A Snapshot Of What To Expect
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(Old site, 2003-2006)
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In political U.S. terms, this blog is disgruntled Democrat turned Republican, slightly right of what is now deemed "center" -- but admits still to possessing moments of weakness for the rapidly vanishing Democratic party that helped win WWII and the Cold War. (Then again, finding oneself "right of center" is not difficult nowadays, given that according to what one sees of much U.S. political discourse, even a Castro -- and Hillary Clinton -- are apparently now rather rightist, and merely attending church weekly gets one labelled "Ker-ris-chan". Eeeeyou! Not one of those!)
In English terms, this blog loves this country, and it just wishes its politicians would somehow always remember that Britain is where our modern world truly began. Not Brussels. (Actually, to be more precise, just south of Brussels,
where Wellington had thumped a certain well-known continental who was also in favor of "European union".)
Email and Comments Policy
Expatyank@aol.com.
This writer sure as heck doesn't know everything -- unlike
the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, who obviously does -- so disagreement is expected. Well-expressed alternative views and interpretations are more than welcome, for that's how we all learn more in this life. Which means that vulgar and/or obscene comments will probably be deleted. So please phrase all abuse politely, and if in doubt refrain from any colorful metaphors and get thee to a thesaurus.
Some Things Never Really Totally Change
'I was asked the other day by a well dressed frenchman whether my province (for he took the United States to be a mere province) was not a great wine country and whether it was not in the neighborhood of
Turkey or
somewhere there about! Another time I was accosted by a French officer "vous etes Anglais monsieur" said he--"Pardonnez moi" replied I "Je suis des Etats Unis d'Amerique"--"Eh bien--
c'est la même chose"!'
Washington Irving, 1804.
There's little more tiresome abroad, than those too full of themselves
"But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities; they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes, for their supernatural ability to bore, for their delightful asinine vanity, for their luxuriant fertility of imagination, for their startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity!"
Mark Twain, in
"The Innocents Abroad." Why this blog supports him?
Because the world's greatest power needs now, perhaps more than in decades, an experienced pair of hands at its helm,
and not a state senator of a scant 4 years ago, with a messiah complex.
Indeed, this blog cannot support that former state senator not necessarily just because of questions over his views of the War on Terror or the economy. Surprisingly, given what we are told of the "post-racial" future he represents, publicly unaddressed somehow remains this little question:
"Guilty? or Innocent?"
Nope, can't even jest. And that will be deemed
dramatic free speech "progress," following the clear curtailment our free speech had endured during the administration of the last 8 years. Yet that same president was somehow blasted regularly and called (and, funnily enough, mostly by those now same "sensitive" supporters of the Illinois senator's messianic bid), well, just about every accursed name under the Sun, including another "Hi-ler! Hi-ler!"
Theodore Roosevelt's Nine Reasons a Man Should Go To Church
1 In this actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid down grade.
2 Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling responsibility for others.
3 There are enough holidays for most of us. Sundays differ from other holidays in the fact that there are fifty-two of them every year. Therefore, on Sundays go to church.
4 Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in a man's own house as well as in church. But I also know, as a matter of cold fact, that the average man does not thus worship.
5 He may not hear a good sermon at church. He will hear a sermon by a good man who, whith his wife, is engaged all of the week in making hard lives a little easier.
6 He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible he has suffered a loss.
7 He will take part in the singing of some good hymns.
8 He will meet and nod or speak to good, quiet neighbors. He will come away feeling a little more charitable toward all the world, even toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as a soft performance.
9 I advocate a man's joining in church work for the sake of showing his faith by his works.
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November 11, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Danny Lemieux
Robert, it’s hard to imagine what it is that those 25 remaining vets have seen in their lives, isn’t it - they fought a war only shortly after planes had been invented. I wonder if they ever lost their faith in humanity, after all the death and destruction they observed?