Sixty years later, the men on the Titanic – liars and thieves, wealthy and powerful, poor and obscure – found themselves called upon to “finish in style,” and did so. They had barely an hour to kiss their wives goodbye, watch them clamber into the lifeboats, and sail off without them. They, too, ‘ope’d it wouldn’t ‘appen to them, but, when it did, the social norm of “women and children first” held up under pressure and across all classes.
Today there is no social norm, so it’s every man for himself – operative word “man,” although not many of the chaps on the Titanic would recognize those on the Costa Concordia as “men.” From a grandmother on the latter: “I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls.”
Whenever I write about these subjects, I receive a lot of mail from men along the lines of this correspondent:
“The feminists wanted a gender-neutral society. Now they’ve got it. So what are you complaining about?”
And so the manly virtues (if you’ll forgive a quaint phrase) shrivel away to the so-called “man caves,” those sad little redoubts of beer and premium cable sports networks.
I don’t know that you can blame this on the feminists: While women have justly determined what it is to be a woman in today’s world, somewhere along the way, men have forgotten what it means to be men.
To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about, Is nothing so bad when you’ve cover to ‘and, an’ leave an’ likin’ to shout; But to stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew, An’ they done it, the Jollies — ‘Er Majesty’s Jollies — soldier an’ sailor too! Their work was done when it ‘adn’t begun; they was younger nor me an’ you; Their choice it was plain between drownin’ in ‘eaps an’ bein’ mopped by the screw, So they stood an’ was still to the Birken’ead drill, soldier an’ sailor too! — R. Kipling, from “Soldier an Sailor Too“
Those of us of a certain age have strolled the green long enough to recognize that the country has changed in fundamental ways from the one that we were born into, and that not all of those changes have been beneficent. Things that would have shocked the conscience of nearly all Americans fifty years ago are now commonplace. Shared assumptions about what it meant to be a part of the American way of life no longer obtain. We have gone from the congenial myth of “E pluribus unum” to a state of acknowledged and de facto cultural Balkanization, one that divides us into semi-permanent economic classes in a way that threatens the social mobility which used to separate us from the lands we’d fled. In doing so we have created politically reliable victim classes whose only hope at economic betterment is plundering their distant and unknown neighbors.
In the WSJ, Charles Murray creates two fictional American villages using actual demographic information from the 1960s to the present day, and comes to some conclusions about our increasing trend towards the cultural isolation of our wealthiest class from their working class brethren that tend to be more sobering than they are shocking:
Changes in social policy during the 1960s made it economically more feasible to have a child without having a husband if you were a woman or to get along without a job if you were a man; safer to commit crimes without suffering consequences; and easier to let the government deal with problems in your community that you and your neighbors formerly had to take care of…
Once the deterioration was under way, a self-reinforcing loop took hold as traditionally powerful social norms broke down. Because the process has become self-reinforcing, repealing the reforms of the 1960s (something that’s not going to happen) would change the trends slowly at best.
Meanwhile, the formation of the new upper class has been driven by forces that are nobody’s fault and resist manipulation. The economic value of brains in the marketplace will continue to increase no matter what, and the most successful of each generation will tend to marry each other no matter what. As a result, the most successful Americans will continue to trend toward consolidation and isolation as a class. Changes in marginal tax rates on the wealthy won’t make a difference. Increasing scholarships for working-class children won’t make a difference.
He has some prescriptions that are equally unlikely to happen as unraveling well-meant but disastrously effected social policies: The super-elites in the upper class ought to reject their tacit custom of “non-judgmentalism” on the social mores of the working class – shaming, in other words – and sell down from their expensive cloisters to go and live among the unwashed.
The final results in Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections confirm an overwhelming victory for Islamist parties.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won the largest number of seats under Egypt’s complex electoral system.
The hardline Salafist Nour party came second.
The liberal New Wafd and the secular Egyptian Bloc coalition are some way behind them.
Jolly for them.
This was inevitable, of course. Just as in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the only vehicle for popular resistance to regime tyranny was the mosque and its extensions. The Islamists and Salafists were more organized than their liberal or secular rivals.
One man, one vote. The real questions is whether these parties can deliver results on the peoples’ aspirations, and if not, whether the vote will have been, “one time.”
Which it’s been a bit of a long walk to a small house, not that I terribly mind the ferrying of a jet from Point Mugu to NAS Fallon. But having once arrived, I was thrice scheduled to go and do my bit against the imperialist warlord running dog lackeys of Carrier Air Wing 7, and each time cancelled. For weather, chiefly. That being the time of year for it here in the high desert, and don’t let the folks from the Pac Northwest hear you grumble, for it’s a terrible beating they’ve been taking.
So! In the best traditions of the service, you are hereby invited and desired to make the best of this space for any such article of news that sparks your interest for discussion, so long of course as it conforms to the customs of the house.
To help you get started here’s this NYT article about why our Afghan “allies” cannot help but murder us:
“What you have here are two very different cultures with different values,” he said in a telephone interview. “They treat each other with contempt.”
The United States soldier was killed this month when an Afghan soldier opened fire on Americans playing volleyball at a base in the southern province of Zabul. The assailant was quickly gunned down. The deadliest single incident came last April when an Afghan Air Force colonel, Ahmed Gul, killed eight unsuspecting American officers and a contractor with shots to the head inside their headquarters.
He then killed himself after writing “God in your name” and “God is one” in blood on the walls of the base, according to an Air Force investigation of the incident released this week.
In a 436-page report, the Air Force investigators said the initial coalition explanation for the attack — stress brought on by financial problems — was only a small part of Colonel Gul’s motivation. His primary motive was hatred of the United States, and he planned the attack to kill as many Americans as possible, the investigators said.
According to the holy Kuran, killing the kufr is no sin, I’m told, so long as you don’t enjoy it.
And! Everyone seems to ascribe the relatively high death-by-car-bombing rate of Iranian nuclear scientists to The Zionist Entity. Michael Ledeen offers a plausible counter argument:
Let’s go back to basics: who could operate in the midst of the armed camp that is Tehran, and might also have a motive for killing these five unfortunate souls? There’s a lot of killing in Iran, and the overwhelming majority of murders are carried out by the regime, and the victims are Iranian citizens from all walks of life. From this standpoint, the regime is the most likely perpetrator. Regime killers could also operate freely throughout the capital, and that also “explains” why there were never calls for information about the assassins. Why ask, when you know their identities, and approved the operation?
What about motive? Look at the last case. What does the regime say about the victim? That he spoke to IAEA investigators (I’m told that the conversation took place outside Iran). The regime doesn’t like that at all, they are very suspicious of their own people (and rightly so!), put very stringent limitations on foreign travel, and monitor the communications of everyone involved in important activities like weapons programs. In the padded cell of paranoiacs around the supreme leader, strong suspicion of disloyalty is probably enough to get a person on one hit list or another, and the regime has every reason to “send a message” to others involved in such activities: one false step and you’re dead.
After reading the whole thing (which y’orta do) I dunno, myself.
I reckon you don’t either.
Happy trails, comrades. I’ll see yez on the other side.
I don’t want to judge before all the evidence is in, but I think I’m on fairly safe ground when I suggest that President Obama may not be getting Karin McQuillan’s vote come November.
Philip Johnston was a missionary’s son who grew up on a Navajo reservation, and fought in World War I. He was aware of the Chocktaw code talkers who served in Europe alongside the allies, and recommended to Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, that Navajos be recruited to serve in the Marine Corps in an identical role. The Navajo language is a complex one, whose “syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training”. It was, at the outbreak of the Pacific War, unwritten, and therefore presumably unbreakable.
Around 400 Navajos served with the Marines at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima – and at all the Pacific assaults the Marines conducted between 1942-1945. They served with all six Marine divisions. Their encryptions were fast, accurate and never broken. And valuable: Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”
So highly was the Navajo code valued, that it remained a military secret for years after World War II. It wasn’t until 1992 that their efforts were publicly recognized.
Keith Little did not know the full extent of his contribution as one of the Navajo Code Talkers to the American effort in World War II until much later in life.
Mr Little, one of the most recognizable of the four remaining Code Talkers, was 17 when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, becoming one of hundreds of Navajos trained as Code Talkers.
He spent much of his later life towards the creation of a museum that he never saw realized: Mr Little died of melanoma Tuesday night at a Fort Defiance hospital, said his wife, Nellie. He was 87.
Belgium’s inability to form a central government would not matter so much if the country did not need to reduce its public spending. Though Belgium is the largest per-capita exporter of goods and services in the world and has healthy private savings, it also has a large and growing public debt—nearly 100 percent of GDP—and an annual budget deficit of more than 5 percent. With growth negligible and government bond yields rising in a currency (the euro) that the Belgians cannot inflate, retrenchment is essential, but the Walloons and the Flemish cannot agree on how to do it. The Walloons want higher taxes to maintain the current arrangements; the Flemish want lower taxes and reduced spending to promote long-term growth. The result is a stalemate. Wallonia and Flanders are like a married couple who no longer can live together but find divorce impossible because of difficulties over the settlement.
Author on Deck – 1812: The Navy’s War
by George Daughan
March 1, 2012
WHAT: As part of the United States Navy Memorial’s Authors on Deck book lecture series, historian and award-winning author George C. Daughan will present his latest work, 1812: The Navy’s War (Basic Books; October 4, 2011). Guests are invited to learn about the often-overlooked history of what has been called our Second War of Independence. Encompassing political, diplomatic, economic and military history, Daughan brings the battles to life, putting them into context with the larger war, and showing how America could not have won without its foundling Navy. Following the presentation, Daughan will be available for a Q&A session and book signing.
WHEN: Thursday, March 1, 2012
12:00pm
WHERE: United States Navy Memorial
Naval Heritage Center
701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004 www.navymemorial.org
COST: Free and open to the public
CONTACT: 202-737-2300
Two hundred years ago, the United States and Great Britain fought each other in a conflict that changed the shape of the world. Daughan offers a comprehensive and vivid account of that conflict, arguing that it is impossible to fully understand the war without an appreciation for how a ragtag team of American commanders, seamen and privateers took on and defeated the most powerful navy in the world. According to Daughan, “The U.S. Navy’s role in bringing about Britain’s newfound respect for the United States was critical.”
George Daughan holds a Ph.D. in American History and Government from Harvard University and is a recipient of the 2008 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for his previous book, If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – From the Revolution to the War of 1812. He spent three years in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War and served as an instructor and director of the MA program in International Affairs at the Air Force Academy. Subsequently, he taught at the University of Colorado, University of New Hampshire, Wesleyan University and Connecticut College. He resides in Portland, Maine.
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
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