The Old Republic
A Republican Is Someone Who Thinks . . .
*That unemployment compensation for laid-off workers is socialism and multibillion-dollar bailouts for banking and stock swindlers is capitalism.
*That killing women and children with high explosives in remote corners of the earth is defending “our way of life.”
Entropy
At times of crisis, George Washington declared a day of fasting and prayer. George W. Bush urged us to shop.
Previous generations for centuries past understood that the Ten Commandments were the origin and foundation of our laws. According to federal judges, it is unconstitutional to have the Ten Commandments in or near a law court. Where do they think the idea of right and wrong comes from? From the government?
An Enquiring Curmudgeon Wants to Know
Are you enjoying your New American Century?
Whatever happened to that Peace Dividend?
How many foreigners have you encountered lately in your daily activities? Do you think it is too many?
Differences
How much better off the American people would be if they could learn the difference between:
investors and speculators
the Constitution ratified by the people of the States and the one promulgated by federal judges
More Things I Miss
Family doctors who treated people rather than symptoms and conditions.
Local newspaper editors who could actually write intelligent, independent-minded editorials.
Newspapers that actually reflected their local community.
Nostalgia—Things I Miss
The Dewey Decimal System.
Grocery clerks who packed bags without destroying fragile items.
Old-fashioned Southern political oratory, last heard in the early 1950’s.
“That’s a Lie”
I was mighty proud of my Congressman Joe Wilson—until he apologised for telling the truth to our sacred Chief Magistrate. I have thought well of Mr. Wilson ever since he was one of the Magnificent Seven of South Carolina state senators who refused to be bribed or browbeaten by the big money men into supporting the removal of our Southern flag from the capitol. Though my esteem has declined some in the last few years when I thought he was a bit too ready to support the schemes of the previous Executive Mansion resident.
What This Country Needs
In one of Henry James’s less unreadable novels, The Bostonians, the hero is Basil Ransom, an impoverished ex-Confederate from Mississippi who is trying to make his way professionally in the urban North. The author wants us to see the tough, realistic, earthy Ransom as a healthy contrast to the decayed idealism of the wealthy, reformist, insular, enervated society of Boston. To the horror of the Bostonians, Ransom declares that he does not believe in Progress—because he has never seen any.
Making War
Wake Island (1942)
Directed by John Farrow, B&W, 88 Minutes
Go Tell the Spartans (1978)
Directed by Ted Post, Color, 114 Minutes
Saigon: Year of the Cat (1983)
Directed by Stephen Frears, Color, 106 Minutes
Americans learn their wars primarily through the movies. Who, except for the few who were actually there, can imagine World War II without thinking of John Wayne? The popular medium gives us a way to digest what would otherwise be too terrible to contemplate, to absorb it into the national psyche.
Bailing the Capitalists: Our Southern Fathers Told Us What To Expect
“ . . . and bank-notes will become as plentiful as oak leaves.” —Thomas Jefferson
“They [the people], and not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labours and our amusements . . . our people . . . must come to labour sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses . . . .” —Thomas Jefferson
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