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Thank You Mr. President

by Christopher Chantrill
January 29, 2006 at 9:55 pm

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AS YOU DELIVER your State of the Union speech this week, Mr. President, and enter the sixth year of your presidency there is something I want to say. It is “Thank you, Mr. President.”

You have achieved three important things in the last five years, Mr. President, and that’s as good as it gets.

First of all, you have responded to the challenge of Islamic rich kid Usama bin Laden and his twisted observance of the Turkish defeat at the gates of Vienna on 9/11 back in 1683.

Secondly, you have put our American wealth-creation machine back on track after the scare of the Great Tech Bear Market of 2000 to 2003 when the NASDAQ declined by over 75 percent.

And now it looks as though you have ended the poisonous Bork era, the twenty years of shame in which liberal interest groups made sport of assassinating the characters of conservative Supreme Court nominees.

Three big things, Mr. President. They say that a president should limit himself to three big things for his time in office, else he will dissipate his energies on ephemera. That puts you in the home stretch already, you fortunate son.

In the matter of the War on Terror, especially in the moment of clarity after the Hamas win in the Palestinian elections, we can now begin to see the wisdom of the strategic moves you made in the months after 9/11. It is good that you have interjected our brave armed forces along the border between Sunni and Shia in Iraq, complicating the task of anyone trying to achieve Islamic strategic concentration.

Strictly speaking, our western team should not be at any disadvantage from the Islamicist gang, but you never know, especially now that we can see that appeasement is not just an accident of the 1930s but a recurrent temptation for many of our progressive friends. In the past it has taken courageous leadership to bring the appeasers to the moment of reality when the scales fell off their eyes. You have certainly done your part to bring this moment to pass in our times.

On economic policy you have proven to be a safe pair of hands pushing through, against the foolish resistance of Congress and the blind ignorance of the Democrats, the necessary income tax rate cuts that have put our great economy back on track and restored its animal spirits. At the moment of trial, three or four years ago, you avoided doing anything stupid and thus spared us any replay of the decade of misery that our grandparents suffered in the 1930s.

As of the time of writing it looks like the Alito nomination is over—bar shouting, as my grandfather used to say. For twenty years we conservatives have bridled and raged at the brutal borking of well qualified, honorable Republican judicial nominees. For twenty years, like Dorothy’s Aunt Em, we have wanted to tell the wicked Democratic witches what we thought of them, but because we are conservatives, we couldn’t. But now, with the successful nominations of Roberts and Alito, you have brought the Bork era to a close. This is a great moment in our nation’s history, because with your steadfast leadership you have ended a great injustice without breaking the peace.

It is sad, Mr. President, that during your administration our Democratic friends have seemed to be unable to accept defeat in good faith and with a good grace. One of the most important skills in conflict is to know how to conduct a retreat in good order. The Democrats are failing to do this, and their failure is worse than a crime, it is a blunder. But you have been determined since the start of your campaign for election in 2000 to restore dignity to the office of the presidency. As your assistant (http://www.radioblogger.com/archives/january06.html#001337) Karl Rove recently said: “This president treats the opposition with dignity and respect.” We thank you for that, Mr. President.

Many things have been said about you in the last five years, Mr. President, many foolish words and a few wise ones. But we who are your supporters want you to know, as we have anxiously observed you from year to year, that we understand how much you carry the troubles of the world on your shoulders. We understand that you can never crow, as your predecessor did, “I love this job!” Today, the job of the leader of the free world is too serious for that.

On behalf of all Americans, Mr. President, we wish you well in this critical year of 2006 as you work to keep Americans safe and prosperous, and work to realize your vision of an America that rewards responsibility with opportunity. We live and work in confidence that under your leadership the State of the Union is sound.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”  —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems... No more rules, no more models... Genius conjures up rather than learns... ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

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Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Society and State

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008

presented by Christopher Chantrill

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