Religion is a collective group of people’s conception of the natural order of things. Collectively religions accurately depict the natural order of things. Not because they are trying, however.  In fact, most religions tell believers it will elevate them above the natural order of things, or remake the others in its image in order to restore the rightful state of order.

Consider Judaism. It told a group of people they were more special than the natural order, and proved it by enslaving them in Egypt, bringing them out of Egypt, insulating them from the natural order for forty years, and then reintroduced them to the natural order of things, which is fighting to sustain their collective conception of natural order, which, like many other religions, offer interesting possibilities at what the natural order could be if it were the natural order, which it could be if it implemented its conception of natural order on everyone else.

Rather, religions together accurately depict natural order because the global concert of each religion’s actors all acting simultaneously and at once is precisely nature’s order. This is true even of Atheists who collectively function as a single religion. As do Voluntaryists, however non-coercively. And wouldn’t natural order be interesting if people, whom for so long have done nothing but coerce each other, just stopped it already? Then people could get on with figuring out whom they are, and being that person. What I’m saying is the great Greek aphorism – know thyself – is potentially unfulfilled.

Perhaps it requires a moment to understand that natural order is as natural order does. Whatever natural order may be, it always abides by the laws of physics, markets, and providence. So what all religions – and cultures, which like any collective group of people trying to achieve their conception of the natural order play a substantial role in shaping the natural order – have in common is a good indicator of what’s true about the human experience. For instance, no religion I’m aware of promises that the rain will fall only on the righteous, because clearly that’s not true. All religions that promise the return of its particular prophet or deity disclaim that the precise date or time is unknown. The exceptions to this all prove the rule, such as the Seventh Day Adventists who were so sure Jesus was returning in 1844 they didn’t bother to bring in the crops that year.

That’s why it’s important to consider how accurately a particular religion depicts the immutable laws by which all actors in the concert of natural order must obey, such as gravity and probability. Consequently, I’m particularly tolerant of religions that articulate and are consistent with the natural rights (see Locke, John; Hobbes, Thomas) that shape my conception of the natural order, which is freedom. I suppose that explains a lot about why some people think man made God in man’s image.

For instance, if God was made in my image he’d love freedom, hate coercion, but be a bit of a fatalist, being a big believer in providence and that the best we can do is to do the best we can. Of course, you can say the same of gazelles on African savannah.

Nature, then, provides the natural order with which the human experience is ultimately consistent. The obvious implication is that humans evolved directly from nature, which is scientifically true. Yet common to almost every human is belief in God or religion, befuddling Atheists. Perhaps gazelles marvel at the stars, thanking providence for sparing them from the day’s lions. That doesn’t account beyond nature’s order, however, for the gazelles the lions ate.

The fact is that natural life is short and brutal. Since humans are uniquely capable of attempting to recreate natural order in their conception of what natural order should be it should be no surprise that humans endeavor precisely that. Perhaps left to our own devices in a world devoid of government or religion – like in The Book of Eli, where the natural order of humankind was truly short and brutal – religion would be a most logical conclusion, as a preferable alternative to nature’s brute order. The logical end of that, though, is the same concert of religions, cultures, and individuals, as exist now, all fighting, one way or another, to assert their conception of natural order upon others. The common human experience, then, may be cyclical and never learns from its mistakes, something to which most religions stipulate. As does Cosmology (universe expanding, contracting, and over again).

If in a world devoid of government or religion life is short and brutal, rather than libertopia, one wonders how voluntaryism might take hold if not by force. Consider Ghengis Khan, the original neocon, who sincerely believed the only way to live at peace was to conquer potentially (and often actually) quarrelsome neighbors, and enforce a culture of peace with the hardest of iron fists – which he did. His only mandate to all within his ever-expanding territory was be peaceful. But it took many millions of lives to achieve that peace, and it lasted only as long as he could enforce it. George Bush might say that Khan violated his peaceful principles to implement his peaceful principles. Successfully, too, for a time.

Then again, hundreds of millions of lives have been wasted throughout history for reasons much less noble than creating a culture of relative peace. As a result I’m often convinced that neoconism is the lesser of the evils. The obvious counterargument to neoconism is that Alfred Nobel thought dynamite – his invention and at that time the world’s greatest weapon – would end large-scale warfare. And look how well that turned out. But as a friend pointed out the other day, Nobel may have actually been correct in principle, and his flaw one of scale. Perhaps hydrogen bombs are weapons great enough in global scale to end large-scale warfare, making irritating regional conflicts the norm rather than greater global upheaval.

Of course, regional conflicts involving nuclear weapons may quickly progress to global upheaval, which makes the neoconservative point about the importance of stopping unstable regimes such as Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. By contrast, neoconservatives tolerate Israel’s nuclear arsenal because they don’t think it’d be used for anything but self-preservation. Self-preservation is a natural right, and one superior to the right of coercion asserted by every invader – even those who claim the right of invasion to create a peaceful order. Human’s collective appreciation for the right of self-preservation may be precisely why implementing an aggressive neoconservative strategy effectively frightens the majority of us into inaction on the matter, leading then to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in unstable regions (e.g. Pakistan), the presence of which makes more likely the prospect of global warfare, which is ultimately much worse than irritating regional conflicts.

Worse, not only are we collectively unwilling to preclude the possibility of global warfare by forcibly stopping unstable regimes from obtaining nuclear weapons, we are unwilling even to destabilize those regimes by tearing down the restrictions on nuclear energy in the United States – ironically, the form of energy powering the Navy, our greatest projection of power – and instantly bankrupt unstable and unwanted regimes the world over. The mass proliferation of nuclear energy in America would reduce regional conflicts into simply national conflicts. Or at least nations in a given region couldn’t project their regional conflicts onto us, which would be outstanding.

So do we agree, then, on supporting nuclear energy? And did I mention Gov. Gary Johnson supports bustin’ down the door to nuclear energy in America? I’m on board.

As far as I can tell only 10 state attorney generals (from Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington) are joining Virginia’s challenge to Obamacare.  Randy Barnett, a Volokh Conspirator, lists the bases for challenging Obamacare here, which include (a) the individual mandate, (b) state-specific kickbacks, and (c) Tenth Amendment. His prognosis is fairly grim:

Ultimately, there are three ways to think about whether a law is constitutional: Does it conflict with what the Constitution says? Does it conflict with what the Supreme Court has said? Will five justices accept a particular argument? Although the first three of the potential constitutional challenges to health-care reform have a sound basis in the text of the Constitution, and no Supreme Court precedents clearly bar their success, the smart money says there won’t be five votes to thwart the popular will to enact comprehensive health insurance reform.

That’s interesting, and extremely important.  But it obfuscates a more important issue.  Only 11 out of 50 states are joining the suit.  A medical prognosis is appropriate here: America’s political spine has osteoporosis.  The best thing you can say about 11/50 is that it’s a fraction George Washington would have used.  [Ed. note: I once read, although I can't find any support on the Internet tonight, that Washington used uncommon fractions, like 7/11, 23/31, etc.]   Also, like I said before, referring to Obamacare as reform is a leading candidate for misnomer of the still infant decade, “since the bill entrenches the existing health care industries’ oligopolistic relationship with the federal government.”

While there may be much perspective to be had regarding the implications of the bill, and what is the best course of action to take to repeal it, I’m struggling to find any positive perspective about the fact that only 11 states are joining the fight.  It’s an appropriate time for inspiration from greater men than ourselves:

“The utopian schemes of leveling, and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable as those which vest all property in the Crown. They are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional.” — Samuel Adams, via.

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams, via Pila.

“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” – Variously attributed, mostly to Alexis de Tocqueville.

Here’s my new favorite, also by Tocqueville:

“I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.”

Finally, Mark Levin reminded us today that Tocqueville warned us, in the early third of the 19th century:

Tocqueville foresaw a slow death of freedom.  He feared that the power of the central government would gradually expand, meddling in every area of our lives, and he was afraid that we would welcome it, and even convince ourselves that we controlled it.

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately.  It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will.  Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated…

The tyranny he foresaw for us does not have much in common with the vicious dictatorships of the last century, or with contemporary North Korea, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.  “The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling.”  The vision and even the language anticipated Orwell’s 1984, or Huxley’s Brave New World. Tocqueville described the new tyranny as “an immense and tutelary power,” and its task is to regulate every aspect of our lives.

It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

Tocqueville thought we would not be bludgeoned into submission; we would be seduced.  He foresaw the collapse of American democracy as the end result of two parallel developments that would ultimately render us meekly subservient to an enlarged bureaucratic power: the corruption of our character, and the emergence of a vast welfare state.  His nightmare vision is brilliantly and terrifyingly prescient:

That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild.  It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.  For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

UPDATE: I found some typos and lousy syntax, and fixed it accordingly.

I found these WWI links at GoodShit.  Interesting perspective here on WWI. It’s a long, interesting article that I recommend. By the way, the author, Mike Gerber, is endeavoring to treat his blog like a magazine, which I think is a neat idea.  Excerpts below.

So for three months, Sir Michael Howard shepherded a hundred or so of us future leaders of the world (you’re welcome) through the sorry events of 1914 to 1918. As my friend Rob and I traded jokes in the shadows—he was a fellow Record E-Boarder, and just as punch-drunk as I—the facts and conclusions flew like shrapnel. What an unholy mess it had been, starting as a comic opera (if the Archduke’s driver hadn’t taken a wrong turn, and Princip hadn’t stopped for a sandwich, the assassination would’ve never happened), and ending like a Wagnerian tragedy. Then as now, it’s difficult to keep the facts in order. Ypres, Mons, Verdun, Chateaubriand—is that one, I forget? The battles are almost impossible to keep straight because they are all the same: stupid plans carried out with incredible bravery, unimaginable slaughter ending in utter stalemate.

“By the end of 1915, the French had lost 995,000 men.” That fact alone is enough to paralyze the imagination, or should be. A million men from one country? In three months? And they were just getting started. How many Einsteins, and Picassos bled their lives away into the dirt of Flanders? How many Alexander Flemings or Louis Armstrongs suffocated in a collapsed dugout, or froze to death on the Eastern Front? How many—and now I am speaking as my 21-year-old self—Thurbers or Benchleys or Groucho Marxes perished? What wars really destroy is potential, the future, and that is something simply too big to mourn. And so Rob and I kept joking, even going so far to pop “Sir Mike” into the magazine for an issue or two. He took it all in very good humor; somewhere I have a letter from him mock-failing us both.

There is no story in World War I, only suffering. There are no great heroes who triumph, nor villains who are vanquished; there is no cause thrumming underneath worth all the sacrifice, nor any final victory redeeming it all. It is, to be blunt, some of the most depressing, unsatisfying history one can study. That is its gift to us, and why everyone should have a passing familiarity with it. Especially citizens of countries who emerged from it relatively whole, and have a tendency to forget what they do not wish to remember—yes, I’m talking to you, United States.

* * *

If our modern madness has a name, this is it. The only reason some members of the US military advocated a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union was, obviously, they felt that they and theirs would come out all right. One always believes that one will survive, this is how human beings are constructed. In people like Curtis LeMay, that instinct was infinitely more powerful than their imagination; that’s the difference between him and say, Jackson Browne. I’d argue one cannot be Curtis LeMay—or indeed any part of the modern military—without killing that precise area of one’s imagination. If a neurotic sees death and decay everywhere, the modern military mind sees everything but death and decay, and must, or be unable to function

Finally, the author linked to youtube uploads of the “The Great War”, which is a BBC series on the first world war similar to “World At War.” I’m happy to find it on youtube, and I’ll be watching all of them.

From freelance journalist Michael Totten:

24 Feburary 2010

From: Mellinger, Jeffrey J CSM MIL USA

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Today, at Arlington National Cemetery, we lay to rest COL(R) Robert L. Howard.  The link for the interview is at the end of this email.

Read a bit about Howard at one of these links: The Robert L. Howard Tribute Website, The Congressional Medal of Honor Society Website, The Washington Post- Medal of Honor recipient Col. Robert L. Howard dies at 70.

COL(R) Howard was arguably America’s most highly decorated Warrior ever, earning more awards for valor (10) than Audie Murphy, but he was surely America’s most highly living warrior until his death.  The US Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) Biographical Sketch.

I had forgotten that Audie Murphy was a highly decorated combat veteran who earned the Medal of Honor.

Color image from the Robert L. Howard Tribute website.

Wounded 14 times in 54 months of combat duty in Vietnam, Robert Howard was awarded 8 Purple Hearts and was believed to be the most decorated living American.

Colonel Howard served five tours in Vietnam and is the only soldier in our nation’s history to be nominated for the Medal of Honor three times for three separate actions within a thirteen-month period. He received a direct appointment from Master Sergeant to 1st Lieutenant in 1969, and was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Richard M. Nixon at the White House in 1971. Colonel Howard is one of America’s most decorated soldiers. His other awards for valor include the Distinguished Service Cross – our nation’s second highest award, the Silver Star – the third highest award, and eight Purple Hearts. He was the last Vietnam Special Forces Medal of Honor recipient still on active duty when he retired on Sept. 29, 1992.

Daniel Hannan sharing some Aristotelian wisdom. Via the Von Mises blog.

Though I don’t have the time to read this biographical sketch of John Maynard Keynes by Murray Rothbard, I look forward to doing so.

I recently linked to an article containing a number of WWII images taken in Nazi occupied Russian territory.  As an introduction to the pictures the article’s author wrote the following:

The photos are shocking and cruel, but they should teach us to respect others’ lives and dignity. We are equal and we are not born to be slaves.

Moving prose.  We are principally equal – human beings – and deserve equal treatment. We are not born to be slaves. Not to each other, not to ideology, not to States.  We should increase our principal understanding of what respect, dignity, and slavery means. We should increase the measure of respect, dignity, and liberty we give each other and demand from the institutions that govern us.

That bit of reflection prompted me to do bit of research into the series of atrocities the Armenians call the Armenian Genocide, but Ottomans Turks, the perpetrators of the aforementioned atrocities, deny was genocide. You probably know that whether to label the over one million Armenians that Ottoman-Turkey killed during the first world war is a contentious issue internationally and domestically.  For instance:

Two years ago [in 2008], before a resolution was to be put to a vote in the House, Turkey recalled Ambassador [to the US] Sensoy in protest. Its president warned of “serious troubles” and its top general said that military ties with the U.S. would never be the same. To limit further damage, the Bush administration and eight former secretaries of state then weighed in to kill the bill. It worked.

With regard to the fight over whether to officially label the Turk-on-Armenian atrocities ‘genocide’ this author persuasively argues what I believe is a more important point:

Among the ways in which freedom is being chipped away in Europe, one of the less obvious is the legislation of memory. More and more countries have laws saying you must remember and describe this or that historical event in a certain way, sometimes on pain of criminal prosecution if you give the wrong answer. What the wrong answer is depends on where you are. In Switzerland, you get prosecuted for saying that the terrible thing that happened to the Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman empire was not a genocide. In Turkey, you get prosecuted for saying it was. What is state-ordained truth in the Alps is state-ordained falsehood in Anatolia. * * *

This kind of nonsense is all the more dangerous when it comes wearing the mask of virtue. A perfect example is the recent attempt to enforce limits to the interpretation of history across the whole EU in the name of “combating racism and xenophobia”. A proposed “framework decision” of the justice and home affairs council of the EU, initiated by the German justice minister Brigitte Zypries, suggests that in all EU member states “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” should be “punishable by criminal penalties of a maximum of at least between one and three years imprisonment”. * * *

Let me be clear. I believe it is very important that nations, states, peoples and other groups (not to mention individuals) should face up, solemnly and publicly, to the bad things done by them or in their name. The West German leader Willy Brandt falling silently to his knees in Warsaw before a monument to the victims and heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto is, for me, one of the noblest images of postwar European history. For people to face up to these things, they have to know about them in the first place. So these subjects must be taught in schools as well as publicly commemorated. But before they are taught, they must be researched. The evidence must be uncovered, checked and sifted, and various possible interpretations tested against it.

It’s this process of historical research and debate that requires complete freedom – subject only to tightly drawn laws of libel and slander, designed to protect living persons but not governments, states or national pride (as in the notorious article 301 of the Turkish penal code). The historian’s equivalent of a natural scientist’s experiment is to test the evidence against all possible hypotheses, however extreme, and then submit what seems to him or her the most convincing interpretation for criticism by professional colleagues and for public debate. This is how we get as near as one ever can to truth about the past.

How, for example, do you refute the absurd conspiracy theory, which apparently still has some currency in parts of the Arab world, that “the Jews” were behind the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York? By forbidding anyone from saying that, on pain of imprisonment? No. You refute it by refuting it. By mustering all the available evidence, in free and open debate. This is not just the best way to get at the facts; ultimately, it’s the best way to combat racism and xenophobia too. So join us, please, to see off the nanny state and its memory police.

The author’s name is Timothy Garton Ash. He has a good piece here on Europe’s illogical, illiberal, and appalling stance degrading position on civil liberty, and especially free speech.  A snippet:

So, for example, last week the home secretary pathetically and idiotically banned the Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the UK to show his noxious and offensive anti-Islam film at the invitation of members of the House of Lords. Result: a curtailment of free speech that gives Wilders more free publicity than he could otherwise have dreamed of. And how does the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne react? Oh, that’s all right, he says, because the film is really offensive. Well, d’oh. Call yourself a liberal? John Stuart Mill would be turning in his grave. And I shall need some convincing that the Conservative frontbench are going to be any better.

I’m not sure I fully understand all the reasons for this cravenness, but here’s one. A couple of years ago I asked a very senior New Labour politician if his government had not got the balance between security and liberty wrong. “Well”, he replied, “one thing I can tell you is that if you ask the British people they will always choose more security.” And this is where the ball comes back to us. Since our leaders are now mainly followers – following the latest opinion poll, focus group or newspaper campaign – it’s up to us, the people, to change their view of what “the people” want.

Pardon my digression. Atrocities should be be investigated thoroughly, and people free of Orwellian restrictions on speech and thought should discuss them openly to find truth. Here are some links with pertinent information about what the Turks did to Armenians during the First World War.

Images:

Here’s a m0ral-relativistic argument against labeling the Armenian atrocities as genocide.

This is a good window into the Armenian point of view.

Finally, here’s the transcript of a Sixty Minutes video clip on the matter.  Excerpt below.

(CBS) Wars are fought over oil, land, water, but rarely over history, especially about something that happened nearly 100 years ago. But that’s what Turkey and Armenia are still fighting over: what to label the mass deportation and subsequent massacre of more than a million Christian Armenians from Ottoman Turkey during World War I.

Armenians and an overwhelming number of historians say that Turkey’s rulers committed genocide, that its actions were a model for what Hitler did to the Jews. The Turks, meanwhile, say their ancestors never carried out such crimes, and that they too were victims in a world war.

Ever since, this battle over history has not only ensnared the two nations but even the White House and Congress, where resolutions officially recognizing the genocide are currently moving through the House and Senate.

But our story begins where the lives of so many Armenians ended, far from Istanbul, in the desert.

“60 Minutes” and correspondent Bob Simon took a drive into what is now Syria, to the barren wilderness, to what amounts to the largest Armenian cemetery in the world.

“As many as 450,000 Armenians died here,” author Peter Balakian told Simon.

Balakian is an Armenian American who has written extensively about what happened in this desolate place.

According to Balakian, 450,000 Armenians died in this spot in the desert. “In this region called Deir Zor, it is the greatest graveyard of the Armenian Genocide,” he explained.

Deir Zor is to Armenians what Auschwitz is to Jews. The most ghoulish thing about the place is that 95 years later the evidence of the massacres is everywhere.

Just a short distance from the banks of Euphrates there’s a dump. It’s also the site of a mass grave. It has never been excavated. All we had to do was scratch the surface of the sand to collect evidence of what had happened here.

Under the surface was evidence of bones. “It’s the hill full of bones,” said Dr. Haroot Kahvejian, an Armenian dentist who showed Simon around.

The next time the GOP decides to articulate its core values, as it recently did in the Mount Vernon Statement, or ask Glenn Beck to be the keynote speaker at CPAC, perhaps they could be so kind as to read this gem by Mickey Andrews. The GOP sorely needs a reminder of what conservatism is, what Constitutionalism is, and why principles matter. Frankly, after reading Andrews’ piece, I realized I needed a reminder as well.

I was asked yesterday whether I would be going to CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which is currently being held a half-hour’s walk from my office in D.C. It was a logical question, not only since the meetings are so close at hand but also because for five years I chaired CPAC.

* * *

But the answer to yesterday’s question was “no.” No, I’m not going to CPAC. And, truth be told, most of the folks there wouldn’t want me there. They wouldn’t think I’m a conservative; many wouldn’t think Barry Goldwater was a conservative; many, had this been three decades ago, might have been seeking a “true” conservative to run against Ronald Reagan. I don’t begrudge these activists their views and they are entitled to use the term “conservative” to describe themselves if they so choose. But the views many of them profess have little in common with the distinctly American kind of conservatism that gave birth to CPAC and the modern American conservative movement. Instead, what many of today’s self-proclaimed “conservatives” proclaim is an ideology borrowed from what Donald Rumsfeld famously dismissed as “old Europe.” Winston Churchill, one of Europe’s better-known conservatives, was half-American and his incredible strength of character helped Great Britain survive World War II, but when asked to define conservatism, Churchill responded that conservatism was about reverence for king and church. But America has no king and has no national church. That distinction is crucial and one in which today’s so-called conservatives have switched sides; crossed the ocean, if you will.

What distinguished modern American conservatism was that it had its roots not in the British kings, but in John Locke and Adam Smith and other champions of individual liberties and individual empowerment. European conservatism–the kind that has now become the rage for the American Right–was top-down and centered on state power. The rise of modern American conservatism, on the other hand, had a distinctly Madisonian flair, embracing the fundamentals of American constitutional limits on central authority. European conservatism found its voice in magisterial decree, religious edict, and acts of parliaments in which members may or may not have ever visited the communities they were presumed to “represent.” American conservatism found its voice in a Constitution that placed every major power in the hands of the people, through their representatives, and ensured that those representatives would actually be residents of the communities that elected them. American conservatism embraced a Constitution that separated and constrained powers, that specified –highlighted–a few of the protected liberties of the people coupled with clear assertions that all undelegated powers–all other unsurrendered liberties–remained with the people rather than the government. A Constitution that placed unambiguous limitations, including direct prohibitions, on the attempted exercise of governmental authority.

Today there are few things that set a “conservatives’” teeth on edge more than a defense of “civil liberties;” yet that is what American conservatism was all about–protecting the liberties of the people. It was a system designed to protect the people from an over-reaching government, not to protect the government from the people.

Gem alert. Brace yourselves.

American constitutionalism was a historical high-point in recognizing individual worth.

Here, have it again. “American Constitutionalism was a historical high-point in recognizing individual worth. Let it soak right in.

Stop at CPAC today and you will find rooms full of ardent, zealous, fervent young men and women who believe the government should be allowed to torture (we condemned people at Nuremberg for doing that), who believe the government should be able to lock people up without charges and hold them indefinitely (something Henry VIII agreed was a proper exercise of government authority). Who believe the government should be able to read a citizen’s mail and listen in on a citizen’s phone calls, all without a warrant (the Constitution of course prohibits searches without a warrant, but nobody cares less about the Constitution than some of today’s ersatz conservatives).

I’m not at CPAC because I believe in America. I believe in liberty. I believe that governments should be held in check. I believe people matter. I believe in the flag not because of its shape or color but because of the principles it stands for–the principles in the Constitution, the principles repeated and underlined and highlighted and boldfaced and italicized in the Bill of Rights. The George W. whose presidency and precedents I admire was the first president, not the 43d. It is James Madison I admire, not John Yoo. Thomas Paine, not Glenn Beck. Jefferson, not Limbaugh.

Ronald Reagan would not have been welcome at today’s CPAC or a tea party rally, but he would not have wanted to be there, either. Neither do I.

Via the newest member of my blogroll.

All wars are a nightmare to those involved. Thank God, most of us don’t know what it is like and have ever been involved in the fights. Most of us have never suffered from hunger, from invaders, or had no home, no clothes and no hope. In most countries of the world, the present generation has no idea about War World II, or they judge on it from shots published by Lifemagazine. There’s another side you have never seen.  The photos featured in my post today were taken in the former USSR during World War II on the occupied territories.  The authors of most of them are not known — these are photos from family archives posted online by grandchildren of those who took part in the war. Some of the photos belong to the Soviet journalists of that time- Vladimir Lupejko and Dmitri Baltermants. The photos are shocking and cruel, but they should teach us to respect others’ lives and dignity. We are equal and we are not born to be slaves. [Emphasis added.]

Apollo 8 was the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, which of course involves transiting the ‘dark side of the moon.’ Upon return to the sunlit portion of the moon, and reestablishing communication with planet earth, Astronaut Lovelle uttered the following epic statement – see video @ 0:11.

By the way, it was Christmas Day, 1968. Transcript below:

089:32:50 Mattingly: Apollo 8, Houston. [No answer.]

089:33:38 Mattingly: Apollo 8, Houston.

089:34:16 Lovell: Houston, Apollo 8, over.

089:34:19 Mattingly: Hello, Apollo 8. Loud and clear.

089:34:25 Lovell: Roger. Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.

089:34:31 Mattingly: That’s affirmative. You’re the best ones to know.