Winds of Change.NET

Project Valour-IT

2008-11-19T19:31:23+00:00

Update: We need more donors!! Donate, comment, and recognize that you're doing a Really Good Thing.

Even before I had a soldier of my own, I've been a big supporter of Soldier's Angels, the peer-to-peer organization that allows each of us to support the men and women of our military.

They are the kind of organization that is a no-brainer to get behind, regardless of your politics - because it's about providing support to the soldiers and their families.

Right now, they are running a fundraiser for Project Valour-IT, which provides speech-controlled laptops to wounded soldiers. I was at an event where Chuck Z talked about what it meant to him, as a wounded and recovering solder - to suddenly be able to send and get email, to surf the web, to write letters. What it meant to no longer be helpless in one area of his life and to begin the long walk to independence and recovery of himself. When you listen to stories like that, it's suddenly easy to understand why this is important.

Every day, from now to Thanksgiving, I'll bump this post...when we've raised over $2,500 from this blog, I'll stop.

Obama's Web 2.0 Communication Strategy

2008-11-19T02:42:31+00:00

You'd think that the party with a massively biased media dead-set against it might be the one doing the most innovation in terms of new channels and approaches. You'd be wrong, of course. The GOP leadership still sees the Internet as a cheaper way to send pres releases, with partial research materials sent as a concession to bloggers. I have yet to see anything approaching a party communication and mobilization strategy for the GOP itself, let alone outreach beyond its base or input into the communication and policy process.

Obama led in all these areas, and this MarketingVOX piece talks about their continuation into governance, alongside the immediately-available "change.gov."

Marc's startlingly naive election-period posts re: "McCain should have run a better campaign in the face of a deeply slanted media" missed a point that no veteran of politics should have missed. Candidates don't have alternative channels to leverage - and it's stupid to expect that. Parties might have them, if they build and tend them beforehand. The GOP has been remarkably deficient in that area, despite the clear writing on the wall for over 7 years, as part of a much larger disconnect from its base. While the GOP begins to sort out its leadership problems, therefore, Obama will continue full-speed ahead - building on his existing advantage in case his fawning media sycophants ever decide to start, you know, doing their jobs.

The Next Tech Boom?

2008-11-19T01:34:11+00:00

In "The Next Tech Boom is Underway," Greg Ness says it may be something much more prosaic and fundamental than the clean tech startups attracting so much venture capital money these days:

"Until the current network evolves into a more dynamic infrastructure, all bets are off on the payoffs of pretty much every major IT initiative on the horizon today, including cost-cutting measures that would be employed in order to shrink operating costs without shrinking the network.... even with the simple act of managing an enterprise network’s IP addresses, which is critical to the availability and proper functioning of the network, expense and labor requirements actually go up as IP addresses are added. As TCP/IP continues to spread and take productivity to new heights, management costs are already escalating.... If something as simple and straightforward as IP address management doesn’t scale, imagine the impacts of more complex network management tasks, like those involved with consolidation, compliance, security, and virtualization.

....The cloudplex will utilize racks of commodity servers populated with VMs that can scale up as needed in order to save electricity and make IT more flexible. That makes incredibly good sense, but are we really there yet? No.... For the network to be dynamic, for example, it needs continuous, dynamic connectivity at the core network services level. Network, endpoint and application intelligence will all depend upon connectivity intelligence in order to evolve into dynamic, automated systems that don’t require escalating manual intervention in the face of network expansion and rising system and endpoint demands."

The article as a whole goes into more depth concerning these challenges, as well as some potential winners in this race. Is this the next tech boom? And is it really underway?

Prince Charles: Defender Of Nothing In Particular

2008-11-18T05:46:45+00:00

This post is inspired by fiona patten's comment (link):

"Yep we [the Australian Sex Party] are not going to be all things to all people- but hopefully we can make some positive change."

Prince Charles, who will in time be King of Australia as he will be of the United Kingdom, wants to take the opposite tack. He wanted to be Defender of Faiths when he becomes King, rather than Defender of the Faith, that is, a particular faith (originally the Roman Catholic faith). That proved controversial, particularly with the Church that he would be the formal head of, but no longer the defender of. So, he's had a new idea (link).

In a compromise he has now opted for Defender of Faith which he hopes will unite the different strands of society, and their beliefs, at his Coronation.

However, there would be huge obstacles to overcome before the Prince can fulfil his wish which he has discussed with some of his closest advisers. It would require Parliament to agree to amend the 1953 Royal Titles Act which came into law after changes were made for the Queen's Coronation in the same year. A senior source told The Daily Telegraph: "There have been lots of discussions. He would like to be known as the Defender of Faith which is a subtle but hugely symbolic shift."

As a monarchist, I acknowledge that there are now no circumstances in which a king or queen of Australia would overrule a Governor General or a Prime Minister, but I think the sovereign is valuable as a traditional symbol above partisan politics. Being the head of the winning political party does not put your picture on the money or on pictures on the wall. There are honors that the scufflers in the grubby brawls of politics, however successful, don't get to ascend to. They are reserved for someone who doesn't even live in the country. And the monarchy is a reminder of tradition in a country where there is no Bill of Rights and where it's tradition, culture and unwritten convention that have, however imperfectly, nourished and protected freedom.

If the monarch isn't willing to be a symbol of something in particular, I think that's an argument against his usefulness.

I don't think you can be a useful symbol of "faiths" or "faith" (in general) in the sense that it seems Prince Charles wants to be.

Faith is specific: it's trust and belief in someone or something, or some group like a pantheon. It's not just a feeling of high-mindedness combined with a desire to be all things to all people. Jesus or Osiris, Krishna or Buddha, Isis or Joseph Smith, Muhammed or Odin, pick one, or with Richard Dawkins none, but if you have faith, you should be willing to choose and defend that choice.

Between Christopher Hitchens (abrasively atheist) and his younger brother Peter Hitchens (actively and solidly Church of England), does Charles have a side, at all?

There's a moment in United 93 (2006) (link), in Chapter 18, an hour and thirty minutes in, where people on the plane are praying: the jihadists to Allah, and the others to Jesus (plus, presumably, Jews praying to their God). What side, in particular, would the Defender of Faith be on? On the side of the faithful, of course. On the side of those praying, and with their causes.

That doesn't cut it. The title "Defender of Faith" is not serious. It's not even symbolic defense of anyone or any cause.

I can't see the benefit, the positive change to be brought about. If you are a member of some tiny minority religion, such as an Australian Aboriginal persisting in your ancient tradition or a reconstructionist British druid trying to revive yours, the King will be no more a symbol of the defense of your rights than he ever was. To the extent that jihadists were emboldened to believe that yet another symbolic defender of a religion other than Islam had crumbled, you would be less secure in your rights.

We may come to a time where the Australian Sex Party is serious, in the sense of being willing to say what it stands for and commit to defending it, and the king of the country will not be serious, in the same sense.

The Australian Sex Party

2008-11-17T15:11:34+00:00

The Australian Sex Party is online (link).

In the context of preferential voting and proportional representation in the Senate, this could become a viable little protest party.

Or rather an anti-protest, anti-pressure group party. It's appeal is straightforward:

"If you're sick of religious and anti-sex politicians like Steve Fielding, Brian Harradine and Fred Nile threatening to block legislation in the Senate and State Upper Houses unless they get their way on sex and gender issues, vote for someone who understands this rort."

Given the damage that Brian Harradine alone caused, and how little Australians like wowsers (that is, people who are obnoxiously puritanical and feel a need to legislate restrictive drinking hours, anti-sex censorship and so on), that's a good pitch.

The Australian Sex Party hasn't released its policies yet, and my opinion of it will depend on what they are, and what the character of the party turns out to be.

If the Australian Sex Party turns out to be a "leave us alone" party with support from the pornography industry, which is what it looks like so far, that's good. (Self-interest can encourage level-headedness, staying power and the habit of not being pointlessly annoying, for the sake of your bottom line. In this context, I think "greed is good".)

If it becomes a broad spectrum "progressive movement" party, that's not good, from my point of view. The last thing we need here is American style "8=hate" thugs going after churches, "anti-choicers" and anybody who believes in the traditional definition of marriage, or defining "hypocrisy" as being gay and not supporting a gay agenda, with "standing up to hypocrisy" defined as "outing" people.

If the party goes bad or goes nowhere, as most small parties do, it's not that big a loss. There are plenty of other worthwhile micro parties competing for my pro-freedom protest vote, such as the Australian Shooters Party (link).

Hat tips to Instapundit (link) and Jammie Wearing Fool (link).

The Prisons of the Arab Mind.

2008-11-17T09:10:15+00:00

I have been studying the Arab mindset for the last four decades from several perspectives. For a start, I myself am a product of this Arabic-speaking region and was able to study the phenomenon from the perspective of an 'insider' as it were, as well as from my vantage point as a researcher who has had twenty books published in Arabic and English (including five devoted exclusively to the Arab mindset and Arab culture). I also had the opportunity to interact with the Arab mindset and culture from a different angle during my years as chairman & CEO of a multinational oil company in the Arab region, when I worked in close proximity with the end product of Arab culture, so to speak – the Arabic-speaking worker in the work environment. The fourth and final perspective from which I interacted with Arab culture and the Arab mindset was when I was called upon to lecture to post-graduate students at a number of universities in various Arab countries on subjects related to modern management sciences and techniques.

The insight into the contemporary Arab mindset that I was able to develop from all these perspectives, in addition to my consuming interest in and close follow-up of the phenomenon over the last four decades, led me to reach the conclusions laid out in my latest book, Arab Culture Enchained, soon to be published by Cambridge University Press. In the book, I describe the Arab mindset as a prisoner held captive within three prisons or shackled with three chains. The first chain is a regressive, dogmatic interpretation of religion that is totally at odds with the realities of the age, with science and civilization. The second is a culture that is not only totally divorced from science and progress as a result of Arab history and the geopolitics of the Arabian peninsula, but, more important, has produced educational institutions and programmes that, rather than foster the values of progress and humanity, actively promote a xenophobic rejection of these values. The third chain holding the Arab mindset back from embracing the spirit of the age is a philosophical dilemma which renders it unable to develop a proper understanding of progress and modernity, and drives it to reject such notions as an invasion of its cultural specificity and civilizational legacy.
The first chain weighing the Arab mindset down and preventing it from joining the march of human progress which, according to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, is moving towards the attainment of transcendental idealism, is the regressive, medieval, Bedouin understanding of religion. A large number of modern-day Muslims have never been presented with an interpretation of religion other than the one propagated by the enemies of reason and free thinking, from Ibn Hanbal in the tenth century to the founder of the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance in the Arabian Peninsula in 1744 (Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab, the spiritual father of Wahhabism, whose message was merged after his death with the ideas of Abul 'Alaa Al-Mawdoody) to the ideas of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. More recently, an Islamic state established three quarters of a century ago (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) took it upon itself not only to stand as the embodiment of this brand of Islam but to export its understanding and spread its message to every corner of the world. In that version of Islam there is no room for the Other (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or otherwise); there can be no equality between men and women nor peaceful coexistence with others, no possibility of allowing the human mind to explore new horizons, no scope for creativity or imaginative thinking. So firmly entrenched in the past is this harsh and uncompromising brand of Islam that it does not allow for the proper interpretation of the word jihad as meaning the use of force only in self-defense against outside aggression but continues to use the interpretation adopted by Bedouin tribes in the Middle Ages, which is the imposition of their religious beliefs on the whole of humanity by force of arms.
Nine centuries ago, the world of Islam was the scene of a battle of ideas between two trends. One trend, which upheld the primacy of reason, began with the Mu'tazalites and was taken to new Aristotelian heights by Ibn Rushd, who lived in Andalusia just over eight centuries ago. The other opposed the use of reason in the interpretation of holy texts, upholding orthodoxy and tradition and spurning deductive reasoning altogether. This latter trend had many prominent adherents, including Ahmed ibn-Hanbal, one of the four Sunni imams, and Abu Hamed Al-Ghazzali, the noted Islamic jurist. Unfortunately for Muslims, the school which favoured unquestioning adherence to tradition over the use of critical faculties prevailed. The defeat of the school of reason was symbolically represented in the burning of Ibn Rushd's works by the authorities, who elevated the stature of Al-Ghazzali to towering heights by bestowing on him the name "Hujat al Islam" (the authority on Islam). Exalting a man who did not believe the human mind capable of grasping the Truth as ordained by God set into motion a process that continues to this day with devastating effects on the Arab mindset, which has become insular, regressive and unreceptive to new ideas.
The second chain shackling the Arab mindset is a cultural climate which has encouraged the spread of tribal values, including such negative values as individualism (instead of tolerance) and insularity (instead of open-mindedness). As a result, Arab societies were unable to receive and assimilate the values of pluralism, acceptance of the Other, a belief in the universality of knowledge and science, acceptance of the human rights movement and the movement for women's rights – not to mention an institutional rejection of the most important achievement of human civilization, democracy. Educational systems in Arab societies reflect the prevailing cultural climate, which stands as a barrier between the Arab mindset and the march of human progress. One need only look at the educational systems in force in a country like Saudi Arabia to realize that they are creating generations totally unequipped to deal with the realities of the age. Indeed, it is enough to see the opinion leaders of that society to realize how strong the organic link between the cultural/educational climate and the insular, backward-looking ethos in some Arab societies.
Finally, the religious, educational, cultural and media institutions in Arabic-speaking societies have created a mindset that considers the call for progress and modernity a call to accept a cultural invasion and the loss of cultural specificity.
The problem of Arabic-speaking societies as well as of some non-Arab Muslim societies will not be solved by military confrontations, security measures or economic rewards and/or punishments. None of these measures address the core issue, which is essentially one of culture and knowledge. Accordingly, the most effective way of dealing with the problem is by adopting a level-headed approach based on a thorough understanding of the reasons behind the distinctive characteristics displayed by the contemporary Arab mindset.

Well, Solar Works, I Guess...

2008-11-17T03:01:24+00:00

...that's not my heavy breathing in the background, it's windy as heck (which is why the fires were so much trouble).

Almost Solar

2008-11-14T16:52:41+00:00

The panels are up and connected. We're waiting for the final city inspection and then we'll throw the (very large) switches.

At $68/month it's a screaming deal. I'll post more as the system comes online.

...some more pictures.

John McCain as George W. Bush's Third Term of Office

2008-11-12T15:40:38+00:00

In retrospect, isn't Barack Obama's charge that electing John McCain meant more of George W. Bush more plausible, now that we see the Republican Party embroiled in a toxic post-defeat fight, and John McCain, the leader of the Republican Party, taking it easy, starting to restore his personal image, and doing nothing either for his party or for his candidate to be Vice-President?

Barack Obama was trying to tie John McCain to the "failed policies" of George W. Bush. That wasn't a very good attack. One of those "failed policies" was the surge, which John McCain did back, and which worked.

But George W. Bush had probably provoked even more frustration through his personnel management than through his policies. He rewarded, elevated and maintained in office people who weren't up to the job. Harriet Miers was a Bush pick that caused a big, needless brawl, but I think Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (elevated) and Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet (maintained in office) are better examples, because they got to prove themselves on the job, and they definitely proved they were incapable of performing their duties commendably. Yet George W. Bush gave George Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That was infuriating.

Many of George W. Bush's people were not only incompetents but backstabbers: George Tenet himself of course; Secretary of the Treasury Paul Henry O'Neill; the amazingly disloyal Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who knew that he had outed CIA officer Valerie Plame but kept mum in public and let a long, destructive and divisive investigation continue anyway; and the pathetic Scott McClellan, a Press Secretary who had so little communications skill that he didn't seem to understand what he was doing in office till he reviewed his performance later (if he worked it out even then). He always made me think of a certain song, or at least its title. (link)

Besides appointing, maintaining in office and offensively praising incompetents and backstabbers, George W. Bush spent a lot of his first term in office apparently waiting for key personnel like Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resolve their differences and start playing nicely together. They never did, and meanwhile the war in Iraq drifted into deep trouble.

John McCain in his long career as a conservative gadfly and liberal media favorite never built up either a settled body of doctrine that his would-be new supporters could refer to in getting up to speed quickly or an adequate supply of personal loyalists to pass on to others face to face his randomly assorted quirky stands on various issues. He had no political army to fight the battle for the presidency with, and no way to train one. He also had an intimidating habit of bolstering his bipartisan bona fides by denouncing conservatives. Those who guessed wrong about things like whether he would think it was OK to run ads using Jeremiah Wright faced censure, and that went a long way to chill John McCain's potential 527 support.

John McCain wasted months after he was confirmed after he was luckily confirmed as the Republican nominee while Barack Obama was still struggling for his nomination, unable to get his campaign any traction. John McCain couldn't heal his rift with a party and a conservative movement that didn't like him or what he stood for, especially McCain-Kennedy. His staff was Bush leftovers, especially Steve Schmidt. He had nothing like the pool of enthusiastic activists needed to give him a strong "ground game". And he didn't have enthusiastic donors sending him money. Bobby Jindal, no fool, wanted nothing to do with this ill-run campaign. (link)

In the end, Sarah Palin gave John McCain the forgiveness of conservatives, and crowds and volunteers, and more money than he had been used to seeing. As a campaigner she proved a mixed bag: horrible in interviews with Charlie Gibson and (much more destructively) with Katie Couric; but great in giving a speech, good in debate with Joe Biden, and fantastic in drawing and pleasing large conservative crowds. Good and bad, she was the campaign, or the part of it that worked on the stump: John McCain had to speak alongside her, or address embarrassingly small audiences. And, in difficult circumstances, Sarah Palin was relentlessly upbeat, whether blithely claiming vindication over "Troopergate" or trying to square the "s***t sandwich" of a 700 billion dollar bailout with a conservative base that hated it.

Now the election is lost and won, both sides, by time-honored tradition, are dealing with their turncoats. On the Democrat side, this should be very simple.

On the Republican side it's a nightmare, because there's not just one Senator Joe Lieberman to cull, there's a horde of pundits, and the party's candidate himself is a foe of all sorts of positions commonly held in the party; and his staff of Bushies has turned out not only to be inept but lying backstabbers, conducting a not-for-attribution smear campaign against John McCain's choice for the vice-presidency.

Beldar explains and in an update shows what needed to happen to the anonymous sources telling lies about Sarah Palin (link).

Nothing of the kind has happened, and too much time has gone by to suspend judgment any more. John McCain has failed to exercise leadership.

And he has failed in the same way George W. Bush did at his worst: by hiring and maintaining in office liars, incompetents and backstabbers; and by letting them do whatever they want; and by not articulating for the conservative movement any relevant, solid and widely acceptable values and principles for guidance. He's not doing anything about the crisis in the party; and he hasn't provided any basis for anyone else to do anything either.

If John McCain had been elected president, it's plausible that he would have kept playing to the same pattern he showed in the campaign and that he is showing much more damagingly after it. If so, it would not have been possible to run the White House effectively like that.

Without being able to pick and keep control of good personnel, and without the ability to make the best use of any talent he luckily hit on (as the fiasco of the Palin rollout and the worse fiasco now unfolding demonstrate), without nurturing either a movement or a party (as Barack Obama and Howard Dean have), without any possibility to reach out successfully to the hostile Democrat legislature (as the financial crisis demonstrated) or to the implacably hostile mainstream media (as the whole campaign demonstrated), John McCain would have been in great danger of being reduced to a lonely figure in the Oval Office, with nothing but the formal powers of his office.

In other words, in some ways he could indeed have been four more years of George W. Bush.

On My Way to Baghdad

2008-11-12T09:39:03+00:00

My request to embed with the U.S. Army in Baghdad has been approved, and it turns out that I need to leave a bit earlier than I expected. It will take a while before I actually get there – I need to be in Kuwait four days in advance for paperwork and “processing,” and I’m going to stop in New York City for two days on the way to Kuwait. But I’ll be there soon enough and will have a large batch of fresh dispatches for you about what is hopefully the end of the war.

I haven’t spent any quality time in Baghdad for over a year. The first time I visited Iraq’s capital was shortly after General David Petraeus unleashed his surge of counterinsurgency forces. It was impossible to determine whether or not he would succeed at the time. Sometimes the surge seemed a smashing success in the making. Other times Iraq looked despairingly broken beyond repair. The country was still so mind-bogglingly dysfunctional it was sometimes hard for me to believe it was real.

A year ago I went to Fallujah and had to spend a day in Baghdad’s Green Zone filling out paperwork to get myself credentialed. While waiting to be processed I sat outside on the lawn next to the Iraqi parliament building and listened to a 45-minute fire fight just on the other side of the wall in the Red Zone. The BRRRRRAP of automatic AK-47 fire was punctuated by the sound of explosions. Police car sirens wailed, and I remember feeling relieved that at least the Iraqi Police were rushing toward, instead of away from, the fight. I remember hearing a car bomb explode two miles away. It sounded like it exploded mere blocks away. Baghdad in 2007 was still not a place you would want to be.

Read the rest at MichaelTotten.com

Without Comment

2008-11-12T03:14:53+00:00

Generations

2008-11-11T23:02:09+00:00

Here's a picture taken of my Great Grandfather with his grandson just before the latter embarked to Europe during the "Great War." The firearms they carry are obviously not indicative of those that were used in Europe at the time, but it provides an interesting continuity.

What follows is a brief account of my Great Grandfather's experience, transcribed by my Great Uncle, in what was called at the time the "War Between the States," because we didn't realize how typical it would become. Just for the sake of recollection and to provide a sense of how easy it isn't. If you'd like to consult an historical review of the events recounted in my Great Grandfather's narrative check out a book by Charles Bracelen Flood entitled, Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War.

It might be of interest to the readers to get some first-hand experiences of one who was in the Civil War, told in his own words a few months before his death.
“I enlisted on President Lincoln’s first call for volunteers, at Key Stone Furnace in Gallia County, Ohio, July 13, 1861. This was in the 27th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Much of the equipment at the training camp was poor. They had no guns. Very few of the soldiers knew how to shoot a gun and hardly knew which end of the gun was to be used. In training we used sticks for guns

“Our first assignment was to reinforce Mulligan at Lexington, Missouri. Lexington surrendered before we could bring up reinforcements. Our forced march took us 45 miles in two days, one right after the other. At Camden Hill we slept twenty minutes. Then we woke up only to find the Rebels had surrounded us in the dark. There was only one way out. We sneaked out, but it meant another forced march through some awful rain. Evidently we were not heard for we escaped an engagement. We marched on to Kansas City, a pretty miserable lot. You see our company had only two mules and one wagon. We had thrown our tents away during the march and our provisions were so scanty that we almost starved. Finally we went back to Lexington, 200 miles, for rations. All we had was a pint of cornmeal a day. Before the winter was over we were ordered back to Springfield, Missouri. In February we joined in the attack on Fort Donaldson [i.e. Fort Donelson].

“Some of the troops refused to walk to St. Louis. From St. Louis we took boats to Cairo, New Madrid and Island No. 10. We crossed the Mississippi in small boats and captured a bunch of Rebels. Our next move was down to Fort Pillow, and up the Tennessee River to the siege of Corinth and Iuka and Atlanta. [Although he began the Siege of Atlanta he mustered out before the city actually fell.] On October 22 and 23, 1862, we attacked Price and Van Doren [General Sterling Price and General Earl Van Dorn] from Missouri. During the first day of the encounter, our division was not in. We watched the movement of Price.

“On the second day we were put in the line of battle. Shells were thrown in. Price drew off the second day. If we had followed we could have captured the whole bunch. This country was mainly swamp. We buried our dead in a deep well [emphasis added]. The next morning we captured quite a bunch of Rebels. We followed them for two or three days to Mobile. [This may have been a slight exaggeration, since Mobile was very far south, near the Gulf. But since they marched 40 to 50 miles in a day, it's just barely possible.] Nothing to eat, no salt, and no bread, but we killed some cows and that helped. So we returned to Corinth and passed on the way a field of sweet potatoes and many got sick from eating them. We then stayed in Corinth awhile. Our next campaign was at Jackson, Miss.

“The 27th and 39th O.V. Regiments were together throughout the war and with the 43rd and 63rd made up the 4th Brigade. This drive was made against Forest (Nathan Bedford Forrest). Forest evidently retreated through a timbered section and eluded the Ohio Brigade. We finally returned to Corinth.

“The next order was to start for Vicksburg. We had no shoes or clothes worth speaking of. Our regiment was given a three months rest while we guarded Memphis. We were within one day’s march of Lookout Mountain. We then started our march to the Atlantic [emphasis added]. My four years were up and I was mustered out. [Although he indicated four years enlistment in the narrative that was clearly a mistake. Enlistment was for three years, which means he mustered out on July 13, 1864.] If I had known Sherman was starting his march to the sea, I would have reenlisted. [This is about as politically incorrect as it gets, but he clearly meant it. Sherman's "march to the sea" is what really ended the war, even though Appomattox was later.]
“In looking back, one of the strangest things about the war was the small ailments that men died of. A blister, indigestion, or a touch of flu would put a man under, when in ordinary circumstances, or at home, he would have been well in a couple of days. Thirteen of the biggest men in the Company had measles. Of course, there being no wagons, they had to shift along. All were dead in less than twelve months [emphasis added]. Our equipment consisted of an old rifle that would kick you down and kick you after you fell, a saber, a bayonet, and belt.” [It isn't clear whether the muskets in the picture were the weapons referred to, but odds are he's holding his musket and the one held by his grandson was actually his brother's. All three brothers in the family served under Sherman.]

Update: By complete coincidence, or perhaps "brain jazz," Gerard Vanderleun just posted a picture (together with a stunning poem) of what appears to be part of Forrest's cavalry, that eluded my Great Granddad's unit. The picture of the Confederate troopers was taken in 1917, so could have been taken within months of the picture above. Well, they could have been taken on the same day for all I know.

Veteran's Day 2008

2008-11-11T00:35:02+00:00

I spent the weekend with Ehren Murburg's dad, Mike, who I consider a new friend. We ate, drank, and talked, and Saturday night a college friend of his from Princeton was in town, so dropped by for a few hours and we talked about everything except the thing which brought us together.

We wound up talking about - shockingly - patriotism, and going back and forth (both Mike and his friend Steve are forthright liberals) on the need for a patriotic liberalism. I told them that in my view, liberalism had become identified with a cosmopolitan view that denied the unique place that America has in the world and that wanted badly to reduce America to a country among others.

Steve offered the notion that America is an idea, and that that idea is inherently welcoming, and I chimed in supporting him; we are not a nation of blood or land, we are a nation of an idea, and possibly the first great nation that can say that.

We need - as liberals, as Americans - to embrace those ideas which are our patrimony, to accept their greatness and the imperfections of the realizations. Just as we recognize the greatness and flaws of our children.

Mike Murburg's son Ehren was buried under an American flag, and like all of those who died and were buried under that flag wearing the uniform of our country, he died for a set of ideas. Those ideas are not liberal, not conservative - they contain American liberalism and conservatism and so are greater than either.

I am an American liberal, and as such, I owe my first loyalty to my country.

And because of that - like many modern liberals - I have no problem being grateful to those who died, were wounded, who simply or heroically served in defense of our flag and the ideals it represents.

So on this Veteran's Day, let me - belatedly - say once again to all those serving and their families:

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

Thank you Ehren. And Mike, for loaning him to us.

And finally, thank you to Eric, my son. For protecting me and the rest of us, and for choosing to wear the uniform and defend the ideas that make this country what it is - great. May we and all our leaders be worthy of you and all your colleagues.

A Great Day For Choice

2008-11-10T15:27:44+00:00

This is to acknowledge that in the recent elections the pro-choice side has been victorious everywhere, and the pro-life side has been defeated comprehensively. To all supporters of choice: congratulations.

In one final day of voting:

Barack Obama, an unprecedentedly radical pro-choice candidate, pledged to support the Freedom of Choice Act (link) was elected President of the United States of America. According to CNN polling (link), he was supported even by 54% of the Catholic vote.

Joe Biden, a pro-choice Catholic, was elected Vice-President of the United States of America.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another pro-choice Catholic (who has expounded unorthodox doctrine supporting her pro-choice politics), was strengthened with an increased majority.

The Democratic party, with a stronger-than-ever pro-choice Democratic National Committee 2008 platform "Renewing America's Promise" (link) (link), also gained in the Senate, smoothing the way for President Obama's choice of judges.

John McCain (pro-life with exceptions) and Sarah Palin (about as radical a pro-lifer as Barack Obama is a pro-choicer) were defeated, and the Republican Party was placed in a serious state of disarray and internal conflict.

In California, Proposition 4, the Abortion Waiting Period and Parental Notification Initiative, was defeated. (link)
In Colorado, Amendment 48: Definition of Personhood (defining personhood as beginning at conception) was defeated. (link).
In South Dakota, Initiated Measure 11 (abortion ban) was defeated. (link)

In Michigan, the Stem Cell Initiative (allowing human embryo experimentation) passed. (link)
In Washington, the Aid In Dying Initiative, Initiative 1000 (2008) (allowing physician assisted suicide) passed. (link)

Hat tip to Jill Stanek, for Life will not go on (link).

"Obama's election means Roe v. Wade has been taken off the table for the next 20 or 30 years. Throughout his four- to eight-year tenure, Obama will nominate at least two or three young Supreme Court justices to ensure the majority continues to agree with that decision, forcing the continued legality of abortion on all 50 states for decades."

"So the holy grail for many pro-lifers is now gone. Just get used to thinking of pro-life strategy without it."

Elections have consequences. Barack Obama has moved promptly to gratify the hopes of his pro-choice supporters. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes that Barack Obama is set on course as a pro-choice absolutist, and predicts outrage by pro-lifers (link).

Not necessarily. That is what Michelle Malkin would recommend (link), and she'd be right. But with no obviously viable endgame left to play for and no doubt about what America has voted for, pro-lifers may simply be shattered.

Out This Weekend

2008-11-08T14:17:08+00:00

Sorry for being inattentive. I'm in Florida hanging with Ethan Murburg's dad, and real life trumps the blog today.

Should be back Sunday night...

A.L.