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Imprimis, published by Hillsdale College, was added today to Pickings’ Most Often Visited Links or Blogroll. June’s issue by Arlan Gilbert was a short history of the College, and of Imprimis. It’s first up today. Use the link to the archives of thirty-five years. You will never run out of things to read. Things written by people who love liberty.
Hillsdale College was founded as Michigan Central College in Spring Arbor, Michigan, and began classes in December 1844. The College moved to Hillsdale and assumed its current name in 1853. Its original financial support was secured by Ransom Dunn, a preacher and professor of moral theology, who raised thousands of small donations for the College during the early 1850s by riding 6,000 miles on horseback through the Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota frontiers. …
… Hillsdale became an early force for the abolition of slavery and several of its professors were involved in founding the new Republican Party in Jackson, Michigan, on July 6, 1854. During the antebellum and Civil War years, the College became a stopping place for such leading anti-slavery speakers as Frederick Douglass, Edward Everett, Senators Charles Sumner and Lyman Trumbull, Carl Schurz, Owen Lovejoy and William Lloyd Garrison. And except for the military academies, no college or university sent a greater proportion of its young men to fight for the Union. Of the more than 400 Hillsdale men who served in the Civil War, half became officers, four won the Medal of Honor, three became generals and many more served as regimental commanders. Sixty died. …
… The second great crisis in Hillsdale’s history began in the late 1950s, when the federal government— following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957— made its first experiments in funding and regulating higher education. By 1962, Hillsdale College president J. Donald Phillips and the College’s Board of Trustees were faced with deciding whether to accept federal aid along with their competitors or take a stand for independence that would place them at a great financial disadvantage. They took the latter course, issuing a “Declaration of Independence†…
Now some serious stuff. As in World Serious. The Cubs are in first place.
Debra Saunders is here writing about the confusion at the NY Times, when, for all their effort a perverted 42% of Americans still think the invasion of Iraq was the correct thing to do. Pickerhead cannot get enough of this story and Debra’s take is outstanding.
When a New York Times poll found that the number of Americans who think it was right for the United States to go to war in Iraq rose from 35 percent in May to percent 42 percent in mid-July, rather than promptly report the new poll findings, the paper conducted another poll. As the Times’ Janet Elder wrote Sunday, the increased support for the decision to go to war was “counterintuitive” and because it “could not be easily explained, the paper went back and did another poll on the very same subject.”
Round Two found that 42 percent of voters think America was right to go into Iraq, while the percentage of those polled who said that it was wrong to go to war had fallen from 61 percent to 51 percent. The headline for Elder’s piece read, “Same Question, Different Answer. Hmmm.” But it should have read: “America’s Paper of Record Out of Touch With American Public.” …
… On Sunday, the Times also ran an opinion piece, “A War We Just Might Win,” by war critics Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, which has prompted Beltway biggies to notice that the surge is paying off.
Well, not everyone inside the Beltway. Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., dismissed the piece as “rhetoric.” “I don’t know what they saw, but I know this, that it’s not getting better,” Murtha told CNN. Since this war began, there always have been people rooting for failure.
With the death toll of U.S. troops surpassing 3,560, Americans have cause to be wary and distressed. They may tell pollsters that they are pessimistic, but that does not mean that they are prepared to lose.
Gabriel Schoenfeld notes the NY Times attempts to enlist George Kennan in the paper’s war against the war.
… So how does it follow from the history of the cold war that we should now abandon military means in the struggle against al Qaeda and simply try to contain it? In fact, we tried something like that approach in the 1990’s, and on September 11, 2001, it led to one of the worst military disasters in American history.
That there are now voices telling us to abandon the military fight against Islamic terrorists and win by setting an example of moral rectitude shows only that there is no limit to the human desire to cut and run.
Marty Peretz noticed the same thing.
The robbing by Thompson of Kennan’s grave is pilferage disguised as homage. And who actually cares what Kennan thought? Is this what the op-ed page thinks is significant opinion?
John Fund on the intemperate Leahy.
… Rather than at least grant Mr. Roberts has an honest disagreement, Mr. Leahy has chosen to smear him. As for President Bush, the Vermont Democrat was openly contemptuous of his court choices. “I am not sure the president realizes what he has done with the court. He was told by Dick Cheney and others, ‘This is what you are going to do.’” …
NY Sun editors on Stevens.
… Though the matter must await the outcome of the law-enforcement process, a note of caution is in order. It has been corruption more than any other issue that has dragged the Republican Party down in recent years. Having been given a majority in 1994 to root out the corruption of the Democratic Congress, all too many Republicans who came to Washington to do good stayed to do well. Despite the war, “corruption/ethics” ranked highest in voters minds, according to exit polls, when voters threw the GOP out of power. …
Power Line posts on “Obama’s War.”
… In sum, this is your standard Democratic attempt to sound tough while effectively advocating defeat in Iraq and ignoring the mounting threat posed by Iran. Obama is smart enough to know that his speech is nonsense. But the fact that he would indulge in this sort of posturing should disqualify him from the presidency. …
VDH too. With a Corner post.
Many have jumped all over Sen. Obama’s suggestion that as Commander-in-Chief he might well cross the border, asked or not, into Pakistan, with beefed-up ground troops, to destroy the purported al-Qaeda sanctuaries. Apart from the notion that it would be as hard to distinguish civilians in a Waziristan from terrorists as it is in Iraq, which the senator has written off, other questions arise. As a US Senator why not now introduce an October 11, 2002-type resolution, authorizing such an invasion? Or why hasn’t he in the past? …
Instapundit points to a Lileks round-up of bridge news from Minnesota.
… “I’ve driven across this bridge every few days for thirty years. There are bridges, and there are bridges; this one had the most magnificent view of downtown available, and it’s a miracle I never rear-ended anyone while gawking at the skyline, the old Stone Bridge, the Mississippi.” …
Popular Mechanics with important background to the bridge collapse.
… The nation’s bridges are being called upon to serve a population that has grown from 200 million to over 300 million since the time the first vehicles rolled across the I-35W bridge. Predictably that has translated into lots more cars. American commuters now spend 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, at a cost to the economy of $63.2 billion a year.
It is not just roads and bridges that are being stressed to the breaking point. Two weeks ago New Yorkers were scrambling for cover after a giant plume of 200-degree steam and debris shot out of the street and into the air. The mayhem was caused by the explosion of a steam pipe, installed underground in 1924 to heat office buildings near Grand Central station. In January 2007, Kentuckians and Tennesseans woke up to the news that the water level of the largest man-made reservoir east of the Mississippi would have to be dropped by 10 ft. as an emergency measure. The Army Corps of Engineers feared that if it didn’t immediately reduce the pressure on the 57-year-old Wolf Creek Dam, it might fail, sending a wall of water downstream that would inundate communities all along the Cumberland River, including downtown Nashville.
The fact is that Americans have been squandering the infrastructure legacy bequeathed to us by earlier generations. Like the spoiled offspring of well-off parents, we behave as though we have no idea what is required to sustain the quality of our daily lives. …
Times, UK tells how organic farmers in Africa may be in trouble because of phony carbon concerns.
As she proudly surveys a plantation of avocado trees and bananas, surrounded by pools of fresh cow manure, Jane Kimani cuts an unlikely figure as an ecological villain.
Like other farmers in this village, about 15 miles (25km) outside Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, she lives in a modest dwelling of brick walls and a corrugated-iron roof only yards from cow sheds, a new apiary and vegetable plots. She does not own a car and uses little electricity.
She farms organically without knowing it, simply because, like many people in a country where two thirds of the population live on less than 50p a day, she could not afford fertilisers and chemical sprays. Her carbon footprint is insignificant.
Yet Mrs Kimani and her husband, Charles, face economic ruin because of the alleged environmental impact of their modest farm. The Soil Association, which certifies about 80 per cent of organic produce in the United Kingdom, has threatened to take away the organic certification from farms in East Africa because their produce is transported to Europe by air, contributing to global warming. …
American Thinker tells how Chirac’s doing.
Jacques Chirac certainly received a lot of front-page coverage when he was criticizing George Bush. But his his own serious scandal is being almost completely ignored in the American press. …
Times, UK with another horror story from the Health Service.