Advice To The Ankle Biters - Road to the Middle Class

Suppose he had spent the whole of the last year making speeches on the progress in the war. Why then his opponents would be accusing him of hyping progess, and the Bush Lied folks would be parsing everything he said and would be writing about how on September 17th there really weren’t 95 Iraqi battalions ready for combat but only 87. And that would prove that Bush’s “credibility” was destroyed. And therefore we should bring the troops home.

In any war there are ups and downs. In any war there are horrible mistakes and miscues. In any war you can make a case for disaster any time up to the final battle. In any war there is always a case to be made that the whole thing has been mismanaged from the start, that the leaders didn’t have a clue, that they went in without a plan, that the military contractors are fleecing the government, that the army is broken, that the generals are fools.

In any war there will always be the Falstaffs, whining before the battle in Henry IV Part 1, “I would ’twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.” Do not we all wish that secretly in our hearts?

So the best strategy for the president is probably to keep quiet most of the time and round on his critics, as he did on Wednesday, when they present him with a favorable opportunity for a skirmish.

The best strategy for the Democrats is to keep up the ankle-biting. With their constant carping they have succeeded in eating away at the president’s popularity, and they have kept their left-wing crazies home. If things go south, they can say: “We told you so.” If things go well, they can tell a war-weary nation that it is time for a change.

Of course, that would be dishonorable. But as Falstaff says:

What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon.

Who needs it?

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

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

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

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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

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

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

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

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

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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