Happy VJ Day.
And of course, it’s not just us. Israel isn’t allowed to win, either. That is the real cause of the continued festering in the Middle East.
[Update mid afternoon]
This seems related: Israel concessions on land are the wrong answer to the wrong problem.
…continue to pass from our presence. Nancy Wake has died at ninety-eight:
Working as a newspaper reporter, Wake found herself in Vienna where she saw Jews being whipped in public by Nazi SS troops. In 2003, she described to News Limited’s then-London correspondent, Bruce Wilson, one of the horrors she witnessed in 1938.
“The Germans and Austrians had set up a kind of Catherine wheel and tied these Jews to it, and as it went around they were beating them and throwing things at them,” she said.
“I thought . . . what had they done, poor bastards? Nothing. So I said, ‘God almighty, it’s a bit much and I’ve got to do something about it’.”
It’s an amazing story. There should be another movie made about her, to reacquaint younger people with her exploits.
Today’s the forty-second anniversary of the first moon landing. Bill Simon and I discussed the ceremony that we developed to commemorate it over on The Space Show on Monday. Clark Lindsey has some more related links.
Hard to believe it’s been that long (doesn’t seem that long ago that I attended a celebration in Hollywood thrown by Ron Howard for the quarter-century anniversary), but today is the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. Wednesday is Evoloterra, so it’s a good time to plan a get together with family and friends to celebrate. Bill Simon and I, the principal authors of the ceremony, will be discussing it on The Space Show on Monday afternoon.
It’s been thirty-five years now. Pound for pound, I imagine the IDF is still the toughest fighting force in the world. They can’t afford not to be.
A perennial classic from Rush Limbaugh’s late father. The people currently running the country certainly have lives and fortunes, but they seem to be a little short of the “honor” stuff, sacred or otherwise.
And celebrate, amidst the hot dogs, barbecue, ice cream and fireworks, and commemorate this anniversary appropriately, with an oral reading of the document that was signed two hundred and thirty five years ago today.
[Update early afternoon (PDT)]
More thoughts from Jeff Jacoby:
If Nature and Nature’s God intended human beings to be free and equal, then the only legitimate government must be self-government. For if none of us is naturally subordinate or superior to anyone else, no one has the right to rule us without first obtaining our approval. Political power, Locke had written, stems “only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.’’
The Declaration of Independence emphasized the point. Not only are all persons endowed by nature with the unalienable rights of equality and freedom, it avowed, but “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’’
No lawful government without consent and self-rule: It was an extraordinary doctrine for its time. . . . July 4 marks more than American independence. It commemorates the great political ideals, rooted in faith and philosophy, that vindicated that independence – and that thereby transformed the world.
But some wish to transform it back.
Most Jamaicans think they’d be better off if they were still a British colony.
No kidding. Decolonialization, particularly for the British Empire, was a disaster for most of the former colonies, particularly in Africa (of which Haiti is a bit of, in the western hemisphere).
Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg, the battle that, combined with the fall of Vicksburg to Grant on July 4th in 1863, broke the back of the Confederacy, though the war would go on for almost two more years. Here’s an interesting story about the fiftieth reunion. Two years from today will be the sesquicentennial. Needless to say, there will be no veterans of the battle attending. Or if there are, they would be interesting medical curiosities, from which we might learn a lot about longevity.
I should have posted this earlier, and it’s hard to believe it’s been that long, but I drove up to Mojave on the twentieth of June, 2004, to see the first flight of SpaceShipOne into space. I put up several blog posts about it, starting with this one. Just consecutively click on the next post (at the top of the page) to see them all, along with links to other posts.
..or give me death. The real story of the Founding of the nation, by Frank J.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Will the Democrats destroy us all?
Only if we let them.