This is Getting Pathetic?

We all know Obama's gaffe-prone; the media tries to cover up the smaller ones, and Obama turns the bigger ones (e.g. no preconditions for negotiations with Iran) into policy papers.

But being a naive idiot is one thing - rewriting history is an entirely different animal. And that's what he's done this time, claiming that his uncle (or maybe it's his grandfather - the article says both, but it's highly unlikely that both were actually involved in the war) was traumatized by the experience of liberating Auschwitz. Hey Barry, your Gramps served with Uncle Joe Stalin's 322nd Rifle Division? Or you're a misspeaking idiot? Which is it?

CBS doesn't even bother to fact-check the story, rather just spits out the contradictions about grandfather and uncle without referring to Wikipedia and its notation that the Soviets overran the camp. But then again (and this one's stuck in my craw all weekend), when the Tribune refers to a veteran of the 2nd Airborne Unit in a story - Unit?! What the hell is a unit? - why should I expect anything from the media anymore? All of this media idiocy and Obama BS is heightened against the Memorial Day backdrop.

UPDATE: The plot thickens! A closer reading of CBS's story causes this speed-reader to realize that Obama claims his uncle liberated Auschwitz. One problem. According to this Tribune article from last March, Obama's (white, Kansas-born) mother was an only child. No uncle. But of course Barry's daddy could have had an uncle fighting in World War II, and perhaps liberating another concentration camp with an American brigade as he says. Another problem. Barry's father is, as we all know, Kenyan. Had he had a brother, he would have had to have fought with British forces, as a member of one of the Empire's African Divisions. These forces were either commited to Africa for the entirety of the war or sent to Burma. No Kenyan uncle in Europe. So it's not just that he misspoke - he didn't mean Dachau, for example (which US forces did liberate) rather than Auschwitz - he flat-out invented an uncle. The Obama family is certainly a casualty of this campaign; first grandma's tossed under the bus in his race speech, now he's inventing uncles out of thin air. Especially against the backdrop of Memorial Day, on which we memorialize the sacrifice of real Americans, this story is so jarring that the media may be forced to take notice.

UPDATE 2: A lot of good stuff on this is getting compiled over at Hot Air - including the fact that he peddled some version of this BS back in 2002. Check it out.

(h/t LGF)

Michael Vick, A True Virginian?

So argues US News's Michael Barone, citing as evidence David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, a book which I recently had recommended to me by a professor. One might almost call Barone sympathetic to Vick's legal troubles, noting that "we seem to consider fox hunting acceptable but have an almost universal feeling that dogfighting is not. Michael Vick, it seems, may have been born in the wrong century." This may be part of the sentiment fueling those polls in which whites have far less sympathy for Vick than blacks do; although a more likely explanation is simple racial solidarity.

This Really and Truly Galls Me

Michelle Malkin caught a story that truly sticks in my craw: in Britain, education bureaucrats have proposed striking from the curriculum the requirement that students be taught about Sir Winston Churchill; they also proposed that more "relevant" topics such as global-warming be taught. Needless to say, Churchill's grandson, Tory MP Nicholas Soames, was furious; he said that “It’s total madness. The teaching of history is incredibly important. If people do not seem to care about the country in which they live, the reason is that they don’t know much about it.” I entirely agree with you, sir.

According to the Sun, though, Winny isn't the only figure of historical import facing the axe: off the mandatory list are Stalin, Hitler, Gandhi, MLK, the War of the Roses (probably an unheard-of event to my American readers), Elizabeth I, and Henry VIII. So perhaps facing the axe was a bad pun.

This simply forces the question of what will students be taught in their history classes? All of these figures (save perhaps MLK) are crucial in the development of modern Britain, and one would think indispensable components of a true education. The Sun doesn't highlight exactly why WSC should be cut, I'd be interested to know. Perhaps because tenacious fighters who doggedly insisted that Britain never never never give up, or noted that "an appeaser is one that feeds the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last," or who rightly said that a fanatic is one who "won't stop talking and won't change the subject" might complicate the process of British submission to Islam. You know, restore their stiff upper lip and all. I'm truly aghast.

A Truly Great Historian

"Historians" such as the peerlessly awful Howard Zinn are the darlings of the intelligentsia, which is in itself tragic. But what's equally tragic is that truly brilliant (and right-minded) scholars such as Gertrude Himmelfarb are thus overlooked or ignored. Her brilliance is on display in a review of Michael Barone's latest book, which itself looks appealing. Most notable is her second paragraph, a call to arms which should be heeded:

In academia today, narrative history is as unfashionable as Macaulay himself. It is said to "privilege" political events over the social and economic forces that truly drive history, and, worse still, to privilege the individuals and elites that happen to dominate politics over the "anonymous" masses that are, or should be, the proper subjects of history--"history from below," as is said. The public has no such qualms. The histories that grace the bestseller lists are, for the most part, narratives, written by nonacademics and a few dissident academics. Barone's book is unashamedly and unapologetically in this genre. It is a detailed chronological narrative of the events (political, diplomatic, military) and the individuals
(high-born and high-powered) that contributed to the English Revolution --a tale well told.

Oh and as I said, she also makes Barone's book sound eminently worthwhile!

[Just for amusement's sake, I'll note that Himmelfarb is the wife of Irving Kristol - and thus the mother of the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol.]

Albania's Long-Lost Roman City

BBC's Malcolm Billings finds his way to Butrint, an almost-forgotten Roman city buried in the forests of the Albanian coast. It's a brief but interesting read about some of the challenges of post-communist historical preservation and archeology. To name one considerable hurdle, native archaeologists are practically non-existent so that in addition to work on the site, they must be trained. The entire preservation effort is the product of the passion of two British lords and an American entrepreneur, something of an odd alliance but engaged in some very important work. The ruins sound spectacular and clearly illustrate the sweep of the region's history - Roman ruins, a Venetian fort, an Ottoman bastion, strong points from Enver Hoxha's Communist regime.

It's unlikely that I'll find myself traipsing through Albania anytime soon, but suffice to say if I do Butrint will be on my list of destinations.

Two Relevant Speeches Worth Reading

Calvin Coolidge's "Speech on the Occasion of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence"

Ronald Reagan's "Independence Day - 1981" speech

The second is less well-known than it should be, the first almost forgotten. So let's change that - read both.

Britain's Vanishing Military

Some MPs are voicing concerns over declining enlistment rates in all branches of the British military; among the cited reasons are "heavy workloads, frequent overseas deployments and impact on family life." No doubt.

Truly gone are the glory days of British arms. Presently, troops can look forward to tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere lasting months and with many comforts while off-duty. At the height of empire, enlistment was something like ten (fifteen?) years, and deployments on far-off posts in unhealthy climes (India, West Africa, etc.) were measured in years. During the Napoleonic Wars, sailors of the Royal Navy could go years without setting foot on dry land (and could go almost as long without their food being refreshed).

I've begun to think that war debts and a whiny Left (including the transmission of various nationalist doctrines into colonies) were only two of the most obvious causes of the decline of empires post-1945. Other under-studied causes could very well include the development of communication technology and rise of the welfare state. The second of these meant that men had a choice between starvation and service (which often wasn't a whole lot better). The former meant that overseas policy was conducted more cautiously by government bureaucrats rather than those on the front line. If he'd been blessed (cursed?) with satellite communications, no doubt Clive never would have fought Plassey. Instead, when England next heard from him, he'd annexed a large swath of India on his own initiative. It used to be that when troops were deposited on some distant shore, they acted as they saw fit until such time as they perished or received further "orders" (often hopelessly obsolete) from Europe. Compare that to LBJ's micromanagement of Vietnam!

What does this all mean? Perhaps national service (broadly construed) should be made a prerequisite for welfare benefits. Of course that would be seen as aimed at the lower classes, which is unfortunately true. A culture of public service needs to be inculcated into national elites, so that they too do their part (though aristocratic officers were often far more trouble than they were worth). Perhaps I am just a man born in the wrong time.

Reexamining FDR

Amity Shlaes shatters historical consensus on the New Deal.

Remember: she just published a book on this topic!