It Shall Be Sustained

On July 4, 1941five months before Pearl Harbora long poem titled Listen to the People, written by Stephen Vincent Benet, was presented on nationwide radio. The full text was also printed in Life magazine. Here’s the whole thing. I posted an excerpt of this poem at Chicago Boyz in 2006…in the comments, Steve Barton points to a podcast of a 1943 performance of this work.

UPDATE: Some Independence Day thoughts from Cassandra. Worth reading more than once.

Teach-Ins of Sorts

A lifetime ago, I took a couple of courses in American Civ from William Goetzman; Amazon nudged that memory by noting his Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism had come out. Although not getting much read lately, I ordered it. Yesterday, A&L linked to a discussion in The Chronicle of Higher Education (which supports A&L). Carlin Romano’s “Obama, Philosopher in Chief” uses Goetzmann as foil.

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Have a Nice Day

The underlying fundamentals are toxic: US gross debt as a percentage of GDP (currently at 375%) is still climbing, housing prices are still falling (wealth destruction as far as the eye can see), un/underemployment is still rising (an inability to service debt), the financial industry is back to its old tricks (bonuses are shooting through the roof again, etc.), China is still manipulating its currency (dashing prospects of future jobs), commodities (higher costs for daily life) are shooting up again, etc. Worse, what action has been taken is largely short term masking of symptoms and not a cure. Our government “brain-trust” is using all of its financial powder on deprecated 20th Century economic measures to prop up the industries that got us into this crisis: like the greasing of palms in the bloated construction industry (what relation that industry has to our future prosperity is a big mystery) and the flooding of a failing oligopoly (the financial industry) with free money.

So where is it heading?

“… a post-Westphalian century replete with neo-feudalism and global guerrillas is on an inexorable march.”

John Robb.

A Strategic Clarion Call: Part I

Looking at my own intellectual journey, I find that creativity usually comes in short bursts that punctuate long periods of reading, reflection, and hard work. About two weeks ago the National Security Blogosphere saw a great burst of creativity by the mind of Zenpundit. In this post (read every word!), Zenpundit identified several issues that the last couple of years of operations in Iraq have brought to the fore:

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