O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;
I want to sound a note that at first appears incongruous or frivolous but is in fact deeply relevant, namely, how the habitual lie seeps into the national character and becomes an inalienable part of it.
Merle Haggard was anything but a political thinker—or even a particularly good songwriter—but, with the exception of one unfortunate line—his 1981 hit song “Rainbow Stew” summed up the common wisdom of disgruntled Americans.
Tom Fleming and Jim Easton try to find some sense in the Peace President’s military adventure.
Great Britain finally gave up the ghost in the early days of this rainy March, but I shall not now dwell on the immediate cause of her passing, which was, of course, the extirpation of hereditary peerage in the House of Lords.
I had already seen, in every major town that fell under Florentine occupation, the visible signs of Florentine tyranny in the glowering fortresses built by the Medici dukes.
All wars are different. But they have similarities, especially those close in time…. How are things similar to a war up on the steppes of Eastern Europe to a war in the mountains of the Middle East?
There have been more comfortable trips to Italy. The flight was delayed for over an hour in which repairmen fixed some problem in the toilet. They could have simply locked up the one of many facilities, but since the flight was full of young female travelers, who absolutely must hear the sound of running water at least once in every hour, they made the right decision.
Don’t you know there’s a war on, as the reprimand went in the last big one. Detached from reality though I am by disposition, I ought to acknowledge that yes, something like a war is going on there, in fact more than one.
