It was a dark and stormy night

Winners of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Including one Dishonorable Mention.

Via Cassandra, who also links an accidental, multi-author effort in which she participated in 2004. Inspired by her purchase of a new car. Some people are more "into" automotive engineering than others.

Independence Day, 2010

More links, beyond those related to the Declaration:

Answer to Jay Leno's question "Why did Washington cross the Delaware?"

George Washington's "Lads" and the Battle of Trenton
Video: George Washington vs. reason - the meeting described in the text above.

Lincoln on Independence: His speech of July 10, 1858 And a related piece.

The Best of All Possible Marches. Just about any way you like it, including by Sousa's band. One more version, at the end of this roundup.

Only in America: It's Rube Goldberg's birthday, too.

Preserving the gift of freedom. Take the time to be an American.

 Resist the disappearance of history and the natural tendency to take America for granted.

Historical MUST READS for Independence Day, starting with William Blackstone

The Declaration

What Jefferson Wrought   Some interesting history.  Plus commentary on the details:  This document  is not just an emotional call to revolution.    And it was the work of more than one man.

Looks like we need a little more emphasis on history.   Have you considered taking 10 minutes to read the Declaration aloud as part of your Fourth of July celebration? I know a few people who have this family tradition.  It would be nice if we could bring back some more community traditions for this holiday. Sissy Willis started a new community activity this year: she invited readers to Tweet the Declaration.

If you're having a quiet day, how about  comparing the Declaration to the old Soviet constitution? The two documents produced very different results.

Bill Whittle produced a powerful piece on the Declaration back in March.  With an excellent suggestion for making our history come alive.   Recommended.  

Here's an Annotated text of the Declaration of Independence. And a video about the Fourth of July, with attention to the contention and factionalism which were so prevalent at the time. The complex government structure which divided power between various branches was intended to decrease dominance of one faction over another. James Madison advocated an approach to government based in "reason, benevolence and brotherly affection."

Have a great Fourth of July.

Update - Wretchard, a naturalized Australian with a keen appreciation of the importance of the American Experiment, writes:

Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the 4th of July, 1826. Though both men were on their deathbeds, each made an effort through the night of the third to survive until the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. . . .

Daniel Webster, who came on the scene after the Founding Fathers had already passed into legend lamented that “we can win no laurels … earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all.” But he was wrong; history comes back offering each new generation a new set of heights to climb. In that sense the Declaration of Independence will forever remain unfinished business; an enterprise well begun which has not quite been completed. . .

Read the whole thing, watch the video.  The Declaration seems to be on people's minds this year.  A copy with the early drafts is linked here.   You could do a little extra credit on your "citizen's required reading for the Fourth of July". (This year, your holiday probably extends into the 5th).  Captain Ed also has a reminder of the Declaration's world-changing significance, followed by the words themselves.

Calvin Coolidge on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration.  This speech by an almost-unknown president is recommended by a lot of folks.  

Historical Tidbits: The Founders risked a lot.  Book:  A Monticello Sampler.  

Our Economic Mess: Videos from Contrasting Perspectives

A British academic explains the failures of capitalism from a Marxist perspective. As The Anchoress notes, it's an appealing video. But the attractive "Marxist Perspective" somehow produced the most repressive, murderous ideology  in human history, despite the beauty of "pure" Marxist theory. Consistently, wherever it was tried. And academics don't seem much interested in this.  This incurious attitude leads me to believe that avoidance of tyranny is far less important than the pursuit of equality in their minds. And totalitarianism can be tempting to the benevolent.

Reason Magazine explains from a libertarian perspective why the new Federal financial reforms won't work. Two minutes, featuring tax cheat and Obama financial guru, Timothy Geithner.

Milton Friedman's classic discussion of Greed with Phil Donahue.

California - No Budget, AGAIN

The Governor gets dramatic with a (probably ineffective) decrease in the salaries of State employees to the federal minimum wage. But this kind of drama does not produce meaningful reform in the long run.

After he was elected to replace a man who had lost control of the State budget, the governor actually tried to enact some real reforms.  He did so with a considerable amount of bravado.  Remember "girly men"?  But The Terminator was, in effect, beaten to a pulp by the entrenched Democratic legislature and decided that if he couldn't beat them, he would join them.  And his wife is from the most prominent Democratic family in America, so his changing political positions probably eased some tensions at home, too.

Better to go with something like Ireland's austerity plan than the yearly drama in California: Tie government salaries to the deficit.   The details show this to be a far more sensible plan than the "cut them all to minimum wage" approach. Glenn Reynolds notes that the Irish plan has the benefit of turning government workers into a lobby for responsible spending. And it might cut down on some corruption, too. Embezzlers, etc., would be directly affecting the paychecks of their co-workers.

Unfortunately, the response in California makes it sound more like Greece.  The government proposes  draconian austerity, then waits for protests which make austerity impossible. Those on the government payroll do more to drive business out of the state so that the budget mess gets even worse.  Politicians cave to current pressures let the guys who are elected after you term out deal with the growing problem, until everything falls apart.

Obama Administration Blocking Media Access to Gulf Response?

The Obama administration knows is has a PR disaster on its hands. PBS (!) made the complaint. The glamour problem of our elegant young president is getting worse.

Captain Ed:

I’m going to use Glenn Reynolds’ line here:

“They told me if I voted for John McCain that the press would get silenced and the executive branch would block accountability. And they were right!”

Oh, and they don't want Republican elected officials visiting, either.  And only a sixth of volunteers are  being put to work.

UPDATE:  Now CNN is complaining.  Video.  But BP started it.

The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment

I wrote about some interesting coincidences concerning the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court's McDonald decision here.

 Captain Ed has an interesting take on the decision - noting Jocob Scollum's observation that four Supreme Court Justices argued against the Constitution and against individual rights in general:

The decision reveals a fundamental antipathy on the part of liberal jurists to the clear language of the Constitution. While we celebrate the fact that five Justices got it right, we should be very worried that the other four still would rather search for penumbras and emanations for their own idea of social engineering than in actually reading the clear text of the document they swore to uphold.

Video featuring Otis McDonald, who took the case to the Supreme Court. Why would Chicago politicians rather call in the National Guard in response to horrific crime rates than allow law-abiding citizens (well, other than themselves and their friends) to have guns? "This hurts me to my heart".

Justice for All: DOJ and the New Black Panthers

Wretchard:

The salient thing about J. Christian Adams’s accusation that the Obama administration deliberately let off the New Black Panther Party after it engaged in voter intimidation is that, if true, it constitutes a pure exercise in the abuse of power. The other wrongs it represents — the perversion of the electoral process, the violation of civil rights — are secondary. The most serious allegation in the whole affair is that the certain officials countenanced a crime because they wanted to. The most concentrated expression of tyranny is malice in the service of caprice. . . .


The greatest damage that political correctness has inflicted on society is to make each of us forget that underneath the accidents of color, nationality and creed, that all of us are men. By dividing humanity into hyphenated buckets, each sequestered in its hate, the puppet masters have managed to set one against the other so thoroughly that the sharpers, wheeler-dealers and fixers can operate undisturbed. In a world where every one thinks of himself as white, black, gay, straight — we have forgotten that the real distinction is between who holds power and who does not. Nothing else matters. The Black Panthers and the three men who are suspected of killing Robert Wone are not impotent underdogs. On the contrary, they wield far more power than we, in our normal lives, could ever dispose of. God grant we never meet them, for if we do, we meet them alone. . . . .

Update II - Ace's comment seems to fit with Wretchard's statement:  "Here's the sort of guy Eric Holder perilously sprang free. "   And Ace is talking about perils to civil rights law - not just to perils against innocent people. Read the whole post and watch the video:

You want freedom?  You're going to have to kill some crackers.  You're going to have to kill some of their babies. 

This is the same guy speaking out in the voter intimidation video presented to the DOJ, just to be clear.

"Social Justice" sometimes means the eradication of "equality before the law".  Our Department of Justice does not appear to believe in equality before the law.  Transforming America, indeed. As Wretchard suggests, if the DOJ acted as it appears to have acted, God help us.

The whistleblower in the dismissal of the New Black Panther case is now being slimed by the DOJ. Typical. Whistleblowers often suffer massive hardship for the rest of us, with little or no thanks.

Might there be a connection between the relative lack of media coverage of the New Black Panther case dismissal and the outing of David Weigel's Journolist posts in order to get him fired? He seems to be the only person at the two major Eastern dailies who mentioned the case.

UPDATE:  The whistleblower explains why he was upset enough to resign.  Also check out the powerful video, an interview of a civil rights attorney who witnessed the intimidation by members of the New Black Panther Party.  He's a self-identified "old liberal", sort of like Dennis Prager - worked on the election campaigns of Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and the first black man to run for governor in Mississippi. "New liberals" are different. They tend to think of "group rights" and "social justice" (which means different things to different people) before "individual rights" and "justice under the law".

Why Democrats thought Obamacare would be popular

Michael Barone explains the connection between the history of Progressivism, the Democrats' belief that Obamacare and other sweeping redistributive legislation would be popular, and their shock at the level of opposition to these measures.

One hundred years ago, most urban Americans rented rather than owned their homes. Many had no bank accounts, and few had significant financial assets. Elites worried that this proletariat might rise in revolution.
In this America, the progressives argued that the Founders’ vision was obsolete. Property rights should be subordinate to human rights. Government should regulate economic activity and “spread the wealth around,” as Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber.

This view animated the New Deal in the 1930s and appealed to the non-property-owning majority. Franklin Roosevelt sowed the idea, harvested by the New Deal historians, that an ever-expanding government was both good and necessary. Democrats were referencing this when they said they were “making history” by passing their health-care bill.

Read it all. It helps explain why people like Rush Limbaugh say they want everybody to be rich. It also helps, to some extent, explain the progressive tendency to define morality in economic terms. And their desire to confiscate people's property - especially the property of the "working rich" rather than the property of the "trust fund babies". People who think that their security will come from the government rather than from working to "get ahead" will be more likely to vote for people who promote progressive policies.

The only enthusiasm for the Obama Democrats’ policies comes from David Brooks’s “educated class”: people who are or identify with the centralized experts tasked by the Obama Democrats with making decisions for the rest of us. . . .

This "educated class" tends to resent crass capitalists who earn more than they do. Polls indicate that they also do not understand why most Americans don't trust them, like Swedes trust their counterparts in Sweden.   You may find the linked video interesting.

Swedish culture stresses working for the "common good" on a very personal level, to the extent that neighbors in an apartment co-op will sometimes get together to eject someone onto the street from their (paid for) apartment if they feel the offender is not sufficiently cooperative with the goals of the co-op. Hard to imagine this in most U.S. neighborhoods.  Some Swedes express fears that the country will someday have a significant number of  "free-loaders" who exploit the generous welfare system, but for now, this does not seem to be a big problem there.

New York City has about the same population as Sweden, and a lot of progressives live there. It would be an interesting experiment to try to bring successful government based on the "Club Sweden" mindset to the diverse population of this city, before trying to extend the dominance of progressive government over the rest of the country.

Tocqueville noted that local civic involvement was an important part of being an American in the past. Swedes seem to retain the idea of partnership with government more than modern Americans. Perhaps partly because of the smaller size of the country.

 A relatively new challenge there is to extend the egalitarian "Club Sweden" atmosphere and sense of cooperation to the largely Muslim immigrant population.