The American Spectator

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p> ALL SUNG OUT br> Re: Jeffrey Lord's Newsflash for the Dixie Chicks : /p> p>Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Lord, and humorous closing. I only wish your effort had not been touched off by the latest remarks from Texas's greatest embarrassment, the "Ditsy" Chicks, decrying what they don't understand. They can afford to find out the time of day on their own, if they're interested; we don't need to waste our time giving it to them. br> -- Mike Showalter br> Austin, Texas /p>

Writing in "Bomb Texas" in the Jan. 13, 2003 Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, historian Victor Davis Hanson said, "The anti-Americans often invoke Rome as a warning and as a model, both of our imperialism and of our foreordained collapse. But the threats to Rome's predominance were more dreadful in 220 B.C. than in A.D. 400. The difference over six centuries, the dissimilarity that led to the end, was a result not of imperial overstretch on the outside but of something happening within that was not unlike what we ourselves are now witnessing. Earlier Romans knew what it was to be Roman, why it was at least better than the alternative, and why their culture had to be defended. Later in ignorance they forgot what they knew, in pride mocked who they were, and in consequence disappeared."

When reading Mr. Lord's piece, it strikes me that those such as the Dixie Chicks and other present or past adherents to the Henry Wallace worldview may have forgotten, if ever they knew, what it was or is to be American or what the consequence of such willful ignorance or contemptuous forgetfulness might be.

p>And also while reading Mr. Lord's piece, it struck me that the Wallace/McGovern liberal paradigm may not have begun in America but elsewhere, likely Europe where intellectuals, politicians and cultural elitists envied America's economic success and geopolitical influence for many decades preceding Mr. Wallace's 1946 speech. br> --

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