Who knew a song opposed to rioting, looting and crime is popular
Jason Aldean's song goes to number one despite attempts to censor it: It is more evidence that censorship is a mistake.
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Obama's patriotism problem
Power Line: Samuel Johnson wrote that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Those were the good old days; now, the last refuge of a scoundrel is pretending that his patriotism has been impugned. In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today, Barack Obama complained that John McCain has questioned his patriotism, and contrasted his own high-minded behavior with McCain's. Here is how the Associated Press put it: Democrat Barack Obama challenged his Republican opponent John McCain on Tuesday to stop questioning his "character and patriotism." Obama was actually quite fulsome on the subject. This is the text of the relevant portion of what he said to the VFW: If we think that we can use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent's patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics. The calamity left behind by the last eight years is too great. Obama seems to ...
Why patriotism matters
Thomas Sowell: The Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday but patriotism has long been viewed with suspicion or disdain by many of the intelligentsia. As far back as 1793, prominent British writer William Godwin called patriotism "high-sounding nonsense." Internationalism has long been a competitor with patriotism, especially among the intelligentsia. H.G. Wells advocated replacing the idea of duty to one's country with "the idea of cosmopolitan duty." Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War, fought under various nations' banners of patriotism. In France, after the First World War, the teachers' unions launched a systematic purge of textbooks, in order to promote internationalism and pacifism. Books that depicted the courage and self-sacrifice of soldiers who had defended France against the German invaders were called...