It's a great time to be alive; but a pall is settling over the world

Mark Steyn recetnly gave a great speech at Hillsdale College. Here are a few paragraphs:

""Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor," wrote Charles Murray in In Our Hands. "When life becomes an extended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant. Such is the nature of the Europe syndrome."

The key word here is "give." When the state "gives" you plenty—when it takes care of your health, takes cares of your kids, takes care of your elderly parents, takes care of every primary responsibility of adulthood—it's not surprising that the citizenry cease to function as adults: Life becomes a kind of extended adolescence—literally so for those Germans who've mastered the knack of staying in education till they're 34 and taking early retirement at 42. Hilaire Belloc, incidentally, foresaw this very clearly in his book The Servile State in 1912. He understood that the long-term cost of a welfare society is the infantilization of the population.

Genteel decline can be very agreeable—initially: You still have terrific restaurants, beautiful buildings, a great opera house. And once the pressure's off it's nice to linger at the sidewalk table, have a second café au lait and a pain au chocolat, and watch the world go by. At the Munich Security Conference in February, President Sarkozy demanded of his fellow Continentals, "Does Europe want peace, or do we want to be left in peace?" To pose the question is to answer it. Alas, it only works for a generation or two. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latterday Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in."

The entire speech is here: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

A few thoughts

1. I'm not a great big fan of Jeff Bezos; but here's a reason to give him some business by shopping at Amazon. He's actually trying to do something about those plastic packages that are impossible to open. The most interesting thing in the article is the fact that 6,000 people end up at the emergency room each year as a result of the various schemes we all come up with to try to open those packages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/technology/internet/15packaging.html?_r=1&em

2. There is a problem with pirates off the West coast of Africa, and there is a problem with shoppers rampaging like barbarian hordes and trampling store clerks to death up on Long Island. It seems to me we could solve both problems by giving cutlasses to the berserk shoppers and then telling them there are bargains aboard the pirate ships.

3. There was a time, not so long ago, when it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire. For you youngsters that meant Great Britain had colonies stretching all the way around the world. Back in that time the British were renowned for their stiff upper lip. That stemmed from the time when Francis Drake didn't let a little thing like the reported arrival of the Spanish Armada interrupt his game of lawn bowling. Drake finished his game and then went to his ship to fight the armada. That's a stiff upper lip.

Those days are over, for it turns out the English Cricket Team ran from India like cowardly dogs with their tails between their legs just because of a few little terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week. Courage and fortitude are vanishing virtues. Perhaps western civilization deserves to collapse.

4. There is a new news and opinion website that I just learned about. It seems to take a very mature attitude toward the results of the recent election. I haven't done much more than skim down to get a sense of what they have to say; but I like the concept.

http://getdrunkandhope4thebest.com/

5. Speaking of running dogs, Barry Obama is running from his campaign promises faster than an English cricket team runs from commitments. His supporters and voters may not notice; but I will notice if he fails to release all the terrorist killers from Guantanamo immediately after he's inaugurated. I'll also notice if he fails to take away the right to a secret ballot from working people in union elections. And I'll notice if he doesn't withdraw all of our troops from Iraq within 18 months of his inauguration. And I'll notice if he doesn't raise taxes on the rich like he said he would. And if he doesn't send troops to invade Pakistan to catch Osama Bin Laden.

Promises are promises, even stupid promises. I'll be soooo disappointed if Barry turns out to be just another lying politician.

And what's with those terrorist attacks in India anyway. I thought the world was going to love us once Barry was elected.