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).
Here is an excellent article I found this morning on The American Thinker.
In this article, US Army Major Greg Reeson responds to bleating screed written by supposed historian Howard Zinn. Among Mr. Zinn’s absurd notions are the silly suggestions that Switzerland lacks military power, that American Exceptionalism is a fallacy, and that we should be embarrassed both of our history and what we as a nation have become.
Major Reeson disagrees, and so do we. If Mr. Zinn has such a distaste for American Exceptionalism, we would like to take the opportunity to remind him there are plenty other places on this ball of mud to hang his hat. He needn’t salute the colors on his way out the door, but no amount of hand-wringing or bleating on his part cause me embarrassment when I do. Mr. Zinn’s hasty departure to greener pastures can only make the place better.
Major Reeson’s article is right on target. We are proud and blessed to be here, and we know that if we had been born anywhere else on this planet, we would have made it our business to come here.
Here is the money quote from the article:
A former commanding officer of mine summed it up beautifully when he said, “When we deploy our forces, one of two things happens: people either say ‘Thank God, they’re coming, or they say, ‘Oh shit, they’re coming.’” Both speak to the greatness of this nation.
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.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/018126.php
It looks like thinks in Britain are going to get much worse before getting any better.
But the truth is we left the camera at home, so I have some typing to do. Last Thursay, we were privileged to host the President of the United States in our tiny little home town of Huntsville. Neither Darling Wife nor I got close enough to meet the man, but it is quite exciting to have the leader of the free world drop by your neck of the woods.
The highlight of the visit was that we were able to get quite close to runway 36R as Air Force One touched down. We were about 300 yards out on the right side of the plane, perpendicular to the runway. I did have the foresight to bring the air-band radio with me that morning. Darling Wife came down to meet me for lunch, and we were able to tell about 5 minutes before they landed which runway they’d be on. Both of us were surprised that they allowed people to get so close as the plane landed.
It was impressive to see the big, blue Boeing 747 as it came down (ironicly enough, directly over the top of Boeing’s Huntsville office). Everyone cheered as the smoke chipped off the edges of the landing-gear tires. Then in less than a minute, they were at the terminal, nearly out of our sight.
A couple hours later, I heard on the radio that they were about to depart. I gathered up some interested people at work, and we went outside with the air-band radio. My office is also perpendicular to the runway, but not quite so close. After a couple of very hot and sunny minutes, we heard Air Force One give its goodbye to Huntsville Tower. Seconds later, we saw it, landing-gear retracted, nose pointed steeply up. Two minutes later, and it was gone. There were no politics discussed. There were no snarky comments from anyone. I was thankful for that because either of those would have soured the occasion.
I may never again get the experience of seeing the leader of the free world touch-down in my home town. I’m glad that I got to see it this time, and my only regret is that we forgot the camera.
Slow down!!! That pistol looks like it is doing 120 MPH just sitting there!
This is the little-know but well-loved Whitney Wolverine, chambered in caliber .22 Long Rifle. It was produced from 1956 until 1957, when my dad was just a pup.
The bottom picture shows a modern reproduction by Olympic Arms, this one in a polymer frame instead of the original Aluminum. It retails for about $280, which is just about in line with the Ruger 22/45. The Ruger for some reason just doesn’t look as fast.
Currently, Samson Manufacturing owns the original production equipment, and will be bringing these babies back from the dead just as soon as they clear the BATF hurdles.
Modern as Tomorrow. Sign me up! Apparently, originals are Curio and Relic eligible.
Anyone else notice that picture of Eli Whitney on the 1950’s advert? You’ll remember from Alabama History that Mr. Whitney invented the Cotton Gin.
Many Alabama students will remember their 4th grade history books had a picture of a black man in the section about Mr. Whitney. I can only guess today that the picture was un-captioned or that any caption that was there was meant to mislead us into thinking that Mr. Whitney was black slave from the south. I can’t even begin to guess as to why they would have done so… Imagine my surprise when I learned as an adult that Eli Whitney was a white man from Massachusetts.
Eli Whitney’s race is completely irrelevant, but the story-line we were sold was that he invented the cotton gin to improve the lives of slaves who would otherwise would have had to perform all of the cotton-seeding operations manually.
It is but enough to make me wonder what else they lied to me about, either directly or through omission.
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.
For the last couple of months, Mr. Card has been producing a well-written course of essays beginning with global warming and ending with a vision of how we might better structure the way we choose to live in the future. As usual, there are passages we agree with (the global warming analysis) and passages we don’t (the idea that people don’t like to drive their cars).
For those who don’t know, Mr. Card is a well-known science fiction writer. He is a democrat and a bleeding-heart leftist. For once, I use those words without revulsion because Mr. Card operates high above the arena of empty political invective. He isn’t hate-filled. He’s logical and honest, and though I often disagree with him, he is eminently respectable. The fact is that we need more people like Mr. Card on both sides. We would do well to listen to him, and perhaps better still to emulate him in the matters of political and civil discourse.
Without further ado, I link you to his series of essays.
As a bonus, I offer you Global Warming: Fighting Off the Ice Age.
Finally, all of Mr. Card’s “World Watch” excellent essays may be found together at http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/index.html.
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.
Conservative commentators have often noted that the political left in America have a strange love affair with fear. They fear death, they fear life, they fear that someone might get hurt. They fear that drinking coffee or eating eggs will kill you, and they fear that we’re destroying the planet. Fear of being offended. Fear of being judged. The list goes on so far that we could be here all day and not name a tenth of the things the left is afraid of.
It does not escape me that when the left tries to insult us, they label us as either being afraid of something or as “fear-mongers.” Take for example the epithets “homophobic” and “islamophobic.” If I understand correctly (and I do), a phobia is an irrational fear of something.
Regardless of the name-calling, I can assure those on the left that I fear no evil. What have I to be irrationally afraid of? People can do as they wish, until they step on me to do it. They don’t live their lives to please me, nor do I live to please them. The only harm done is perhaps a wounding of pride or a pang of conscience, but there’s no more damage done than there is to me when the leftist tells me that I’m afraid of gays or Muslims.
The pioneer spirit is what made America great. We’ve torn that down, and replaced it with a nation of hand-wringing ninnyhammers, afraid of the merest sunburn. It’s time to sort that out. We need to grow a national back-bone. We start that process by toughening up individually. We’ve become too sensitive, like a tooth that is offended by cold. Life is too short to allow other people the power to offend you. Simply ignore it and move on.
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist
in nature, nor do children of humans as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”-Hellen Keller
In order to help qualify and quantify the problems of this world (how can we fix them if we don’t know what they are), I have decided to add a new feature to the Daft Musings Hall. This new feature will be named “Too Many/Not Enough,” and for our first installment, I offer:
There are far too many Franklin Delanos in this world, and not nearly enough Theodores.
There are far too many Barrak Hussein Obamas, and not nearly enough Ronald Regans.
There are far too many Jimmy Carters, and not nearly enough Winston Churchills.
In a few hours time, December 7th 2006 will fall upon Pearl Harbor. 2471 Americans died in that attack, but America came to life. The Nips visited us with violence, and we returned it with a portion a good deal larger than they could enjoy. The attack was an act of war, and we responded with appropriate righteous fury. We take this time to remember and honor our grandfathers and great grandfathers who were slaughtered that day. We do not look back in mourning of our dead, but in anger at the cowardly act by our enemy.
It is interesting to note that during the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, Hawaii was not a US state, but was a US territory.
We call into contrast the reaction to the attack on the second USS Cole (DDG 67) in Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000. 17 sailors were killed, and 39 others were injured. America sniffled, whimpered, then lost interest and got bored with the whole affair. President Clinton derided it as an “act of terrorism” when it was, in fact, an act of war. Neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration after it did much in the way of vengeance with respect to the Cole and her sailors.
This is emblematic of America’s current turmoil. The followers of the false prophet (may pieces of swine be cast unto him) have declared war on us. The Cole attack was an opening salvo of that war. Six years later, we are having debates about wether or not we are “just” to fight the enemy. Half of the country still believes that they have seen the enemy, and it is we.
Whilst we debate, our real enemies laugh and plot. The glittering monuments to colossal heathenism that laid the plan to destroy the USS Cole escaped a Yemeni prison in February of this year. They are still at large.
Our righteous fury and our desire to face and defeat the enemy have become flaccid with the fusillade of erectile disfunction advertisements in our electronic and print media.
The aphorism that “Old people know stuff” is true. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers knew how to fight. They knew when to fight. It is rumored that the Nips did not invade mainland America because they knew that there would be “a rifle behind every blade of grass.” This implied a skilled and committed man behind the trigger of each rifle.
The followers of the false prophet (may pieces of swine be cast unto him) follow the pattern of destroying the lives of uninvolved people to force political change. Their goal is nothing less than global sharia. If you think the NSA “warrantless wiretap” program is bad, you just wait.
As bad as it is now, I think that we still have time. We are only losing this war because it is boring and we are not interested in admitting that it exists. It is time to come alive. It may be a bad war, but hey, it is the only one we’ve got!
As for my blade of grass, it is currently covered by a 1944 Mosin Nagant M44 Carbine. This is an extremely unattractive piece, of Russian manufacture. It was built by slave labor in the Izhevsk Arsenal. It is powerful, reliable, accurate enough, and currently very cheap in the US market. Very good examples of this piece may be had for as little as $80, and surplus Soviet bloc ammunition for it is ridiculously cheap in bulk at less than 10 cents per round.
To my fellow citizens, I issue the challenge to regain that proud fighting spirit of our forefathers. In 2007, plant a flagpole in your yard. Fly “Old Glory” at the top, fly Gadsden’s Flag below, and let any follower of the false prophet (may pieces of swine be cast upon him) that your blade of grass is covered.
Last week, whilst in Vietnam, an idiot reporter asked President Bush a question, to the effect of, “Do you think that there is anything that the {failed} Vietnam war could teach you about how you should be handling the Iraqi war?”
I didn’t listen to his response because I was talking over it. My response was, “Of course. When there’s a war that needs to be won, best get in, win it decisively, and above all, do that fast before the democrats get a chance to get themselves elected to a majority in congress just to make sure you loose it.”
That should be the lesson we learned from Vietnam.
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.
