An entire nation that adopted a policy of pacifism would soon become a nation of slaves. Since the Christian religion has not yet become the exclusive preserve of fools, cowards, and idiots, it is strange how many people believe that Christ requires believers never to resist evil by force.
Even the dialectically materialist children’s books of my Soviet youth nurtured the idea of an “animal kingdom,” the realm where the lion was tsar. Presumably this autocrat ruled in consultation with his ministers, other imposing mammals like the elephant and the buffalo, and of course the principal temptation for a youthful intellect was to arrange the whole planetary zoo on the lines of the Table of Ranks introduced in 1722 by Peter the Great, whereby every citizen held a civilian rank corresponding to its military equivalent.
America is supposed to be a republic with democratic elements. The republic part, such as the electoral college, the Senate and Supreme Court, limits the excesses of democracy. The democratic element is that, if the people really want something over a reasonable period of time, they’re supposed to get it.
Life is rife with disappointments, none more bewildering, perhaps, than the crash of adolescent illusions. Ever since the distant days of youth I have had a soft spot for the nostalgia of the Russian gypsy song, those early twentieth-century laments that, rather like a gypsy fortune teller, seemed to foretell the impending loss of our homeland and of our liberty.
Long ago when Trump first took office, I advised him on Fleming Foundation to fire all his generals. Including the admirals. Instead, he packed them into his administration: Gen. Mattis, Gen. Kelly, Gen. McMaster. The only good one, Gen. Flynn, got railroaded by Trump’s own “Justice” Department, then later exonerated.
In a world growing evermore progressive – I suspect the Gadarene swine thought this tendency marvelous as they went off the cliff – one has to work hard to stay in place.
When I selected the first Bulldog Drummond for our ongoing discussion of books, it was partly because it is the kind of old-fashioned adventure that people like to read in the summer, and partly the author’s understand of certain fundamental things of life might remind readers of the “world we have lost.”
Afghanistan is not a natiom, much less a nation- state. It is patchwork of hostile ethnicities and regions engaged in endless conflict, alternately lapsing into a cold, or blowing up into a hot, war
Summertime and the living’s not just not easy, but when, even in the shade, it gets hot enough to fry an egg sunny side up it’s pretty much impossible. July, as the gentle reader may have read, was globally the hottest month since records began, and it now looks like August will be even hotter. You just can’t beat this kind of heat with mint juleps.
August 15 marks 50 years since Nixon took us off gold. Since then, gold has gone from $35 an ounce to $1,782. A better way to put it is: The dollar’s value was eroded from $35 an ounce of gold to $1,782 – a reduction of 1/50th of the original value.
