The American Spectator

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Indecent Appeasement

5.28.08 @ 12:01AM

HEART-RENDING
Re: Jeffrey Lord's Seeing Evil: The Arms of John McCain:

In the fourth to last paragraph of Mr. Lord's superlative and at times heart-rending piece, he uses the word "tortuous." Wouldn't "torturous" be more appropriate?
-- Jens Andersen
Vancouver, Washington

Kudos to Mr Lord and his timely article on John McCain's trouble with his arms, and where that trouble originated. It is something else to remember on or near Memorial Day that some survivors should also be remembered, and not just the dead.

As for Obama, he can't even remember what he's speaking about on Memorial Day -- or maybe he really does see the dead.
-- Gary Stevenson

So the correct answer for Matthews' guest Kevin James was not, as Matthews himself supplied it, that what Chamberlain did wrong was give Hitler Czechoslovakia.

No, what Chamberlain did wrong was far worse. He never understood he was seeing evil. But Chamberlain did, in the end. In his eventual declaration of war, Chamberlain essentially apologized to the British people for having been unable to see evil in time!

Churchill's eulogy made it clear that he thought Chamberlain was a good man, but his inability to see evil in time to act effectively against it was his failing, not that he never understood seeing it at all.

I suspect that had to be the hardest part for Chamberlain to face while he was slowly dying as the war raged. It must have hurt him a lot as he read about it. No, I doubt if he could have prevented the war entirely...but he could have saved his own nation a great deal of the blood, sweat and tears they later shed. And that, after all, had been his primary responsibility.

The biggest regrets I have in my own life are over the times I have failed to live up to my responsibilities. All too often, I'm afraid, which is why I'm trying harder now. Still, some were not done in time and now never can be.

If I had only one bit of advice to give to Obama, it would be that: don't let it happen to you.
-- Gregg Calkins

Winston Churchill is the source of many witty quotes, but one in particular sums up Neville Chamberlain's naive view of Hitler and his fellow travelers. Chamberlain had made his name in British politics as the reforming mayor of the city of Birmingham, and Churchill drew heavily on this when he remarked that Chamberlain saw foreign policy through the wrong end of a municipal sewerage pipe. I wish there was a single Republican who had the nerve and the wit to make that comment about the Democrats.
-- Christopher Holland
Canberra, Australia

What a wonderful exposition by Mr. Lord. An excellent recitation of Mr. Chamberlain's cowardly folly, which today is heralded as "courage" by Democrats.

Democrats find no appeasement in their various surrenders to evil dictatorships. I have long wondered how they could proclaim they are not appeasers with a straight face. Is it that we, the people are so stupid? Is it because the media refuses to do any critical analysis of what Democrats say and do? Has the world actually turned upside down and what once was heroic is now cowardly and vice versa?

Thanks to Mr. Lord's piece I now do understand, in a flash of brilliant clarity why Democrats are incapable of appeasement. The word is defined as making concessions often in derogation of one's own principles.

As anyone who observes the Democrats knows, they do not have principles. Thank you, Mr. Lord, for the insight.
-- Jay W. Molyneaux
North Carolina

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