Posted on 01/19/2005 9:51:40 AM PST by Mo1
*sniff*, please pass me a tissue about CNN losing more audience...*sniff*.
Yeesh, CNN was the only cable news they had at our DC hotel. They stink even worse these days than before.
Prairie
Well, that should peg the old rating's meter.
The magic number's calling, Nully.
Glad he made it home safely. Bad weather is nothing to mess with, especially as many idiots as there are out there on the roads.
When I heard the courage of Bush speech I thought of kind of A Proclamation to the World of the America role is too this planet!
It also reminded me of this.....
Poems by Goethe
"Genius"
(This "motto" is actually from W.H. Murray, "The Scottish Himalayan Expedition", with the Goethe quote at the end.)
Until one is committed there is the chance to draw back;
always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)
there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which
kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would not
otherwise have occured. A whole stream of events
issues from the decision, raising in one's favour
all manner of unforseen incidents and meetings and
material assistance which no man would have dreamed
would come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it!
Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.
Begin it now!
ha ha hehehe! I got 666.....
Powerline Blog has an interesting take on the Bush Inaugural Speech and its critics:
Often immoderate, never confused
That's Dafydd ab Hugh. Here's his take on Bush's speech:
Every conservative criticism of the speech I've read is a variant on the same theme: Bush couldn't possibly have meant what he said; therefore, he was either confused or lying. How dare he!
This only proves how necessary, even vital, was this address: even conservatives have lost the ideological core that was once America. We as the people no longer truly believe in liberty, not as Americans did for the first sesquicentennial. We have become cynical; we are little, green pieces of rock.
The new Bush call to liberty is not rash. It does not require we drop everything to march to the crusade, launching simultaneous attacks on Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Russia. Neither does it prohibit temporary alliances with tyrannies in order to defeat larger ones, as in World War II. But it does say that no longer will we acquiesce in another nation's tyranny simply for our own convenience. We will not overturn elections, overthrow democracies, or even, by our money and our silence, encourage autocracies to crack down on their own people's natural, godly desire for freedom. Appeasement is a tactic of weakness, and we are strong.
We have done these things before; we justified them in the name of a higher cause: trade, security, anticommunism. But Bush notes that, in the long run, we cannot rely on trade with dictatorships; and tyranny (not poverty) begets terrorism, which threatens America's security; and we cannot fight an ideology like Communism -- or militant Islamism -- without an equally robust ideology of our own... you can't defeat something with nothing. Our "something" is liberty; and without it, we are nothing more than the new Roman Empire, adrift in an ocean of relativism and cynical realism.
This is foreign to our character. It is un-American. It is French.
To the extent that the dinosaurs of the movement -- Buckley, Noonan -- cannot recognize their own jadedness, they have become unhelpful. To the extent they fight against the new revivalism of that old time ideology of liberty, they give aid and comfort to the enemy... not only the internationalists across the aisle but even the torturers and beheaders across the sea. There may once have been an epoch of accomodation; but if so, it's time to move on. That was then.
This is now, today. And today, the watchword is liberty, and America is its guardian -- for all, at least by word if not always deed. Time for us all to learn it; it comes as second-nature to us Americans, if we'll just stop talking ourselves out of it.
http://powerlineblog.com/
I have to admit to being a little distracted during the speech. I was busy watching the unwashed rent-a-mob out the window.
did you read the speech?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1323944/posts?page=259#259
Thanks for the link. The only part I didn't care for was the mentioning of the Koran as a "truth". Personally I just don't buy that but I realize the President says stuff to communicate to a very broad audience and not just in this country. He was not just talking to Americans in this speech.
I think the State of the Union address may be even more interesting.
...In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils 7 Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
***
Exerpted from Wasington's Farewell Address to the Nation.
That would be WasHington's Final Address...
.....Westy.....
I'm listening to a good classic rock station on the radio -- I almost always listen to talk radio. I was thrown back into the normal comfort zone for a minute when they played the song Rush always uses for his bumper music... however, the song kept playing... it's a pretty cool song. Never heard the whole thing before.
Yeah, that part made my skin crawl.
.....Westy.....
I plead guilty. But it's sweetliberty's fault. She INVITED me into the "Dimensional Door" to begin with, lol!!!
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