Few people in history can truly define an age. Alexander the Great, Augustus, Napoleon, and Hitler come to mind. Often times, too often, they are associated with the evil of the age. Even Pericles and the Golden Age were butressed by imperialism and extortion. John Paul II was one of the few who define an age and do so for the cause of good.

In the coming weeks and months, we will come to learn much about this man, from his humble beginnings to his early life under Nazi, then later, Stalinist rule. He was a man of great faith, of high intelligence and quick wit, and very athletic. Yet, it was his personal magnetism and charisma that made him far more than just the "bishop of Rome."

He was fiercly anti-commiunist at a time when it wasn't fashionable. He was steadfast in his belief of right and wrong, at a time when it wasn't fashionable. He was unyielding in his commitments to his religious doctrine, at a time of ever increasing pressure. He refused to be swayed by the age of relativism and moral decay.

You never could say you always agreed with him. His support for life extended to the unborn and the convicted. His opposition to socialism was not support for laissez faire capitalism. Yet he reached out to Jew and Muslim, traveled the world, touched the hearts, minds, and souls of literally billions. He reminded us that we have more to live for than ourselves.

He was the first ever to visit a Jewish synagogue, and he openly acknowledged the past sins of his church against Jews. He was as humble as he was bold, as genuine and sincere as his critics were callous and petty.

He did something that many would have thought impossible: he restored political and moral legitimacy to the papacy. He leaves behind a terrible scandal, one his church never fully addressed, one it hid under the covers for too long. This too must be acknowledged.

His successor has a most important task in cleaning house, reforming a stagnant and in effect dying institution. This task will consume much of the next pope's efforts, and one that is essential. Let us all pray that the College of Cardinals picks wisely.

For literally billions of people, he was the only pope they ever knew. He was able to transform himself from more than just a religious leader to a world icon. He transcended faith, race, and culture.

His critics, who are really critics of all people of faith, will find plenty to criticize. They will disparage church practice and practices from those that exposed millions to AIDS to gender inequality in church and society. They will however, over time appear to be shrill and spiteful nihilists. More and more people will over time see that the pope's words against relativism and narcicism were prescient indeed.

Though neither Catholic nor Christian, I too feel a loss on this day. I recognize the great man that he was, the great ideas he championed, and the great deeds that he accomplished. I also recognize that he left behind or failed to address all the issues he should have. But after all, he was, as we all are, only human.

(hat tip instapundit)

Photos from Lance Frizell in Iraq.








Only from America.

Professor Hanson wrote in Soul of Battle that from ancient times until today, only armies comprised of freemen, from a free society can wage wars of liberation. Epaminondas' 70,000 or Sherman's 62,000 both marched directly into states of helotage and aparthied and left them burnt, utterly defeated, collapsed. In their wake were hundreds of thousands of liberated people, a society ruined, a way of life destroyed forever.

Sadly, the Greeks would be crushed by a Macedonian meglomaniac and the South would suffer the stain of a century of segregation. But neither state would ever forget the vanquishing, liberating hordes that descended upon their sanctuary. Spartans would reward the man who kill Epaminondas at Mantinea and the South would forever curse the name of Sherman, even though it was Grant who killed hundreds of thousands of the South's finest mercilessly and ruthlessly.

Yet, in both cases, the armies came from states where men were free and status was based on prodigious use of your God given ability. Both were considered birthrights. Just as Beoetians found Sparta thoroughly disgusting, and happily went to work building Messene and Megalopolis, so too did the bummers of Sherman find the plantation class and their lives not worthy of awe, but of complete destruction.

Today in Iraq, the US soldier is following in the footsteps of Theban hoplite, the Yankee soldier, and the WW2 GI. The sheer animus towards the previous regime is so evident in their dedication and committment to the freedom of Iraqis. It is not something that fiery orators and rhetoric can muster, as the hearts and minds so easily swayed by politicians are quickly quieted by battlefield realities. As soon as one realizes that he is fighting to inflict the same misery onto others, he becomes more concerned about individual gain and returning home to glory.

The anger of the GI in Iraq is not much different from the anger felt by the GI in 1945 upon discovery of Dachau. Thirty years of deprivation and dehumanization are now being rectified by the only force capable of such: free peoples aroused to fight.

Just as Sherman said of the South that if we pierce the shell, we will find it empty, so too have have we pierced the shell of the "Arab street" and of the thugs and kleptocrats that perpetuated their caste system. And like Sherman, we find their mythical world hollow.

Perhaps it is why the Army, which has not met its recruiting goals at home, finds reenlistment rates highest among its combat veterans. Those who served in Iraq are most eager to return, those farthest away, most afraid. Perhaps it is why the morale, two years into the operation, is still high. Those who have returned and been critical, as is their right, are remarkable only by their paucity.

Quietly and continuosly, the soldier in Iraq has built and rebuilt far more than he has demolished. He has saved scores times more than he has killed. He has saved more Arabs and Muslims from torturous and murderous lives than all the blustering dictators combined. Like his predecessors, he has suffered mightily, and yet remains committed to the mission. He seeks nothing in return, save for the smiles of the children in new schools with new desks with textbooks free from Stalin-like propaganda. He seeks not wealth nor glory, but simply to return to the world from whence he came, knowing he left Iraq free.

If people doubt the future of America, look no further than Iraq, for both fear and hope will be fulfilled. Only those who truly love freedom, who are filled with the soul of battle, could have accomplished what they have, in such short time. Know that America still produces them, that the torch has been passed, and it is now carried by worthy successors. The faces in Iraq once jumped out of C47's on a cold June night, held fast in a snowy forest, and climbed a mountain and planted a flag on top of hell.

Yet, those with trepidation still have reason. It is not that we don't produce them any more, it's just we produce so few. And it is why we must be ever vigilant and determined in this, the great challenge of our generation. And it is why we must patiently overlook the protestations and bile that spew from the supposed "enlightened" ones for it masks not rages but jealousy.

They know that as in the past, so too in the future, in the darkest hour, in the time of greatest need, the delivers will come as they always have. And they will come: only from America.

From MSNBC.com's Insurgent attacks against U.S. troops decline:

Insurgent attacks in Iraq have fallen dramatically since the Jan. 30 elections, and the number of U.S. deaths reported this month dropped to the lowest in a year.
...
“The Iraqi army and police are easy targets for terrorists,” he said. “They lack the modern equipment of the Americans.”

There are also more of them on the streets every day. Ali al-Faisal, a member of the Shiite clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of lawmakers leading the new parliament, said the change was because Iraqi police are taking the lead in fighting the insurgency.

“In the past, they were targeting the American forces because they were in charge of security,” he said. “After the new Iraqi army and police were established — and succeeded in maintaining security and began annihilating (the insurgents) — they shifted their attacks.”
...
Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a spokesman for the 3rd Infantry Division based in Baghdad, said soldiers are noticing an improvement on the streets, as “Iraqi police and security units are standing up and becoming more effective.”

Perhaps they, the MSM, are starting to get it. Maybe they're starting to realize that the Iraqi forces are coming on line and are taking over for policing and securing their country. Maybe they're also able to finally see that the real target of the insurgency is the Iraqi people themselves. It is possible that the media, so long determined to report anything positive, is now going to focus on the real not desired situation.

It is ironic that now they're asking if the insurgency is faltering. I asked this over two months ago.

What is most telling is not the number of bombings, but the lack thereof. The attacks, though horrific and deadly, are becoming fewer and farther apart. It is hard to estimate the numbers, but every day CENTCOM releases numbers of more and more insurgents captured, weapons caches discovered, and terrorists killed. The question remaining is not only of the numbers left, but of their resolve to fight.

We haven't cured the common cold, and we will never find the last terrorist. As every day passes, it is more and more evident that they are on the losing side, that they are simply dying for others' agendas. How many more are going to be willing to die for Zarkawi's ego? I would guess that the numbers are dwindling daily. We can't know the exact numbers nor can we surmise the enemy morale, but for all the predictions of violence, we can ask this simple question, "Is this the best they have?"

We can look back just a few months to the elections in Afghanistan with all the similar predictions of violence. So successful were the Afghan elections, that the press has quietly forgotten them, lest anyone be reminded of what might be the most remarkable foreign policy development since the Berlin Wall came down. And lest anyone be reminded that the driving force behind them was President Bush.

They won't go away completely, but if the elections go off with any level of success, the insurgency will have been proven to be a spent force. They had a run where it looked like they could influence the outcome, but no longer.

If I could see this two months ago, why not the media. It's good that they're joining the party, just as long as they remember that we were here a long time.

(again: hat tip powerline)

Big Trunk comments on the Minneapolis Star-Trib's endorsement of an increase in the minimum wage. I wrote on this some time ago, that there is a real reason behind the push to increase the minimum wage, and it has absolutely nothing to do with helping the poor.

So, briefly, let's summarize who exactly earns minimum wage: 3 percent of the workforce who are, young, non high school grads, unmarried, part-time, in service (i.e. low skill) sector jobs, or in jobs also are supplemented with tips (which would rise them above purely minimum wage earners).

Since the young under 16 can't vote, the rest of the young rarely vote, and since this demographic would tend democratic anyways, why the ruckus over the minimum wage. And is another $.50 cents really going to hurt businesses? Landsburg surmises that most studies showing no effect on jobs have been suppressed, and that only the five showing negative results on jobs get reported. And that would be exactly the New York Times response? No, there is a real reason for the ruckus, and the democrats are being disingenuous about it, to say the least.

So, who exactly benefits from the minimum wage hike? Workers (how I hate that word, so Marxist) who EARN ABOVE THE MINIMUM WAGE. Why? Say you're a worker at a fast-food restaurant for almost 1 year. You started at the minimum wage, $5.15, and in the course of the past year, you've done well, worked hard, and earned a $1 raise. Now, after a year, you're earning $6.15. Then the federal government raises the minimum wage by $.50 to $5.65. Is it becoming clear who benefits most? Not the worker starting out, though the extra half dollar is nice. No, the real beneficiary is the worker who is at $6.15. They have to get a raise as well. And what about all the other workers who've worked their way up from minimum wage? Surely they're "entitled" to a raise as well.

Now there's also another sneaky secret to the minimum wage hike. If, as logic would dictate, all wages would increase, a secondary effect takes place. As workers earn more in dollar amounts, guess what happens to tax receipts? You guessed it.

The real evil in the minimum wage increase battle is that it isn't really aimed at workers at the bottom, but at everyone who earns hourly wages and who is above the minimum wage. And who exactly would those workers be? Union workers. And who are the biggest contributors to the democratic party? Unions. See for yourself. Of the top 20 donors, 14 are unions. I'm sure that's just coincidental though.

The simple truth is that the minimum wage does nothing to help those at the low end of the scale. In fact, it has the opposite effect. It prices them out of the labor market and forces employers to seek alternatives. It is a tax on those who do the majority of hiring, and it's sole purpose is to augment the wages at every level above minimum wage, at the expense of the poorest workers, those being exploited for the perceived gain. Then the final hit comes as goods most affected by labor costs will end up costing more, thus hurting the lower socio-economic groups harder.

(hat tip Powerline)

Paul Krugman has simply lost it. His latest article rant, What's going on is the insanse rumination of someone surely unhinged. How else to explain it?

Democratic societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their midst. The desire to show respect for other people's beliefs all too easily turns into denial: nobody wants to talk about the threat posed by those whose beliefs include contempt for democracy itself.

Perhaps he's never heard of Howard "I hate them all" Dean.

Another thing that's going on is the rise of politicians willing to violate the spirit of the law, if not yet the letter, to cater to the religious right.

I'd much rather have polticians ignore the law, where the people have the right and the power to remove them from office. Unlike the professors friends who simply use the courts to issue edicts from on high.

Everyone knows about the attempt to circumvent the courts through "Terri's law." But there has been little national exposure for a Miami Herald report that Jeb Bush sent state law enforcement agents to seize Terri Schiavo from the hospice - a plan called off when local police said they would enforce the judge's order that she remain there.

No, everyoine doesn't know about it. In fact, perhaps the professor didn't bother to read a little farther, as it clearly states:Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in Florida law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it. However, it was Jeb Bush who refused to push the issue, instead of sending in the federales to sieze Elian.

Now, what if this was a woman seeking a late-term abortion, say on the grounds that her life was in danger. And say that the state she was in prohibited late-term aboritons, unless her life was in danger, yet all the judges who reviewed her legal case were unmoved she was in medical jeopardy. Now, assume that the governor could, under certain circumstances, override the judicial decision. In this case, the governor decides to. Would the professor be so upset with a governor using a wrinkle in the law to circumvent judges' rulings?

I guess he answers that question:

Yesterday The Washington Post reported on the growing number of pharmacists who, on religious grounds, refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or morning-after pills. These pharmacists talk of personal belief; but the effect is to undermine laws that make these drugs available. And let me make a prediction: soon, wherever the religious right is strong, many pharmacists will be pressured into denying women legal drugs.

So I guess we could infer from this that the professor believes the goverment should force people to act against their conscience.

We can't count on restraint from people like Mr. DeLay, who believes that he's on a mission to bring a "biblical worldview" to American politics, and that God brought him a brain-damaged patient to help him with that mission.

Now, where exactly does Tom DeLay sasy this? This is the kind of drivel one expects from bloggers, not "serious" jouranlists like the professor. But then again, lunatic theories are the heart and soul of the democratic party.

America isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.

Again, they actually pay him for this garbage? The problem for lefties like Krugman, is that they have used a variety of extralegal tactics to impose a panoply of laws on the public, everything from busing and quotas to environmental regualtions to the most recent gay marriage decisions. They truly expect the right to do the same, instead of through the ballot box, which is where conservatives have made their gains.

He has truly gone of the deep end with this one. One simply has to wonder, what's he on.

If I could pick one person to go to Vegas with, it'd be Senator Clinton. Every roll of the dice for her has been a winner. Most notably of course was the Iraqi war, where her votes for the war and the funding never appearing poltical (as opposed to a certain northeastern senator), her support always strong, her criticism always cautious, and her trips to see the troops greeted with surprisingly positiveness. Which has made me wonder whether she can win the primaries.

What's next for the junior senator from the Big Apple? Why, it's violent videogames and their impact on children. In this crusade, she finds herself aligned with Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, two of the more conservative members of the Senate, and certainly two of the best fundraising items for moveon.org. They would be the, well, Hillaries of the left.

Her pro-war, anti-media stances are sure to make her more appealing to the country. But can she win in the democratic primaries?

(Hat tip Todd Zywicki, Volokh Conspiracy)

Howard Kurts reports in the WaPo that College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds. Big surprise there, as most of us who attended university in the last 30 years or so have experienced first hand that the "mainstream" is stridently left of center. What is shocking is that finally this coming into public light.

Kurts addresses the university imbalance:

By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.

Todd Zywicki, comments on this section of the article:

When asked about the findings, Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, said, "The question is how this translates into what happens within the academic community on such issues as curriculum, admission of students, evaluation of students, evaluation of faculty for salary and promotion." Knight said he isn't aware of "any good evidence" that personal views are having an impact on campus policies.

"It's hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college."

by saying that "This is consistent with what I hear from many of my own students--university campuses have become so cartoonishly left-wing that many students are essentially just tuning out their professors. Students report that they just go through the motions of pretending that they are converted, then they just regurgitate the mantra on exams in order to get a good grade."

That might very well be the case, however, the study, and Professor Zywicki, fail to mention the real area of impact, the one I'm most closely associated with: education.

The vast majority of professors in the humanities are liberal, and exceedingly liberal at that. Here's a simple question. Which departments do the vast majority of school teachers come from? If you said the humanities, you'd be correct. And here's another question. Which department is probably the most liberal of all? If you said education you'd probably be right as well.

Education is as inhospitable a profession to conservatives as any. Perhaps Mr. Zawicki is correct that the vast majority of college students are just going through the motions, parroting their professors for grades. But the real damage is being done before college, where liberal teachers and worse, left leaning textbooks rule the day.

Hillsdale College professor Burt Folsom spoke about how textbooks distort history at a speech to the Accuracy in Academia's Conservative University in 2001. History is particularly subject to revisionism and rewriting as it, more than any discipline, is the gatekeeper of culture.

How much impact does a math or science teacher really have? They can stress evolution as fact rather than theory, but only the history teacher really can shape our views on the country. Who else can portray America as a racist, sexist, mysoginistic, slave society, or as the liberator of hundreds of millions, the shining light of liberty and freedom to the world? Who else can reduce Stalin's Ukrainian genocide to a single sentence? Who else can protray the depression as a failure of capitalism, not a series of bad decisions by the government.

Compounding this is the fact that most history teachers simply put, don't know history and rely almost exclusively on the textbook. Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg wrote in A History of Flawed Teaching:

Nearly a third of the students who apply to Stanford's master's in teaching program to become history teachers have never taken a single college course in history. Outrageous? Yes, but it's part of a well-established national pattern. Among high school history teachers across the country, only 18% have majored (or even minored) in the subject they now teach.

Today, most college students will take at most a single history class in college, and it will be taught almost always by a liberal, usually very liberal, professor. Prior to that, their only other history classes will be in high school, taught by teachers not well schooled in the subject, relying heavily upon textbooks written by liberal, usually very liberal, college professors.

And it gets even worse from there. As the schools of education are filled with the same liberal minded professors, liberal attitdues towards education are being applied to history with disastrous results. Most notable of these is the dominant paradigm permeating education called multi-culturalism, that all societies and cultures are equal. Another trend the last couple of decades has been away from reading and writing, too rote and mundane, and towards "authentic" assessments, which would include anything but reading and writing.

Students are encouraged to create their own knowledge and present it in meaningful ways. Would that that were a cruel joke. The simple fact about much education, and particularly history is this: students are taught less and less, and are just required to present it in an array of differing ways. My discipline of history has become one of a few names and dates, no ideas or connections, where how students feel about an event equally as important as how they understand the event.

Was the exploration of the New World simply white racist Europeans raping and pillaging in a cultural hegemonic orgy? Or was it the result of centuries of Western inquiry and individualism combined with the modernity of an economic and technological explosion fueled by a continent of nationalistic kings freed from papal constraints? Either way, what matters is that students know the Aztecs built their chinampas and died from smallpox brought by the Spanish.

Teachers with precious little historical insight are truly unable to cover the breadth and depth of history, to bring it alive. Thus an ever more growing reliance on "teaching" and less on history. To bring the subject alive requires novel and creative activities, rather than deeper insight. For example, how would a teacher teach the Seven Years War in conjunction with the French Revolution, German unification, the American Revolution and WW1? Or would they?

An historian could, but not a teacher who has taken few if any history classes. No matter. According to Professor Wineburg, what has history morphed into?

Lack of knowledge encourages another bad habit among history teachers: a tendency to disparage "facts," an eagerness to unshackle students from the "dominant discourse" - and to teach them, instead, what the teacher views as "the Truth." What's scary is the certainty with which this "Truth" is often held. Rather than debating why the United States entered Vietnam or signed the North American Free Trade Agreement or brokered a Camp David accord, all roads lead to the same point: our government's desire to oppress the less powerful. It is a version of history that conjures up a North Korean reeducation camp rather than a democratic classroom.

The lack of diversity on college campuses plays out not just in college classrooms where parents are spending good money on bad indoctrinaiton. It plays out in our public school classrooms as well, as the same ideologies are presented to students, and teachers, and accepted uncritically as if it were some simple algebra example. If there is anything to worry about in the future, it is not that students can't do math, it's that they don't know history.

There are many good teachers who teach their disciplines well, and without ideological slant. There are many good and dedicated teachers who do challenge their students, present the breadth and depth of their subject, and are doing yeoman's work. No one broad stroke should paint all teachers. Nevertheless, there is a real problem in education today, and needs to be addressed.

Things are not too well in the Middle East, for the left that is. Having been unsuccessful at derailing the war, their efforts to portray the insurgecy and post invasion as a combination of Vietnam with an American Einsatzgruppen were also unsuccessful. Then having failed to defeat the president and watching an historic election in Iraq followed by protests throughout the Middle East, now some opponents are asking Was Bush Right after all?.

Well they aren't done. The new meme, which has had a few trial balloons, the latest from Geoffery Wheatcroft called Democracy's nasty surprises, is that sometimes democracy just doesn't work out all that well. It'll not be the last furtive attempt by the reactionary left. Since you look foolish to all but the democratic party or moveon.org, though there's precious little difference anymore, in replaying the Bush-Hitler analogy, the next best thing is to remind everyone that Hitler was elected.

Though remind might be too generous a word, as reminding implies the people actually knew in the first place. The new "intellectual" tract will be that Hitler was elected and Germnay soon descended into fascist tyrrany, and just wait, those pesky Shia will do the same. Sadly, like the other arguments this too will play out as long people don't do something heretical, like pick up a history book.

That 1932 election showed that democracy often raises as many problems as it answers, a lesson we may soon learn again in the Middle East.

Which really raises an interesting question, if you think about it. Why all the fuss about "disenfranchisement", if democracy raises as many problems as it answers. This is the first part of the new line of thought, that even though we are seeing democracies bloom in Afghanistan and Iraq, begin in Palestine, and restless peoples from Egypt and Lebanon to Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia are making their voices heard, this really isn't a great a thing as made out to be.

While in reality, it's power to the people, but this time that's not some stupid slogan of a few brain dead pseudo-intellectuals looking for a free ride on the backs of naive students. It's actually the people wanting to excercise their God given rights, coming together spontaneously and courageously. Rather then risking a night in jail if they're lucky, as martyrdom was always so painless and cheap, it's actually risking one's life and their family's lives too.

So, once we determine that democracy isn't always the answer, what's the next step? Point out all the failures of democracy while conspicuously hiding the truth about those failures.

First, always start with the 1932 election. Then, move on to Africa.

To say that democracy will always defeat tyranny is much too simple. Sometimes it can lead to it. When the colonial powers departed Africa in the 1950s and 60s, they left behind model constitutional arrangements, regular elections, bicameral legislatures, even replicas of the speaker's mace from the House of Commons.

And all too often the outcome was, in the sarcastic phrase, "one man, one vote, one time." When the British wanted to extricate themselves from the last of these territories, then called Rhodesia, they held a national election. It was won by Robert Mugabe, with results that have been seen ever since.

So the best the author can do is to rehash an example of a British colony that elected a nationalist leader, a Marxist with Soviet support who was opposed to British aparthied rule, to prime minister.

As for the Nazi analogy, none of the conditions that were ripe for Hitler to assume power are present in Iraq. In fact, the Iraqis have just been freed from thirty years of Ba'athist rule, there is little sympathy nor support for a return to those days.

At the heart of this argument is truly the "they're too stupid to govern themselves" thesis. Fortunately in western democracies they have an elite to rule, except in America which had the temerity to re-elect that illiterate gunslinger. And if America can't be trusted...

Just expect in the months to come to be reminded more and more that oftentimes democracy yields poor results. In other words, we can't promote democracy becasue we just don't know where that path might lead, and we have no control over the outcome. Which is why I've long said that the left has Contempt for democracy.

(Hat tip Powerline.)

Fatos Tarifa, Albanian ambassador to the US::

Upon committing Albania to the Coalition of the Willing, Prime Minister Nano urged his fellow European leaders to visit Normandy "to see for themselves what the United States has been willing to undertake in the name of freedom. We should all visit Normandy. We should pay homage to those brave Americans who stormed ashore at Omaha Beach and gave their lives for the freedom of others. The wonder of it is that the Americans are willing to do it again," Mr. Nano said.
...
The difference between the United States and the Islamic terrorists is this: The terrorists export death. The Americans export freedom.
The surprise is not in Albania's decision to send more troops to fight for freedom in Iraq. The surprise would have been if Albania did not.

Obviously, Ambassador Tarifa and Prime Minister Nano never attended public schools in the US.

I rather prefer the complete and unqualified support of 3.5 million Albanians, and their brave young men than the "our traditional allies".

Why we continue to send our blood and treasure overseas to liberate will be the great historical question two centuries from now. Should America continue to be a great power, it will that she nobly and courageously led the way. If she should falter, and recede in to mediocrity, it willbe becasue of her benevolence and magnanimity, not her hubris and greed.

What other nation in history would have done what we've done, and still continue to do? Precious few examples exist in history when men so possessed of the passion of freedom will march onto anothers soil to break the chains of helotage, then leave seeking nothing in return. They leave, their work done, their soil to be tended, thier shops to be reopened, the newly liberated their new friends and their equals, in trade and politics.

Few are the examples. And most if not all were American.