Nyt Take A Powder Dems - Road to the Middle Class

THE NATION´S newspaper of record finally said it. Responding to a letter “from an opponent of the invasion who urged the American left to `get over its anger over President Bush´s catastrophic blunder´ and start trying to figure out how to win the conflict that exists,” The New York Times opined:

No one wants a disaster in Iraq, and Mr. Bush´s critics can put aside, at least temporarily, their anger at the administration for its hubris, its terrible planning and its inept conduct of the war in return for a frank discussion of where to go from here.

Oh good. So now after encouraging the crazies for two years the Times has suddenly decided it is time to get responsible. Maybe that is because Bush has almost won the war (it certainly is telling that the noted strategic expert Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) has recently called the Iraq War a quagmire).

On the matter of Sen. Kennedy, Tony Blankley thinks that “Ted Kennedy and the exit strategy crowd” can be explained by modern developmental psychology. At a certain age, children get to believe that they can manipulate the world through mere wishes. “Babies cry and mother brings them milk... They cry and mother changes their nappy. Thus the immature mind develops the magical idea that the physical world can be manipulated by merely wishing for something.” It is telling that Sen. Kennedy would never think of developing an exit strategy for something he believes in. Like government education.

Liberals have been telling this Vietnam Quagmire story to themselves for a generation. But there was never a quagmire, and the American people never turned against the war. What happened was that liberals turned against the war and managed to pitch President Nixon out of office. Then a Democratic Congress cut the funds to support South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese invaded the south, and that was the end of the Republic of South Vietnam. After it was all over liberals needed a narrative that exculpated them from their responsibility for sending twenty million people into slavery. They decided that their policy to get out of Vietnam at any cost was a noble attempt to extricate the United States from its Vietnam quagmire.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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