Category — History

Here are two delightfully incorrect photos. Both are from Canada, circa 1942.

I’m posting these for no other reason than to upset some fascist.

This should prove acutely interesting. The naval power once floated by the Brits faces reduction to a coastal defense force. The coast they may have to defend is a bit distant.
Even the mighty Lion suffers reduction to penury by many jackals.

Argentine president lays ‘inalienable’ claim to Falklands

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands, which remain in British hands after the 1982 war between the two countries, is “inalienable,” President Cristina Kirchner said Wednesday. [snip]

The April 2, 1982 invasion prompted then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to deploy naval forces to retake the Falklands, known as the Malvinas in Spanish. [snip]

In her speech Kirchner called for Argentina to strengthen its representation in international bodies to denounce “this shameful colonial enclave in the 21st century.”

And Vice President Julio Cobos said in the southern city of Rio Grande that “we must recover this territory that is ours, that belongs to us.”

The comments came as Kirchner faces her own woes, battling against farmers who have barricaded roads in a protest against a stiff tax hike on soybean exports.

With the Democrat Convention looming and a great contest for the Donk nominee keeping all spellbound, Chuckie believes a retrospective of past great candidates is in order.
Enjoy viewing, pick out where you were and what you were doing when they illuminated electrified shattered the national conscience confidence.

Winners all!

Well, one got there and really screwed the pooch.

Best and brightest’ dim on history

Tomorrow is President’s Day, so it’s an appropriate time to see who has a good handle on national history or government. If you think, however, the nation’s college students have the most knowledge about the subjects, think again.

College freshmen earned an average grade of ‘F’ — or just 53.7 percent — when asked a series of questions about U.S. presidents and key historical events from their times in office. After four years of college, their knowledge didn’t improve.

College seniors got just 55.4 percent on the 60-question quiz given to 14,000 students at 50 colleges and universities around the country as part of a study designed to test their knowledge of America’s history, government, international relations and market economy. [snip]

It found that Harvard University seniors did best, with a grade of just 69.6 percent — a D-plus. In general, the higher a college ranked on the widely publicized U.S. News & World Report rankings, the lower it ranked on civic learning. In schools such as Cornell, Duke, Yale and Princeton, all ranked in the magazine’s top 12, seniors actually did worse than freshman.

You’re surprised at this?

From Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce:
(Link to Book)

December 19th, 1914 -
Lt Geoffrey Heinekey, new to the 2nd Queen’s Westiminster Rifles wrote to his mother, “A most extradordinary thing happened…some Germans came out and held up their hands and began to take in some of their wounded and so we ourselves immediately got out of our trenches and began bringing in our wounded also. The Germans then beckoned to us and a lot of us went over and talked to them and they helped us to bury our dead. This lasted the whole morning, and I talked to several of them and I must say they seemed like extraordinarily fine men…It seemed too ironical for words. There, the night before, we had been having a terrific battle, and the morning after there we were, smoking their cigarettes and they smoking ours (p 5).”

“…As night fell on Christmas Eve the British soldiers noticed the Germans putting up small Christmas trees along with candles at the top of their trenches and many began to shout in English “We no shoot if you no shoot (p. 25). The firing stopped along the many miles of the trenches, and the British began to notice that the Germans were coming out of the trenches toward the British who responded by coming out to meet them. They mixed and mingled in No Man’s Land and soon began to exchange chocolates for cigars and various newspaper accounts of the war which contained the propaganda from their respective homelands. Many of the officers on each side tried to prevent the event from occurring but the soldiers ignored the risk of a court-martial or of being shot.”

Such is, or used to be, the power of this important Christian occasion. It still is for us. A wish for peace, and a Joyous Christmas, from me to everyone, Christian or otherwise, everywhere…and especially to the faithful folks here at New England Republican.

Plus c’est le meme chose, plus ca change….

George Orwell, in 1941, in his essay “England Your England“

The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality. Many intellectuals of the Left were flabbily pacifist up to 1935, shrieked for war against Germany in the years 1935-1939, and them promptly cooled off when the war started. It is broadly though not precisely true that the people who were the most “anti-fascist” during the Spanish civil war are most defeatist now. And underlying this is the really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia - their severance from the common culture of the country.

In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse-racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God save the King” than of stealing from a poor box.

All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judge that they were “decadent” and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible….

It is, of course, an open question as to whether the American Left can boast a single “intellectual” when their model for house intellectual is Charlie Rose or worse, Bill Moyers. But if Paul Johnson’s definition is apt (”an intellectual is someone who cares more about ideas than about people”) there might be a few.

Albert Gore doesn’t quality but Noam Chomsky probably does. The former is a raving lunatic on all fronts, but the latter poses interesting ideas about linguistics even though he has detestable opinions about politics.

Fortunately for the West, Britain could decline into leftist irrelevance because America sat in the wings ready to rescue the world from barbarism. But today, if not us, who? The worms are in the apple.

Here’s a story you won’t find in the Boston Globe. A declassified Soviet memo details Ted Kennedy’s offer to help the Soviet Union win a propaganda war in the United States. Kennedy, convinced that Soviet aggression was President Reagan’s fault, offered his help in presenting the Soviet case to the American people in an attempt to unseat President Reagan.

Sadly, you see the same pattern from liberals today who have shifted their sympathy to Iran, North Korea, and various terrorists. It’s our fault these nations are exporting terrorism and building nuclear weapons. Bay State Senators are not covering our state in glory that’s for sure.