Rights Defined

From Theo:

"I'd like to clarify something that some people seemed to be confused about.

Health care is not a right. (Neither is education, or food, or housing, or a job.)

How can I be so sure?

Anything that requires the labor of someone else cannot be a universal human right.

Our Constitutional, Natural Law rights require only that others leave us alone. They require no labor, action, payment, participation or sacrifice of anyone else on our behalf.

We have the right to NOT be interfered with when we speak, practice religion, gather, or bear arms. We have the right NOT to be imprisoned without due-process, to be searched without cause, to be made to testify against ourselves.

See how that works?"

Bring It On

Clown Nose Off, Clown Nose On

Wading through these videos will take some time but consider it a teachable moment.

Jon Stewart would have been exposed as a fool and a knave to his audience by now were it not for the fact that they are more historically illiterate than he is. Let this then be a lesson about why it is dangerous to get your "news" from the "pseudo-news comedian" who in the process of crossing the lines between news and nonsense irreparably blurs them. In what appears to be a serious conversation about torture Cliff May and Stewart bring up the atomic bombings during World War II around the 5:50 mark. Stewart then professes that he thinks President Harry Truman was a war criminal.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

A few days later after presumably digesting the fact that he called President Harry Truman a war criminal and perhaps a couple of e-mails calling on him to do so, Stewart does the honorable thing and apologizes on air for his comments.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Harry Truman Was Not a War Criminal
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

And now the historical facts behind the decision to drop the atomic bombs courtesy of Bill Whittle. If Jon Stewart had a working knowledge of these facts he could have saved himself a great deal of trouble and would not have misinformed his audience.

But I doubt he would have been as hip and cool.

My First Bumper Sticker

Inspired by the Tea Party sign below.

Hostis Humani Generis

Bret Stephens nails it in this article in The Wall Street Journal:

"Piracy, of course, is hardly the only form of barbarism at work today: There are the suicide bombers on Israeli buses, the stonings of Iranian women, and so on. But piracy is certainly the most primordial of them, and our collective inability to deal with it says much about how far we've regressed in the pursuit of what is mistakenly thought of as a more humane policy. A society that erases the memory of how it overcame barbarism in the past inevitably loses sight of the meaning of civilization, and the means of sustaining it."

Down The Memory Hole

CWCID: American Digest

How Well Did You Score?

It's test taking time over at ISI and you can participate here:

Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions is the third major study conducted by ISI on the kind of knowledge required for informed citizenship. In 2006 and 2007, ISI published the first ever scientific surveys of civic learning among college students. Each year, approximately 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 schools nationwide were given a 60-question, multiple-choice exam on basic knowledge of America’s heritage. Both years, the students failed. The average freshman scored 51.7% the first year and 51.4% the next. The average senior scored 53.2%, then 54.2%. After all the time, effort, and money spent on college, students emerge no better off in understanding the fundamental features of American self-government.

This year, ISI sought to learn more about the real-world consequences of this collegiate failure. ISI crafted a study to measure the independent impact of college on the acquisition and maintenance of civic literacy over a lifetime. First, a random sample of 2,508 American adults of all backgrounds was surveyed, allowing comparisons to be made between the college and non-college educated. They were asked 33 straightforward civics questions, many of which high school graduates and new citizens are expected to know. Respondents were also asked several questions concerning their participation in American civic life, their attitudes about perennial issues of American governance, and other behaviors that may or may not contribute to civic literacy. Finally, the results were run through multivariate regression analysis, allowing ISI to compare the civic impact of college with that of other societal factors.

Do Americans possess the knowledge necessary to participate wisely in the affairs of the nation?

Seventy-one percent of Americans fail the test, with an overall average score of 49%.

Earning a college degree does little to increase knowledge of America’s history, key texts, and institutions. The average score among those who ended their formal education with a bachelor’s degree is 57%, or an “F.” That is only 13 percentage points higher than the average score among those who ended their formal education with a high school diploma.

Officeholders typically have less civic knowledge than the general public. On average, they score 44%, five percentage points lower than non-officeholders.

The Chicken Little Fifth Column

I have been meaning to post this article from the AP and my comments about it for a week. I am going to intermingle my commentary with the article and I'm fairly certain you won't have any difficulty telling who is who.

Everything seemingly is spinning out of control

By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN, Associated Press Writers
Sat Jun 21, 3:14 PM ET

Is everything spinning out of control?

No. Why do you ask?

Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

Yes, yes - levees burst from time to time. Anyone that lives in that part of the country understands it could happen. I can only speak for myself but my home value is stable because I don't live in a hyper-inflated coastal region and I manage to pay for college tuition for our two children, our health care needs as well as our gasoline usage while continuing to move financially forward. In case you didn't notice (since it isn't getting a significant amount of coverage in the media) we are winning the war against Islamofacism and yes, it will continue for some time. But make no mistake - we will prevail.

If Horatio Alger is spinning in his grave it's because of "news" stories like this one.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

"The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche" is alive and well, no thanks to the doom saying minions of the Fourth Estate.

The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."

Don't get me started.

Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.

An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.

This is the most overused and least relevant straw man question in polling. It is, by it's very nature, designed to provide a negative result which means very little.

"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change."

I am sorry Mr. Truxal finds the current state of affairs to be "pretty scary" but his assessment that things haven't been getting better only pertains to him. The vast majority of people in this country live in greater affluence than their parents and grandparents. And I'm not quite sure how being in the basement during a tornado and having very little power to make it change go together.

Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.

We consider ourselves to be fortunate and we are extremely generous in sharing that good fortune when natural disasters of this magnitude strike anywhere in the world. The United States is always ready to lend a helping hand.

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?
It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

I vote for "freakish late-spring deluge". I also agree that New Orleans is a national embarrassment, but not for the reasons you might expect. For anyone to have as much advanced notice as New Orleans had and fail as utterly to evacuate the city as they did only speaks to their ignorance, incompetence and stupidity. You live in a city that is below sea level. If you can't handle the fact that major storms and flooding will occur occasionally - then move.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

When is someone going to demand that China and India control their "runaway consumption of food and energy"? I have noticed that food prices have risen but it seems like a huge increase only because prices have been relatively flat for the last 16 years. And here all this time I thought ethanol was a "green" solution to our energy situation. Since we have virtually legislated new domestic refineries out of existence and we're not allowed to drill for oil, yet, what did you expect? By the way, those people who need to eat those crops can have them if they are willing to pay more for them than the ethanol plants. I believe capitalism still works that way. Or they might even consider growing their own. I also remember hearing that Sam's Club limited rice sales for awhile to three 40 pound bags per customer. How much rice do you eat in a year?

Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.

Well, at least now, with the Heller decision, DC residents can defend themselves when the lights go out. The same thing goes for California as New Orleans or Iowa - if you can't abide the weather - move. And do us all a favor and send a postcard when you find Nirvana.

Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.

OK, so you can't go to Europe. Big deal. We live in a very large, very beautiful country and few of us have seen it all. If some airlines want to charge for luggage, fly an airline that doesn't and we'll let the market sort it out.

Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.

Good God! A writers strike - heaven forfend! Try something new and pick up a book for a change. Newspapers and video stores? Next thing you know we'll be subsidizing buggy whips.

But there's always sports, right?

The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too. Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating. Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.

Gee, sport stars doing drugs. In this day and age? My perpetual innocence has been wounded. Find 'em, bust 'em and boot 'em. Sorry - but that's how it should work. And anyone that is surprised about NBA refs has never watched a basketball game.

It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.

Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.
American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.

"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."

But your point is every step back has been accompanied by two steps forward, right? Why should this time be any different?

Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.

I'm not quite sure what the point of this observation is since by my reckoning it's about a 50-50 split.

This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable.

"Uncontrollable"!? Since when has history ever been controllable?

Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.
Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.

We have finally stumbled on the truth - "Surely people know how to fix problems now." Indeed, they do and always have. Government, if the opinion polls are to be believed, is the problem, not the solution. We have always had the ability to do things for ourselves in this country, if we only will.

Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

Or maybe what will take place will be the greatest growth of freedom in history powered by a capitalist world economy which will catapult mankind to new heights we can only imagine.

Pull on your boots - we've got work to do.

In The Footsteps Of John Kennedy

From The Belmont Club:

"Those who have grown up believing that John Kennedy's finest moment was the Cuban Missile crisis will be disappointed to learn that he may have contributed to the face off: widely considered the moment the world came closest to Central Nuclear War, by telegraphing weakness by his eagerness to "talk" to his adversaries. A NYT op-ed co-authored by Nathan Thrall and James Wilkins recounts:

Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.

The meeting was a disaster. Kennedy was prepared to be conciliatory. Khruschev was prepared to take the ball Kennedy wanted to hand him and run with it to the goal line.

Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: “Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?”

But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.”

If that were all, Kennedy could have chalked it up to experience. But JFK had repeated Chamberlain's key mistake at Munich. He sent a signal of abject weakness to an aggressor held back only by fear. He walked into shark-infested water bleeding and ringing the dinner bell. And although the US was overwhelmingly stronger than Khruschev's Soviet Union, the wily old Bolshevik judged it safe to hustle the "very inexperienced, even immature" Leader of the Free World. The Soviet strongman struck while the going seemed good.

A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.

Yet the John Kennedy who faced off against Nikita Khruschev was a combat veteran of the Second World War, and presumably tougher than the veteran of combats with the Rev Jeremiah Wright. But why is it so important for the American President to have manifest the qualities of coolness, discipline and steadfastness? Why can't America simply elect a man who will greet every foreign dictator he meets with a pre-emptive apology at the door?

Because the US President is, as Winston Churchill once described Grand Fleet Commander Admiral John Jellicoe, 'the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon'. He is the one person who can manufacture a world crisis by manner alone. The question is what impression The People We've Been Waiting For will convey to America's enemies may be put to a test. And this time we may not be as lucky as Kennedy was during the Days of October."

The World's First Web Server

For those of us who spend a great deal of time on-line, this article about the first web server is a must read. Just think - the invention of HTML was only 18 years ago. And how it has changed our lives....

Happy Birthday!

Today would have been Ronaldus Magnus' 97th birthday. Celebrate with this wonderful bit of video history.



CWCID: Captain's Quarters

I Give Up

Not knowing your own history just makes you ........... stupid. I do not have the words to describe my disgust with this story:

"Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll which shows nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth, while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 per cent thought the 12th Century English King Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 per cent thought World War II prime minister Winston Churchill was made up.
The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.
Three per cent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain's most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington were also in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 per cent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes actually existed, and 33 per cent thought the same of WE Johns' fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people."

I think Sir Winston Churchill was, without question, the greatest statesman of the 20th century. It is insulting to the man and everything he represented that 23 percent of his own countrymen don't believe he ever existed. As if further evidence of the decline of Great Britain was needed.

Glory Days

I just finished reading John Gorman's book The Buzzard which recounts the rise and fall of WMMS, the legendary Cleveland FM radio station. Gorman, along with Denny Sanders, was the architect of WMMS which provided the soundtrack for my teens and early twenties. My children and their contemporaries never had an opportunity to experience this almost communal form of radio that made you feel you were connected to all of the other hip and cool people in town - people to whom music meant something.

While Gorman does take the opportunity to grind a few axes, he also provides an inside glimpse of the unusual personalities, both on and off the air, and how against enormous odds they created something far greater than the whole of it's parts. WMMS carved a unique niche in radio history for itself and helped make Cleveland the Rock and Roll Capital of the World.

The Decline Of The West

CWCID: Instapundit.

On The Origins Of Liberty

" We believe that the first written reference to the concept of liberty is the ancient Sumerian cuneiform symbol "amagi".

Urukagina, the leader of the Sumerian city-state of Girsu/Lagash, led a popular movement that resulted in the reform of the oppressive legal and governmental structure of Sumeria. The oppressive conditions in the city before the reforms is described in the new code preserved in cuneiform on tablets of the period: "From the borders of Ningirsu to the sea, there was the tax collector." During his reign (ca. 2350 B.C.) Urukagina implemented a sweeping set of laws that guaranteed the rights of property owners, reformed the civil administration, and instituted moral and social reforms. Urukagina banned both civil and ecclesiastical authorities from seizing land and goods for payment, eliminated most of the state tax collectors, and ended state involvement in matters such as divorce proceedings and perfume making. He even returned land and other property his predecessors had seized from the temple. He saw that reforms were enacted to eliminate the abuse of the judicial process to extract money from citizens and took great pains to ensure the public nature of legal proceedings.

In this important code is found the first written reference to the concept of liberty (amagi or amargi, literally, "return to the mother"), used in reference to the process of reform. The exact nature of this term is not clear, but the idea that the reforms were to be a return to the original social order decreed by the gods fits well with the translation."

From The Online Library of Liberty.

Repeal The Second Amendment?

Yesterday the editorial staff of The Harvard Crimson, the Harvard University student newspaper, called for the repeal of the Second Amendment. While I will leave it to others to dismantle their poorly constructed argument I would like to point out the sweeping and sad historical illiteracy on display here.

This is the first sentence of the editorial:

“Written in an age in which minutemen rose to dress and fight at a moment’s notice, the Second Amendment was no doubt motivated by a young nation’s concern for its own safety and stability.”

And here is a history lesson from of Rand Simberg:

“The most key motivation was the very recent memory of the battle that set off the war, in Lexington and Concord.

What set off that battle? The British troops had marched from Boston toward Concord (as Paul Revere was riding through the countryside rousing the citizenry) to seize the armory and confiscate the weapons stored there. Had the militia (i.e., able-bodied men in the area) not had their own, they would have had nothing with which to fight them, had the British troops actually been able to carry out their orders.

That's why the Founders thought it important that people have a right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment is a last-ditch insurance policy against a tyrannical government, something of which the sophomores in Cambridge (not very far from either Lexington, or Concord, and the location of one of the ancillary battles) are apparently incapable of conceiving. Or if they do, they probably imagine that it's the Bush administration.

The more I think about it, the more appalling it is that Harvard students could be so ignorant of American history, not just because it's supposedly such an elite institution, but because that particular bit of American history took place almost literally in their own back yard, as the British retreated to Cambridge (where Harvard was, as it is today). And afterward, Gage attempted to confiscate all the private weapons of the citizens of Boston.

What does this say about the state of American higher education today?

I wonder if anyone involved in that editorial could even describe the circumstances of the battle that kicked off the revolution?

It just occurs to me that, given their ignorance of history, the sophomores may defend their editorial on the basis that the "Americans" were rising up against a foreign government, thus making their point about the amendment being for the defense of "America" and is thus no longer needed, since America now has the most formidable armed forces in the history of the world.

Of course, they were doing no such thing. The "Americans" were British citizens (even though they couldn't vote and had no members of Parliament, but were taxed nonetheless--remember "No taxation without representation"?) rising up against their own government. "Americans" as we understand them today did not exist in 1775. Again, that thought too was very fresh in the Founders' minds.”

The Lost Lesson Of Thanksgiving

John Stossel has an article about this little known piece of early American history at RealClearPolitics:

"Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. "Isn't sharing wonderful?" say the teachers.

They miss the point.

Because of sharing, the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

The failure of Soviet communism is only the latest demonstration that freedom and property rights, not sharing, are essential to prosperity. The earliest European settlers in America had a dramatic demonstration of that lesson, but few people today know it.

When the Pilgrims first settled the Plymouth Colony, they organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share everything equally, work and produce.

They nearly all starved."

WWCD

In this article, Victor Davis Hanson relates how much the world stage of today resembles Europe in 1938 at the height of appeasement. The only question we have left to ask is "What would Churchill do?"

VDH's Private Papers::The Brink of Madness: "But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around."