Roy Jacobsen, of Writing Clear and Simple, alerts us that tomorrow is National Grammar Day.
Update: On closer examination, I note that National Grammar Day is actually today.
Unless you’re reading this tomorrow, of course, in which case it’s yesterday.
Judge Andrew Napolitano has a new book coming out on America’s treatment of citizens according to race. While claiming all are created equal, over the years they have rejected that idea deliberately. It’s called Dred Scott’s Revenge.
“The real culprit throughout our racial history has been the government,” writes Napolitano. “At every level, at virtually every turn, in every generation, the government selectively chose to enact and enforce laws and inevitably condoned and protected the most horrific abuse imaginable to blacks, and to some of the whites who protested.”
This will have to be a short post. My new publisher is finally calling on me for input in getting my book put together, so I can’t give my topic the word count it deserves.
But here’s tonight’s Provocative Thesis™:
All liberals are Christians.
Even if they’re atheists. Even if they’re Jewish or Buddhist or New Age or “Spiritual, Not Religious.”
They’re Christian heretics, but they’re Christian heretics. Continue reading On stopping swords, with swords
Thomas Jefferson, who was not always right about things but is still a pretty quotable leader, gave us this bit of ugly word imagery: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
In related news, things in Iraq are on the upswing.
Thomas Sowell has a good article on word usage. He writes, “The expression, ‘It goes without saying. . .’ is a fatal trap. Few things go without saying. Some of the most valuable things in life may go away without saying– whether loved ones in one’s personal life or the freedom or survival of a nation.”
The time is overdue for saying things.
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
Read more from this great Irish poet here.
Today at The Brussels Journal, Thomas F. Bertonneau gives a synopsis of a fascinating report written by author Sigrid Undset (one of my favorites) following her escape from occupied Norway through Russia and Japan during World War II.
At least one western intellectual wasn’t duped by Stalin.
At least, it’s huge news if you’re a Viking buff. Or a Viking buff particularly interested in western Norway, anyway. Karmøy island, specifically.
OK, it’s huge news if you’re me.
You’ve certainly seen pictures of the Oseberg Viking ship. It looks like this.
The Oseberg ship, along with the Gokstad ship, were both discovered in remarkable states of preservation in grave mounds in the eastern part of Norway in the 1880s. They were painstakingly reconstructed, and are now viewed by thousands of visitors annually in the Viking Ships Museum in Oslo. Two women had been buried in the Oseberg ship; a man in the Gokstad.
But nobody knew the Oseberg ship’s secret history. Now it appears that history is coming to light. Continue reading HUUUUGE NEWS!!!!!!!