Hmmm, let's see...
Works for me.
Posted on 08/06/2010 11:48:57 AM PDT by neverdem
I think it’s more like he was raised in a dem family and it just stuck. It is a conundrum for VDH and one I can’t get my head around. I’m a history nut and his books resonate with me for some reason. Oh well.
It wouldn’t surprise me.
What might be an even better question: What would people like me do if that were to happen? That will have to remain a mystery, for now. ‘>)
Which one do you recommend?
RE: “Obama initially called for understanding and patience with the BP spill, in a way he had not when demagoguing Katrina. He suddenly found Guantanamo, renditions, military tribunals, Predator assassinations, and Iraq to be complex issues, after assuring us that they were open-and-shut cases of simple morality. Bush’s deficit misdemeanors suddenly became Obama’s felonies — after he ran on the theme that Bush had recklessly run up the debt.”
See my Sowell-quote tagline
If you want to focus on ancient Greece I would read “A War Like No Other” - about the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta. Great stuff.
If you want a flavor of his work spanning ancient Greece, the US Civil War and WWII check out “Ripples of Battle”. A good short read at less than 300 pages. This book highlights what I like most about VDH; his ability to correspond ancient events to modern ones. Excellent book.
I think his best known work is “Carnage and Culture” - awesome book but somewhat long at 500 or 600 pages - can’t remember exactly.
I like DVH, but I’m tired of the Bush bashing no matter form it comes in.
note to self, proofread.
But, can the Republic survive Hussein?
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there were pro-American Democrats. The one to remember today, on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, is Harry Truman. Scoop Jackson. Zell Miller. Joe Lieberman (and look where it got him).
Bomb Iran?
I want that poster!!!!!
Be my guest! Thanks.
I agree with some of the sentiments here about the false equivalence between Bush and Obama.
I was no Bush fan, but whatever faults he had, there is no comparison between what he did or didn’t do and Obama’s deep-seated hatred for the United States. And I don’t say this lightly. It really is difficult for me to accuse any president, regardless of party, of hating his own country.
It really is scary to have a president who is so openly hostile to the American people and our culture, to federalism, to our principles, and to the the Constitution.
What is so despicable about Obama is that he clearly has no respect for his Oath to the US Constitution and is brazenly giving the American people the middle finger, almost asking us “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
I really hope we get a Republican Congress with a spine that puts him in his place.
Thank you.
[The common denominator here is that a largely conservative electorate has always wanted lower taxes, smaller but more competent government, fewer overseas commitments, honest government, and officials who live like the public they represent — and it can’t seem to find that package in any party or candidate being presented to it.]
And wouldn’t recognize her if she was right in front of them being attacked daily by a partisan media.
Hailey Barbour ?
Hmmm, let's see...
Works for me.
No, because Iran is his friend. I think he’s more likely to provoke a crisis with a formerly friendly power, feign an assassination attempt and attribute it to the right, or simply declare that he “needs” to have all power (Hitler’s Enabling Act) to overcome unemployment.
He wants Islamic law installed here. And he wants to be in charge of it, which he will be.
That’s a lot of far-out stuff you attribute to him, and most worrisome as you are one of my favorite posters.
If you’ve come to believe it, I am truly concerned, not for you, but for my country.
I do think what you propose is possible, as I see 0bama as a most unstable and brittle individual, likely headed for a breakdown when he loses Congress (and possibly, the Senate) in November.
He is, after all, a relatively young man raised and insulated by a poisonous intellectual monoculture, outside of which there are only class enemies. That monoculture he shares with a large portion of the mainstream media, who appear to be realizing, albeit dimly, that they're only in front of the zeitgeist parade and not really leading it. That monoculture he has brought with him into office, and it's costing him dearly.
One could not imagine Sarah Palin, to whom VDH refers somewhat obliquely in his comment about the electorate desiring a representative who lives like them - us - one could not imagine her bringing an entire staff of Wasilla housewives into DC to running the government, although it wouldn't necessarily be all that bad an idea. But 0bama has surrounded himself with a cage of parrots fledged exactly like him, who respond to opposition only by shrieking louder. It just isn't healthy.
In January 2010 I wrote, somewhat in despair, that I hoped he would grow in office, and he still might, although he isn't showing many signs of it at the moment. The office could also kill him, and I'm not joking, nor would I wish it to happen, but despite a predilection for the philosophical calm brought on by the well-groomed golf links, he has to be in the office at some point, and it turns out to be a very stressful place. Whether he understood Bush's gasp, as he embraced him at the inauguration - "so relieved" - he understands it now.
But along the way he has used a seldom-precedented majority in Congress to push (1) the sad, old-school party-first porkfest that uses money that is increasingly scarce to reward party supporters, (2) a program of progressive nostrums with regard to health care and environmental routes to the acquisition and centralization of power, and (3) a paralysis in foreign policy that is not helped by the least competent Secretary of State we've had in a century. A clever political operator could adjust in the face of an epochal lack of success; an unreflecting ideologue cannot. And for all the talk of 0bama's intellectual powers, he displays a facility of rehearsed expression more adept at getting him through the finals at Harvard than any deep understanding of the canon he is apt to cite.
In short, he may be a bright enough fellow - I'll take that on credit rather than demonstration - but he isn't in the least learned, and with that comes a lack of humility and humor, and a concomitant arrogance, that is a major character flaw. It is annoying when present in a lecturer; it is disastrous when present in a policy-maker. And that's the real problem. The mistakes he has already made, the catastrophic policies he has already put in place and that his party will defend to the last, have robbed him of the ability to triangulate as Clinton did. The damage he has already done to his country is like a set of self-imposed handcuffs.
There is, however, someone who might pull him through this thing, although I don't see it happening. He needs to call his predecessor, the one he's been blaming the fall of the sparrow on, whose policies he has had to continue even as he has continued the same tired criticism. Because what happened to 0bama was that he went to the briefings, and he heard what Bush had been hearing, and realized at last why what has been done, has been. Were he man enough he'd admit it. He isn't yet, and perhaps he will never be, and it is the country who will suffer for it. All IMHO, of course.
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