Steyn: Four More Wars

While many ’conservatives are tiring of the War on Terror, Mark Steyn rings down Full Speed
Ahead to the engine room. And he understands why people are a little leery of President Bush’s
inaugural speech compared to their continuing praise for President Kennedy’s call to “pay any
price, bear any burden” 44 years ago. When Bush says “It is the policy of the United States
to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions
in every nation and culture”
they think he means it.
And they are probably right.

More on the New England Vapors

While Larry Summers completes his re-education course somewhere in New England, George Will has a few things to say
about Victorian maidens suffering from the vapors
and modern feminists that use Victorian methods
to attack ideas with which they disagree. What it comes down to, writes Will, is that the left cannot
abide “the thought that nature sets limits to the malleability of human material,” that there
are physical limits to the left’s program of human improvement.

Spengler: Americans Can't Do Tragedy

You can’t put one over on Spengler. He’s right there in the front rank complaining that it
just isn’t on to save Charlotte Simmons
from a necessary martyrdom. But, he’s sanguine about it.
Americans have an ideal of middlebrow competence—represented by heroes like Chuck
Yeager and George W, Bush—that shields from them the real awfulness of life.
But not Spengler. He has drunk deep from the German experience, and has seen the face of the Dionysian,
the truth of a universe filled to the brim with wanton death and destruction.

Forming and Breaking Relationships Easily

No, this is not about divorce. It is about the nature of social relationships generally. Some
relationships can be formed and dissolved easily, like a temporary business partnership, writes
Arnold Kling, and others are
more permanent, with higher costs of entry and exit.
“Societies that place individuals under the permanent discipline of inherited or assigned
collectivities, and permanently bind them into such.” remain bogged down
in family favoritism, ethnic, racial, or religious factionalism.”
But the Anglsphere is peculiar in that its “civil society” tolerates, and even encourages
a much more flexible, voluntary approach to relationship and obligation. Read the whole thing
here.

Ken Mehlman Lays Down a Marker

You can’t make it any clearer than this. Ken Mehlman
announces
that he’s going to use the
1.4 million volunteers he mobilized to re-elect President Bush in moving the president’s agenda for
Social Security reform, tax simplification, and grow the Republican Party.

Ankle Biters Get Teeth into Inaugural Speech

Loyal liberal E.J. Dionne gets to work
on knee-capping the president’s inaugural speech. Apparently
there was much less than met the eye; Bush isn’t going to march out and
conquer the world tomorrow, according to White House staffers.
This is a problem “and a terrible mistake for Bush,
because the greatest barrier to Bush’s success in his second term
is the intense cynicism he has inspired about his motives.” Well
that’s a possibility.
Or is Bush’s big problem the intense cynicism his political opponents have
inspired about his motives? There is a difference, Mr. Dionne.

Brit Bobbies Lost Key to Gun Cupboard

Don’t cancel your British vacation, it was nearly a century ago when London bobbies chasing some Latvian armed robbery suspects
in London had to borrow pistols from bystanders, because the
gun cupboard
at the police station was
locked and nobody could find the key. Don’t be too hard on those Keystone Kops, though;
In 1909 there were only about 12 armed robberies a year in London, and the public had a right to carry
a gun without a license. But don’t worry. Today things are much more civilized. Now there are 12 armed robberies every couple of weeks in London, the police and
the criminals are armed to the teeth, and the average citizen is forbidden to carry a gun.