Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Sarah has posted something of interest at trying to grok. She is comparing the essence of the book Dark Star Safari to the situation in Iraq. The question posed is whether we can change a culture, or even want to.

Setting up the conditions for people to be free won’t work if the people don’t yearn for freedom. Similarly, setting up the conditions for progress won’t work if people can’t see the big picture.

I’ve pondered the same question.

I guess this is the factor in politics that interests me. I don’t like the political process. I don’t care much for career politicians. But the political process has absorbed much of what is our society and culture. Or, our culture and society have surrendered. The latter is far more likely. Too many people want the government involved in some small thing, and that expands daily once the government has its foot in the door.

I want to see our society and our culture separate from politics. That is the libertarian in me. I had a long discussion with a friend yesterday about the place of the Boy Scouts in this country. They are being shoved aside by people like the ACLU who see their reverence as a threat to the government.

But reverence is a sense of calm and acceptance of moral standards. It doesn’t have to be on-the-knees worship of a deity. Those values must exist in some form. My friend was adamant that the government could not force people to be subjected to any religious thought. I asked him what the Constitution said. “Well, it says no religion is allowed.” I asked him to quote it. He couldn’t, so I did. He walked away a little stunned.

And this is a man whose son is an Eagle Scout, and sees the value in scouting. Where has our culture gone in two generations?

The help-yourself mentality is losing ground in our society. Boy Scouts used to do all kinds of community projects. No longer allowed in many places. Might be a “separation of church and state” issue. Funny how people can quote this phrase written by Thomas Jefferson, yet ignore things like his words at the top of my site. Same man. Same sentiment. Misinterpreted.

Are we ready to be like the countries in Africa?

As we all struggle through this election cycle, Ilana Mercer has an excellent piece at WorldNetDaily

The acme of athletic achievement, expressed in the immutable truths of speed, strength and skill, is uncontested. The charmed men and women gracing the podiums of modern Olympia are there for no other reason than that they are the finest in their fields. What greater contrast can there be between the Olympian, who powers himself to the pinnacle, and the politician, who drapes himself in the noble toga of idealism, in the famous words of Aldous Huxley, so as to conceal his will to power.

Competition, so hated by the far left, rears its ugly head. And guess, what. We like it.

It is simply coincidental, yet a little serendipitous, that Alex put together his essay Anti-Americanism in Part One, Part Two, and Part Three at about the same time as Norman Podhoretz published World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win in Commentary.

Podhoretz’s article is far longer than anything I typically read on a monitor, so I printed it out and read through it at my leisure. Alex’s first part I linked to earlier. He writes from the perspective of someone who has lived in Europe, not simply visited as a tourist, or even living on a military installation and making weekend forays into the civilian population centers. Sarah can attest to the differences.

First of all, Podhoretz writes in unglowing terms about Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton. He has little good to say about Dubya’s first months in the Oval Office, either. Understand, this is all in relation to our responses to terrorist actions. He makes no comment regarding other areas of Presidential prerogotive.

But he is nearly absolute in his assessment of Dubya’s approach to things since 9/11. So, for those of you who immediately want to characterize him as a “chicken-hawk,” you can click that mouse button and ignore the rest of this post.

What he saw was a transformation. I think we all saw it. Some didn’t like it. Some still hate it. Others always will. The transformation I saw was what makes me an unapologetic Bush supporter. The 9/11 attack woke us all up, but he was the one politician willing to say the things that needed to be said. And he was willing to do the things which needed to be done. Still is. Still is. I see in him all the things I admire about Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who were viewed by “their betters” as a cowboy and a dullard.

Few, if any, of Truman