argus

Your only required reading assignment today: Top Ten Reasons to Stop the ACLU

Happy birthday to the United States Marine Corps — here’s to 230 years of excellence, sacrifice, and leadership. If it’s true that our country’s kids need more heroes and role models, they can find them in the Marines. HOORAH.

Forwarded from my sister with the comment “who needs a gun”: Arkansas man kills deer in house

It is stunning: I still hear on a semi-regular basis from a few acquaintances quips to the effect of “Oh, everyone simply knows that there were no WMDs in Iraq, that the intelligence was just WRONG.” A few of the farther left of these acquaintances will go ahead and press for the touchdown: “Isn’t it just OBVIOUS at this point that Bush LIED?!” It’s one thing to read commentary about such people; they then seem remote, more or less properly ensconced in surreality. It’s quite another thing altogether to be face to face with someone who appears to (still) genuinely believe that a) there are/never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and/or b) that Bush knew this and intentionally lied about it to take us into war.

For any of you who still cling to the fantasy-land myth that is a), go read this article by Jack Kelly (hattip to Mr Boortz). A sample:

The 4th Infantry Division discovered in an ammo dump near the town of Baiji 55 gallon drums of chemicals which, when mixed together, form nerve gas. They were stored next to surface-to-surface missiles which had been configured to carry a liquid payload.

As Neal says, is the math really that hard here? Or are we still hearing that there were/are “no WMDs in Iraq” because the moonbatty left doesn’t consider the stockpile described above a “WMD” because it hasn’t been mixed yet — a process which might take a day, and probably more like a few hours?! Nitpickiness of this degree over such inane technicalities must be a genetic defect in Lefties (ala Clinton’s dissertation on what the meaning of “is” is).

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming :)

Several days ago, Neal Boortz linked to an OpinionJournal article by Peggy Noonan entitled “A Separate Peace”. The gist of the article is that Noonan has observed an undercurrent of resignation in the country — resignation about the near-future. That the “trolley is off the tracks”, to use her phrase, and that there isn’t much if anything that can be done.

Read “A Separate Peace” >>

This is a striking thing to read: it’s the theme of conversations I’ve been having with various people for years now, dating all the way back to mid-college. But whenever the subject weighed too heavily on me, I would brush it off with the self-reassurance that my concern was the result of naivete. Surely They have everything under control. “They”, of course, are “the elites”: “our educated and successful professionals”, according to Noonan. What makes Noonan’s article really hit hard is her observation that the elites — “the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us” — seem to break down into two basic categories. The first category are those who recognize that we’re hurtling to an unknown and likely unpleasant future and are going to do whatever they can to stave off disaster. The second category are those who seem resigned to this future and have merely tried to “get theirs” from live, adopting a tired, melancholy live-and-let-die mentality.

What’s driven me to post about all of this? I’ve since forwarded/recommended this article to several people …and in their response to me they *all* mentioned the same sorts of things: a conversation that was had “just the other night” with their spouse about their concerns for the “big picture” future; a conversation with close family at a recent get-together; an over-the-water-cooler sort of conversation that turned unexpectedly heavy when “the future of the country” suddenly popped up. I had always thought that my musings over such a bleak subject were an isolated outlier, but Peggy’s apparently right — we the people can sense the coming storm. Dr. Franklin’s prescient words to Mrs. Powell in 1787 Philadelphia may be put to the test in our lifetimes: “A republic - if you can keep it.”

May God give all of us the humility and wisdom to indeed “keep it”.

UPDATE Here’s a perfect example of “off the tracks”: 9th Circuit Rules Parenthood Unconstitutional. How’s that homeschooling option looking now?