Churchill Quote of the Day

Churchill wrote this about British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, but it applies much more widely,

"Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened."

Thought for the day

On this first day of March,

"And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring !"

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Life in Double "A" America: the Bankruptcy of the Elites

From a few days ago, Victor Davis Hanson writes about the intellectual bankruptcy of our establishment elite.  A point I have been making to anyone who will listen, in the midst of our world crisis, we are saddled with an establishment marked by second class intellects and third class temperaments.

To quote Oliver Cromwell (by way of Leo Amery),

"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.  In the name of God, go!"

Toynbee on Civilizations

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."

--Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), British Historian

Life in AA America: 'The Ship Be Sinking'

Bear with me a moment.

My all time favorite sports locker room quote comes from former NBA-star Michael Ray Richardson, commenting on the poor play of his early-1980's New York Knicks team,

Richardson:  "The ship be sinking."

Reporter:  "How far can it sink?"

Richardson:  "The sky's the limit."

I recalled the Richardson quote (he's now a successful minor league coach) while listening to this interview on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" yesterday, while driving around town.  NPR interviews Bill Gross, the founder of PIMCO, an investment management firm, on the ongoing debt ceiling crisis in Washington.  Gross has predicted that the U.S. will eventually lose its AAA credit rating.  In yesterday's interview he reaffirmed his view of U.S. credit as "AA moving toward A".

Reflecting on the national debt crisis, I can't move past my Lewis Carroll observation from earlier:  our political class seems extraordinarily capable of "believing impossible things."  Namely, they seem able to believe that we can continue to spend at a rate that requires borrowing 43 cents for every dollar we that goes out, indefinitely.

I will follow Walter Russell Mead's advice and ignore the hour-to-hour twists and turns in the debt ceiling crisis.  But the general trend of events gives me a sinking feeling.

For a counter-point, Mead recommends this piece by Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post.  Samuelson argues that the elites are beginning to pay attention and the latest events represents nothing less than "a crisis of the old order."

Believing Impossible Things

Recent events have remained me of the passage from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass involving Alice and the White Queen,

"I can't believe that!" said Alice.

"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone.  "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."

Alice laughed.  "There's no use trying," she said:  "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.  "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.  Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

"Ozymandias" in the News

Last week I reprinted the Shelley Poem "Ozymandias" after Mark Steyn referenced it in his weekly column.  Now Walter Russell Mead references the poem in describing the Abu Dhabi Sheikh who had his name painted in the Arabian desert in letters you can read from space.

From the Daily Mail:

The poem, again,

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.  Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away' "

Minnesota Shutdown is Over

The partial shutdown of the Minnesota state government over the budget dispute has ended.  Upon reflection, I can't help but think of the Churchill quote, addressing the surprisingly successful evacuation of Allied armies from Dunkirk in 1940,

"We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory."

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

In his column this week, Mark Steyn references this poem by Shelley:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Global Weirding

One of my favorite Hunter S. Thompson quotes comes from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

As Walter Russell Mead writes on his blog, "Global Weirding" is the new hot trend in climate scares and this concept has great promise for the larger world of politics.

Writes Mead,

"Politics, economics, international relations, religion: everything in our world is getting weirder, and the weirding is happening faster all the time."

On Europe,
"Look, for example, at Europe.  Not since the 1930s has the incompetence, incapacity and selfish shortsightedness of Europe’s governing class been so shockingly on display."

On Economics,
"Right now both the real economy and the financial markets are changing so rapidly that nobody really understands how all the pieces fit together."

Robert Heinlein Quote on Poverty and Progress

Via the InstaPundit:

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.  Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.  Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as 'bad luck.' "

Ed Driscoll Posts the Quote of the Day

Ed Driscoll posts his quote of the day from a Down Under website commenter,

“Once a society reaches the point where common courtesy must be legislated, they’ve really just about admitted that they’ve failed.”

(Via Mark Steyn on the National Review Corner blog, Tim Blair)

Magna Carta Now Dead

Well, 800 years is a long run for anyone.  Overturning common law dating back to Magna Carta in 1215, the Indiana State Supreme Court has ruled that citizens have no right to resist illegal entry by police.  Please turn out the lights on your way out.
Perhaps now is the time, as was done in centuries past, to reissue Magna Carta as law.

See the commentary on The Volokh Conspiracy.
Michael Walsh comments in National Review Online's Corner.

Love this quote from William Pitt,

"The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!"

Niall Ferguson on Decline

“Having grown up in a declining empire, I do not recommend it. It's just not a lot of fun actually, decline."


--At the Aspen Ideas Festival, July 6, 2010.


Link to the video


I stumbled upon Niall's quote in reading Mark Steyn's "Happy Warrior" column in National Review.  Mark includes a number of colorful metaphors illustrating Britain's decline as an empire, but I most enjoyed this one, which gives his entry its headline ("Downhill Only"),


"In pre-Thatcher Britain, the escalators seized up, and stayed unrepaired for months on end.  Eventually, someone would start them up again, only for them to break down 48 hours later and be out of service for another 18 months.  It was always the up escalators.  You were in a country that could only go downhill: All chutes, no ladders."

He Who Knows Nothing, Doubts Nothing

The science is settled.

(Via The Soup, basic cable clip show)

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man

A Correction on Quotes

In a first, this blog will post a correction.  A reader questioned the attribution of the quote "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people" to Eleanor Roosevelt, stating that an earlier attribution credits the quote to 19th-century English historian Henry Thomas Buckle.

I am happy to give credit where credit is due.  Usually questionable quotes are credited to Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, or Will Rogers.  One attributed to Mrs. Roosevelt, I felt safe in going with.

Happily, the incident has introduced me to Mr. Buckle, whose work during his brief life focused on the History of Civilization in England, a subject near to the heart of this blog.

Great Eleanor Roosevelt Quote (Corrected on March 18)

I heard a great Eleanor Roosevelt Quote on the Rush Limbaugh show today.  (A sentence you would not expect to read).

"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people."

I will work to follow that advice.

[Note:  See correction on March 18.]

A European's Warning to America

Daniel Hannan, MEP, is that European.  Writing in the Wall Street Journal from the United Kingdom, Mr. Hannan supplies a cautionary tale.

Does his warning come in time?  Hannan quotes Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

(Via Real Clear Politics)

What comes after the Blue Social Model

Walter Russell Mead takes on Paul Krugman, showing where the Nobel-prize winner is both right and wrong about the future of higher education and the professions.

Mead quoting Oliver Wendall Holmes,

"How it went to pieces all at once,
All at once, and nothing first,
Just as bubbles do when they burst."

But all is not doom and gloom with Mead, he also hints at where we could be headed,

"But this process of creative destruction is not a Scrooge-like endeavor to squeeze the honest workers for the benefit of fat cats.  It is clearing the field for new enterprises and new professions.  If education, government and other important services become cheaper and better in quality, and as inflation in other sectors like health care is better controlled, it will be easier and cheaper than ever to start new businesses."