Dutton’s Arts & Letters links to The National’s “The Trial of Leonid K“, which chronicles the attempt by Khruschev’s grandchildren to resurrect the reputation of their father, a World War II hero maligned of late. It is a cry against thuggery – the Russian tradition of rewritten history. Gossip, rumors, suggest: “The point is to suggest; soon, the suggestions will evolve into a belief, which will evolve into an orthodoxy.” But if our libel suits are complicated and victories sometimes counterproductive, in Russia such attempts are even more likely to cross quicksand:
History
Quote of the Day
… the right of self-defense was not a right that was enacted by governments and granted to the people. The right was inherent in the natural order of the world, and the right existed everywhere. The principle of a natural right of self-defense was pervasive among the American Founders. The Founders viewed resistance to tyranny … simply as an application of the right of self-defense, which was a natural right regardless of whether a person was attacked by a lone criminal, or by a large criminal gang, in the form of a tyrannical government.
David B. Kopel, The Catholic Second Amendment
(Good essay — but riddled with typos.)
Oh for a Cromwell
Someone sent me an e-mail with the text of Oliver Cromwell’s speech to the pesky House of Commons in 1653. This was the Rump Parliament, the remnant of that inordinately long Long Parliament and Cromwell decided that they had outsat their welcome. He marched in with some troops, seized the Mace and said:
“…It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God’s help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.
“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”
And they went. One can’t help feeling that there is place for a Cromwellian action now for all sorts of reasons, not just the highly entertaining saga of MPs getting caught with their hands in the till. I hope that he will reappear in time to ban huge Christmas celebrations as well.
Quote of the Day
This financial and political system is the operating system on which the world runs; the Dutch introduced version 1.0 in about 1620; the British introduced 2.0 in about 1700; the Americans upgraded to version 3.0 in 1945, and as an operating system, it works pretty well—most of the time. The 300 years of liberal, global capitalism have seen an extraordinary explosion in knowledge and human affluence. Not everybody shares in these benefits, and there are environmental and social costs to the rapid progress. Still, not many of us would like to turn the clock back to 1610.
But the system has bugs—among them, a tendency to crash. Ever since the great Dutch tulip bubble of 1637, the economic system has been prey to roller-coaster-style booms and busts. From the South Sea bubble of 1720 to the subprime loan bubble of our own time, the financial system leads people into irrational behavior and fever dreams of wealth and of eternally rising prices for stocks, houses—and tulips. These episodes never end well, and as time passes and the financial system grows more complex, more global and more interdependent, the cost of these periodic crashes gets worse.
RTWT.
That Nazi Bastard Could Fly!
Ernst Udet. Possibly one of the best pilots ever. Came to a bad end after getting into bed with the Nazis.