Month: November 2008 (Page 1 of 4)

On the David Horowitz TV video podcast: Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2008 presidential election, challenges facing the Obama administration, and history’s lessons.

Hanson’s “Restoration Weekend” lunch keynote, and the Q&A session that followed, are both packed with good discussion and well worth watching. Both videos can be viewed online here. Or, do what I did and get the latest episodes via the iTunes podcast feed.

…of others — still just as relevant the day after:

Victor Davis Hanson: “Some Random Politically-incorrect Reasons to Be Optimistic on Thanksgiving Day”. (Appreciation of dedicated pilots and the wonder of air travel hardly seems “un-PC”, but I suppose his other points qualify.)

Bill Whittle celebrates the life of a friend recently lost.

Neo recalls a Thanksgiving spent alone, in “Thanks for the burger, but no thanks”. (I’ve been there!)

A horrific night/day in India’s financial capital, and it’s apparently still ongoing. Most reports thus far estimate between 100 and 125 killed, and approximately 300 wounded, after gunmen opened fire and lobbed grenades at six or seven sites around the city. Responsibility for the attacks has yet to be clearly established, though some say this attack on soft targets has the hallmarks of an al Qaeda operation. Reports claim that in addition to the 14 police officers and 80 Indian nationals killed, the gunmen were questioning people and targeting holders of British and American passports. Hostages were taken; some released or escaped, some may still be held. The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel is ablaze and under seige.

A selection of current reports via Drudge:

BBC: Indian PM vows action on attacks

Breitbart: 14TH LD: 125 dead, more than 300 wounded in Mumbai terror attacks

Times Online: Foreigners targeted in co-ordinated Bombay attacks

Sky News: Mumbai Hotel Terror Attacks: Scores Killed In Violence Against Foreigners By Islamist Militants

Via Instapundit: a roundup at Barcepundit, and comments from Ann Althouse.

Roger Kimball on a ridicule-worthy legal absurdity in Strasburg, Illinois:

On one side you have these preposterous petty tyrants (in the case of IDOL, they’re called “conciliators”–how George Orwell would have like that!) armed with the power of the state, on the other side you have individuals and local communities endeavoring to stand on their own two feet and live their lives without “bailouts” and unmolested by state interference.

But such autonomy is the one thing these miniature despots can’t abide. They don’t want people to be independent. They don’t want local communities to take care of their own needs. They want to meddle. They want to be the sole source of sustenance and labor–and they want to do it, of course, on their own terms, enforcing their own requirements for who gets to work, when, under what conditions, and how much they are paid. This, as Friedrich Hayek observed, is the road to serfdom.

John Agresto at NRO, courtesy of Ed Driscoll:

This, by the way, is why Sarah Palin was so refreshing and, to be clear, so exotic to all the elites: a woman who could raise herself up by dint of hard work and self-sacrifice to be a wife, mother, mayor, and governor. She didn’t do it by set-asides, by birth, by quotas, or by handouts. She did it as a woman and she did it by her efforts. She exemplified what we all once saw as America—a land of opportunity, where you could be anything you set your mind to be so long as you worked for it. She showed us something about both her character and ours, our old-fashioned American character. For all this, she had to be ridiculed—she represented a kind of American virtue that shames the privileged, whether they be rich or poor.

But maybe we as a party have boxed ourselves in. We believe that prosperity will trickle down from the success of the prosperous and we believe (or have been shamed into believing) in the superior moral status of those whose only job is always to ask for more. But the shiftless have no greater moral claim than others, and prosperity doesn’t always trickle down from the top. It wells up from the efforts of the working classes, the middle classes, the builders, doers, and makers of America. And it’s not just small-business owners who are the backbone of America but the clerks and sales people and night watchmen in those businesses.

The poor knew Obama was on their side, and the liberal rich were always in his camp. (If it’s simply “the economy, stupid,” and not culture and values, then why does Connecticut always vote Democratic and West Virginia not?) No, the strange thing was that the party of self-reliance, of initiative, of productivity and hard work, the party of cops and soldiers, firemen and farmers, hunters and ranchers—the party of ordinary American virtue, not privilege—allowed itself to look like the party of big oil and bailouts. How bizarre it was to see a plumber trying to come to our rescue and tell us what to say; but it was already too late.

Ample material for ten insightful articles, condensed into one. Don’t miss Victor Davis Hanson’s latest: “Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts”.