Ronnie We Hardly Knew Ye!

As democracy starts to bud in the Middle East, this commentator remembers the “surprising” day the Berlin Wall fell and Ronald Reagan’s commentary on ABC. Why, he asked, should we be surprised at all this? Why was it “that anyone should be surprised that a people enslaved for over four decades should want to agitate for their freedom. The surprising thing was not that people wanted to be free. Rather, it was that they were enslaved in the first place.” Yes. Why is that?

Oh, Ronnie, Ronnie, you “amiable dunce.” How little we knew you when you ran for office, and even as you presided for eight years as president. It seems that only now are we fully coming to understand you, the world-historical genius that came from humble beginnings in Dixon, Illinois, to lead this nation to honor and glory.

Slip in the Shiv

Let’s stick it to
Dan Rather
one more time! There is so much to tell, so little time to tell it.

Cuddly Pessimist Admits Error

America’s most cheerful pessimist, Ex-Brit John Derbyshire, cheerfully
admits
that the pessimists were wrong, he being one of them, of course. But
still, there is plenty to be pessimistic about. Things could still go horribly wrong.
And anyway, what is the point of being pessimistic unless
your pessimism turns out to be too pessimistic. Or something like that.

Steyn: Assad Checks the Eye Chart

Finally, the “arab street” is being heard from, and it is holding up an eye chart not for
Uncle Sam but for Boy Assad in Syria. Mark Steyn is
gloating again.

Spengler: 20th Century Losers are Dying Out

Look at the UN population projections,
advises
Spengler, and think about what it means. The nations
that are losing population are the ones that lost the wars of the twentieth century. Ukraine, Russia, Germany.
There is no substitute for collective identity, he warns, of the kind that showed its ugliest side
with Hitler and Stalin. Depopulation begins with the Ibsen woman: “Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts.”
We know all about that, these days, don’t we?

Your Bias is Showing!

David Frum takes The Washington Post to task for its instinctive liberal bias. Side-by-side
stories make the point. The first is an
article about evangelicals by the “acid-tongued” Hanna
Rosin. Her piece “drips with disdain.” Right alongside is a cheerleading report
on a public showing
of PBS’s recent lesbian episode of “Postcards from Buster” the
cartoon rabbit. But we should remember that things are now different. Back in the old days, conservatives
could only fume about liberal bias to each other. Now there’s Blogger Nation every day
“speaking truth to power,” as the saying goes. And that makes a difference.

Idiotarianism, A Brief Survey

Said Nelson Mandela: “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” Actually, old chum, the opposite is true, writes Tim Worstall. Poverty is the natural state of mankind, has been for millennia. “What is unnatural and what is man made is wealth.” And as for slavery and apartheid, it was only a little over 200 years ago that a few crazy British thought up the idea of abolishing slavery. Before that it was universal and natural. In The Year 1000 author Danny Danziger tells how you could submit yourself to slavery in Britain a thousand years ago, and get yourself three squares a day. In those days, if you wanted to do a little slave-trading you’d head for Dublin, Ireland, the chief slave market of western Europe.