Happy Independence Day!

 

(Madeleine Stowe as Cora Munro in the great Last of the Mohicans, 1992, on the spirit of America and freedom:

They do not live their lives “by your leave”! They hack it out of the wilderness with their own two hands, burying their children along the way.

)

‘France train shooting: Americans overpower gunman on Paris express’

Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Briton Chris Norman after the attack on the train.
“The three Americans and Norman have already been awarded medals of bravery from the local mayor. Stone was still in the hospital, so he is not pictured in the Twitter photo above.”

If countries like France won’t allow the concealed carry of firearms, maybe the concealed carry of Americans is the next best way to stop would-be mass shooters.  The Guardian reports:

A heavily armed gunman has opened fire on a high-speed train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris before being overpowered by three US citizens, two of whom were soldiers.

Washington Post: Expert Says Countries ‘feel betrayed’ by Fickle U.S. under Obama

We were told that cowboy Bush had made the world hate America, but that a President Obama would make the world like us and trust us again.

Now even the liberal Washington Post is all but admitting what Mark Steyn and other conservatives have been saying for some time:  The Obama administration has made a habit of failing our allies and helping our enemies, and the world is taking notice.  Under the headline “Obama seeks Arab allies against Islamic State but must overcome mistrust of U.S.”:

But already there is a disinclination to believe his promises, said Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

Mark Steyn on Benghazi

Mark Steyn, as usual, is must-read material.  I recommend his last three weekly columns, about Benghazi and what has happened since.

Did you know that since Benghazi, the Islamists have also destroyed six of our Harrier jets and killed two of our Marines?  (More.)  Neither does anyone else.  See also pro-Obama media bias.

Steyn:

• September 15th
  Disgrace in Benghazi
  And a dying superpower’s blundering response.
  (National Review Online, Orange County Register)

Occupy Protesters Want to Belong

Occupy protesters are motivated not so much by policy goals as by a need for community and a desire for personal validation, according to new research by the Frontier Lab.  

September 11th

What can I say that hasn’t been said?

Ten years ago this month, some Muslims hijacked planes and crashed them into both towers of the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon.  Passengers in a fourth hijacked plane learned what was going on from friends, by cell phone, and fought back, losing their lives but saving untold others when the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.  

Not Inevitable

In the July 4th issue of National Review (page 18), Kevin D. Williamson has a piece that’s informative and also pretty funny (perhaps he hopes to be the next Mark Steyn?), describing how Canada overindulged in deficit spending for decades, but then sobered up in response to fiscal crisis in the ’90s, and has kept deficit spending under control ever since. 

Happy Independence Day

Eleven score and fifteen years ago, a group of visionaries brought forth a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

We’re still here.  America is one of the oldest continuously functioning constitutional republics in the world, and she’s still a relatively free country, at least for now.  I think that’s something to celebrate.

As you celebrate today, here’s something to think about:  Why did we declare independence from George III?  Do you think we should have?  Why or why not? 

Can We?

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The story of America in the twentieth century was the story of the growth of government.  It has accelerated and decelerated, and even retreated at times, but taken together, it looks almost inexorable—it grows and grows, slowly choking out freedom and economic activity. 

The Uncolonialism

In Mark Steyn’s America Alone, he notes that relatively child-unfriendly Western nations prop themselves up to some extent through what is sometimes called “brain drain”—that is, by attracting some of the best and brightest from poorer countries to fill out the ranks of those Western nations’ doctors.  Thus the Western nations postpone the problems caused by poor birthrates and by policies that make it unattractive to go into medicine, but in so doing, they presumably further impoverish the source countries. 

Celebrate Good Times

Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley yesterday in the race for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, 52% to 47%.  If you haven’t been following it, here’s the skinny:

This probably means that Democrats no longer have enough votes (60) to overcome Republicans’ filibuster of the health-care bill in the Senate.  That means that the Democrats’ version of health-care “reform”—already getting less and less likely as time went on, given that they hadn’t passed it before this year, an election year—is probably now dead.  We won.  Thank You, God, and a big thank-you to the people of Massachusetts.