The start of th EPL season appears to have coincided with my last post.  I think there must be a connection.  My apologies (to no one in particular).  Just as it was once de rigeur for George Will-type intellectuals to prove their regular-guy status by professing a passion for baseball, it now appears that every blogger now demonstrates his street savvy by expressing his love for the "beautiful game."  So it is with some reluctance that I admit that I played soccer in my youth (quite well actually), and that I now share the passion with my son, Master S, who already is a better player than his father ever was.  To add to the cliche (I am so embarrassed), I follow some loveablly hapless loser of a team, Fulham.  I do so for no obscure reason.  Brian McBride is my favorite player in the world, and, at the time EPL games became regularly available on FSC, Fulham started two Americans and two Danes whom I knew.

Glad to get that out of the way.  I have busting a gut to share my wisdom with the world, but have been constrained by my real job.  Yesterday, I watched a segment on the Today Show about some high schoolers in Cross River who were suspended for performing the Vagina Monologues, or something similar, after being forbidden to do so.  Great story:  spunky teenagers, old fogie administrators, edgy topic -- what more could one want. 

What I wanted was a school administrator with enough backbone to say, without embarrassment: "Hey, maybe the parents of a school don't want a bunch of teenagers telling them what is appropriate for their children to see and hear, including younger siblings."  Funny how, if the topic of the play had been Christian-themed, I doubt the Today Show would have been as sympathetic to the spunky teenagers.

As historians are fond of noting, any ex post facto analysis of a choice of options cannot be a comparison of the status quo ante and the option selected, if different.  The status quo cannot be assumed to continue, and the comparison has to be where are we now and where would we be if we had done nothing.

I have thought of this while reading the news from Lebabnon.  Amid the analysis of the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict and of the Iraq war, I have yet to see any discussion of any link between the two.  Specifically, what position would we, and more importantly, Israel, be in if we were not currently in Iraq and if, added to the current mix, were an emboldened and hostile Iraq led by Saddam Hussein.   

There was a time when the preservation of israel was a strong concern of the Democratic party.  If memory serves me correctly, the previous President Bush wa spilloried for his lack of support for that country.  It appears that Democrats have abandoned that position entirely.  A complete withdrawal from Iraq would have immeasurable consequences, but one consequence that I think could be measured is the impact on Israel.  How does one reconcile support for Israel with withdrawal from the area?  Beats me.

Blogging has been light, if anyone is there to notice.  I have been granted extended leave from the Institute for a dose of Danish therapy.  Two weeks in Denmark would be great therapy for anyone, but it is especially so for the Directrix and the Juvies to spend time with their relations.  I am not sure whether it is my inefficiency with the language, but events in Lebanon are not as front burner as I imagine they are back home.  Indeed, people here seem more worked up about the Tour de France. 

For that reason, some one is going to have to explain the concept of proportionate response to me.  I just finished a column on the subject by Professor Bainbridge; it seems to be the rage.  In my first post, I mentioned some of the eerie similarities between public attitudes toward the War on Terror and the war with Hitler.  I wonder whether I am witnessing my generation's version of the Phony War or Sitzkrieg.  Indeed, if I recall, the concept of disproportionate response was what prevented France from challenging Germany's remilitariztion of the Rhineland.  I am sure it would have been a great comfort to that generation that France's failure to act then would be approved by sensible people today.

It may appear from my initial posts that I have a thing about Andrew Sullivan.  I confess I do.  Sullivan was the first blog I ever read on a regular basis, and it was through him that I discovered virtually every blog that I now peruse.  Furthermore, he made me think seriously about issues that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been of little concern to me.

Am I the only who now thinks of the Bill Murray character, Bob, when he reads Sullivan's site these days.  Instead of a goldfish, Andrew seems to carry all of his neuroses in a plastic bag tied around his neck.   He now substitutes snarky comments for reasoned argument.  What's with this  "King George" nonsense?  A little too Dowdesque for my taste.

Sullivan comforts himself by blaming criticisms of the new Andrew upon his willingness to criticize the President and others in the conservative movement.  He lets himself off too easily.  What Sullivan has lost is his ability to maintain his detachment and address arguments in a logical and rational manner.  Case in point-Sullivan quotes the following exchange and offers his own conclusion:

"Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the t*st*cl*s of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty

Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that..."

    Suddenly you see that Yoo's endorsement of evil had real life effect.

No Andrew, you are wrong.  It is not an "endorsement of evil," it is a recognition that there is no "law by Congress" that addresses such evil.  The old Andrew would have easily seen the difference.  Sadly, the new Andrew does not.
  

Andrew Sullivan links (sorry, I have not figured out how to do links) to an article in the Washington Post about the hardships endured by illegal immigrants.  The NY Times recently ran a related story about hard-working and law-abiding illegals in this country.  I am waiting for either paper to write a story about  the frustrations of an equally law-abiding, hardworking, and desparate group of individuals who are waiting patiently to immigrate into this country lawfully, and the obstacles they must overcome.  I won't hold my breath.

Today, the Stanwright Institute begins its inaugural post at Town Hall. As Institute Director, I have no particular insight into anything affecting the world, but I feel that blogging therapy will help me, the Institute's only (delusional) patient.

I was prompted to blog by a story I read in Richard Ketchum's excellent history, The Borrowed Years, which chronicles the US from 1938 to 1941.  The book illustrates many parallels, besides the obvious ones, between the rection to Hitler then and the reaction to the terrorist threat today.  Paricularly significant to me, however, was an anecdote Ketchum writes about Senator Arthur Vanderberg, whose pre-war isolationism placed him, at least in popular thinking, in the pantheon of history's narrow-minded thinkers.

After the passage of Lend Lease, which Vanderberg had opposed with all his will, he confided in his diary and in private letters:  "If America cracks up, you can put your finger on this precise moment as the time when the crime was committed."  He added that he felt that he "was witnessing the suicide of the republic."

Nevertheless, once headed down this path, Vanderberg placed his personal feelings aside for the betterment of his country, and vowed to support the president:  "I fought it from start to finish.  I think it was wrong.  I think it will not stop short of war.  but it is now the law of the land [and] we have no alternative but to go along." "If we stand any show, it will be from pursuing this new, revolutionary policy to the last limit with swiftest speed.  I shall vote hereafter accordingly."

It is, perhaps, a commentary upon our current political leaders, that Vanderberg's spirit seems so extraordinary.  One wonders where are the Vanderbergs of today (and if they still exist, how will they survive the Lamonts)?