Closing Ranks

I love her. She is precisely what we need right now.

I've heard him speak.

And now, everyone, if you haven't already, close ranks. This is a man we can get behind. Will we disagree? Of course. We disagreed with President Bush on a host of things, but he's still a good man and a great president. At the very least, if oyu have some intense reservations about McCain (as I did and do), this is a man who has a running mate we can support.

The alternative is darkness, a huge step backwards. The stakes are insanely high. This is no time to play around in third-parties. They tried that against Nixon, and it fizzled. We're a two-party country. Federalists and Dem-Reps, Whigs and Dems, and now Reps and Dems. It is, I think, a throw-away (and a huge cop-out) to third-party vote, at least this time.

I could be wrong.

At any rate, I don't think it's Last Night in America, but instead 3:00 a.m.

Morning is coming.

(P.S. Not like anyone at NR reads this, but assuming they do: Sorry, Chris Buckley, for the tarring and feathering you've endured by others in our party [you are still an elephant, right?]. You're a brilliant writer. You're dead wrong this time, but you're still brilliant. All the best.)

Freedom in Peril

The 2008 Olympics have resulted in great glory for American athletes. I’m proud of them; I especially like the American swimmers taking it to the French and making them look foolish – “smash them” indeed. Nonetheless, ideologically, it’s inconceivable that a Communist country – an ideology we just spent fifty years fighting – is allowed to host a major Western event. What of freedom, what of liberty? Isn’t it painful to anyone that a Greek concept – from whose ancients we derive so much – is being exhibited in a Communist country? Isn’t it upsetting that we’re emboldening a country with which we are at ideological odds? What about Taiwan and Tibet?
Some of us still care about you, Taiwan/Tibet. And we’re boycotting the Olympics.

In Eastern Europe, on top of this, Georgia is clinging with all its might to freedom and liberty while being trampled by Russia. Georgia is a sovereign nation and it has every right to undertake the course of action it chose, namely, putting down a rebellion by Muslim separatists in Ossettia. Russia’s intervention can only be described as imperial, a sickly dream of growing Russia back to her Soviet, or better, Russian Empire size. Russia being the nation that it is, it is the imperative of every Westerner to stand with Georgia. She has every right to preserve herself, in defiance of Russia.

Listen to a bit of Bach, read a Shakespearean or, feeling Latin, a dolce stil nuovo sonnet, and thank God Almighty for Western civilization. These are important times.

Freedom moves through Europe

At least, for now.

Buckley on Panama

What Buckley Tells Us: Vol. 1

This is taken from Buckley: The Right Word, but was originally published as a column entitled "Mystifier" on April 23, 1968:

"...the speech was so heavy with rhetorical pomposity that it would have required a Saturn IV Booster to launch it. Would you like a taste? 'Our time of testing now follows like a twin heritage of challenge - from both these earlier ages....'

If you believe that I selected the single worst passage, I give you the peroration which, I have a paralyzing suspicion, somebody at Rockefeller's shop actually thought was eloquent. . . [sic]

'I believe deeply in such a new government, such a new leadership, and such a new America.
'We as a people have - right now - a choice to make.
'We must choose between a new division or a new dedication.
'We can live together as bullies - or as brothers.
'We can shoose a life of the jungle, or a life of justice.
'We cannot have both.
'We cannot live for long with parts and pieces of both.
'We must choose.'

We must cut the crap...it takes men of archaeological passion to find Mr. Rockefeller's ideas in Mr. Rockefeller's current prose."

Now, you tell me that isn't relevant.

Shari'a?

From wikipedia:

The idea that certain rights are inalienable was found in early Islamic law and jurisprudence, which denied a ruler "the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being." Islamic rulers could not take away certain rights from their subjects on the basis that "they become rights by reason of the fact that they are given to a subject by a law and from a source which no ruler can question or alter."^[1] These ideas may have influenced John Locke's concept of inalienable rights through his attendance of lectures given by Edward Pococke, a professor of Arabic studies.^[2]

So what do we know? That Western Civlization would never have happened without Islam. Never mind that, at best, they were copyists, scribes who translated previously-written texts (their mathematical achievements were paralleled by other cultures), their best [i.e., most famous] figures [I think of Averroe and Omar Khayyam and the Arabian Nights] were publicly denounced, that they didn't show this "respect for inalienable rights" to anyone in Tuscany, Spain, North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, etc., but they were the birth of inalienable rights?

Try again, mon ami.

Wake Up

It's been a while since I've posted, not including the requiescat in pace for Saint (William) Francis. World's going down the drain, though. No one has courage, no one has backbone, everyone trembles before an unseen enemy (which, bizarrely, is supposed to be overwhelmingly moderate and peaceful - which begs the question, then why are you afraid?).

If anything, it calls for the rediscovery of passion, a complete optimism and a refusal to back down. The world can be yours, if you take the time to claim it. There is no obstacle that the West has found insurmountable, has been afraid to face. We should not start now.

Current reading: Sophocles (Oedipus the King), Zora Neale Hurston, William F. Buckley (Miles Gone By). Current music: was Bach, then Rachmaninoff, now Van Morrison.

To quote Churchill:

"You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

On that note, what have you done to save Western Civilization?