“The contrition tour goes beyond Latin America. In China, Mrs. Clinton told audiences that the United States must accept its responsibility as a leading emitter of greenhouse gases. In Indonesia, she said the American-backed policy of sanctions against Myanmar had not been effective. And in the Middle East, she pointed out that ostracizing the Iranian government had not persuaded it to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.”
Sandler wrote that Hillary brought to mind Bill Clinton:
“On a single trip to Africa in 1998 … Bill Clinton apologized for American participation in slavery; American support of brutal African dictators; American ‘neglect and ignorance’ of Africa; American failure to intervene sooner in the Rwandan genocide of 1994; American ‘complicity’ in apartheid … .”
Yet, as C.S. Lewis reminds us in “God in the Dock,” “The first and fatal charm of national repentance is … the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing — but, first, of denouncing — the conduct of others.”
Bewailing the policies of Bush as failures and standing mute in the face of attacks on his country and predecessors may come back to bite Obama.
For when Jimmy Carter assumed a posture of moral superiority over LBJ and Richard Nixon, by declaring, “We have gotten over our inordinate fear of communism,” it came back to bite him, good and hard.
Category: Quote of the Day
Quotes of the Day
I don’t know if this qualifies as ‘insider trading’, but if you own Federal Express stocks you might want to sell, sell, sell.
As happens every few years, Washington was turned on its head and the neocons ended up back on top. The conservatives who endorsed Obama last year in hopes of seeing change in foreign policy are long forgotten. The hawks who went hoarse trying to defeat him are celebrated by liberals as the responsible faction on the Right. There was no manipulation involved, just a minor rebranding. As easily as one Kagan steps down from the stage, another rises to take his place. So PNAC becomes FPI, and the neocons become the new Obamacons.
Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, The Beauty Stop, The World According to Carl, The Right Nation, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Quote of the Day
Will it be Texas governor Rick Perry? Perry is using rhetoric about seceding from the union. That is EXACTLY the kind of thing we need. I believe, given the other states with similar resolutions in their legislatures, that it would begin a domino effect. It would give people a chance to actually have a clear reason to fight: their state’s rights of sovereignty and they would know that they have the state’s resources behind them. Unfortunately, even though it’s clear what a boost Texas seceding would be in uniting us, I have no doubt that Perry is not up to the task and is using the issue as nothing more than a rallying point for reelection.
Where have all the heroes gone? Where are all the pioneers? Where are the visionaries? Where are the true statesmen? Where are the defenders of freedom? What has happened to the American Spirit of life and liberty? I guess they’re all at the mall or Starbucks and are too fat to get up out of their chair and fight. Or they’re looking forward to retirement and the “good life” after spending their life being a good soldier and playing by the rules and saving for the “golden years” while their real golden years of youth were passing them by. Certainly they can’t be asked to risk all that for something as silly as their children’s futures. How selfish of me.
Or maybe we don’t want to risk our children’s well-being now, so we defer it until they’re adults and let them deal with the fact that they can’t afford college or health care or a home without going into enormous debt and we never teach them the importance of things like: character, honor, integrity, truth and freedom but rather teach them how to live in fear and how important it is to get a “good job” and play by the rules and to go along to get along and that will be safe.
Quote of the Day
Supporters of the sexting law say it’s necessary so that teenagers will not be prosecuted as sexual offenders and have their lives ruined. There is some validity to that, as dopey kids do dopey things. However, the sane solution would be to categorize sexting as a misdemeanor breach of the peace, thus sending a message that it is unacceptable for kids to send other kids sexual images.
But secular-progressives are loathe to make that judgment. Remember, these are the same people who believe a girl has the right to an abortion without telling her parents. So if a kid can undergo a major life altering operation (especially for the fetus), why should it be a big deal to do a little sexting?
With a liberal federal government and media, there is little opposition being voiced to what is happening in Vermont and other secular-progressive enclaves. Culture war issues have been forced to the back room by the awful economy, and the S-P’s are taking full advantage. If American children are legally allowed to send explicit pictures of themselves to other kids, then say goodbye to traditional boundaries of behavior.
The slippery slope is here.
Quote of the Day, Part 1
Can I tell it like it is? Our Christian leaders are not fighters, they are authors. Osteen, Dobson, and Warren are more famous for what they have written, than for what they have done. They are more concerned with how they will be perceived by the enemy than they are with defending the Truth. While the enemies of God kill, steal, and destroy our children, our leaders are worried about the “tone” with which our message is delivered. They are more concerned with looking Christian than being Christian.
Compassion– a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
Compassionate conservativism shows more sympathy for those they are fighting than for those they are supposed to be defending.
So, has the Republican Party advanced Christianity or has Christianity advanced the Republican Party?
No King but King Jesus! Long live the King!
It is time to let conservatism die.
Quote of the Day
If Friday’s ruling is upheld, John Demjanjuk, who has been charged with no crime on German soil, is to be taken to Germany, home of the Third Reich, to be tried by Germans for his alleged role in a genocide planned and perpetrated by Germans. He is to serve as the sacrificial lamb whose blood washes away the stain of Germany’s sins.
But if Germans wish to prosecute participants in the Holocaust, why not round up some old big-time Nazis, instead of a Ukrainian POW.
Answer: They cannot. Because the Germans voted an amnesty for themselves in 1969. So now they must find a Slav soldier they captured — and Heinrich Himmler’s SS conscripted and made a camp guard, if he ever was a camp guard — to punish in expiation for Germany’s sins.
The spirit behind this un-American persecution has never been that of justice tempered by mercy. It is the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago.
Quote of Day
“It seems that what we are seeing in the return of the Churchill bust is less a personal vendetta against Churchill the man and more an open breach in the Western continuum out of which a new orientation toward the Third World will become increasingly apparent. Having achieved a Washington-like apotheosis in the American imagination, Churchill serves not only as the preeminent symbol of resolve, courage and faith against the enemies of Western civilization. He serves as a symbol of Western civilization, period.”
The return of the Churchill bronze confirmed the suspicion that Obama was anti-Occident. The habit of giving inappropriate, thoughtless presents? as he and his family are deluged with wild effusions of love and lavish gifts? this shows Obama to be, well, a bit of a pig.
George Will once wrote that “manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related—as a foundation is related to a house—to the word civilization.”
The ability to mind one’s manners in dealing with others is a reflection of the mettle of a man. Or a woman.
Quote of the Day
While NATO provides Europe with a security blanket, it provides America with what she cannot live without: a mission, a cause, a meaning to life.
Were the United States, in exasperation, to tell Europe, “We are pulling out of NATO, shutting down our bases and bringing our troops home because we are weary of doing all the heavy lifting, all the fighting and dying for freedom,” what would we do after we had departed and come home?
What would our foreign policy be?
What would be the need for our vaunted military-industrial complex, all those carriers, subs, tanks, and thousands of fighter planes and scores of bombers? What would happen to all the transatlantic conferences on NATO, all the think tanks here and in Europe devoted to allied security issues?
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the withdrawal of the Red Army from Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO’s mission was accomplished. As Sen. Richard Lugar said, NATO must “go out of area or out of business.”
NATO desperately did not want to go out of business. So, NATO went out of area, into Afghanistan. Now, with victory nowhere in sight, NATO is heading home. Will it go out of business?
Not likely. Too many rice bowls depend on keeping NATO alive.
Quote of the Day
As we celebrate the vicarious death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, let us remember the importance of preserving liberty within these United States of America. And this commitment involves much more than attending church once a week or repeating an occasional catechism. It means we must seek to incorporate the principles of liberty and independence into the very fabric of our lives and work. It means we will offer eternal vigilance to the fundamental principles upon which America was built. Liberty has no guarantees or assurances. Each generation must work to preserve, protect, and defend the principles of constitutional government, or else liberty will be lost.
Made a fool of by Hitler, baited by his backbenchers, goaded by Lord Halifax, facing a vote of no confidence, on March 31, 1939, Chamberlain made the greatest blunder in British diplomatic history. He handed an unsolicited war guarantee to the Polish colonels who had just bitten off a chunk of Czechoslovakia.
Lunacy, raged Lloyd George, who was echoed by British leaders and almost every historian since.
With the British Empire behind it, Warsaw now refused even to discuss a return of Danzig, the Baltic town, 95 percent German, which even Chamberlain thought should be returned.
Hitler did not want a war with Poland. Had he wanted war, he would have demanded the return of the entire Polish corridor taken from Germany in 1919. He wanted Danzig back and Poland as an ally in his anti-Comintern Pact. Nor did he want war with a Britain he admired and always saw as a natural ally.
Nor did he want war with France, or he would have demanded the return of Alsace.
But Hitler was out on a limb with Danzig and could not crawl back.
Repeatedly, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. Repeatedly, the Poles rebuffed him. Seeing the Allies courting Josef Stalin, Hitler decided to cut his own deal with the detested Bolsheviks and settle the Polish issue by force.
Though Britain had no plans to aid Poland, no intention of aiding Poland and would do nothing to aid Poland — Churchill would cede half that nation to Stalin and the other half to Stalin’s stooges — Britain declared war for Poland.
The most awful war in all of history followed, which would bankrupt Britain, bring down her empire and bring Stalin’s Red Army into Prague, Berlin and Vienna. But Hitler was dead and Germany in ashes.
Cost: 50 million lives. “But ’twas a famous victory.”
Quote of the Day
In future years, when they regain political power, conservatives will likely face the difficult task of reforming entitlements while minimizing the social fallout of the citizens who have come to view them as acquired rights. All the more reason to take Western Europe’s lessons on public spending growth seriously: at the moment, it seems that even with plentiful European evidence of the dangers of too much public spending, American policy makers are unwilling to change course, willing to repeat the mistakes of Western European countries while the leaders of these very countries argue in favor of a different course.
