Unfortunately in the year XXXX the whole world was one large international workshop. A strike in the Argentine was apt to cause suffering in Berlin. A raise in the price of certain raw materials in London might spell disaster to tens of thousands of long-suffering Chinese coolies who had never even heard of the existence of the big city on the Thames. The invention of some obscure Privat-Dozent in a third-rate German university would often force dozens of Chilean banks to close their doors, while bad management on the part of an old commercial house in Gothenburg might deprive hundreds of little boys and girls in Australia of a chance to go to college.
History
Guilty Men?
It has been intriguing to read complaints on the right about the Democrats and their supporters blaming the Republicans for the financial mess, when, they argue, so much of it was the Democrats’ fault what with bad legislation, pressure on banks and refusal to agree on any kind of control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How is it possible to be that cynical and for the populace to be that credulous?
I suppose we shall not know just how credulous the populace is until the results start rolling in on November 4 5 but I could not help thinking back to the 1945 General Election in Britain, the one that Churchill’s Conservatives so shockingly lost.
There is a great deal of rather vague historical rationalizing along the lines of people wanting a new order and the war democratizing the British society to an extent not known before. This rather clashes with what we know about the fifties but let that pass. There may have been a feeling that something new was required after a war of that magnitude, though the feeling did not last.
What is far more rarely discussed is the dishonest Labour Party campaign that focused on the issue of “guilty men”. In not very subtle terms this was a campaign that blamed Britain’s unpreparedness for the war and, indeed, the fact that the war even happened on the Conservatives who had refused to rearm in the thirties, thus finding themselves unable to stand up to Hitler in 1938 and fighting a losing battle in 1939. After he had lost the election Churchill added his own version of the tale, which was substantially the same as the Labour one.
NEW BOOK: The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy and War
Re-posted from Zenpundit.com at the request of my co-author Lexington Green:
The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War
This post has been a long time coming.
A while back, we had a a symposium at Chicago Boyz to discuss and debate the superb book Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd
few were initially skeptical and we had one certified critic ( though I had tried to recruit several more). Overall, it was the kind of exchange that makes the blogosphere special as a medium when it is at it’s intellectual best.
Shortly thereafter, via Dan of tdaxp I was approached by the publisher of Nimble Books, W.F. Zimmerman, who happened to be a military history buff and who was interested in working our loose online discussion of Dr. Osinga’s prodigious tome into a book. Initially, I was somewhat dubious but I warmed to the project at the urging of tdaxp and Lexington Green, and agreed to serve as the Editor and “herder of cats” in a project that would involve a large number of contributors with very different backgrounds and some fairly dense and esoteric material on strategic theory to digest and make comprehensible to a general reader.
A wonderful experience.
We had an excellent roster of contributors for The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War
I’d like to think that Colonel Boyd would have wanted it that way.
Why Feminists Hate Sarah Palin
(UPDATE [h/t Alan Henderson]: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose)
Via the usual source … well, if Cathy Young can diagnose it, so can I. Or rather, so can Spider Robinson:
I think one could perhaps make an excellent case for Heinlein as a female chauvinist. He has repeatedly insisted that women average smarter, more practical and more courageous than men. He consistently underscores their biological and emotional superiority. He married a woman he proudly described to me as “smarter, better educated and more sensible than I am.” In his latest book, Expanded Universe—the immediate occasion for this article—he suggests without the slightest visible trace of irony that the franchise be taken away from men and given exclusively to women. He consistently created strong, intelligent, capable, independent, sexually aggressive women characters for a quarter of a century before it was made a requirement, right down to his supporting casts.
Quote of the Day
From commenter “OldSalt” in this discussion at Belmont Club:
One of the major irritants I have about 9/11 is the defacto blackout on all newsreel coverage that day by the MSM. It’s a crime. American’s need to see the result of the failure of deterrence, of the failure of their government to adequately protect them by developing an adequate military, and by projecting power forward to any location that doubts American resolve (e.g. Georgia, for one example, Venezuela for a second example). All the “military power” in the world is useless and wasted if those holding the reigns have insufficient resolve or courage to deploy it, and deploy it sufficiently to “sell it” to the world.
Americans need to see the results of true American failure. They need to see American’s just normal and “ordinary” as themselves making the extra-ordinary decision forced upon them, i.e. to jump to their deaths from 100+ stories to avoid the suffering of burning to death. That was the choice that our politicians left them, when they failed to do their job. (I hold the Clinton Administration and their hold-overs, and the then-Democrat Senate for failing to approve nominations 9 months after the election, primarily responsible. However, there is certainly enough blame to go around, and to cover 20 years of “pretending” by both parties.)
I wish to GOD to see one of the networks grow gonads and put the entire 9/11 day of media coverage on the air. My God, the men going to war today weren’t even teenagers in some cases, and they deserve to know the full context of why the are going to war! However, the liberal MSM knows that the factual media coverage immediately begs the question of “why did it happen?”, “who could or should have prevented it?”, and truthful answers to those questions would be certain to impact the “future political viability” of some of the MSM “journalists” favorite politicians. And so, the blackout continues, even on the so-called “right wing” Fox. Not even profit moves their decisions; it’s an absolute blackout.