A RED HERRING
Re: Geoffrey Norman’s Ninety-Two Years and Counting:
Geoffrey Norman incorrectly quotes Winston Churchill that
“America should have minded her own business and stayed out of
the World War [I]” — a favorite of neo-isolationists for many
years.
This particular red herring is the very first entry in an
appendix of unattributed quotations in my book, Churchill by
Himself, together with the following note:
“Posted on the Internet in 2002, this quotation
caused a stir. In 1942 a $1 million lawsuit was brought against
WSC (who had denounced the quotation as fiction) by publisher
William Griffin of the New York Enquirer. It was
dismissed when WSC admitted to the interview but denied the
statement.”
My book contains numerous accurate Churchill remarks
expressing exactly the opposite opinion, e.g.: “[There are] only
two ways of winning the war, and they both begin with A. One is
aeroplanes and the other is America.… Everything else is swept
away.” (Munitions Council, 4 September 1917). And: “the moral
consqeuence of the United States joining the Allies was indeed
the deciding cause in the conflict….Defeatist movements were
strangled on the one side and on the other inflamed.” (The
World Crisis, Vol. 3, 1927).
Incidentally, the New York Enquirer later became the
National Enquirer, which is still doling out the same
quality material.
— Richard M. Langworth
Editor, The Churchill Centre
www.winstonchurchill.org
NEW US VS. THEM
Re: George H. Wittman’s Leading From Weakness:
What you didn’t add is that the Obama administration switched to
a British newspaper for its trial balloons because he is far more
interested in what Europeans think than in what Americans think.
I guess we’ll have to get used to it.
The old distinctions between Democrats and Republicans, liberals
and conservatives, though still marginally valid, have now been
replaced by the new distinction:
Constitutionalists and internationalists.
Obama has put the Internationalists in the driver’s seat.
Gee! Haw! Giddyap! Whoa!
— A. C. Santore
SINGLE PAYER: BAD FOR YOUR CONSTITUTION
Re: Philip Klein’s Obama’s False Choices:
If one starts with false questions, one is limited to false
choices. Even if the most rational answer to health care were a
government solution (and no evidence demonstrates the Obama
solution is a prudent one) the question remains faulty
because it is based on an a priori assumption
that government has a role to play. Where in the Constitution is
the right/responsibility of the government (at any level) to
provide health care written or implied? This first
question is being purposely ignored by The Prince and
representatives from both sides of the aisle.
Tea Parties are brewing. Tax revolt hangs in the air. If the
collected strength and wisdom of the Right is going to drop the
people’s elbow on the arrogant and unconstitutional overreaching
of power of the current administration and the Democratic
controlled Congress, wisdom and experience dictate that we go in
with a clear vision of victory, a plan for that victory and an
exit strategy. (We have seen power corrupt the GOP when they had
contol over the White House, Senate and House.) If we are to
battle back extensive taxes and over-regulation, maybe we can
beat back some of FDR’s other legacies.
The Left is drunk on power and feels no need to hide its
arrogance. Their weight on the people is causing many to tremble,
but under such conditions the people do find their way to be
heard. History is replete with leaders and heroes who have heard
the peoples voice and answered the challenge to speak truth to
power. If now is the time to be heard, we must find our
leaders. Times of testing leave only the strong and the
dead.
Before we make our choices, let us be wise enough to ask the
proper questions.
— Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York
IT’S NOT JUST THE BANKS
Re: Philip Klein’s Wrestling With Capitalist
Pigs:
Philip Klein points out the misguided antics of the large banks
that have earned capitalism a bad name recently. I wish to point
out that the capitalist business society is not just made up of
large banks, but the local and regional ones as well, and also
practically any other business that comes to mind. And the vast
majority of these are productive and responsibly run companies
that make our American way of life possible. As the author states
in his story, government intervention is anathema to the free
markets, and a strong argument can be made that this is why we
are in all this mess to begin with.
— Richard Craig
Q.E.D.
Re: Quin Hillyer’s Blocking the Funds of
Terrorists:
“Who can object to giving money to charities?”
If the government wants to decrease a behavior, they tax it more
heavily.
Prince Obama proposes decreasing the allowance (i.e., increasing
taxes) for charitable giving.
Therefore, The One objects to giving money to charities.
— Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York
A BAKER’S DOZEN OF REFORMS
Re: Andrew Cline’s The NCAA’s Slaves:
Here’s a new plan to reform the NCAA:
No freshmen play on the varsity…
Each school must have try-outs open to all students…
No recruiting….
All athletes must meet the academic entrance standards of the
school…
They must also show academic progress each year….
No coach can be paid more than a professor…
Restore the Regionals. Teams in the West play in the West
Regional, etc. (Note the disgrace this year of Big East teams
being #1 seeds in 3 different Regionals, and none of them making
the finals)…
TV money must be shared equally between all NCAA
schools….
Bring back the student-athlete. No more professional athletes
dominating college sports.
— C. Baker
PERSPECTIVE NEEDED
Re: Patrick O’Hannigan’s Obama, Noonan, and
Blarney:
I lost respect for Peggy Noonan during her Palin-bashing in the
last election. My sense is that time has passed Ms. Noonan by.
She’s comfortable in the detached world of high concepts and
ideals and has lost touch with the grit of real life. In that
sense she is a perfect match for Obama, which may explain the
attraction. Aloof elitists both.
Obama’s actions will have devastating affects on people. Noonan’s
journalistic ramblings on Obama’s persona shows she is equally
detached from the impact of what he is doing.
— Dave U.
A HISTORY LESSON
Re: Jason Emerson’s Lincoln’s Decisive
Switch:
I submit just a brief remark or two regarding the featured review
of the “Lincoln’s Decisive Shift” by Jason Emerson.
I simply ask is this the same Lincoln that lectured black’s in
the Oval Office that it was their duty to leave this country? Did
he give them an option of being sent to Liberia or Haiti?
Was this the same Lincoln that was pushing for legislation in
1861 would have prevented Congress from making slavery illegal?
Was this the same Lincoln that stated to blacks that it was
impossible for whites and blacks to commingle?
Did Lincoln tell the negroes in 1862 which he had he
summoned…”you and we are different races”. We have between us a
broader difference than exists between almost any other two
races”. Right or wrong,” the difference meant that the negro was
unassimilable in American
society. Freedom will not solve the problem.” “If the negroes
wanted to avoid a future of menial subjection, they should think
of colonizing, under United States protection in Haiti or in
Central American. It is better for both of us”. Good old Abe
clearly did not consider negroes equal in potential but
instead inferior as a race.
Where in hell does the American Spectator dig up these book
writers that write pure myth. I realize that your top editor has
a thrill up his leg for Churchill not unlike Chris Mathews has
for the man child. Your editor has bought all the Churchill self
promotion crap that Churchill put to ink… including lies —
true history be damned.
Surely he is ignorant as to true history and how Churchill lied
twice regarding Sir Hugh Dowding. Churchill’s words did not win
one battle. Dowding and his few only saved the western
civilization. George Will wrote that “we remember Jefferson but
live Hamilton. We remember ego driven Churchill but few know
Dowding was the the true hero that lead the few brave fighter
pilots. Churchill… please take another bow.
This is the second book feature by the Lincoln Cult which has
little with fact. Sad. Fortunately my subscription spanning some
ten years soon closes out. You magazine is following the
Republican party. You do not demand the truth and have less and
less influence. Apparently all your staff is the product of
government education.
— William Davies
THE LIBERAL CAREER TRACK
Where are now all those demonstrators shouting “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi
Min”? Where are now those killers of Weather Underground and the
Black Panthers? Where are now the former members of the Communist
Party USA?
Well, in several places, as follows:
1) they are now tenured radicals in our universities “teaching”
the new generations how to elect that empty suit from Kenya as
our Community Organizer-in-Chief with his ACORN
brownshirts;
2) they are in the Congress and in the White House nationalizing
banks, oil companies, and automobile industry while printing
soon-to-be wirthless trillions of dollars (read also about their
visit with the Castros, for example);
3) they are in the environmentalist movement saving “endangered”
species (like polar bears whose population in the last 30 years
went from 5,000 to 25,000), maintaining deadly rotting swamps
full of mosquitos, as “wetlands,” killing 110 milion Africans
with their outlawing of the completely safe DDT, stopping all oil
drilling everywhere, saving the planet by stopping global cooling
(hm, no — that 1970s scam did not work), by stopping global
warming (hm, no — that hoax of the 1990s did not work what with
11 years of cooling), by stopping climate change flimflam now
with enormous new taxes;
4) they are members of ACLU, Human Rights, Amnesty International,
etc. — where they defend criminals, terrorists, mass murderers,
Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and similar humanity
benefactors and freedom fighters.
That’s where they all are!
— Marc Jeric
Las Vegas, Nevada
