How to get him out of it.
Good luck with that. After a lifetime of being a hot-house plant, I don’t think he’d survive outside of it. Anyway, I don’t agree that the problem with the president is that he doesn’t press the flesh with enough people. Meeting with crowds wouldn’t break through his narcissism and unjustified arrogance.
…and Rousseau was wrong about war.
Rousseau was wrong about pretty much everything, and following his flawed philosophy has led to the suffering and death of hundreds of millions since.
Some thoughts on (some) libertarians and the confederacy. As he points out, the south wasn’t opposed to a large centralized government — they just wanted to have one of their own to continue to enforce slavery.
Why he was right about Howard Zinn. Not to mention schools of education.
As Glenn notes, Zinn was a communist, and his works (and those who admire them) should be no more worthy of respect than those of an avowed Nazi.
[Update a few minutes later]
More:
The AP story is a sort of hit job, intended to discredit Daniels who is coming up for his six-month review as head of Perdue University. Its actual effect, on me, anyway, was to increase my already high esteem for the man. Here is a chap that not only saved the state of Indiana from the fiscal nightmare that leftist-run states like Illinois and Michigan are suffering (remember Detroit?), but he is also someone who can spot a Communist fraud at 100 paces and isn’t afraid to say that left-wing propaganda is not the same as history and should not be purveyed as such on the taxpayer’s dime. Zinn’s book, wrote Daniels in one of those emails, “is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page.” That’s exactly right.
…Note well, Daniels doesn’t say Zinn’s book oughtn’t to be allowed to be published. He doesn’t want to censor the book. He merely says it shouldn’t be taught as history. He would, I’d wager, say the same thing about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And he’d be right.
The country needs a lot more Mitch Danielses. It’s a shame that he didn’t run in 2008.
[Update late evening]
First link was broken. Fixed now. Sorry!
And a century and a half ago, along with the celebration of the 87th anniversary of the signing, the Union was celebrating the defeat of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia the previous day at Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg to Grant in the west. The southern cause’s fate was sealed.
Some thoughts on the 150th anniversary of the victory. I hadn’t realized that there was even a controversy about whose fault the loss was. I’d always thought it was clear that it was ultimately Lee’s responsibility — he ordered the charge — though having better information from Stuart might have resulted in different decisions on his part. I think that, after his previous string of victories, he’d grown overconfident, and was overcome with hubris.
Also, a bonus link to libertarian perspectives on the war. I’ve always thought that the tragedy of the war was that states rights were so damaged because the southern states chose to use them to defend slavery.
[Update a few minutes later]
How not to remember Gettysburg:
What, one must say, led this prolific best-selling writer to think anyone concerned with the meaning of Gettysburg would give a damn about where she and her husband slept when they were overnight guests at the White House? I was waiting to hear her say that, unlike others, she didn’t have to pay for the honor. And anyone who read her Dartmouth commencement address already knew this story.
As a historian, Kearns Goodwin should know that history is the means by which we, as a people, learn about our country’s past — how our ancestors took risks and measures that made the United States the hope of the world and created the great republic in which we now live and breathe as free men and women. Instead, Kearns Goodwin used the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the most important battle held on our own land to talk about herself, and the would-be greatness of the contemporary liberals she holds in esteem.
No less than what I would have expected.
Gouverneur K. Warren and Joshua Chamberlain probably saved the Union from defeat in the battle, and perhaps the war itself, a hundred and fifty years ago today.
It’s been a century and a half since the beginning of one of the (if not the) most consequential battles of American (and indeed, world) history. It was the beginning of the end for the southern cause, particularly after Grant took Vicksburg the day after the end of the battle, cutting the south in two and freeing him up to come east command the army that would eventually become the greatest the world had known up to that time.
[Update later morning]
Some thoughts from George Will.
The battle is also a sharp rebuke to those who claim that violence never solves anything. Ultimately, it solved slavery in America.
I’m not sure why it’s all of a sudden gotten new play, but given all of the lies and cover ups that the government has been seen to be involved in recently, it’s probably fertile soil for it right now. I was always sceptical of the official story, given so much eyewitness testimony about missile streaks and such, but none of the alternatives make a lot of sense either. I have no firm opinion on it.
But you know what would be an interesting investigation to reopen in this environment? Or rather, in the coming environment of late 2015, early 2016? When the Democrats are holding their primary?
Someone should do a documentary on Vince Foster. Next month (on Moon Day, in fact) will be the twentieth anniversary of his death, the circumstances of which remain a mystery to anyone actually paying attention. I have no idea who killed him, and we may never know, absent a deathbed confession or something, but I think that the likelihood that he killed himself is slight, and that he died in Fort Marcy park, vanishingly small.
Is Megan Draper Sharon Tate?