Chicago Boyz Archive

Quote of the Day from Winston Churchill, July 4, 1918

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The Declaration of Independence is not only an American document. It follows on the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as the third great title-deed on which the liberties of the English-speaking peoples are founded…. The political conceptions embodied in the Declaration of Independence are the same as those expressed at that time by Lord Chatham and Mr. Burke and handed down to them by John Hampden and Algernon Sidney. They spring from the same source; they come from the same well of practical truth….

Winston Churchill, speech given at the Anglo-American rally at the Albert Hall on US Independence Day 1918.

RTWT.

(Note that Churchill’s reference to the “Bill of Rights” is to the English Bill of Rights of 1689.)

Quoted in a review by Andrew Roberts of Mr. Churchill’s Profession: The Statesman as Author and the Book That Defined the “Special Relationship” by Peter Clarke.

We made a similar argument in America 3.0:

[T]o fully understand the meaning of the American Founding, and of our Declaration and Constitution, we need to go back even farther, to see where they came from. The Founders were not writing on a blank page. Far from it. They made a Revolution because the American people already held strongly to certain principles that they saw coming under increasing threat. And they wrote our Founding documents as a conscious attempt to preserve a valued way of life, at least as much as to make something entirely new.

And Daniel Hannan made much the same point in Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World, when he wrote:

American Patriots didn’t just propose ideas that were inspired by the philosophy of Magna Carta. They saw that document itself as a part of their inheritance. When, as they perceived it, George III violated their patrimony, they too up arms to defend it.

We rightly celebrate our independence, and the Declaration that proclaimed it.

And we are right to recognize that the freedom our Founders fought for was ancient and the Declaration was the embodiment of something very old.

Julie Burchill on Margaret Thatcher, Newly Timely After Nine Years

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[A]s some smart-aleck said, we must change or perish. And who should break our long postwar consensual slumber — not with a snog but with a short sharp smack around the head with a handbag and a cry of “Look smart!” — but the Iron Lady herself.
 
Mrs Thatcher meant, and still means, many things — some of which she is not yet aware of herself, as we are not. Only death brings proper perspective to the triumphs and failures of a political career; it is only with the blank look and full stop of death that that old truism “all political careers end in failure” stops being true. Only a terminally smug liberal would still write her off as an uptight bundle of Little Englandisms, seeking to preserve the old order, however hard she worked that look at first; voting for her was something akin to buying what one thought was a Vera Lynn record, getting it home and finding a Sex Pistols single inside.
 
She was just as much about revolution as reaction, and part of any revolution is destruction. Some of the things she destroyed seemed like a shame at the time, such as the old industries — though on balance, isn’t there anything good about the fact that thousands of young men who once simply because of who their fathers were would have been condemned to a life spent underground in the darkness, and an early death coughing up bits of lung, now won’t be?

Here is the original article. RTWT.

Let’s hear that one more time:

“She was just as much about revolution as reaction, and part of any revolution is destruction.”

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Ron Paul reading America 3.0? Apparently so!

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Ron Paul

According to the Ron Paul Channel he is.

On their page entitled What Ron’s Reading, there’s America 3.0!

I hope he gives the book to Rand Paul when he is finished with it. Chapter 9 in particular will help him transcend the misleading and fruitless neocon versus isolationist terminology on foreign policy. Anyone who disputes the type of engagement typified by the protracted engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be subject to the dismissive label “isolationist.”

The review by David Desrosiers in the Washington Times said “Sen. Rand Paul — and his supporters — should make “America 3.0” their book of ideas.”

Maybe Sen. Paul is having the old man check it out before he reads it himself?

As Jim Bennett and I have noted, we are standing by to brief Sen. Paul about the book at his convenience! And we would be happy to autograph Ron Paul’s copy!

Kevin D. Williamson: “Politics Pays: No society can long thrive by making its innovators subservient to its bureaucrats”

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It is baffling that my progressive friends lament the influence of so-called big money on government while at the same time proposing to expand the very scope and scale of that government that makes influencing it such a good investment. Where government means constables, soldiers, judges, and precious little else, it is not much worth capturing. Where government means somebody whose permission must be sought before you can even begin to earn a living, when it determines the prices of products, the terms of competition, and the interest rates on your competitors’ financing, then it is worth capturing. That much is obvious. Progressives refuse to see the inherent corruption in the new ruling class — and, make no mistake, we now have a ruling class — because it is largely made up of them, their colleagues, and people who are socially and culturally like them and their colleagues.

Politics Pays: No society can long thrive by making its innovators subservient to its bureaucrats., by Kevin Williamson.

Williamson is always good. Be sure to check his posts daily.

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America 3.0: Request for Amazon Reviews — we need to get up to 50 five star ★★★★★ reviews — UPDATE

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UPDATE: When I initially posted this, America 3.0 had 39 five star (★★★★★) reviews, and we needed 11 more to get to the critical number of fifty. Since then America 3.0 has gotten eight new five star (★★★★★) reviews, so we only need THREE MORE.

If you liked America 3.0 but hove not yet posted a review on Amazon, see below, and, I hereby request that you do so!

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