Wednesday, June 09, 2004

We are the good guys

If you had any doubt, just watch the funeral procession for Ronald Reagan.

Our troops don’t goosestep down Pennsylvania Avenue, they honor a true American President with a precise, yet simple transfer to a caisson.

Nor do we parade our missiles or tanks down the Washington Mall. You know, those little things you’d assume would be going on here in Empire America.

In addition, I have yet to find a mural or statue for any living President ala Saddam or any other crack-headed dictator.

Next time some putz calls Bush a Nazi or makes a crack about the death of Ronald Reagan, I think that person deserves a shot in the chops...repeatedly.

America, the Beautiful

I have lived in many different states across our country, from the low rolling hills of upstate New York to the humid forests of central Florida, from the lush plains of the Midwest to the scorching desert of the Mojave, and from the frantic hustle and bustle of Southern California life to the bucolic quietude of the islands of Northwestern Washington.

I have seen tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes (including a particularly exciting one 40 miles off the Virginia coast), sandstorms, and the occasional forest fire. I have seen sunrises over the New Mexico desert, just as the hot-air balloons were taking off, and I have seen the sunsets both from Key West (probably the most beautiful on the planet) and from the beach of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, CA.

I have driven the length of Interstate 5, from San Ysidro, CA, to Bellingham, WA, both ways. I have driven almost the entire length of Interstate 10, from Santa Monica, CA, to Jacksonville, FL. I have lived in La Vieux Carre (the French Quarter) in New Orleans, LA, during the annual Mardi Gras parties.

I’ve done a lot of things, and been a lot of places, and I have never seen a nation with as wide a variety of people and places as I have seen here in the United States. People disparage us because “most Americans don’t have passports”. I revel in the fact that I don’t need one. If I want to visit a different culture, I can find one that is to my liking, and I don’t have to have anything but the money to pay for it. (And, thanks to the limitless opportunities here, I have that kind of leisure time.)

Look around you, and see - really see - the beauty that is staring you in the face every time you turn around. You live in the Urban jungle? A short drive away is hundreds of square miles of open fields and real grass! You live in farm country, where the tallest thing you’re ever likely to see is your neighbor’s grain silo? Buy a ticket, and you can be taking a cruise down the Mississippi River, just like Mark Twain did it.

If you started out on the west Coast of France (Brest, for example), and drive east for a few thousand miles, you could pass through half a dozen countries, and end up somewhere near Moscow. If you do that in the US, starting near San Francisco, you’ll pass through a single nation, and end up near Washington, DC.

So the next time people start putting Americans down just because we donb’t have to carry passports, tell them, “That’s a feature, not a bug.”

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Speaking of quagmires

What would those on the Left think and say about Normandy?

Victor David Hanson has a few ideas.

Heh.