Bryan Strawser

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Archives for September 2004

Two Years In, the Rest of our Lives to go….

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Glenn Reynolds, over at Instapundit pointed to this Bleat, by Minneapolis’s James Lileks from September 11, 2003.

I’ve never read a more fitting blog post about 9/11:

Two years ago today I was convinced that every presumption I had about the future was wrong. This war, I feared, would be horrible, total, and long.

Two years later I take a certain grim comfort in some people’s disinterest in the war; if you’d told me two years ago that people would be piling on the President and bitching about slow progress in Iraq, I would have known in a second that the nation hadn’t suffered another attack. When the precise location of Madonna’s tongue is big news, you can bet the hospitals aren’t full of smallpox victims. Of course some people are impatient with those who still recall the shock of 9/11; the same people were crowding the message boards of internet sites on the afternoon of the attacks, eager to blame everyone but the hijackers. They hate this nation. In their hearts, they hate humanity. They would rather cheer the perfect devils than come to the aid of a compromised angel. They can talk for hours about how wrong it was to kill babies, busboys, businessmen, receptionists, janitors, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers – and then they lean towards you, eyes wide, and they say the fatal word:

But.

And then you realize that the eulogy is just a preface. All that concern for the dead is nothing more than the knuckle-cracking of an organist who’s going to play an E minor chord until we all agree we had it coming.

I’ve no doubt that if Seattle or Boston or Manhattan goes up in a bright white flash there will be those who blame it all on Bush. We squandered the world’s good will. We threw away the opportunity to atone, and lashed out. Really? You want to see lashing out? Imagine Kabul and Mecca and Baghdad and Tehran on 9/14 crowned with mushroom clouds: that’s lashing out. Imagine the President in the National Cathedral castigating Islam instead of sitting next to an Imam who’s giving a homily. Mosques burned, oil fields occupied, smart bombs slamming into Syrian palaces. We could have gone full Roman on anyone we wanted, but we didn’t. And we won’t.

Which is why this war will be long.

The world will not end. It will roll around in its orbit until Sol expires of famine or indigestion. In the end we’re all ash anyway – but even as ash, we matter. The picture at the top of this page is a sliver taken from a 9/11 camera feed. It’s the cloud that rolled through lower Manhatttan when the towers fell. Paper, steel, furniture, plastic, people. The man who took the picture inhaled the dust of the dead. Somewhere lodged in the lung of a New Yorker is an atom that once belonged to a man who went to work two years ago and never came back. His widow dreads today, because people will be coming and calling, and she’ll have to insist that she’s okay. It’s hard but last year was harder. The kids will be sad and distant, but they take their cues from her, and they sense that it’s hard – but that last year was harder. But what really kills her, really really kills her, is knowing that the youngest one doesn’t remember daddy at all anymore. And she’s the one who has his eyes.

Two years in; the rest of our lives to go.

Zell’s Speech

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Much is being said in the press and in the blogosphere about Zell Miller’s Speech to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night last week. I missed the speech and caught only the highlights – I was able to watch the rest last night.

Overall, I thought it was a good speech. Yes, Zell was a bit angry and frustrated and that came out in his speech. But I’d be angry and frustrated too if I thought that my party had abandoned me – and Zell is right about the Democrats having changed over the last twenty years.

A couple of the better portions of his speech:

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier.

And, our soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

It is not their patriotism, it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking.

They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace. They were wrong.

They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war. They were wrong.

And no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

Of course, many on the left didn’t like Zell Miller’s comments about the role that the American Soldier has played defending our freedoms. Scott Rosenberg over at Salon.com writes this:

I’m sorry, senator, but you couldn’t be more wrong. (And every Republican who applauded you needs a remedial civics class). It is the U.S. constitution that bestows these freedoms. Executives and legislators sometimes try to abridge them. Soldiers, for the most part, protect them. But from the time of the nation’s Founding Fathers on, American leaders, thinkers and citizens have been conscious of the tension between our cherished civil freedoms and the logic of warfare. Waging war demands sacrifice and obedience — and compromises freedom. And so democracies rightly and appropriately go to war reluctantly, and voters demand that their leaders show that there is no alternative to fighting.

Yes, he’s right. These freedoms are guaranteed by the Constitution – but they’re protected by the American Soldier – and others – who have ensured that our Constitution was protected. Senator Miller has a law degree – taught history and poltical science – and served in the military. I’m quite sure that he doesn’t need a remedial civics lesson.

Miller continues:

Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than 20 weeks of campaign rhetoric.

Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

And…

For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure.

As a war protester, Kerry blamed our military.

As a senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harm’s way, far away.

George W. Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.

John Kerry wants to refight yesterday’s war. President Bush believes we have to fight today’s war and be ready for tomorrow’s challenges. President Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists, no matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.

George W. Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.

From John Kerry, they get a “yes/no/maybe” bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.

As expected, the left went nuts. Dave Winer wrote the following:

The Zell Miller speech was a wakeup call. That wasn’t an election speech, that was incitement to a lynch mob. Guess who’s the guest of honor? Think about it. Why was the Miller speech so scary? Answer — you’re next. That’s what Miller was saying. After this election we put on the brown shirts.

I guess he’s expecting the SA and the SS to start marching in the streets next – under the banner of the Republican Party.

I’ve always admired Senator Miller – he’s a frequent guest on Imus in the Morning – my morning talk radio show. I’ve found his interviews engaging and humorous – just like his speech.

The Cradle of Baseball

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A little more than a week ago, I visited that cradle of baseball – Boston’s Fenway Park to catch a game between Boston and Toronto.

Baseball at Fenway is just, well, different, than other ballparks. There’s the history and traditions – such as the last World Series won by Boston (1918):


worldseries

Then there’s Coach Johnny Pesky, who played for Boston in the 40s and 50s – and continues to suit up for every game:

pesk

And the Green Monster out in Left Field:

greenmonster

And the famous Red Seat in the outfield where Ted Williams hit his monster home run:

redseat

Some scenes from the game:

thepitch

fists

There’s no place like Fenway Park…

John Galt: We are on Strike!

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Some deep thoughts from Ayn Rand:

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values, I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing – you who dread knowledge – I am the man who will now tell you.

You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster. In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.

You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I – I am the man who has granted you your wish.

Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived the world of man’s mind.

Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose mind isn’t. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren’t.

While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem – I beat you to it. I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality – mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.

All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet draded to lost, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. Who do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.

– Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Busy

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Been busier than a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

I have much queued up to blog about – but first I need to relax 😉

More to come…