I’ve been trying to come up with a way to express my thinking about the capture of 15 Royal Marines and sailors of the Royal Navy. Luckily for me, someone else captured it for me:
It’s been over 200 years since the Royal Navy placed a frigate and a fighting captain in every part of the world’s oceans deep enough to float one in order to frustrate Napoleon’s imperial ambitions and safeguard the Home Islands. It’s been almost a hundred and forty years since Parliament sent a combined force 0f 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, 26,000 camp followers and 40,000 animals led by General Sir Robert Napier on a 400 mile trek across some of the harshest terrain in Africa to rescue a handful of British diplomats and missionaries held hostage by the mad king of Abyssinia. The flower of a generation was cut down on Flanders fields to safeguard the continent from Prussian militarism, and even at their darkest hour, the bravery and pluck of the British citizen following the debacle at Dunkirk and during the Blitz was never in doubt.
But it appears perhaps that the last of that Britain may have sailed home victorious at the end of the campaign to wrest the Faulkland Islands back from Argentine aggression. The Iron Lady may not have “been for turning,” but the wheel turned on without her. What was Britain seems to have become Europe.
When in times of old the British lion did roar, the world would tremble. Now the commodore of a royal fleet with a 1000-year history, and a man commanding a ship belonging to that fleet - a fleet, by the way, which seems to be evaporating before our very eyes - suffers 15 of his people to be illegally seized without firing a shot. Having placed them in danger in a war zone without, it would appear, having even been in the position to support them. In much the same waters where a previous insult was issued three years ago.
I don’t know how I feel about a shooting war with Iran. But if a bunch of vessels come alongside some of your folks sitting in a couple of rubber boats, and you’ve got weapons aboard, it seems obvious what your course of action should be.
There was a time — before satellite communications and GPS — that Royal Navy Captains, Commodores, Admirals and Commanders-In-Chief has absolute authority to act, so long as they did so within the confines of their orders from the Admiralty. And acting in ones’ own defense was always permissable. Now, the Admiralty is excerising tactical command of individual vessels at sea from cushioned chairs in London. And that’s obviously to the detriment of its sailors and Royal Marines.
Indeed, looking back to the days of Nelson and Napoleon, if a Royal Navy officer hauled down colors and surrendered his ship and his men without firing a shot, he would likely as not have been court martialed and set on the beach, at half pay and without a ship for the duration of his life.
Where has that spirit gone?
That’s the name of a new report just released by the Pacific Research Institute that puts a firm cost on America’s broken tort system. Check out these highlights from the report:
- The $865 billion annual cost of America’s tort system is equivalent to the total yearly sales of the entire U.S. restaurant industry.
- More than 51,000 U.S. jobs have been lost due to asbestos-related bankruptcies alone. Employees at these bankrupted companies have lost $559 million in pension benefits.
- Lawsuits against American corporations generate an annual loss of $684 billion in shareholder value. Who are American shareholders? Not just Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. 50% of all US shareholders are ordinary individuals.
- If you assume U.S. costs should be in line with other industrialized countries, the authors project that America wastes $589 billion per year on excessive social tort costs, equivalent to the total annual output of Illinois.
- The practice of “defensive medicine” by litigation-fearing physicians increases American health care costs by $124 billion per year and adds 3.4 million Americans to the rolls of the uninsured.
If that don’t make your head spin, nothing will.
Read the whole thing.
HT: The American Justice Partnership.
Wednesday was the fifth anniversary of the enactment of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. My friend Krempasky pilloried the law here.
For my own part, I still believe today, as I did then, that the law is an obvious affront to the First Amendment. It mystifies to this day how the Supreme Court managed to find otherwise.
The First Amendment is very simple. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
There’s absolutely no reason for you to have ever seen a printed copy of the McCain-Feingold law. Well, I have, and it runs to hundreds of pages. The resulting jurisprudence totals thousands more. And the original Federal Election Campaign Act (passed in 1974) and other related legislation add another hundred or so to the stop of the stack.
All of these laws — made in due course by Congress — exist to restrict, in one or another, how Americans can participate in the political process. And McCain-Feingold is a frontal assault on the rights of speech and association.
And yet, it’s still on the books. Five years later.
Perhaps one of these days we’ll stumble on a Congress or Supreme Court willing to defend our rights and protect the Constitution.
Until then, I’m voting for anyone but McCain.
Today, the Rev. Jesse Jackson announced that he was supporting Senator Barrack Obama’s candidacy for President. “He has my vote,” Jackson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Sen. Obama wants Americans to believe that he is a visionary leader who has turned away from the politics of the past. But hitching his wagon to Jackson’s fallen star undermines the image that the Senator is working so hard to cultivate.
Obama likes to suggest that, as President, he will put aside the politics of division, raise the level of discouse in Washington, and bring together a divided America under a banner of renewed hope for the future. Jackson has built his political career by relying on the politics of division. Rather than forward-looking optimism, Jackson’s politics dwell in an unhappy past which, Jackson believes, entitles him and a whole group of Americans to special treatment.
I have no idea whether Sen. Obama sought the Rev. Jackson’s endorsement or not. And no candidate is ever going to turn down an offer of support — nor should they. But this endorsement is one that Senator Obama doesn’t need, and, ultimately, doesn’t help his candidacy at all.
Well, in the coming weeks, I will finalize the last details of my relocation, and I will become a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia. (”Commonwealth” is an old English term that means, “a state that has to be difficult and not call itself what everybody else does.”)
This will also mark the first time in my life that I will vote in a party primary, and Virginia’s primary might still be meaningful, depending upon events. Or at least it will seem comparably meaningful; when you live your adult life in the District of Columbia, your vote really doesn’t matter, as your officeholders are pretty much selected by the Democratic primary. If you vote for a Republican in general election, you get to see your vote counted on election night as the results are being updated. “Hey, Bush went from a total four votes to five in the last hour! That’s my vote!”
I notice that our friend Erick Erickson has endorsed a candidate — Mitt Romney — and then retracted that endorsement, and says that Hugh Hewitt, who wrote a book on Romney, has come as close to endorsing Romney as you can without actually endorsing him.
I understand why organizations endorse candidates, and I understand why publications endorse candidates. But I’m not quite sure whether the endorsement of any one individual carries all that much weight. I won’t be blogging about my choice, because A) I don’t want my preferred candidate’s rivals to complain that I’m biased, etc. and B) I don’t really think anybody cares about who I vote for. It’s just one vote, and in the general election, Mrs. Hillary Spot is almost certainly going to cancel mine out, anyway.
So I’ll put it to the great political minds and memories of my co-bloggers… has there ever been an endorsement by an individual that swung a race?
Marshall: Great question, Jim. I can’t think of one on the national stage, but at the state level, it happens all the time. The clearest examples go back a ways, when men like Senator Harry Byrd dominated politics in their state simply by giving “the nod.”
It’s funny. I do words for a living. I write them. I use them to advise clients. And I help clients use them to communicate with others. I’ve been doing words for a long time.
It’s occured to me in the past — and I’m feeling it acutely today — that there are times when words just aren’t capable of getting the job done. Any phrase you can concoct just doesn’t seem sufficient to the task. And every sentence you cobble together just sounds trite. And it turns out that those days are the most important ones of all.
Given that I had so little time in Paris — indeed, no time to even cover the basics like the Louvre and Notre Dame — I’m very glad that my one real stop was at the Arc de Triomphe.
It was purely a fluke of proximity. If I’d been making own arrangements, it would have been lower on my list. But my firm’s office was nearby, which meant my hotel was nearby, which made the Arc my first stop.
Standing, as it does, in the midst of a chaotic traffic circle in the heart of one of the world’s largest and busiest cities, it’s easy to forget that the Arc is a solemn memorial to the millions of Frenchmen who died for their country in World War I, World War II, Algiers, and elsewhere.
The Arc itself was conceived after Napoleon’s triumph at the Battle of Austerlitz, though not completed until a revolution or two after he departed the scene. The names of his armies and French generals are inscribed on the walls. Emblems representing battles of the period run around the tops of the walls. Its combination of size and sculpture render the arc both imposing and beautiful. But is is not the arc itself that evoked the most breathtaking moment of my visit to the site.
There were two elements that left a much stronger impression.
The first were the plaques. Simple and bronze, they were planted in the ground beneath the center of the Arc. They were not cordoned off, and to my horror, many visitors were simply walking on them. There were but a handful. A relatively large one commemorated French soldiers who gave their lives in World War I. Another relatively large plaque honored the French who fought for their country and freedom in the Second World War. Slightly smaller plaques covered other conflicts. It was their simplicity that made them powerful. And their proximity to the second breathtaking element.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from the First World War sits in the central section of the Arc, slightly off to the side nearest the eastern portion of the Champs Elysees. It is adorned by a large, bronze rectangular slab and the French eternal flame
During my visit, a retired solider was standing guard in full uniform. Every few moments — or whenever a visitor pointed a camera — he would come to attention and salute. The tomb is kept with fresh flowers and is cordoned off from visitors and the soles of their shoes. The tomb honors its occupant and speaks well of his nation — a nation which gave an entire generation of young men to the slaughter of the First World War.
As I left the Arch and began my walk down the Champs Elysees, the tomb got me to thinking about the ways in which we honor the people who make the ultimate sacrifice for those of us who can’t, don’t or won’t go to war. It struck me, as it has in the past, that no gesture or plaque or statue can ever be sufficient, but that, in the end, that really isn’t the point. Memorials like the eternal flame beneath the Arc de Triomphe are more about us — about ensuring that we who remain understand the sacrifices that have been made for us and behave accordingly.
And that brings to a broader point about France. From a mere two hour walk through Paris, it’s abundantly clear that at some point, the French had an astute sense of history, and not just their own. They have streets named for De Gaulle, Eisenhower, and King George V (who was King of England during World War I). There’s a wonderful statue of Winston Churchill on a corner of a major intersection. There’s even a wonderful statue of the Marquis de Lafayette — who helped George Washington win our own Revolutionary War — in an honored place along the Sein.
But that sense of history is no longer reflected in France’s politics. In its lust to remain a significant power, France has climbed into bed with the kinds of regimes — like Syria, China, Iran, the Sudan — that it sent millions of men to their deaths to oppose. That’s unfortunate, but I don’t harbor any illusions that anything I say will impact French politics. I hope it’s enough only to lament, which is precisely what I did as I walked past the Arc de Triomphe on the return journey to my hotel.
Jim: Ah, Paris. Yup, it was not what I expected when I visited there early last year. I had saved up a thousand and one snappy rejoinders to snide French waiters, only to find just about all of them polite and the people friendly. Completely at odds with the popular perception of the sneering, insulting, smug Frogs.
A couple of thoughts regarding the French and their history.. I watched an odd French film called “A Very Long Engagement” (the trailers made it seem more surreal and dreamlike than it actually was) but a key element of the story was the sense of French World War One vets that their country wasn’t worth fighting for - that their generals were fat, hedonistic and corrupt and didn’t value the lives of their men. (One soldier’s sister aims for revenge against his commanding officer.) I don’t know if the portrait in the movie can be used to assess an entire country, but one got a sense that the French pride was based on certain tangible aspects of their life - their food, their wine, their culture and arts - and not necessarily on France as a nation itself. The French may love their country, but they may not define loving their country the same way we do. They may appreciate their country, but they may not be eager to fight, kill, or die for it.
Walking from the Champs Elysees to the Port Alexandre III, I witnessed a traffic accident.
An unfortunate Paris commuter — he looked about 55; wore a suit and tie; and was obviously just trying to get home — rear-ended a police van. The van contained at least 8 members of the French National Police force who were on their way, well, somewhere.
The sidewalk was flocked with tourists like me, and the laughter as a result of the collision sounded like the inside of a comedy club.
Good news — they didn’t haul the motorist away in cuffs. Bad news — they didn’t haul the motorist away in cuffs.
So Jim’s just back from two years in Turkey, while Marshall’s hanging out in London, Brussels, and Paris.
Well screw you two, because I’m going to ST. LOUIS(!) in a month for the NRA Annual Meetings.
And actually, I’m not really kidding. If you’ve never been to an Annual Meeting of the NRA, it’s truly an awesome and awe-inspiring time.
So enjoy your Big Ben and your Eiffel Tower, Marshall. In just a few weeks I’ll be taking in the sights and sounds at the new Busch Stadium and wandering the aisles of the convention center. So there.
Marshall: In the final anaylsis, I would take a Sunday afternoon game at Busch stadium over a day at the Louvre anytime.
Jim: Why choose? It’s a big world. If any Democratic presidential candidates address the NRA convention, maybe I can head out there as a business trip…
I’m in Paris today, and my new friends at the Edelman office here basically shooed me out to enjoy the city once they learned it was my first visit. (It was also a crystal blue day with the temperature cracking sixty.)
So I started at the Arc de Triomphe (more on that in a subsequent post), worked my way down the Champs Elysees, and, eventually, across the Port Alexander III. (For all of the other non-French speakers, “port” means bridge.)
[Insert gratuitious photo of the Arc here. Make sure to point out the amazing blue sky.]
The bridge provided a direct and amazing view to Les Invalides, an astonishing structure that I will take the time to actually visit on my next trip. Here’s a photo:
I didn’t make it to the Eiffel Tower, but I did take a pitcture from afar. Sorry about the light. The sun was going down.
I also didn’t make it to the Louvre or Notre Dame. It was getting dark, and I decided I wanted to experience those with my wife. So I walked back up Avenue de George V to the Champs Elysees and found a little bistro for an early dinner.
All in all, I truly enjoyed Paris. I can see why writers, poets and playrights are drawn here. The streets and avenues are inspiring. The history and architecture is thought provoking. And I look forward to returning when I have more time to truly experience it.