And take the Civics Literacy Quiz!
Let’s see how you match up. For what it’s worth, I scored %76, which is seven percentage-points higher than the average senior at Harvard. Harvard seniors scored the highest of all schools surveyed.
So, give it a try, see how you do, then work on improving your score. (Hint: You improve your score by reading more, not by going back and taking the test multiple times).
Orson Scott Card knocks one out of the park.
I’m always stunned by his analysis. If someone in the administration isn’t listening to him, they damn well should be.
Some of the best parts, any text in bold is my emphasis…
History does repeat itself. Never exactly — there are always enough differences in the details that people who are determined not to learn anything from the past can find an excuse.
But history shows patterns precisely because human beings don’t change.
…
American politics in the decade of the Zips (it’s zip-seven right now) aren’t British politics in the 1930s. American strategy in the war we’re currently fighting isn’t anything like the specific strategies that Hitler or Churchill needed to follow in order to win.
In fact, in one key way, we are living through the opposite of the run-up to World War II. America has a President who has taken the early action against the maniacs who seek world domination that Chamberlain refused to take.
But there are still some very important lessons we must learn:
- When the press has decided to report only one side of the story, the public is ill served.
…- If you do not believe the threats of an insane enemy and destroy their war capacity early, when it can be cheaply done, you will pay for it in blood and horror.
…- Only fools believe that an enemy cannot do what he threatens to do.
The Brits really believed that because they had a long reputation for ruling the ocean, Germany could not really challenge them. They ignored all the intelligence reports about Germany’s effort to rebuild its army and, particularly, its air force.They seemed to believe that just by being Britain, they could stop Germany whenever they wanted to.
Similarly, Americans seem to think that no matter what weapons Iran develops, when it becomes necessary we can stop them.
…- Only fools allow their best allies to be neutralized before the war begins.
…- Remember the big picture.
…- Everybody makes horrible mistakes; the side that learns from its mistakes and relentlessly moves forward is the one that will win.
…- Without leadership, the cause of democracy cannot be won.
Here is the place where I have finally come to despair of the Bush administration. There is no one — no one — who speaks with a voice like Churchill’s.
Right from the beginning of the war against Islamic terror, I have been saying that President Bush needed to ask us for sacrifice, to work together for victory. Instead, his message was to ignore the war and just go about our business. This is not how democracies win wars.We only win when we are stirred in our hearts, convinced of the righteousness of our cause, united in a common struggle, and asked to make sacrifices. In other words, in democracies the people have to believe it is their own war.
The sad thing is that our cause is righteous — freedom from religious oppression and from the dictatorship of madmen. We are right now in the business of saving the world from a Muslim empire that will make Hitler look like an amateur, when it comes to murder and oppression. And yet nobody is telling that true story to the American people.
Instead, it’s as if the administration were trying to hide the war from us so we won’t get annoyed by it. Meanwhile, the appeasers are telling their false and dangerous story and getting away with it. Even the bloggers and the Republicans in Congress waver, because they have no voice leading them.
President Bush has made the right decisions. But he is, in fact, a manager, not a leader. Nor has he found a Churchill and brought him into the administration to do that job. All the faces are grey, all the voices are dull, and so the opposition dominates the public conversation.
It gets better. You should read for yourself.
We have a strong affection towards President Theodore Roosevelt, and we accept it as a good omen that our first-born’s due date is on the anniversary of his birth. We are pleased to pass along these words that Mr. Roosevelt wrote shortly before his death in January of 1919.
In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American…
There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
We certainly are ready for another like him. Now for those of you paying attention, yes T.R. was once the mayor of New York City, but Mayor Guiliani is comes nowhere near the same ballpark.
We have no love of Republican POTUS candidate Ron Paul. He seems to be an isolationist with little clue as to how the world actually works. The one thing that he did get right was to point out that our founding fathers cherished the idea of liberty and not the idea of democracy.
It seems to us that democracy was meant only to be the vehicle, and liberty the destination.
Expound.
But I have not forgotten:
The Scout Law
A Scout is:
Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean
Reverent
I have recently finished reading Mark Twain’s Roughing It. This book is a fine account of life in the American “old west,” and has much to recommend it. The above link is to the Project Gutenberg electronic text in its entirety.
Previous to this, I had the pleasure to indulge in Jerome Klapka Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. I had never before heard of this second author before I stumbled upon him one day whilst repeatedly mashing the Random Article button at Wikipedia. I can’t imagine why I’ve never heard of this book before, but nothing that I could say would add anything to the book’s excellence. Just read it.
The most striking feature of these books is that both of them were well worn by the time the year 1900 rolled around, but they are both compellingly modern.
Most recently, however, I have come across the writings of the late Col. Jeff Cooper, deceased just this 25th of September. Col. Cooper’s commentaries are located here.They are nothing short of amazing. If you don’t have a sense of humor, don’t bother. Col. Cooper’s writings will probably make some people madder than they would be after being forced to listen to hours of the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Col. Cooper was harsh, unyielding, macho, sure of himself, honorable, and as sharp as they come. He had a wonderful gift of language that I am jealous of. Even if you disagree with him %80, read his commentaries anyway because you will learn something new. Start at the beginning, and understand that it will take a bit of time to understand that he’d been writing these commentaries for many years prior to 1993, but they were published elsewhere. So you will find that there is some context missing.
Among other things, you will learn of the tyranny committed by our government in the 1990s against our own citizens. I don’t remember much about the Waco, TX incident because I was in high school at the time, and was thus rather disconnected. Col. Cooper points out that whilst the Branch Dividians were all nuts, they hadn’t broken any laws, and the ATF really didn’t have any good reason to go kicking in their doors. You’ll also learn about another episode in which an ATF sniper assassinated the wife of a suspect while she was holding her baby. Why don’t I remember any of this?
For some reasons unknown to me at this point, I feel it necessary to insert the disclaimer that I think both David Koresh and Randy Weaver were unqualified nut cases. Col. Cooper asks the questions that I never heard during that time, namely, since when is it ok for armed agents of the United States Government to assassinate our fellow citizens, no matter how crazy they may be, without even holding a trial. I should also disclaim that shooting our citizens is a far worse offense than the warrant-less interception of phone calls made to or from known enemies over-seas. I can’t wait to read up to the Elian Gonzalez debacle. The fact remains that Janet Reno is still walking around in freedom. In a just and righteous world, this would not be.
Another thing that I learned was that the Clinton administration ordered the destruction of many fine Springfield Armory 1903 and M1 Garand rifles, as well as a number of M1911 Colts, despite the facts that these are not weapons that you find in the hands of your typical street-thug. These weapons won WWI and WWII for us. They were our heritage. Our grandmothers and grandfather paid for them with their scrap metal, their war bonds, and often with their lives. It was our right to collect them and hold on to them as living snippets of our shared history, and pass them to our children and grand-children, preserving the stories of how they saved nations and ended the holocaust. In many ways, this was the parallel of melting-down the Liberty Bell, crumpling-up the Declaration of Independence and hurling it into the recycling bin, or demolishing Montecello to the purpose of installing a parking garage. This was a great shame that will never be reported.
Col. Cooper advocated granting the franchise only to those who had read and understood the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Upon reading this, I hardily agreed, even though by those standards I would be disqualified. I have not digested the last two of the four mentioned, as they are talked-about, but never seriously studied in our public (Government) schools today. Before the next election, I will have read them all, and perhaps the anti-Federalist papers for good measure.
The great thing about Col. Cooper is that he was tough as nails, and unapologetic for it. His writings demonstrate what it means to be a man. He wrote them in a way that is convincing because his words are plain, but they are not simple. Col. Cooper was an educated man, and that becomes very clear due to the depth of his words.
In this age of the modern, sensitive “man,” reading Col. Cooper’s work makes me want to stand up and shout “Yes!” He got it right. He reached me. I, for one, will not be feminized.
Perhaps you will notice that I’ve changed the title of this web log from “My Spot for Venting About Stupid Things No One Cares About” to “The Daft Musings Hall.”
This is largely due to my extensive work with the French Resistance, and the fact that my Series 5 “Allo, Allo” discs have finally arrived… Not that it is hard for me to resist the French, you will understand.
That got me thinking again about the fine broadcasts performed by Mr. Crosby during WWII at the Kraft Music Hall. In deference to that, I’m happy to bring you “The Daft Musings Hall.”
Listening to these recordings makes one thing abundantly clear in my mind. Something has gone terribly wrong in this country over the last 60 years. We will always have struggles as a nation. Today, we fight the same fascist enemy with a different face. We didn’t want to fight then, as we don’t want to fight now. But then, we knew what we had to do, and we did it. And our countrymen, even the entertainers, WANTED us to win!
Today, we are engaged in battle. Many people in this country don’t understand why. Many have forgotten or ignored more than 30 years of attacks and aggression by people who hate us because we are free and successful. Many don’t even believe it is real. Many more people in this country think that we deserve it, or that we caused it, or that we had it coming… precisely because we are free and successful.
Perhaps the biggest failure of the greatest generation was that they were too successful at providing better lives for their children. We have become too soft. Baby-boomers grew up in a more comfortable world than their parents. The next generation grew up with less hardship, still. My generation, with even less. We demand air-conditioning, padded chairs, and perpetual entertainment from TV, iPods, computer games, and the internet. It has gotten to the point that we’re unable to discern right from wrong, because “right and wrong” are anachronistic abstract concepts that have long since been washed out of the common fabric of our nation.
We are being taught from our youngest years to “open” our minds. We are taught that the only true wrong that a person can commit is to be “judgmental.” Political Correctness is eroding our language, as Mr. Eric Blair predicted. Worse still, many people confuse simple crassitude with being Politically Incorrect… Another example of the erosion our language. Our institutions of higher learning are producing astounding numbers of people who think they are smarter than they actually are. I think that it is attributable to my proposition that once you’ve both removed high standards and made people feel guilty about judging anything, you’ve lost the ability to discern brilliance and the flicker of thought from banal platitudes.
I’m not going to pretend that I know how to solve these problems. I like my iPod and my air-conditioning. The only thing that I can do is to point-out the problems I see, and try to identify them explicitly. The first rule of trouble-shooting is that you identify the problem, then cut it in half. I’m not even sure how to do that in this case, but I will at least offer-up the following positive affirmations:
Yesterday were the Iraqi elections. So, this morning I’m driving to work… And I have Sirius Satellite Radio. My normal morning fare is the Tony Snow show on 142 Sirius Right. Tony is a little bit goofy, a lot big Boy Scout. So I can relate to him more than most people, I guess. Tony spent the first 15 minutes of his show absolutely giddy. Proud of our country. Proud that the Iraqi people got to experience the privilege we take for granted far too often. I listened to his whole first segment, and couldn’t help but smile.
Then I flipped over to Sirius 144 Air America, just because I was feeling particularly evil. I came in at the beginning of the second segment of this show. I’m not sure what the name of the show was, but it was two women, talking back and forth. In that whole segment, they talked about the Iraqi election for about 15 seconds. It was pretty much dismissed as “what-EVER. That was so last week, and we’re bored with it.” They didn’t actually say those words, but that accurately describes the tone. Instead, the topic of conversation was Condi Rice’s hair. Apparently, she changed it recently, and it looks like a “helmet” now (their words, not mine). They spent about 7 or 8 minutes on Condi’s freaking hair. I don’t know what to say. Vapid. Ignorant. Morons. I actually felt myself getting dumber sitting there listening to these people have a serious discussion about how America is going to hell because they didn’t like the Secretary of State’s hair style.
Nothing like a serious discussion of the issues. And I mean, this was nothing like a serious discussion of the issues.
Also in the news today… A woman on unemployment in Germany is about to have her benefits suspended because there is an employer willing to offer her a job. The only problem is that this new employer just happens to be a brothel. The job just happens to be that of prostitute. I can’t find the original link I read this morning, but this one sums it up nicely.
Just remember, a liberal is a person who sees an underage girl performing sex acts live on stage, and wonders if she is getting paid minimum wage.
I don’t do New Year Resolutions. So, this year will be no exception. However, it is not all that uncommon for me to set a few goals from time to time. So this year, I think that I’m going to dig up some books by and about the founding fathers of our country. The goal being mostly to remind myself that the people who founded this country were all right-wing-kook-extremists, just like me. As the post-election left-wing meltdown continues, with liberals screeching about how “Red State” people are ignorant morons, it will be nice to read the words of these intelligent men, and to remember that they are largely responsible for me
thinking the way I do. I am a conservative, I do believe in God, I am patriotic. I am not an uneducated simpleton fool. I sense that I’ll probably write two or three screeds about this in the coming year.
Specifically, I want to look through the Federalist Papers, some Washington, some Jefferson, some Ben Franklin (particularly, I’d like to reread his autobiography), and revise on some of the minor/obscure founding documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Also, I intend to finish the 9/11 commission report.
Also, for career development this year, I’d really like to learn to write useful code in C. Really, as a full-time UNIX systems administrator, I am often ashamed of that fact that I can’t program in C. Perl is great, and as a rule has gotten me out of (also in to) many sticky situations, but really I should learn C.
Finally, I’m really going to try to write more. I will probably use this LiveJournal thing as the medium, since it is easy enough. Nobody but Chris will read it anyway, and the only reason that he will is that he gets all of my posts emailed to him automagically. Chris, read-on. I promise it will be hella boring.
Some things I want to write about:
I had no champagne for the new year, I’m afraid. I had a nice bottle of Chimay Grand Reserve (a.k.a. Chimay Blue) that I was going to enjoy, but decided to save it. At $9 per bottle, it is packaged like champagne (750 ml, cork finished, wire bale), but tastes better than any champagne I’ve ever had, and is WAY less expensive. Vouve Clicot is probably the best tasting champagne I’ve ever had. It is currently at about $45 for the same 750 ml bottle. Also, I have one bottle of Left Hand Imperial Stout that I am saving for a cold night. I am worried that winter may be over though. We had those two days, just before Christmas where the high
was in the 20’s. Right now, we’re having upper 60’s. Happy January in North Alabama.
I got several new books for Christmas, including the Bill O’Reilly book, Who’s Looking Out for You? Anyone who thinks that O’Reilly is a conservative after reading this book should go have a mental exam or perhaps go look at a dictionary. This book was closer to a “Self Help” book than anything I have ever read before. As it turns out, I like Bill’s writing style much better than his interviewing/commentating style on his TV show (I’ve never listened to his radio show). Perhaps it is because he’s not interrupting someone else’s every third word. I’ll talk more about the book in another entry later because I thought it was actually good and made some points I hadn’t thought about.
Oh, and I swore off Slashdot just over a month ago. Haven’t found a good replacement for it yet, we’ll see how long it lasts… Annoying pratts. So far, I have done well. Been there less than 3 times in the last month. Haven’t missed it, per se. But I do miss having a good source of computer geek news updated several times per day. If not for their agenda of left-wing politics and slamming any company out there that has the nerve to actually try to (gasp) make money, I’d still be a (many-times-a-day) daily visitor.
In summary, happy new year to you all. Really, I plan to live 2005 just like I lived 2004. Keep moving forward, doing what I do, brewing a few beers, fixing a couple of computers, and generally enjoying life in North Alabama with my wife.
