http://www.takimag.com/ en test1@me.com Copyright 2008 2008-05-09T12:26:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_truth_about_the_good_war/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_truth_about_the_good_war/#When:12:26:00Z Good things come in pairs. In this case there are three, actually. Three books which set the record straight. Not the usual victor’s justice twaddle that we in the West have been swallowing these last 60 some odd years. All I can say is bravo to the three authors, bravo for courage, bravo for honesty, and bravo for putting emotion aside and sticking to the distaseful facts. Buy and read these three books and the next time you’re discussing history, make yourself unpopular but right. 2008-05-09T12:26:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/war_of_the_babies_when_modern_warfare_and_demography_square_off_demography/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/war_of_the_babies_when_modern_warfare_and_demography_square_off_demography/#When:23:47:00Z What was the most important battle of the late 20th century? You could argue it was the one that took place on the southern border of Morocco on November 6, 1975. Of course, we're not talking about another Stalingrad here. In fact, what happened that day isn't usually called a battle at all. Its official name is "The Green March." On one side were 350,000 unarmed Moroccan civilians carrying green (Islamic) flags, and on the other—miles inside the border, because they were hoping not to have to confront any of the marchers—was a shaky, demoralized token force of Spanish troops pretending to defend a former Spanish colony, the Spanish Sahara. The Moroccans had to think outside the traditional military-conquest box. 2008-05-06T23:47:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/come_home_conservatives_the_antiwar_conservative_movement/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/come_home_conservatives_the_antiwar_conservative_movement/#When:04:02:00Z The figures and organizations Kauffman profiles do not fit into the received version of American history, in which only “leftists” who “hate America” might object to spending trillions of dollars feeding imperial ambition. The conservative John Randolph of Roanoke, who opposed the War of 1812, and Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president who had earlier opposed war with Mexico, are just two of the people discussed in Ain’t My America who refuse to fit themselves into the proper categories. 2008-05-05T04:02:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/benedict_on_the_border_a_showdown_of_church_and_nation_state/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/benedict_on_the_border_a_showdown_of_church_and_nation_state/#When:00:17:00Z With the visit of Pope Benedict to the U.S., American Catholics are faced with a grave confrontation between Church and State, a conflict between their supernatural faith and their patriotic duty, unparalleled in the English-speaking world since Pope Pius V deposed Queen Elizabeth I—and encouraged Catholics in her realm to topple her from power. Right? That’s what you’d think, from reading the statements of open-borders activists alongside the complaints of restrictionist ex-Catholics like Tom Tancredo. In fact, the current argument is much more complicated, and reflects millennia of tension between the notion of national sovereignty and the universal claims of Christian faith and morals. 2008-04-30T00:17:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/whats_going_right_in_europe_how_localism_might_save_the_continent/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/whats_going_right_in_europe_how_localism_might_save_the_continent/#When:01:22:00Z The most successful anti-immigration parties in Europe are regionalist/secessionist parties. They are “apolitical” because they do not particularly like politics. Their militants, members and voters do not like the state, they want to be left alone. They defend local communities that want to run their own affairs. They are parties of the land and the community, rather than the state. They are, as the media and the political establishment derisively call them, “populists.” 2008-04-28T01:22:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_limits_of_lincoln_bashing/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_limits_of_lincoln_bashing/#When:11:45:00Z Between the warring camps vying for ownership of the true “American conservatism,” a remarkable consensus has emerged around the status of Abraham Lincoln and his legacy. In the conservative house divided, almost everyone agrees that the president was the prophet of democratic imperialism and that his war with the South was a mere dress rehearsal for global crusades for democracy which began half a century after his assassination. Naturally, the so-called paleoconservatives and neoconservatives disagree on the merits of Lincoln’s putative policy, but they don’t disagree that he led the advance guard of this project to create the world in America’s image and likeness. This dispute is no mere academic matter, since those who control the Lincoln legacy also manufacture the grist for any number of ideological mills. 2008-04-23T11:45:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/europes_cassandra/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/europes_cassandra/#When:01:00:00Z On April 20, 1968, on a Saturday afternoon, Enoch Powell delivered his “Rivers of Blood” speech at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham. He went there fully aware that what he was going to say would be of historic importance. Earlier in the week, he had told his friend Clement Jones: “I’m going to make a speech at the weekend and it’s going to go up ‘fizz’ like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up.” In his speech, Powell warned of the dramatic and tragic results which mass immigration from the undeveloped world was going to have on Britain. He referred to the Roman poet Virgil, who has the Sybil prophetize, in Book 6 of the Aeneid, “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.” 2008-04-21T01:00:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_man_who_knew_how_much_it_would_cost_doing_something_or_nothing_on_clima/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_man_who_knew_how_much_it_would_cost_doing_something_or_nothing_on_clima/#When:12:16:00Z Prediction is famously difficult, as one wag put it, especially if it is about the future. So now that we've passed the five year mark in the Iraq adventure, who was in fact right about the likely costs of it? Certainly it wasn't those proposing the invasion, some of whom proposed numbers as low as $50 billion in total costs. Of all that did, indeed, try to add up the costs, the only one who gave us a figure even remotely comparable was William Nordhaus. If Nordhaus has indeed been that one good predictor on one subject, perhaps we should be paying especial attention to his predictions on other matters as well? Like, for example, the area where his reputation really comes from, the predictions about the costs both of climate change and attempts to mitigate it through reductions in emissions. 2008-04-18T12:16:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_new_hope_same_as_the_old_hope/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_new_hope_same_as_the_old_hope/#When:11:11:00Z In the candidacy of Barack Obama, one sees the history of the American Left writ small. Obama is an heir to the paternalist dynasty of the populists, progressives, New Deal, and Great Society; the Hull House-style passivism that demands city hall, the state legislature, and bodies more distant solve personal problems; the social gospel of Reverend Wright that makes politics of religion and a religion of politics; and the anti-Americanism of Ayers and Dohrn. Obama’s insistence that he offers fresh ideas stems from a refusal, common on the Left, to reflect on where those ideas came from or how those ideas fared. To remain ignorant of the Left’s abysmal track record is to perpetuate an ideology that would be dead if not for weak memories. 2008-04-16T11:11:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/nationalism_is_what_we_need_now_a_case_for_an_unpatriotic_conservatism/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/nationalism_is_what_we_need_now_a_case_for_an_unpatriotic_conservatism/#When:04:11:00Z In most intellectual circles on the right, as well many in the center and on the left, it is fashionable to damn nationalism. Among conservatives, patriotism is held to be something almost always worthy of praise—though exactly what patriotism might entail has never been settled upon. As is so often true, the conventional views of the Left and Right, if not entirely unfounded, are limiting and sometimes simply wrong. The United States, at present, suffers from an excess of patriotism and a generally defective sense of nationalism. European countries, too, would benefit from being more nationalistic, though in the Old World the excess is not of patriotism but of a leftist internationalism that has rendered Europeans helpless in the face of Islamic immigration. In the case of U.S. foreign policy, it has not been “jingoistic nationalism,” as many critics like to claim, that has driven our country into an interminable and unjust war in Iraq but a genuine, if misguided, patriotism. The United States should act more like a nation among nations: jealous of her own sovereignty and national borders, respectful of those of other countries. 2008-04-14T04:11:00-05:00