Saturday, July 26, 2003

I've just started reading The Soul of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson. It focuses on three great generals. Epaminondas, William Tecumsah Sherman and George S. Patton. The primary thesis of the book is that there is no army so deadly as the aroused citizenry of a democracy called up to destroy an evil enemy. I am struck by the similarity of his analysis to the wars described in the Book of Mormon, especially the ones involving Moroni, a citizen soldier who rallied his people with a banner called the Title of Liberty. He was a military innovator, as well, although unlike the others, he did not seek to destroy the enemy's ability to make war in the future. It is one of the keys of our present situation as well as those described in the book that the best soldiers are those who are "inspired by a better cause," their homes and their liberties, their wives and their children, and, when they are convinced that they are fighting against an evil force, they are quite deadly.

Friday, July 25, 2003

I've just watched the end of a program on the Discovery Times Channel about the discovery of over a hundred infant skeletons in a sewer in the ancient Roman city of Ashkelon. After detailing the evidence that the site was beneath a brothel, where slave girls would dump their unwanted babies, primarily the boys, because girls would grow up to replace their mothers. Of course, there was the obligatory caution at the end that we have no right to judge these people, instead of thinking how miserable and degraded their lives were.

Yeah, right. The more I learn about classical "civilization" the more I fear for what our world is becoming. But, let's not forget, they did invent cement and built good roads. And if they'd had trains, they'd have run on time.

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Best of the Web today has a couple of links that show clearly how weird the Democrats have become.

First: "Howard Dean grudgingly acknowledged that 'it's a victory for the Iraqi people' but insisted that 'it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war,' and added: 'I think in general the ends do not justify the means.' "

Then this quote from Bill Clinton: ""I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying 'we probably shouldn't have said that.' You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can't make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now."

Who'd have ever thought that the party could sink lower than Bill Clinton?