Tuesday, April 29, 2008

A great quote from today.

And I mean today; this is the ending sentence from Thomas Sowell's latest column:

Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it.
Sowell writes this in describing Barack Obama's notion of "Change" - that word the Obamessiah loves to use so much. Obama's economic polices are not new; they are straight out of the 1960's. His foreign policies are not new; they are straight out of the 1930s. In both cases, these policies were unmitigated disasters.

Good Day to You, Sir

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

As per your previous post about Reverend Wright, how "ironic" that he ended it with this: "A change is going to come."

Anonymous said...

Bloody Hell!
Obama is proposing that Germnay should be given control of part of Checzolvakia? This *is* bad news!

W.R. Chandler said...

Did you actually read the Sowell column, or are you just talking out of your anal orifice?

Don, American Idle said...

Do you think Obama thinks Sowell is black enough?

(I'm glad I'm not the only one who is not happy with the minor Shakesperean character.)

Anonymous said...

I read it. It was woeful. It shows a staggering misreading of history as well as a pretty hilarious failure to grasp the concept of irony. Firstly, the history.. the meetings between heads of state did NOT lead to the Second World War. If anything, they delayed it slightly, which given the state of the armaments of Western Europe was a Good Thing. We simply were NOT ready to fight a war against the German Army and the negotiations of Chamberlain actually bought much needed time. What led to the WWII were factors such as the punitive peace at the unsatisfactory end of WWI, the economic collapse of the Weimar, the rise of communism in the east which caused a reaction in the west in the form of fascism... I think that claiming that it was caused, even in part by meetings between heads of state is simply laughable.


As for the irony: http://z.about.com/d/history1900s/1/0/Q/1/reagan13.jpg

W.R. Chandler said...

No, Neville Chamberlain's and the League of Nation's acquiescence to Hitler had nothing to do with emboldening him to keep invading other countries.

What is laughable is your pathetic attempt to rewrite history.

Anonymous said...

The League of Nations was already irrelevant by then. The LoN had become irrelevant after Abyssinia (heavily helped towards irrelevance by the USA as a matter of fact). In any case, the LoN was not usually conducted by the media friendly nonsense of meetings between heads of government. The meetings between heads of government started well after war was already inevitable and so could not possibly have been a cause for the war, as was claimed in the column to which you linked.

So, once again, I say the column was woeful in its analysis. I also not that you have no comment about the meetings between heads of state that Reagan engaged in..

W.R. Chandler said...

I haven't commented on Reagan's meetings because I haven't read the link. The only meeting I need to worry about was Reykjavik, where Reagan told Gorbachev to pound sand and refused to give up SDI. That spelled the death knell of the Soviet Union. Now *that* is diplomacy.

Sorry to rain on your revisionist leftist parade, but you must face the facts that giving in to evil does not make evil go away; it only makes evil stronger. Chamberlain should have known that as he waved that worthless piece of paper in the air.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I am confused. You seem to be flitting between two points of view. You claimed (via the linked article) that it was meetings between heads of state that led to WWII, even though the war was inevitable by the time of any such meetings, and the meetings delayed the war, putting the UK in a better position to actually fight the German Army and Air Force when the time came. But then you said it was the inaction of the League of Nations that led to it. Now, the League of Nations did not involve meetings between heads of state very often.

But then, heads of state meetings are OK when it was Reagan involved. So, to summarise:

Meetings between heads of state: BAD because they lead to wars that are already inevitable.

But at the same time,

Meetings between heads of state:
Good because they lead to the end of the Soviet Union. Which of course was not in anyway caused by inherent economic problems, the loss of the war in Afghanistan, a series of bad harvests, fading central control of the republics and other such factors. No. It was caused soley because Reagan refused to give up a missile defence scheme that never worked during the lifetime of the USSR.

W.R. Chandler said...

Meetings between heads of state are fine as long as your own head of state doesn't give in to or give a position of strength to the evil on the other side of the table.

Chamberlain did it, and judging by the squishiness of Obama in dealing with the Revagogue Wright affair, it seems he wouldn't do too well negotiating with someone like Ahmedinejad.

Reagan went to Reykjavik with SDI in his corner - a position of strength - and he called the shots against Gorbachev.

W.R. Chandler said...

By the way, how do you think the USSR started having all those money problems? Could it be trying to keep up in an arms race with the U.S. under Reagan?

In our time, you leftists try to tell us how weakened the USSR was by the time Reagan becamed president. Yet, when he called the USSR an "evil empire," the first thing the left did was to get their panties in a bunch about how we shouldn't insult the all-powerful Soviets because they might attack us. So which is it? Were the Soviets on their knees, or were they powerful enough to take over the world? Get your story straight.

Anonymous said...

They were NEVER in a position to take over the world. And I have no need to "get my story straight" as I have never claimed otherwise. You have a habit of arguing against positions I have never espoused. You seem to have in your mind some idea that there is a single entity called "the left" which all people who disagree with you must belong to. That is demonstrably false, just as it would be false if I were to claim that all people on "the right" hold a single on any issue. Binary thinking is not very useful in many areas of life, and it is possibly least useful in politics.

W.R. Chandler said...

And you have a habit of changing your argument when the other one isn't working. You gave every excuse in the world for why the USSR dissolved, and specifically mocked my position that Reagan put them away.

*You* are the one who gave me a laundry list of reasons why Reagan was irrelevant in the demise of the Soviet Union. My retort is that is not what people on the left were saying when Reagan was insulting their precious Soviet Union.

Sorry I don't have time to delve deep into your psyche and find out the true, complex, and nuanced nature of each and every political, philosophical, and moral position you hold. On the other hand, based on the arguments (almost all wrong) that you *do* espouse on this blog, for purposes of simplicity and expediency, I hereby shelve you into the leftist category.

By the way, I disagree with people on "the right" as well; especially when their thinking goes so wacky, that it circles all the way around to... the left. Kinda like that "right-winger" John McCain.

Back to the original point of this entire argument: I notice you posited that WWII was "inevitable." No, it wasn't. Had Hitler's "baby" of a powerful Army and dreams of world domination been strangled in the cradle, then WWII would most certainly not have been inevitable. Instead, capitulation and weak negotiations were all that was forthcoming from the European Allies. Kind of like what Barack Obama wants to do:

Capitulation: Pull out of Iraq and guarantee a blood bath that makes the violence there now seem insignificant

Weak negotations: Talk to these nutball dictators out there and ask them what we did to offend them.

Therefore, Dr. Sowell's arguments are sound, and I am more likely to believe this renowned scholar who actually lived through World War II over, well, you.

Cheerio!

Anonymous said...

WWII was inevitable by the time there were meetings between heads of state. Therefore it is silly to blame it on the meetings between heads of state. That was the point I have been making from the start. You seemed to agree with that, because you then switched to saying it was the League of Nations that failed to stop Hitler. That is pretty much something I agree with, a stronger LoN, had it acted correctly over Abyssinia and other matters may have had the chance to stop Hitler. But, the LoN, by the time Hitler was recognised as a threat, was irrelevant due in large part to the actions (or lack there of) of the USA.

Sowell's argument however seems to be that it is the meetings between heads of state that led to WWII, which is patently incorrect. And not only is it incorrect, but it is laughable when you look at the actions of Reagan, who also had meetings between heads of state. But you won't criticise him for that.

And on a final note, I challenge you to find ANY reference to Obama saying he wants to "ask them what we did to offend them". I am guessing you won't find one. But hey, that isnt important, because it is just one of those annoting facts that can get in the way of a nice rant about his "shrew of a wife".

W.R. Chandler said...

Wow! For 70 years, the world thought that it was the western European nations trying to appease Hitler that helped bring about World War II. But in one fell swoop, donalbain has declared everyone else to be wrong. I am in the company of greatness!

As to the Obama thing, you don't think *he* is stupid enough to justify terrorism do you? He lets his church, pastor, and campaign website bloggers do it for him. Obama can say whatever he wants and talk tough about attacking Pakistan and other such rubbish. I judge him by his actions. And his actions are to surround himself with terrorists and terrorist sympathizers such as Revagogue Wright, Bill Ayers, and blogger Tony Wicher.

Regarding Michelle Obama:

Shrew - A woman with a violent, scolding, or nagging temperament; a scold.

Have you watched and listened to this woman's speeches? "Shrew" is the perfect description of her.