One world ends, another begins
On this day in 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, setting in motion a series of events that led to a century of warfare and helped create the world we live in today. The Middle East, Soviet Russia, the Cold War, the hegemony of the United States- all these came from this one act of violence. The world has never been the same.
Orlando
This will be my only post on the horrorshow in Orlando. As usual, Fred said it more concisely than I ever could-
From the standpoint of a curmudgeon, to which ashen-souled tribe I belong, the events in Orlando provide the gray satisfaction of confirmation. We in our dismal trade derive no joy from unavoidable sufferings springing from the routine malice of existence—cancer, automobile wrecks, birth defects—but we thrive on the self-inflicted, on the finger-hammerings accompanied by cries of “Ouch!” We observe that Muslims are nothing but trouble anywhere, so we import Muslims. We observe that diversity is the chief source of bitter strife in the world, so we open the borders. When seeking employees, we deliberately hire people who can’t do the job. In our universities we purposely admit those who neither can nor want to learn. Then, when the obvious, the predictable, indeed the inevitable unexpectedly occurs, we insist that it really didn’t, or shouldn’t have, or wouldn’t have, or something, and do it again. In its way it is wonderfully funny.
Unless of course you are among the dead.
Something that cannot be forgotten in all the shameless political posturing I’ve seen since this terrible event- that was 50 AMERICANS that were killed ON OUR OWN SOIL- and why we cannot rise up in righteous anger at that simple fact, why we cannot bring ourselves to speak the true name of our enemy- ISLAM- is a mystery to me. We have lost whatever grit and manhood we ever possessed as a nation.
I laughed, I cried
via @spacebunnyday
June 6, 1944.
D-Day without words.
Where would we find such men today?
On this day in history “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, by George Orwell, was published. Note to the current generation- that book was intended as a warning, not as a user manual.
Yes they are
Dover Beach – A poem by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; – on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold 1849
Careful what you wish for…
A glimpse at a possible future. I find it highly disturbing.
via Goodshit
The Road to Serfdom
This gallery of Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” is inspired by a post on Instapundit. Click the pic to read.
[EasyGallery id=’theroadtoserfdom’]
This was published after WW2, when the West had been eyeball-to-eyeball with Fascism and Socialism for decades, so the imagery is a little dated. The message is not, and is more needed now than ever in my lifetime.
The more ambitious among you may want to check out the book “The Road to Serfdom” by F. A. Hayek. It will scare you sober- or so I hope.
The Millennial’s Dilemma
Life is like unto a female dog, then you shuffle off this mortal coil…
Cuba Libré
The Four Horsemen
Early Darwin Award Winner
…from the unlinkable Rantburg–
