morality."
Now the last leader of the Soviet Union has spent half an hour on his knees at the tomb of St. Francis. From the London Telegraph:
Mikhail Gorbachev...has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.
Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.His arrival in Assisi was described as "spiritual perestroika" by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.
"St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ," said Mr Gorbachev. "His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life," he added...."It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb," said Mr Gorbachev.
"We deem it the central revelation of Western experience," William F. Buckley wrote in 1960, "that man cannot ineradicably stain himself, for the wells of regeneration are infinitely deep....Even out of the depths of despair, we take heart in the knowledge that it cannot matter how deep we fall, for there is always hope."
Behold the visage of Henri Pirenne. Genius historian.
That I was able to recognize his genius after reading mere summaries of the theses of two books he wrote about the Middle Ages (this relatively short one about his Medieval Cities, and this relatively long one about his Mohammed and Charlemange) is itself testament to that genius. Here is his wikipedia page. (Rather paltry, considering his genius. But, then, considering the length of this wikipedia page, I guess it goes with the territory.)
That I was able to recognize his genius after reading mere summaries of the theses of two books he wrote about the Middle Ages (this relatively short one about his Medieval Cities, and this relatively long one about his Mohammed and Charlemange) is itself testament to that genius. Here is his wikipedia page. (Rather paltry, considering his genius. But, then, considering the length of this wikipedia page, I guess it goes with the territory.)