Curtis Dahlgren
UN GLOBAL WARMING CONFERENCE CONCLUDES; "Snow-blanketed U.S. battles freezing winds and ice"
By Curtis Dahlgren
"Never think that you've seen the last of anything." — Eudora Welty, UW '29 ("The Optimist's Daughter"; 1969)
"A nation that is morally dead will soon be financially dead." — Calvin Coolidge
HERE'S A "THEORY" FOR YOU: CALVIN COOLIDGE WAS OUR GREATEST PRESIDENT (and in cahoots with the standards of the enviro-MENTAL-wackos, "the burden of proof iis on the deniers" to disprove my theory)!
The United States just officially okayed "embryonic stem-cell research," a catch-phrase for Nazi-style medical experiments on living, though "useless," human beings. Liberals in the Senate are demanding Federal funding for abortion (obviously confusing "legal" with the "moral"). Maybe that's why only 1 in 5 Americans call himself Liberal. Silent Cal said:
"Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness."
Senator Feinstein says that what is "legal" is "moral." Maybe that's why the approval rating of Liberals is in the toilet and they're trying to flush us down with them (as Laura Ingraham says). California is in no position to lecture the rest of us on morality! Cal said:
"The people who start to elect a man to get what he can for his district will probably find they have elected a man who will get what he can for himself."
Boy, could we ever use another Silent Cal. President Obama accepted the Nobel Prize on Thursday "with great humility." Then he proceeded to deliver a lecture that was so long it sounded like anythig but humble. President Silent Coolidge said:
"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."
Speaking of "COOL," it was the same day, Thursday, that this news item was posted:
"Snow-blanketed US battles freezing winds and ice"
by Mira Oberman — Thu Dec 10, 1:36 pm ET
CHICAGO (AFP) — Heavy snow blanketed much of the central United States Thursday after a massive winter storm left residents battling frigid temperatures and icy roads.
Some parts of Michigan and Ohio were expected to get as much as several more feet (up to a meter) of snow as the system which has battered the country since Sunday made its way northwards up into Canada.
"This one came roaring through, it came in off the west coast, started really getting put together in Utah and then just blasted across the plains," said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.
"As the system moves through, back behind it all this Arctic air came pouring south out of Canada and sweeping across the plains."
High winds were creating blizzard-like conditions even in areas where the snow had stopped falling by pulling snow drifts up off the ground, Slattery told AFP.
Those winds were also adding a bitter bite to the already freezing winter air, complicating efforts to dig out from under the heavy snow [and restore power].
Wind chills were forecast to range from -15 to -30 Fahrenheit (-26 to -34 Celsius) from Wyoming to Wisconsin and even Iowa and Missouri for the next few days.
The biggest snowfalls — as much as 59 inches (150 centimeters) — were recorded in the mountainous areas of Colorado and Utah [where the glaciers were "melting"].
But 17 states from California to New Hampshire saw anywhere from one to four feet of snow (30 to 120 centimeters) and strong winds created drifts as high as 15 feet . . . [end of excerpt]
A news headline the next day, Friday, said, "EU nations commit $3.6 billion to climate fund" [to warm up the planet — or cool it off?].
Thousands of years ago, King David of Israel wrote:"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed [saying] Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords [purse strings] . .[er, rob them] . . .
"He Who sits in the Heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His [hot] displeasure."
TOO HOT OR TOO COLD?
An old joke comes to mind. This one guy was driving his wife and mother-in-law to town. One of them said, "If you don't turn down the heater, I'm going to die."
The other one said, "If you don't turn up the heat, I'm going to die." So he opened the window and turned off the heat to shut one up. Then he closed the window and turned up the heat and shut the other one up.
God is still in control, and it sounds like He's doing the same thing to this "most highly-evolved generation" in history (which thinks it can control the planetary weather). Boy do we ever need a Silent Cal Coolidge to shut them up.
Cool Silent Cal was seated at a state dinner once next to a woman who bet that she could pry at least three words of conversation out of him. Cal said, "YOU LOSE." The modern-day Sophists are in a funk right now, because they are losing and the people are winning.
[Support for the Federal "reform" of the health system is now at about 38 percent. Only 30 percent of us think the country is going in the "right direction." Asked whether they would now prefer Obama or George W. Bush as President, Obama won, but the vote was 50% to 49! One poll shows a similar result for the hypothetical question, would you prefer Obama or Sarah Palin — Sarah trailed him by one percentage point, and we haven't even reached the "tipping point" yet!]
If I were in the Senate today, I would introduce a law banning all future laws (except that one). The late Robert Novak once made fun of a Kansas legislator who ran on the promise to vote NO on every bill introduced in the legislature. He won. Novak said after a lifetime of watching "sausage and laws" being made that this Kansan was now his favorite politician of all time.
Walter Lippman once accused Calvin Coolidge of having "a genius for inactivity." Cal said:
"Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."
He probably wrote that because that's more than three words. Author H.L. Mencken once described Cal's writing as "possessing almost Lincolnian austerity and beauty." Here are some more examples:*
"I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of Government. Every dollar we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form."
"There is scarcely a word in the constitution of any of our States or of our nation that was not written there for the purpose of protecting the liberties of the people from some servitude which a despotic government had at some time imposed upon them."
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent."
The corollary is, nothing is more "common" than successful people who didn't graduate from an institution of Higher Learning — but persisted. Eh? The modern Sophists say "Free college for everyone!" Bunk! Our trump beats their trump!
Pencil-necked geeks with multiple degrees in multi-culturalism get trumped every day by common people with sharp pencils. My dad quit school after 8th grade, but to him, 2 + 2 was still 4. Actual studies have shown that many city kids now can't even do basic math in 8th grade!
lMy dad could read, too, and he was old enough to remember, not only Calvin Coolidge, but he saw Buffalo Bill, and heard Teddy Roosevelt speak when he was running for President.
HOW OLD AM I?
Not to digress, but I personally met one of the men who helped carve Mt. Rushmore (and Teddy's been on Mt. Rushmore for almost 70 years now). Besides my father and mother, the one who liked to ask the dumb questions, one of the most influential teachers in my life was born in 1892.
Pearl Harbor occured within a month of my conception (I like to claim that that's why the Emporer of Japan was so pi — ed off). You might say I'm from the Old School. I'm so old that I don't even like to hear women say "pi — ed off." The year I was born, the divorce rate in the U.S. was one percent!
BTW, the dumbest article I ever saw was in the USA TODAY not too long ago. It claimed that growing "secularism" is the reason the divorce rate now [seems to be] falling. These sophomoric secularists never took credit, of course, for the rise from one percent to 50 percent though. The real reason for any decline in divorce is that people are delaying, and even avoiding, marriage. People who shack up don't divorce, dummy.
Even though only 20 percent of people call themselves Liberal, the sophists claim that the Age of Reagan is over, and as the USA TODAY "forum" said (11/3/08), "In fact, religiion in politics might just recede into the background." That's the mantra now.
As early as 1950, the Sophists thought that they had the traditionalists iced out of Academia, and therefore, any role in public life. But as Eudora Welty said:
"Never think you've seen the last of anything."
I guess I am digressing, but you get the point. Calvin Coolidge once said:
"It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow."
In the late 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith said that he was certain that conservatism was dead because "conservatives don't publish." However, William F. Buckley was already publishing! In "God and Man at Yale," Buckley had written:
"I propose, simply, to expose what I regard as an extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that, under the protective label 'academic freedom,' has produced one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of these supporters to be atheistic socialists."
CONCLUSIONS?
Samuel Adams said, "As long as the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader . . .
"For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when Knowledge is diffus'd and Virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauch'd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign invaders."
As of 2008, the Sophists were the optimists. They not only had friendly invaders flooding in from South of the Border, but the Sophists themselves were invading the highest circles of Power in Washington DC. And rumor has it that traffic is so heavy on the border that the Department of Homeland Security is installing stop-and-go lights on the Rio Grande River (if I may be redundant). Once FedMed HELLthCare passes, we may have to import doctors too to do "jobs Americans won't do anymore."
"The danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day." — Joseph Story
As the saying goes, "perception is reality" in politics. The perceived Conventional Wisdom in 2008 was that the Old School Ways were receding "into the background"; the New Age wave was an "inevitability." Even Republicans who take their opinions from the NewYork Times and Washington Post dropped the word "abortion" from their surveys sent to former supporters. They abandoned the global warming debate in favor of "coalition building."
And now John McCain is in trouble even in his home state. The perceived "conventional wisdom" was only a figment of the RINOs' imagination. They didn't see the "blizzard" coming. And there'll be another storm of protest visiting Washington DC this coming Tuesday, December 15. Wish I could be there.
I have to stay here to keep my home fires burning in my stove. This is the "upper crust" of America. This is the U.P. of Michigan. Even the high school girls up here are taking their minds off boys long enough to talk about the weather during lunch time. Two-thirds of the shivering citizenry of the U.S. think that global warming is a bunch of BULL-loney, to put it in polite terminology. Next summer, the liberals in both parties are going to find themselves out in the cold during the primary season.
P.S. Speaking of "Lincolnian austerity and beauty," I've been trying for years and years to get anyone who reads or listens to get people to read Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address (given when he was an unofficial candidate for the nomination in February 1860). After all these years, I finally succeeded in getting one person to read it (see below).
People think that just because they remember reading one Lincoln speech, short enough to have been theoretically written on the back of an envelope, that they know Lincoln's mind, motives, and intentions. Even Sean Hannity threw a barb at Lincoln yesterday. But the Cooper Union speech covers more than 12 pages of fine print, and I don't know how many megabytes, so it's too much "trouble" to bother reading today (even though we are at a crossroads of history not seen since the 1850s).
"I never read books — I write them." — Punch
Disraeli said that the Whigs were the "stupid party," and he could have been talking about the American Whig party of 1850, which came up with the 'Final Solution' to slavery: pass the "Compromise" of 1850, and ignore the spread of slavery. The Whigs were replaced by the Republican party, but the latter is morphing back into the old Whig party (or was, until the inconvenient Tea Parties came along). By "writing books" but failing to read their own history books, the "hip" coalition-building RINOs could go the way of the DINO-saurs.
As for Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, Donald Hank took time to read it, and he wrote a column asking the question, "Can conservatives pull together?"
www.laiglesforum.com
"It seems as if all the avenues have been tried to defeat the elitist overlords in America and elsewhere, and no one has gotten to first base. The only thing these people understand is FORCE, but do we have it?
"Before you say we do, let's look at the differences between those who effectively oppose the elitists [in politics and talk radio] on the one hand, and the grassroots on the other . . . [speaking of splinters and lack of courage in the movement]
"America cannot live by bread alone and Adam Smith's ideology can't even begin to save us. We need to work hard to persuade our team mates of the importance of a traditional, Biblical world view in restoring our Republic. And by that I am not talking about today's wishy-washy religious 'leaders' using slick marketing techniques to build a flock. I am talking about men who know what sin is and aren't afraid to spell it out.
"I say that because on a practical level, people cannot passionately support wishy-washy politicians who have no moral underpinnings, but on a spiritual level, God absolutely will not bless a country that calls good evil and evil good. Obama and his abject failure to solve the economic crisis — even greatly exacerbating the current one — is proof of that.
"If we can restore morality, everything else will fall into place. If we can't, everything will just fall."
Further reading (note how Abraham Lincoln demonstrated that the founders supported federal intervention, in matters of morality, later in their public lives):
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm [thanks, Don]
PPS: Don't accuse me of being a "Lincoln worshipper." I still think he was one of our Top Ten home-schooled Presidents, but my new theory is that our greatest President was Calvin Coolidge. Y'got a problem with that? [thanks to the Conservative Book Club for the Silent Cal quotations, too (a review of a book, the title of which I can't recall. Sorry, it must be just a senior moment, as the page I was quoting from just disappeared into thin air)].
JUST FOR THE RECORD:
My apologies also for the length of this column, so soon after my regular Wednesday column, but this is such a critical and crucial week in our history. I try not to bore you with things you already know, but I am torn, as I like to chronicle the recent headlines and happenings, just for the historical record. For example:
"Terrorists granted civil trials in New York City; Navy seals who arrest a top terrorist are court-martialled"
"Nobel committee cries 'Peace, peace' — when there is no peace"
"Center for Disease Control estimates about one-in-six Americans have had swine flu"
"Swine flu vaccination clinic cancelled on account of cold weather"
"Five Americans arrested in Pakstan planning to fight with Islamo-terrorists"
PPPS: They came from the same area of northern Virginia as "Major Hasan" and the Virginia Tech shooter. You may have two guesses as to their religious beliefs, but if you give the wrong answer, you may make Senator Reid very angry. That might constitute "profiling"! So much for the bad news; the good news is that the five wannabe terrorists were reported to the FBI by their own families. FANTASTIC!
Maybe "the canary in the mineshaft" can still be given CPR and revived.
I speak of the United States of America, in case you didn't get the humor there.
© Curtis Dahlgren
December 11, 2009
"Never think that you've seen the last of anything." — Eudora Welty, UW '29 ("The Optimist's Daughter"; 1969)
"A nation that is morally dead will soon be financially dead." — Calvin Coolidge
HERE'S A "THEORY" FOR YOU: CALVIN COOLIDGE WAS OUR GREATEST PRESIDENT (and in cahoots with the standards of the enviro-MENTAL-wackos, "the burden of proof iis on the deniers" to disprove my theory)!
The United States just officially okayed "embryonic stem-cell research," a catch-phrase for Nazi-style medical experiments on living, though "useless," human beings. Liberals in the Senate are demanding Federal funding for abortion (obviously confusing "legal" with the "moral"). Maybe that's why only 1 in 5 Americans call himself Liberal. Silent Cal said:
"Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness."
Senator Feinstein says that what is "legal" is "moral." Maybe that's why the approval rating of Liberals is in the toilet and they're trying to flush us down with them (as Laura Ingraham says). California is in no position to lecture the rest of us on morality! Cal said:
"The people who start to elect a man to get what he can for his district will probably find they have elected a man who will get what he can for himself."
Boy, could we ever use another Silent Cal. President Obama accepted the Nobel Prize on Thursday "with great humility." Then he proceeded to deliver a lecture that was so long it sounded like anythig but humble. President Silent Coolidge said:
"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."
Speaking of "COOL," it was the same day, Thursday, that this news item was posted:
"Snow-blanketed US battles freezing winds and ice"
by Mira Oberman — Thu Dec 10, 1:36 pm ET
CHICAGO (AFP) — Heavy snow blanketed much of the central United States Thursday after a massive winter storm left residents battling frigid temperatures and icy roads.
Some parts of Michigan and Ohio were expected to get as much as several more feet (up to a meter) of snow as the system which has battered the country since Sunday made its way northwards up into Canada.
"This one came roaring through, it came in off the west coast, started really getting put together in Utah and then just blasted across the plains," said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.
"As the system moves through, back behind it all this Arctic air came pouring south out of Canada and sweeping across the plains."
High winds were creating blizzard-like conditions even in areas where the snow had stopped falling by pulling snow drifts up off the ground, Slattery told AFP.
Those winds were also adding a bitter bite to the already freezing winter air, complicating efforts to dig out from under the heavy snow [and restore power].
Wind chills were forecast to range from -15 to -30 Fahrenheit (-26 to -34 Celsius) from Wyoming to Wisconsin and even Iowa and Missouri for the next few days.
The biggest snowfalls — as much as 59 inches (150 centimeters) — were recorded in the mountainous areas of Colorado and Utah [where the glaciers were "melting"].
But 17 states from California to New Hampshire saw anywhere from one to four feet of snow (30 to 120 centimeters) and strong winds created drifts as high as 15 feet . . . [end of excerpt]
A news headline the next day, Friday, said, "EU nations commit $3.6 billion to climate fund" [to warm up the planet — or cool it off?].
Thousands of years ago, King David of Israel wrote:"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed [saying] Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords [purse strings] . .[er, rob them] . . .
"He Who sits in the Heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His [hot] displeasure."
TOO HOT OR TOO COLD?
An old joke comes to mind. This one guy was driving his wife and mother-in-law to town. One of them said, "If you don't turn down the heater, I'm going to die."
The other one said, "If you don't turn up the heat, I'm going to die." So he opened the window and turned off the heat to shut one up. Then he closed the window and turned up the heat and shut the other one up.
God is still in control, and it sounds like He's doing the same thing to this "most highly-evolved generation" in history (which thinks it can control the planetary weather). Boy do we ever need a Silent Cal Coolidge to shut them up.
Cool Silent Cal was seated at a state dinner once next to a woman who bet that she could pry at least three words of conversation out of him. Cal said, "YOU LOSE." The modern-day Sophists are in a funk right now, because they are losing and the people are winning.
[Support for the Federal "reform" of the health system is now at about 38 percent. Only 30 percent of us think the country is going in the "right direction." Asked whether they would now prefer Obama or George W. Bush as President, Obama won, but the vote was 50% to 49! One poll shows a similar result for the hypothetical question, would you prefer Obama or Sarah Palin — Sarah trailed him by one percentage point, and we haven't even reached the "tipping point" yet!]
If I were in the Senate today, I would introduce a law banning all future laws (except that one). The late Robert Novak once made fun of a Kansas legislator who ran on the promise to vote NO on every bill introduced in the legislature. He won. Novak said after a lifetime of watching "sausage and laws" being made that this Kansan was now his favorite politician of all time.
Walter Lippman once accused Calvin Coolidge of having "a genius for inactivity." Cal said:
"Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."
He probably wrote that because that's more than three words. Author H.L. Mencken once described Cal's writing as "possessing almost Lincolnian austerity and beauty." Here are some more examples:*
"I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of Government. Every dollar we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form."
"There is scarcely a word in the constitution of any of our States or of our nation that was not written there for the purpose of protecting the liberties of the people from some servitude which a despotic government had at some time imposed upon them."
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent."
The corollary is, nothing is more "common" than successful people who didn't graduate from an institution of Higher Learning — but persisted. Eh? The modern Sophists say "Free college for everyone!" Bunk! Our trump beats their trump!
Pencil-necked geeks with multiple degrees in multi-culturalism get trumped every day by common people with sharp pencils. My dad quit school after 8th grade, but to him, 2 + 2 was still 4. Actual studies have shown that many city kids now can't even do basic math in 8th grade!
lMy dad could read, too, and he was old enough to remember, not only Calvin Coolidge, but he saw Buffalo Bill, and heard Teddy Roosevelt speak when he was running for President.
HOW OLD AM I?
Not to digress, but I personally met one of the men who helped carve Mt. Rushmore (and Teddy's been on Mt. Rushmore for almost 70 years now). Besides my father and mother, the one who liked to ask the dumb questions, one of the most influential teachers in my life was born in 1892.
Pearl Harbor occured within a month of my conception (I like to claim that that's why the Emporer of Japan was so pi — ed off). You might say I'm from the Old School. I'm so old that I don't even like to hear women say "pi — ed off." The year I was born, the divorce rate in the U.S. was one percent!
BTW, the dumbest article I ever saw was in the USA TODAY not too long ago. It claimed that growing "secularism" is the reason the divorce rate now [seems to be] falling. These sophomoric secularists never took credit, of course, for the rise from one percent to 50 percent though. The real reason for any decline in divorce is that people are delaying, and even avoiding, marriage. People who shack up don't divorce, dummy.
Even though only 20 percent of people call themselves Liberal, the sophists claim that the Age of Reagan is over, and as the USA TODAY "forum" said (11/3/08), "In fact, religiion in politics might just recede into the background." That's the mantra now.
As early as 1950, the Sophists thought that they had the traditionalists iced out of Academia, and therefore, any role in public life. But as Eudora Welty said:
"Never think you've seen the last of anything."
I guess I am digressing, but you get the point. Calvin Coolidge once said:
"It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow."
In the late 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith said that he was certain that conservatism was dead because "conservatives don't publish." However, William F. Buckley was already publishing! In "God and Man at Yale," Buckley had written:
"I propose, simply, to expose what I regard as an extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that, under the protective label 'academic freedom,' has produced one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of these supporters to be atheistic socialists."
CONCLUSIONS?
Samuel Adams said, "As long as the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader . . .
"For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when Knowledge is diffus'd and Virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauch'd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign invaders."
As of 2008, the Sophists were the optimists. They not only had friendly invaders flooding in from South of the Border, but the Sophists themselves were invading the highest circles of Power in Washington DC. And rumor has it that traffic is so heavy on the border that the Department of Homeland Security is installing stop-and-go lights on the Rio Grande River (if I may be redundant). Once FedMed HELLthCare passes, we may have to import doctors too to do "jobs Americans won't do anymore."
"The danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day." — Joseph Story
As the saying goes, "perception is reality" in politics. The perceived Conventional Wisdom in 2008 was that the Old School Ways were receding "into the background"; the New Age wave was an "inevitability." Even Republicans who take their opinions from the NewYork Times and Washington Post dropped the word "abortion" from their surveys sent to former supporters. They abandoned the global warming debate in favor of "coalition building."
And now John McCain is in trouble even in his home state. The perceived "conventional wisdom" was only a figment of the RINOs' imagination. They didn't see the "blizzard" coming. And there'll be another storm of protest visiting Washington DC this coming Tuesday, December 15. Wish I could be there.
I have to stay here to keep my home fires burning in my stove. This is the "upper crust" of America. This is the U.P. of Michigan. Even the high school girls up here are taking their minds off boys long enough to talk about the weather during lunch time. Two-thirds of the shivering citizenry of the U.S. think that global warming is a bunch of BULL-loney, to put it in polite terminology. Next summer, the liberals in both parties are going to find themselves out in the cold during the primary season.
P.S. Speaking of "Lincolnian austerity and beauty," I've been trying for years and years to get anyone who reads or listens to get people to read Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address (given when he was an unofficial candidate for the nomination in February 1860). After all these years, I finally succeeded in getting one person to read it (see below).
People think that just because they remember reading one Lincoln speech, short enough to have been theoretically written on the back of an envelope, that they know Lincoln's mind, motives, and intentions. Even Sean Hannity threw a barb at Lincoln yesterday. But the Cooper Union speech covers more than 12 pages of fine print, and I don't know how many megabytes, so it's too much "trouble" to bother reading today (even though we are at a crossroads of history not seen since the 1850s).
"I never read books — I write them." — Punch
Disraeli said that the Whigs were the "stupid party," and he could have been talking about the American Whig party of 1850, which came up with the 'Final Solution' to slavery: pass the "Compromise" of 1850, and ignore the spread of slavery. The Whigs were replaced by the Republican party, but the latter is morphing back into the old Whig party (or was, until the inconvenient Tea Parties came along). By "writing books" but failing to read their own history books, the "hip" coalition-building RINOs could go the way of the DINO-saurs.
As for Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, Donald Hank took time to read it, and he wrote a column asking the question, "Can conservatives pull together?"
www.laiglesforum.com
"It seems as if all the avenues have been tried to defeat the elitist overlords in America and elsewhere, and no one has gotten to first base. The only thing these people understand is FORCE, but do we have it?
"Before you say we do, let's look at the differences between those who effectively oppose the elitists [in politics and talk radio] on the one hand, and the grassroots on the other . . . [speaking of splinters and lack of courage in the movement]
"America cannot live by bread alone and Adam Smith's ideology can't even begin to save us. We need to work hard to persuade our team mates of the importance of a traditional, Biblical world view in restoring our Republic. And by that I am not talking about today's wishy-washy religious 'leaders' using slick marketing techniques to build a flock. I am talking about men who know what sin is and aren't afraid to spell it out.
"I say that because on a practical level, people cannot passionately support wishy-washy politicians who have no moral underpinnings, but on a spiritual level, God absolutely will not bless a country that calls good evil and evil good. Obama and his abject failure to solve the economic crisis — even greatly exacerbating the current one — is proof of that.
"If we can restore morality, everything else will fall into place. If we can't, everything will just fall."
Further reading (note how Abraham Lincoln demonstrated that the founders supported federal intervention, in matters of morality, later in their public lives):
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm [thanks, Don]
PPS: Don't accuse me of being a "Lincoln worshipper." I still think he was one of our Top Ten home-schooled Presidents, but my new theory is that our greatest President was Calvin Coolidge. Y'got a problem with that? [thanks to the Conservative Book Club for the Silent Cal quotations, too (a review of a book, the title of which I can't recall. Sorry, it must be just a senior moment, as the page I was quoting from just disappeared into thin air)].
JUST FOR THE RECORD:
My apologies also for the length of this column, so soon after my regular Wednesday column, but this is such a critical and crucial week in our history. I try not to bore you with things you already know, but I am torn, as I like to chronicle the recent headlines and happenings, just for the historical record. For example:
"Terrorists granted civil trials in New York City; Navy seals who arrest a top terrorist are court-martialled"
"Nobel committee cries 'Peace, peace' — when there is no peace"
"Center for Disease Control estimates about one-in-six Americans have had swine flu"
"Swine flu vaccination clinic cancelled on account of cold weather"
"Five Americans arrested in Pakstan planning to fight with Islamo-terrorists"
PPPS: They came from the same area of northern Virginia as "Major Hasan" and the Virginia Tech shooter. You may have two guesses as to their religious beliefs, but if you give the wrong answer, you may make Senator Reid very angry. That might constitute "profiling"! So much for the bad news; the good news is that the five wannabe terrorists were reported to the FBI by their own families. FANTASTIC!
Maybe "the canary in the mineshaft" can still be given CPR and revived.
I speak of the United States of America, in case you didn't get the humor there.
© Curtis Dahlgren
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