Archive for October, 2009

Booklog: Herodotus—Introduction

The Persian Wars are the subject of two literary masterpieces: Herodotus’ Histories and Aeschylus’ Persians. Since the Persian Wars—like the Punic Wars, the Crusades, and the West’s ongoing struggle with Islam—serve to define who we are, perhaps it would be useful to take a brief look at a few of the books of Herodotus that are directly relevant to the cultural struggle between the West and its enemies. We’ll start with Book I.

The Hate That Never Dies

Jonah Goldberg has a piece in yesterday’s USA Today defending television loudmouth Glenn Beck from his critics. In the course of his piece, Goldberg takes a swipe at Pat Buchanan for not being a Republican and for writing a revisionist history of the start of World War II, making the same sort of arguments that used to be made in books published by such conservative publishers as Regnery and Devin-Adair.

The Generals’ War

The Pentagon’s pre-emptive strike came with the leak of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s confidential review of the Afghan war to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.

McChrystal’s painting of the military picture was grim.

Dave’s and Roman’s World

New York City-based IAV, which studies and comments on the state of the culture, reported the other day on the problems faced by our basic civilizing institution, the family. The report packs no surprises, at least for Americans old enough to have glumly watched the steady erosion of valuable inhibitions on wrong behavior over some years.

Another War in the Works

By accusing Iran of having a secret “nuclear weapons program” and demanding that Iran “come clean” about the nonexistent program, adding that he does not rule out a military attack on Iran, Obama mimics the discredited Bush regime’s use of nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to set up Iraq for invasion.

The Booster

Obama is by nature a booster—like the first stage of the missile lofting its payload into the upper atmosphere. A huge bang, a mighty whoosh and then a few miles up, a fizzle as the Obama-booster burns out and drops back to earth. Who knows what happened to the payload? He doesn’t seem to have much stamina or even strategy for getting useful things done. No wonder he leaped on the “secret Iranian nuclear facility.”