Anglosphere

A must read for every Conservative/Libertarian

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The linked article is, IMO, an important read for all of us in the think tank/free market movement. I’ve often started feeble attempts to write a nearly exact commentary, and thankfully, some one wrote it for me.

It encompasses many of the things I’ve attempted to communicate in various debates/discussions with colleagues at Heartland and out on the Free Market Rubber Chicken circuit. It applies to libertarians as much as conservatives.

MODERNIZING CONSERVATISM cogently lays out exactly why the conservative movement is heading toward rough waters.

While I don’t agree with every aspect of prescribed remedies, the need for a reformation of the movement is 100% accurate, IMO.

Some titillating excerpts…

“Long-term evidence indicates that the starve-the-beast strategy not only fails, but may make the problem of unrestrained spending growth worse, suggesting that a “serve the check” strategy might be a more effective means of curbing the growth of government spending. The simple explanation for this seeming paradox is that the starve-the-beast strategy currently allows Americans to receive a dollar in government services while only having to pay 60 cents for it.”

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An Orphaned Cookbook

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The Daughter Unit is, as I have mentioned before, the absolute queen of yard sales, thrift stores and estate sales. She views each possible venue as a rich hunting ground and regularly emerges triumphantly flaunting a high-quality and originally expensive item bought for a relative pittance.  She also has a soft spot for old books, especially the ones which look as if they have had better days. She says they appeal to her rather like  a kind of abandoned pet,  the elderly animal left behind when the owner dies.

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68F on November 13, 2011

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The Location: The front porch, Oak Park.

The Drink: Bourbon and ginger ale.

The Book: Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea: The Daring Capture of the U-505, by Daniel V. Gallery. A pal, a former destroyer officer as it happens, gave me this book with the highest possible recommendation. Rear Admiral Gallery was a salty character. He gives excellent and colorful and opinionated explanations of all aspects of the war against the U-Boats, with many anecdotes. A most educational read, and a page-turner. As of page 130/338 I can recommend it to all who are interested in such matters. If you visit Chicago, you can see the U-505 at its permanent berth at the Museum of Science and Industry, where it came to rest after Gallery’s men captured it.

We won’t get many more nice days like this one this year. Today is pretty much an aberration. I am expecting a severely cold winter this year, based on pure guesswork and gut feel, speculation about sunspot activity and its effect, contrarianism about global warning, general pessimism, and not much else.

(Below the fold, Gallery on the conning tower of the captured U-505, via Wikipedia.)

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Thank you to all of our veterans, living and dead.

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The Statler Brothers, Silver Medals and Sweet Memories

God bless America.

Just a picture on a table
Just some letters Mama saved
And a costume broach from England
On the back it has engraved:
To Eileen, I love you
London, nineteen forty-three.
And she never heard from him again
And he never heard of me

And the war still ain’t over for Mama
Every night in her dreams she still sees
The young face of someone who left her
Silver medals and sweet memories

In Mama’s bedroom closet
To this day on her top shelf
There’s a flag folded three-cornered
Layin’ all by itself
And the sargeant would surely be honored
To know how pretty she still is
And that after all these lonely years
His Eileen’s still his

And the war still ain’t over for Mama….
Silver medals and sweet memories

You Must Love Whittaker Chambers, But You Must Not Drink Too Deeply Of His Perfumed Pessimism; Or, Be Happy For The Struggle Will Be Dire But The Victory Will Be Sweet

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I had a chat with a friend today. He mentioned Whittaker Chambers, and that he sometimes thinks that Chambers was right, that we were on the losing side of history, and the fight itself is the only reward.

I mentioned something I believed Chambers had said, that all we could do was to preserve the “fingers bones of the saints” through the coming Dark Age. I wrote to him after I’d had a few minutes to mull our conversation, and to noodle a little on the Internet. Below, lightly edited, is what I sent.

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I recalled the Chambers quote incorrectly.  He did not say “finger bones of the saints” as I have been misquoting him for years now.

Here is the passage which I remembered erroneously:

That is why we can hope to do little more now than snatch a fingernail of a saint from the rack or a handful of ashes from the faggots, and bury them secretly in a flowerpot against the day, ages hence, when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there was once something else, that something else is thinkable, and need some evidence of what it was, and the fortifying knowledge that there were those who, at the great nightfall, took loving thought to preserve the tokens of hope and truth.

(From William F. Buckley’s memoir of Chambers, here.)

Damn, that is beautiful.

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