History

It Shall Be Sustained

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On July 4, 1941–five months before Pearl Harbor–a 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.

Other 4th of July reading:

Power Line has thoughts from Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge(!)

Reenlistment ceremony in Baghdad.

Update: Corrected date of original radio broadcast of the Benet poem.

No Fun Beyond the Khyber Pass

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Douglas Hurd, former British Foreign Secretary, has a review in the Spectator of A Million Bullets: The Real Story of the War in Afghanistan by James Fergusson.

The book recounts the brave performance of the British Army and RAF in Afghanistan, under difficult circumstances. Nonetheless, the mission is not going well. Hurd tells us that Fergusson quotes one Captain Leo Docherty:

You don’t win hearts and minds with soldiers; you need engineers, builders, the development people from DFID. We have embedded journalists; they risk their lives to do their jobs. Why can’t we have embedded development individuals? That’s what we need.

This is yet another iteration of Tom Barnett’s long-standing cry for a SysAdmin force to “win the peace” once the initial round of shooting has died down.

Without such a capacity, it is categorically impossible to realize the kind of ambitious “nation building” goals that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair articulated once the current two wars got under way:

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My Kind of Guy

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(via Steve and Aaron)

Getting Warm

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…a good time to spare an appreciative thought for Willis Carrier.

Enjoy it while you can.

The Democratic Party, egged on by the mainstream media and by its own “progressive” wing, has demonstrated considerable hostility toward energy production in any practical form. And activists of many types have shown great skill in using the legal and regulatory systems to delay energy-related projects…for years, and sometimes for decades.

If we have an Obama presidency and a Democratic sweep of the House and Senate, I think it is likely that in 10 years, the number of people who can afford air conditioning will be much smaller than it is at present.