Body count, &c. [Impromptus by Jay Nordlinger]

National Review ^ | 8/27/2012 | Jay Nordlinger

[Servant of the Cross]

Let me know if I’m being a right-wing paranoid. I saw a headline last week: “US military deaths in Afghanistan at 1,968.” (Article here.)

If a conservative Republican, rather than a liberal Democrat, were in the White House, would the media be doing a big countdown to 2,000?

Based on recent experience, am I being paranoid — or more like realistic? (It will shock you to know that I vote “realistic.”)

Think way back to the Florida recount in 2000. The Democrats worked pretty hard to block military ballots — to have them invalidated. This did not play very well, politically. About two weeks into the recount, Joe Lieberman went on Meet the Press to say that military voters should be given “the benefit of the doubt.” He continued, “Al Gore and I don’t want to ever be part of anything” that might hamper military voters. This horrified Democrats trying to win the election, but they backed off.

This year, the Obama campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic party of Ohio are suing Ohio for its policy on military voting: which gives military personnel extra time for early in-person voting, owing to the vagaries of what they do for us. To read a good article on the subject, go to that political ace, John Fund, here.

With some regularity, Democrats claim that the military favors their presidential candidates, who are thought to be less war-like. Isn’t it odd, then, that the one party seems so touchy about military ballots?

Is that McCarthyite? (Or just true?)

After Prince Harry’s most recent antics, I saw a lot of commentary about how he was just a “young person,” acting as a young person should, “blowing off steam,” etc. Harry is 27. How long will adulthood be delayed, as humanity “progresses”?

Keats was dead at 25. A lot of Britons, within memory, were dead on battlefields long before they reached Harry’s present age.

Just sayin’. Then again, one can make excuses for Harry: his parents’ marriage; his mother’s death.

One more thing: Is Harry a little like Princess Margaret — a younger sibling who can screw off because the older one has all the responsibility?

Here was a damn odd headline, last week — the mind sort of reeled, historically and otherwise: “Israel president asks Germany to back circumcision.” (Article here.)

I was reading Benjamin Kerstein on Noam Chomsky, here. And as I was reading, I thought, “This is some of the most intelligent, clearest, most honest writing I have read in a long time.” It was so good — so rich in those qualities — it reminded me of the writing of National Review’s managing editor, Jason Steorts.

Very high praise, from me.

In a blogpost, Daniel Hannan quoted Norman Nicholson, a “wistful Cumbrian poet,” said Hannan: “That’s the trouble with summer: It’s late so soon.”

I thought of the famous aria from Barber’s Vanessa (words by Menotti): “Must the winter come so soon?”

I wish to give you a snippet from Nobel Peace Prize history, and then tell you why I’m doing so. In 1934, the prize went to Arthur Henderson, formerly the foreign secretary of Britain. He was a fellow-traveler — a great fan of the Soviet Union — and a leader of the disarmament movement. Giving the presentation speech for Henderson was Ludwig Mowinckel, the prime minister of Norway.

Allow me to quote my book — my history of the peace prize:

Mowinckel noted that people were saying, “Germany is arming.” “Well!” replied the prime minister. “In the divine comedy by our immortal Ludvig Holberg about the unhappy Jeppe, we find this sentence: ‘Everybody says that Jeppe drinks, but nobody asks why Jeppe drinks.’” Mowinckel was citing Holberg’s Jeppe på Bjerget, or Jeppe of the Hill (a work from the early 1720s). The prime minister said, “Let us all who now complain that Germany also is arming look into our own consciences and ask why Germany is arming.” And that, Mowinckel was saying, was because other nations were arming, or rearming: acting warlike.

Why do I regurgitate this now? A couple weeks ago in Salzburg, I was amazed to see a poster advertising Jeppe of the Hill — a production in German. Ol’ Holberg, still a draw, 300 years later.

Funny headline — but a perfectly straight headline: “Rat that doesn’t gnaw discovered in Indonesia.” (Article here.) Can a rat that doesn’t gnaw be a rat? Is gnawing central to ratness?

In a column last week, I dumped on the US-China Business Council, saying they were spamming me with the usual pap: about “anti-China rhetoric” (from critics of Beijing) and so on. I wish to say now that I think the council has interesting and worthwhile things to say. My view of Sino-American relations is not the view of the US-China Business Council. But, again, I’m happy to hear the council’s view, and I’ll add that their communications director, Marc Ross, is a rare gentleman.

I was interested to read in an article that Ehud Barak is a pianist. He is a former prime minister of Israel and the current defense minister and deputy prime minister. Never knew about his musicality. I did know David Bar-Illan, the late Israeli writer and editor, who contributed to National Review — and who was Benjamin Netanyahu’s communications director, the first time Bibi served as PM. David had a significant career as a pianist.

The first president of a free, post-Communist Lithuania, Vytautas Landsbergis, was a pianist. And then there was Paderewski — prime minister of Poland immediately after World War I.

I never gave much thought to the Electoral College — thought it was a historical curiosity, kind of confusing. George Will once spoke of “getting to 270” (270 electoral votes). I knew there was something funny about Rutherford Hayes. And I remember a quip by Patrick J. Buchanan.

In these Reagan-loving days, it might be hard to understand, but the scorn poured on Ronnie was great, vicious, and vile. People said he was stupid — a simpleton — and loved to mock the college he went to, Eureka, in Illinois. They made it a big joke. On television, PJB retorted, “Reagan’s real college is the Electoral College” — or something like that.

Anyway, along came 2000. The Florida recount. And Bush v. Gore. The Electoral College, unexpectedly, was a huge issue. And we Bush supporters, more than the other side, had to confront a major question: Is the Electoral College right and just and democratic? Keep it or ditch it?

Thank goodness my friend Tara Ross has written Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College, now out in its second edition, revised and expanded. The foreword, by the way, is by the just-mentioned George Will.

A reader alerted me to a song called “American Muscle.” He said, “I don’t recall a rock song referencing Davos or the Queen of Jordan or monetary policy, but this one does. Catchy tune, thought you’d like it.” I do!

Sample lyric: “I sailed through Fordham and wowed ’em back at Wharton. / I dominated Davos at the Economic Forum. / Baby, the Queen of Jordan won’t stop calling me now.”

As they say in Indian restaurants, enjoy.

Finally, a reader writes, “There’s a Chicago Cubs minor-league player with the greatest name in baseball: Rock Shoulders!” There’s plenty of competition in baseball, not to mention other sports, but that’s hard to beat, true. See you!

[Servant of the Cross]

NR's Jay Nordlinger does his version of random thoughts. I posted mainly because of his points on the hypocrisy of the DNC/MSM industrial complex as it relates to everything military.