...country music was good? Here are a couple of reminders:
From 1982, "Nobody" by Sylvia Kirby
From 1980, "Pilot of the Airwaves" by Charlie Dore
Thanks to Nancy for reminding me of Charlie Dore, whom I had not thought of in years. I suppose her music is more accurately described as British folk/pop, but it can still fall under the country umbrella. Either way, it's just beautiful.
Sorry for the lack of posting this week, but things have been especially busy with work and other matters. Since my last entry, I managed to finish Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War by Patrick J. Buchanan. Once finished, I then read some reviews by John Lukacs and Victor Davis Hanson (here and here). In his book, Buchanan argues that Great Britain (via Winston Churchill) committed a serious blunder by going to war against Nazi Germany in 1939. Taking a broad view of the early twentieth century, Buchanan states that in the future, historians may regard the First and Second World Wars as two phases of a "Great Civil War of the West" that did not reach its ultimate conclusion until the end of the Cold War in 1989. The notion of the time period of 1914 to 1989 being one of continuous conflict is not Buchanan's alone – in The Shield of Achilles, Phillip Bobbitt refers to it as the "Long War" of 1914-1990. One could also argue that the war is not even over as of 2008, for since 2003 in Iraq, the United States has been engaged in a project of restoring political order to a part of the Middle East that has not known long term peace since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps a better term would be "The Forever War" – coined by science fiction author Joe Haldeman in his classic novel of the same name. In any case, Buchanan's narrative is thought-provoking. The start of what would come to be known as World War I signaled the end of a long period of global Western expansion. By the early twentieth century, several European nations – Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and to a lesser extent Spain, Portugal, and Belgium, had amassed massive colonial hegemonies, the largest of which was the British Empire. Without a doubt, the West dominated the world politically, economically, militarily, and territorially. However, by the end of the First World War, Germany's colonial empire abroad was no more - having been carved up by Britain, Japan, Australia, and South Africa – and several monarchial dynasties had fallen, among them the houses of Hohenzollern (Germany), Hapsburg (Austria-Hungary), and Romanov (Russia). And in the war's aftermath there emerged a rising world power: the United States of America. Also emergent in the two decades after World War I were totalitarian dictatorships in Italy, Japan, Russia, and Germany – led by men who would plunge the world into a second global conflict that would dwarf the first in terms of physical destruction and loss-of-life. In the aftermath of World War II, the British Empire upon which the sun once never set would cease to exist, as the United Kingdom, strapped for funds and manpower, was unable to hold on to its far-flung possessions, leaving the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's two remaining hegemons, the latter of which would collapse by the end of the 1980s. Buchanan places the blame for the end of Western global domination upon Winston Churchill, who Buchanan believes was instrumental in leading the British Empire to its ultimate demise. Churchill held key positions within the Liberal government that oversaw Britain's entry into World War I and was a leading member of the Conservative Party by the 1930's, ultimately becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom upon Neville Chamberlain's resignation in 1940. Buchanan portrays Churchill not as the "Last Lion" who courageously stood up to the scourge of Nazism when all appeared to be lost, but rather as a war-hungry toff who loudly agitated for Britain's involvement in two continental European wars in which Britain had no overriding national interest. Without Britain's entry into either war, Buchanan maintains that the first would have been a mere replay of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and that the second might have been no more than a slugfest between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin – a war in which both sides might have been weakened sufficiently to the point that neither would ever have threatened the peace-loving democracies of the West. That is tricky territory for any historian, academic or amateur, to tread upon as there is simply no way to prove or disprove such counter-factual assumptions. But Buchanan marches on, claiming that Churchill and others among Britain's war party were recklessly irresponsible in pushing Britain into entering a costly war with Imperial Germany, imposing a "Carthaginian Peace" (as South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts called it) upon Germany at Versailles, and ultimately committing a series of diplomatic blunders that pushed Benito Mussolini into Hitler's arms, allowed Hitler to re-arm, and goaded Hitler into attacking Poland in September 1939 – a country which Britain and France foolishly (and unrealistically) promised to protect in the event of a German invasion. Criticisms of Buchanan's thesis have been harsh. In the July 2, 2008 issue of The American Conservative, historian John Lukacs (pronounced LOO-kash) criticizes Buchanan for committing the logical fallacy of special pleading, selectively quoting a renowned historian like A.J.P. Taylor who maintained "Only Danzig prevented cooperation between Germany and Poland" to support his thesis, but then ignoring other quotations (Churchill being "the savior of England") from Taylor that undermine it. Throughout the book, Buchanan posits Hitler as more of a passive player in the diplomatic games of 1930s Europe, rather than the belligerent aggressor he actually was. On Buchanan's dichotomy of an aggressive Churchill/Britain vs. a passive/reactive Hitler, Lukacs writes: Another historian who takes issue with Buchanan's arguments is Victor Davis Hanson. One argument Hanson finds spurious is Buchanan's assertion that Britain's issue of a war guarantee to defend Poland was directly responsible for such atrocities as the Katyn Forest massacre, the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz, the destruction of the Polish Home Army, and the half-century of Soviet repression that followed. Hanson responds: Indeed, Buchanan does fall into the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc on this point, much like the conspiracy theorists and revisionist historians at lewrockwell.com who assert that Franklin Roosevelt goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor and that American foreign policy was culpable for the events of September 11, 2001, rather than the Japanese militarists and Islamic radicals who committed the respective heinous acts. It is, to put it simply, complete nonsense. But what is not nonsense, and quite refreshing, is the other side of Churchill that Buchanan exposes his readers to. The Churchill we see here is not the hagiographical icon feted by so many admiring historians, but rather a talented, intelligent, brave, but occasionally flawed man whose career was far from spotless. For example, it was Churchill who, as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915, bore direct responsibility for the disaster that was the Battle of Gallipoli in which more than 200,000 British, Australian, and New Zealander troops lost their lives, and who as Prime Minister was responsible for ordering the disastrous raid on Dieppe in 1942, just to give a couple of examples. I certainly do not agree with all of Buchanan's assertions, nor do I agree with his overall indictment of Churchill or the parallel he draws between 1930s Britain and early twenty-first century America. I do, however, appreciate Buchanan's ability to force his readers to re-examine long-held assumptions – and because of that, I recommend this book. *** Having completed Buchanan's book, I am now finishing up Harry Turtledove's Opening Atlantis and will shortly begin re-reading Tom Kratman's A State of Disobedience. Good weekend wishes to all!A man has, or more precisely chooses, his opinions. The choice, ever so often, depends on his inclinations. In this review it is not my proper business to speculate about Buchanan's inclinations. I must restrict myself to his arguments.
This is reprehensible. Now British military weakness is blamed for Auschwitz, rather than the innate sinister nature of Nazism? Does Buchanan believe that had Britain not tried to stop Hitler, the death camps would never have occurred? Does he know of the prewar Nazi precursors to the Final Solution, the geneses of which were clear from Germany's own treatment of its chronically ill and mentally disturbed?
Having just taught my two courses for the day, I went up to my office, turned on the computer, pulled up the Drudge Report and saw that President Bush is going to lift the executive ban on offshore drilling. From the article:
There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by former President Bush in 1990. The current president, trying to ease market tensions and boost supply, called last month for Congress to lift its prohibition before he did so himself.It would be nice if the do-nothing leaders of the Democratic Congress would quit worrying about doing right by the Gaia-worshippers and instead do right by the American people who are suffering under rising gas prices. Inevitably, the aforementioned moonbats will respond by saying we can't drill our way out of this crisis and that we need to protect the environment of our coastal areas. And indeed, the government has been acting along those lines for some time:
But Perino said Bush no longer wants to wait. She pinned blame on the leaders of the Democratic Congress, noting that no action has been taken on this issue.
"They haven't even held a single hearing," Perino said. "So we are going to move forward, and hopefully that will spur action by the Congress."
Congressional Democrats, joined by some GOP lawmakers from coastal states, have opposed lifting the prohibition that has barred energy companies from waters along both the East and West coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. A succession of presidents, from Bush's father—George H.W. Bush—to Bill Clinton, have sided against drilling in these waters, as has Congress each year for 27 years [emphasis mine]. Their goal has to been to protect beaches and coastal states' tourism economies.That's right, such restrictive policies have been in place since 1981, which not coincidentally is when the last American oil boom went bust - not because of a lack of oil, but because environmentalists persuaded the government that protecting "the environment" was more important than achieving energy independence and affordable gasoline.
Originally posted at The Festering Swamp on January 17, 2008 With this entry, I conclude my series of old Festering Swamp blog posts, for I have no others left except for a Thanksgiving Day post by Dana from last year. With Dana's permission, I'll post it again this coming Thanksgiving. As the first paragraph indicates, I originally wrote this in response to the commonly-held belief that the Republican Party has not been at the forefront of the historical expansion of political rights in this country. This was the very last entry I posted at The Festering Swamp, for I resigned as a contributor eight days later. – Mike LaRoche In the comments to my previous entry, Luke Y. Thompson raised a valid point, writing: "I really must've missed the part in history when Republicans were behind the initial great strides in women's rights and worker's rights. Please fill me in." With this entry, I will attempt to do so. To understand the long-standing Republican commitment to civil rights, it is best to begin with the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. In April 1866, Congressional Republicans (against the strong opposition of President Andrew Johnson, a Unionist Democrat), introduced the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment entailed the following: Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in June 1866, and it was forwarded to the states for ratification. Johnson fought hard against the ratification of this amendment throughout the summer and fall of 1866, but his efforts were futile as state after state outside the South approved it (all of the Southern states, except Tennessee, voted it down). In February 1869, the Republican Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was subsequently ratified by the requisite number of states. This Amendment guaranteed voting rights to all citizens regardless of their race, color, or former slave status. During Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, more measures were taken by Congress to protect blacks against harassment. One significant piece of legislation, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, made it a felony to interfere with voting rights and authorized the use of the army for the law's enforcement. A similarly strong law passed was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which broadly outlawed public racial discrimination. More than a dozen years after Reconstruction ended, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) tried to push his Force Bill through Congress, which would have restored voting rights to African-Americans throughout the South. At the time, Southern state governments (under the control of Redeemer Democrats) were busy enacting legislation to marginalize blacks politically and socially. Cabot's bill failed largely because of Democratic opposition and continuing strife over the passage of the unpopular McKinley Tariff Act. It should also be remembered that the Republican Party's commitment to civil rights was alive and well during the twentieth century, for it was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who used federal troops to force the state of Arkansas to admit black students to Little Rock's Central High School. And as Dmac mentioned in my previous entry's comments, Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-IL) was instrumental in pushing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. On the matter of Sen. Barry Goldwater's (R-AZ) stance against the legislation, Goldwater's position was rooted in concerns over provisions in the bill that granted federal agencies excessive power in enforcing the legislation – a very valid worry in retrospect. Regarding women's rights, Republican support for female suffrage was evident as early as the 1860s, when the very Republican territory of Wyoming became the first to allow women to vote (h/t to Eric Blair for the Wikipedia link): "In 1869, Wyoming extended much suffrage to women, at least partially in an attempt to garner enough votes to be admitted as a state. In addition to being the first U.S. state to extend suffrage to women, Wyoming was also the home of many other firsts for U.S. women in politics. For the first time, women served on a jury in Wyoming (Laramie in 1870). Wyoming had the first female court bailiff (Mary Atkinson, Laramie, in 1870) and the first female justice of the peace in the country (Esther Hobart Morris, South Pass City, in 1870). Wyoming became the first state in the Union to elect a female governor, Nellie Taylor Ross, who was elected in 1924 and took office in January 1925." The first woman elected to Congress was also a Republican: Rep. Jeanette Rankin (R-MT) of Missoula, who also holds the dubious distinction of being the only member of Congress to vote against America's entry into both World War I and World War II. Also, it was a Republican Congress that in 1919 passed the 19th Amendment, granting women nationwide the right to vote. This was done over the loud objections of then-President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. On the subject of worker's rights, it was President Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, who in 1890 signed the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Sherman Antitrust Act outlawed pools and trusts, stating that there could be no more collusion among businesses to restrict competition. Specifically, the law stated that there could be no "conspiracy in restraint of trade." Another Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, took even more aggressive action. In 1901, Roosevelt declared that "the absolutely vital question" facing the country was "whether or not the government has the power to control the trusts." Evidence of this change of focus on the trusts came when the federal government, at Roosevelt's direction, filed an antitrust suit against the Northern Securities Company after an exhaustive investigation had turned up evidence of illegalities. Corporate leaders such as J.P. Morgan were shocked, but Roosevelt was adamant that government be used as an instrument to control business. In response to the indignation expressed by many business leaders, one newspaper editor wryly stated: "Wall Street is paralyzed at the thought that a President of the United States would sink so low as to try to enforce the law." Another sign of the change in business and labor policy under Roosevelt was apparent with his handling of an anthracite coal strike in Pennsylvania in 1902. In this case Roosevelt chose to have the government mediate in this dispute between labor and management: commonplace now, but unprecedented then. In May of 1902, nearly 50,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania went on strike to demand higher wages, shorter hours, and recognition of their union, known as the United Mine Workers (UMW). The strike dragged on through the summer and fall, but with winter approaching and with the price of coal reaching all-time highs, President Roosevelt called representatives from both sides to meet in October 1902. Management at first refused to speak with the union leaders at the meeting, insulting the President. In response, Roosevelt threatened to seize the mines and operate them with federal troops – a threat that quickly brought management around. With J.P. Morgan's encouragement, the mine owners agreed to arbitration and in the end the miners won a reduction in work hours and a wage increase. Management received a concession in that they did not have to recognize the UMW. Ultimately, Roosevelt was steadfast in his belief that the government should act independently of big business, and he characterized his actions during the anthracite coal strike specifically as an attempt to give both labor and management a "square deal." Although I titled this entry "The Secret History of the Republican Party," there really is nothing secret about what I have discussed. The facts are easily available but have been consistently ignored (if not distorted) for years by many so-called professional educators across the country – due to either ideological bias or just plain ignorance. Oftentimes in the pursuit of historical truth, the most critical step is to unlearn what you have previously learned.
Originally posted at The Festering Swamp on April 18, 2007 Here are my thoughts on last year's Virginia Tech massacre, which if I'm not mistaken, took place in Tom Kratman's hometown. As an academic, I wish the Texas legislature would pass a bill allowing people who carry Concealed Handgun Licenses, like me, to carry their weapons while at work. Banning guns from campus does nothing to protect faculty, staff, or students from gun-wielding psychopaths. Rather, it just turns us into sitting ducks. – Mike LaRoche Not surprisingly, the recent shootings at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University have sparked calls from the usual suspects to renew efforts at restricting gun ownership rights. Gun control advocates reason that if Virginia had stronger sales restrictions on firearms, the massacre at Virginia Tech may have been prevented. Statistics from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, however, undercut their own thesis that stronger gun control laws make citizens safer. Check out Of Arms and The Law, a pro-Second Amendment blog, for further information. History is not on the side of the gun control lobby, either. The historical origins of the right to bear arms date back to early modern England. In fact, up until the early twentieth century, Britain had a laissez-faire policy toward individual handgun ownership. In a 2002 review of Guns and Violence: The English Experience by Bentley College historian Joyce Malcolm, Glenn Reynolds writes: It is a standard observation in American and English debates over gun control that England has strict gun controls and low crime rates, while America has (comparatively) liberal gun laws and higher crime rates. It is usually assumed that there is a cause and effect relationship, with the low crime stemming from the strict gun controls in England, and vice versa in the United States. This turns out not to be the case. As Malcolm observes, violent crime rates in England, very high in the 14th century, fell more or less steadily for five hundred years, even as ownership of firearms became more common. By the late 19th century, England had gun laws that were far more liberal than are found anywhere in the United States today, yet almost no gun crime, and little violent crime of other sorts. (An 1870 act, which was seldom enforced, required the payment of a small tax for the privilege of carrying, not simply owning, a gun.) Despite a well-armed populace, Malcolm reports, "statistics record an astonishingly low rate of gun-related violence in the late nineteenth century." How low? In the course of three years, according to hospital reports, there were only 59 fatalities from handguns in a population of nearly 30 million people. Of these, 19 were accidents, 35 were suicides, and only 3 were homicides; 3 an average of one a year. After World War I, the divergence between American and British gun laws became wider, with the United States continuing the laissez-faire tradition inherited from Britain, while Britain itself opted for a more statist model. The bottom line for Britain is this: over time increased handgun restrictions have resulted in a rise in crime - a trend continuing to this very day. Not coincidentally, other individual rights in Britain have eroded as well. The old adage of "fear a government that fears your guns," while perhaps trite, is very true.
Despite these rates, which Malcolm is right to call astonishingly low, the British government decided at the turn of the 20th century to begin a program of gun control that would ensure "that nobody except a soldier, sailor, or policeman, should have a pistol at all." The claimed justification was the "enormous" number of handgun injuries.
Rachel Lucas beat me to it. Two days ago, Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech that was overbearingly condescending to those Americans whom many an elitist academic and liberal refer to as being afflicted by the "disease of monolingualism" – namely some 90% plus of the population. Here's what the esteemed Senator said: "I, I don't understand, when people are going around worrying about, 'we need to have English only.' They, they wanna pass a law, 'we want just, uh, we want English only.' No, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But. But. Understand this. Instead of worrying about whether, uh, immigrants can learn English. They'll learn English. You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish! You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language. "You know, it's embarrassing, it's embarrassing when, when, uh, when Europeans come over here. They all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe. All we can say is merci beaucoup. Right?" Wrong. For one thing, not all continental Europeans speak English. In fact, outside of countries like the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and a few other countries where English is taught to children in school from a very young age, most Europeans do not speak English. Don't believe me? Try visiting Spain, where even in a cosmopolitan city like Madrid you will search in vain for a native Spaniard who speaks English fluently. Not that I think that to be a problem, mind you. When in a non-English speaking country, I consider it a moral obligation to try speaking to the people I encounter in their native tongue. And this is coming from someone whose knowledge of Spanish is less-than-perfect. Now it is true that percentage-wise, more Europeans are multilingual than Americans. However, the multilingualism of many Europeans is something born of necessity. They inhabit a densely-populated continent with a variety of differing cultures and languages. If each state of our fifty had a different official language, you can be sure that a significant percentage of Americans would be multilingual as well. Here in South Texas, Spanish is a fact of everyday life, but it is not impossible to get by knowing only English. The only people here that don't speak English fluently are recent immigrants or those who grew up in isolated towns on or near the border with Mexico. Personally, I have no innate bias against learning languages other than English, be that language Spanish, French, or something else. Being from the Texas-Mexico border, and having lived in Japan for four years, I am quite used to being around those who do not speak English as their first language, if at all. But I am quite annoyed by prattling schoolmarm-types who say it is the duty of Americans – living within their own country – to learn Spanish or other foreign languages. Rather, it is incumbent upon foreigners – whether expatriates or immigrants – living in this country to learn English. Just as it would be incumbent upon me to learn Spanish or Japanese were I to permanently relocate to Spain or Japan. That is not cultural imperialism, it is common decency. By saying what he said, Sen. Obama revealed that he is indeed the Second Coming…of John Kerry. I must conclude that Tom Kratman was right when he commented here last week, saying that that the American social and demographic landscape strongly favors Sen. John McCain. Obama is an elitist simpleton with a tin ear if he truly believes (and thinks it acceptable to say) that Americans are alone among Western peoples in having culturally isolated populations, and that it is his responsibility to enlighten us embittered hillbillies who not only cling to our guns and religion, but to our English language as well. Of the alleged "sophistication" of average Europeans vis-à-vis Americans, Vox Day, who resides in Italy, writes: Lack of linguistic sophistication exists in all countries. America is no exception in that regard. If Sen. Obama is so concerned with learning Spanish and winning the upcoming election, he would do well to learn this phrase: callete el ocico.Speaking as someone who has lived in Europe for close to half my adult life, rest assured that there are just as many European homebody dumb hicks as there are American ones. I have one teammate from Calabria, and he is every bit as unintelligible in Italian as the thickest-tongued backwoods Alabaman is in English. I've been in places where no one even speaks anything that is recognizable as a genuine language; they only speak a dialect called, appropriately enough, dialetto. (It means "dialect".) The only difference between a European hick and an American hick is that the European hick is far more inbred, since his family has probably been there for at least 500 years.
No, I'm not suggesting that neoconservatives have had anything to do with the sad fortunes of Great Britain; it's just that both topics were on my mind today. At his weblog Vox Popoli, Vox Day mentioned this article published at the Haaretz website wherein it was said that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, had effectively told Israel it had no "green light" to attack Iran. Day interpreted this as meaning that the neocons had "run out of juice" and "the third invasion has been called off, even if a proxy can be found to start it." He then used the occasion to take a shot at militant atheists, writing: I must admit, that is very clever rhetorical jujitsu and I actually agree with Day's take on the atheists, but the whole "neocon"' business is getting old; the term has long been ambiguous as I noted in earlier blog-posts here and here. In the comments to Vox Day's post, someone writing under the handle "confused" noted Jonah Goldberg's frustrations, posted today at the NRO's Corner, over the term: "I know it's an old lament at this point, but it never ceases to amaze me how in the course of less than a decade "neocon" has come to be an all-purpose word for every liberal bogeyman imaginable. Until very recently neocons were supposed to be the "good conservatives," the ones the New York Times could tolerate at cocktail parties and leftwing academics could tolerate — in sufficiently small numbers — at egghead retreats." I then added my own comment: Well, as former San Antonio Express-News columnist Roddy Stinson used to say, "so much BS, so little space". Or to quote Friedrich Schiller: "Against stupidity, the gods themselves labor in vain." *** Concerning Great Britain, the cow-like submission to radical Islam and big government has gotten so bad over there that blogger Rachel Lucas has started filing her posts about it under the label "Britain Surrenders." The news articles she is writing about have all come out within the past week, the first being this story of how Muslims were "offended" at a billboard sign featuring a picture of a puppy sitting in a policeman's hat – puppies being dogs and therefore "unclean." And of course, some socialist tosser working for the local constabulary issued an apology. Fools. And then there is this news about how explosive-sniffing dogs will now have to wear special booties if they're going to be used to search Muslim homes. Incredible. You have people in Britain plotting acts of terrorism and the government is worried about offending them by bringing dogs into their homes (which in many cases probably aren't their homes but government subsidized "council houses"). But wait, there's more! It seems that British toddlers who say "yuck" to unfamiliar, foreign foods can now be termed "racist" along with their parents. To that I say, hey you kidney pie-eating limeys, grow a pair already! By the way, I think Indian food tastes like roadkill. So sue me. And finally, there is this sad tale of a British man named Sydney Davis, whose house was being stoned night after night by rowdy "youths." Finally, he had had enough of the situation, the police having been of little help: For more than two years, Sydney Davis's house has been under siege from youths throwing stones. After two hours of bombardment in the latest attack and no sign of the police, the 65-year-old retired builder decided enough was enough. As a particularly large missile landed in his kitchen, he grabbed a plank of wood from the garden and ran towards the gang to scare them away. The police arrived just in time - to arrest Mr Davis for possession of an offensive weapon. He now faces up to six months in prison. Yesterday Mr Davis said he was bewildered by the decision to prosecute him. Later in the article, Davis refers to the law as "a colossal ass." No kidding. Winston Churchill once described socialism as "the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." After decades of socialist domestic policies and indoctrination, which even the Conservative Party has been unable (or unwilling) to eradicate, a failed British society is the result. How sad for what was once the world's greatest empire to be reduced to a mere parody. I wouldn't say the Caliphate is coming, because for all practical purposes it is already here.I don't see how there could ever be any need to attack Iran over nuclear weapons anyhow. Since we are reliably informed that religion prevents scientific development, there's obviously no way that the Islamic Republic could ever develop modern weaponry. QED.
Goldberg makes a good point. Nowadays, "neocon" is just a meaningless standard issue lefty swear-word, just as "religious right" was a decade ago and "New Right" was in the '80s. And the narrative is always the same: conservatism has been hijacked by a new evil cabal leaving "real" conservatives out in the cold.
