RetrophischI’ve stood outside a church in Kigali where this happened. Where the priest(s) abandoned to the mob those seeking safety.
It was sobering to drive past it every single day we went to the orphanage to see or pick up the little boy who would become our youngest son.
Oh man, @iamjamiefoxx would be perfect for this, too.
Legendary World War II B-29 Pilot, Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Robert “Bob” Vaucher Dies at 102. www.aopa.org/news-and-…
(Thanks to @ReneeLeonardKe1 on Twitter for posting about the story.)
Thirty-five years ago today, we lost the Challenger and its crew. I stood in the library between classes at my high school, mouth agape, watching the footage with several classmates.
“Roger, go at throttle up” forever seared into our memory.
#totouchthefaceofGod
Conrad Heyer was born in 1749, fought as part of the Continental Army in the American Revolution, and was photographed in 1852 at 103 years of age.
I am a day late noting it, but Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) has an excellent historical piece on Cinco de Mayo. Oh, the what-ifs from this period of history alone could churn out a score of Harry Turtledove alternate-history tomes.
“Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.” — Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)
“But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm… But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 46
I wonder what our fourth president, a strict constitutional constructionist, would think of us now.
“Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 39
Oh, what of our history we have forgotten.
Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn’t just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit.
F.A. Hayek, an Austrian economist living in Britain, wrote “The Road to Serfdom” in 1944 as a warning that central economic planning would extinguish freedom.
[…]
Hayek meant that governments can’t plan economies without planning people’s lives. After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges. The scientific-sounding language of President Obama’s economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government’s single plan.
At the beginning of “The Road to Serfdom,” Hayek acknowledges that mere material wealth is not all that’s at stake when the government controls our lives: “The most important change … is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.”
This shouldn’t be controversial. If government relieves us of the responsibility of living by bailing us out, character will atrophy. The welfare state, however good its intentions of creating material equality, can’t help but make us dependent. That changes the psychology of society.
According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest?