No, it was not a mistake.
Category Archives: History
The 4th On The Mall
A first-hand report from Ashe Schow.
Nike Redeems itself
A Signature Bernie Sanders shoe to help you survive socialism.
Heh.
A Classic Ode To America
From an immigrant from Britain, on this Independence Day:
George Orwell wrote admiringly of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Tommy” that “it would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep.’” Coming from a family with deep roots in the military, I had certainly never made mock of uniforms or of the people who wore them. But I had taken them for granted. I’d taken everything for granted.
I quickly realized that the West’s position was the product of concrete choices and explicit sacrifices. Before September 11, it had never occurred to me that the stability of global trade, international peace, and the integrity of transnational communications were in some regard the product of a naval supremacy that the United States silently inherited from the British. It had never occurred to me that the world would look dramatically different if another country or axis enjoyed this power, and that it was in my interest to ensure that this never happened. I had never considered, in other words, the importance of the Pax Americana. From now on, I would never forget it.
Neither, until when, three years later, I took a course in British colonial history at Oxford, did I have much of an idea as to quite how exceptional and extraordinary the United States was in world history. Reading through all the documents that I could find, I quickly gained an appreciation for the classical liberalism of which I had never quite realized I was an adherent. It is no exaggeration to say that, discovering the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, and the men who, in Frederick Douglass’s immortal words, “preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage,” I felt as the heathens of old must have when they discovered the Bible. This, this was my cause — not all that teenage fluff.
I was hooked. However vehemently my leftist friends tried to relegate the virtue of a nation to the sum of its spreadsheets, the fact remains that the United States is the only country in the world that was founded explicitly on a proposition, and that in consequence has a set of values to which it can return and to which its immigrants may hew. The Declaration of Independence, Chesterton wrote, is “perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.”
…F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in “The Swimmers” that
France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter — it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.The “idea” is obvious — it is written down in one place, accessible for all to see. The “willingness of the heart” stuff, however, is where things start to get trickier — where things, you might say, become “harder to utter.” Being asked to explain why I love America is sometimes like being asked to explain why I love my fiancée. There are all the tangible things that you can rattle off so as not to look clueless and sentimental and irrational. But then there is the fact that you just do, and you ultimately can say little more than that.
I don’t know why I love the open spaces in the Southwest or Grand Central Terminal or the fading Atomic Age Googie architecture you see sometimes when driving. I don’t know why merely glimpsing the Statue of Liberty brings tears to my eyes, or why a single phrase on an Etta James or Patsy Cline record does what it does to me. It just does. I have spoken to other immigrants about this, and I have noticed that there is generally a satisfactory explanation — religious freedom, the chance at self-expression, the country’s size — and then there is the wistful stuff that moistens the eyes. Show me a picture of two canyons, and the fact that one of them is American will make all the difference. Just because it is American. Is this so peculiar? Perhaps.
RTWT
[Update a few minutes later]
On this Fourth of July, why have we lost our patriotism?
I’m not sure “we” have. Based on polls I see, it’s mostly (as usual) Democrats.
[Via Ed Driscoll, who has more related links]
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related to the first link: The joys of London on Independence Day.
[Afternoon update]
Sara Hoyt: And our flag was still there.
[Update a few minutes later]
More thoughts from Sara, on Robert Heinlein, a writer for America.
Scott Adams
The Case Against Kipling
It’s not so simple.
He was a man of his times, and a great poet.
Reparations
…and the racial republic:
In academia it is increasingly common, as Harvard College’s dean Rakesh Khurana told graduates recently, that individual achievement is seen as less important than the “dynastic” forces of race. This underpins the notion that students “of color” need to be treated differently than others. This follows from the notion that “group rights,” not individual rights, are what matters. As one liberal observer noted, the West is “now inculcating in a new generation ideas where the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The very Enlightenment principles that underlay the liberal ideal are being largely cast away.”
Once the party of racism, always the party of racism.
Dear Alexandria
Thoughts from a descendant of one of those Ellis Island arrivers who “snuck on to a boat.”
He’s a cruel man, but fair. My grandparents on my father’s side came through as well, a century or so ago.
The “Anti-Fascist” Fascists
Apparently it’s OK to both physically and verbally attack a gay Asian man for covering “Antifa” riots, both by “Antifa” and the media. In fact, the Portland mayor approves.
Commentary from The Spectator:
…the real enablers here are the politicians and journalists who’ve championed Antifa, such as the CNN presenter Chris Cuomo, as well as the Portland authorities who have consistently turned a blind eye to the criminal behavior of the group. Indeed, Andy himself was assaulted by an Antifa activist at his gym last month and the Portland Police took no action. And he was punched in the stomach while covering an Antifa May Day protest in Portland while a police officer stood by and did nothing.
Let’s hope this sickening attack finally shames the Portland authorities into taking action against the group. Beating up a journalist because he or she criticises your political ideology is what the Nazi party did in Germany in the 1930s.
Don’t count on it. More from Reason, and American Conservative.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Trump supporters should thank Antifa, et al., as they are terrific motivators for Trump’s voters, and, in fact, recruiters for the Trump coalition. It’s already reached the point where Trump, once considered a crazy man, now looks like the reasonable adult in the room.”
[Update a few more minutes later]
Michelle Malkin has set up a fund for Andy.
[Monday-morning update]
By any means necessary — it won’t stop with Andy Ngo.
The Western elite had been dominant for so long that their virtue, no less than their wealth, was undoubted. It was as if Dorian Gray said of his portrait: that can’t be me; I must have been infected by conservatives. The idea that the Thing Western society assured itself did not exist had come for them, at last, was totally unexpected as was the realization that all their tokens of virtue were not keeping It at bay.
Perhaps the magnitude of Hillary’s 2016 loss is only now becoming apparent. Clinton didn’t just lose the White House, she also lost the Democratic center to the radical ornaments. The diminution of Brooks, Stevens, Kristof, and even Biden are the consequence of that defeat. The radicals who once served the useful purpose of putting fear into the other side are taking center stage. It’s not surprising that the French Terror began with the purge of the moderates and the urgency of virtue. As Robespierre put it, virtuous men have no choice but to employ any means necessary:If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.
The Thing is older than one would think. And more voracious. The intellectual Old Bolsheviks thought their illustrious records would protect them from the ruffian Stalin. Bukharin, who was eventually executed by Stalin, once said: “Koba, you used to be grateful for the support of your Bolshevik comrades.” “Gratitude is a dog’s disease,” Stalin shot back.
It will get worse before it gets better, unfortunately.
But Ted Cruz has called for federal action against the mayor of Portland: “To federal law enforcement: investigate & bring legal action against a Mayor who has, for political reasons, ordered his police officers to let citizens be attacked by domestic terrorists.”
Yes. This is insurrection.
[Update a while later]
If you don’t stand up for Andy Ngo, you could be next:
What you just saw was a pack of privileged white dudes in masks beating up a smaller guy who’s a minority (Ngo is Vietnamese-American) and a member of the LGBTQ community (he’s gay). These cowards punched him and threw things at him in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, because they knew the cops wouldn’t stop them. It might as well be Alabama in the ’50s. The only difference between Antifa and the Klan is fashion.
First the fascists came for the gay Asians, and I said nothing, because I was not gay, or Asian.
[Update a while later]
Good, Harmeet is on the case:
Here’s the story at the “right wing” Quillette.
[Update a few minutes later]
Leftist “journalists” respond to the attack with the flippancy you’d expect.
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes, it’s insane that we’re having a debate over whether it’s acceptable to violently attack a journalist.
Mueller’s Upcoming Testimony
The ghost of Hunter Thompson looms over it.