The modern equivalent would be if Donald Rumsfeld had quickly organized an effective and successful operation to rescue, shelter and feed the inhabitants of New Orleans after Katrina.

“He did not make his own disposition, It was born with him. It chose his ideals for him, he did not choose them. It chose the kind of society It liked, the kind of comrades It preferred, and imposed them upon him, rejecting the other kinds; he could not help this; It admired everything that [General George] Washington did not admire, and hospitably received and coddled everything that Washington would have turned out of doors — but It, and It only, was to blame, not Funston; his It took as naturally to moral slag as Washington’s took to moral gold, but only It was to blame, not Funston. Its moral sense, if It had any, was color-blind, but this was no fault of Funston’s, and he is not chargeable with the results; It had a native predilection for unsavory conduct, but it would be in the last degree unfair to hold Funston to blame for the outcome of his infirmity; as clearly unfair as it would be to blame him because his conscience leaked out through one of his pores when he was little — a thing which he could not help, and he couldn’t have raised it, anyway…

“If this Funstonian boom continues, Funstonism will presently affect the army. In fact, this has already happened. There are weak-headed and weak-principled officers in all armies, and these are always ready to imitate successful notoriety-breeding methods, let them be good or bad. The fact that Funston has achieved notoriety by paralyzing the universe with a fresh and hideous idea, is sufficient for this kind — they will call that hand if they can, and go it one better when the chance offers. Funston’s example has bred many imitators, and many ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of Filipinos by the awful “water-cure,” for instance, to make them confess — what? Truth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless…”

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.

the parallels between this and reality are stunning.

Gotta love Twain…

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Maybe steyn did not do his homework.

Seriously, HTML Retardo, if you don’t restore my preview button, I will reveal where Josh Trevino lives. Not now, perhaps, but iacta alea est! (And Gallia est omnis divisa in tres partes.)

(And shouldn’t someone make a “never-the-Twain-shall-meet” crack?)

Morel was for a time imprisoned due to an obscure British law against sending an antiwar pamphlet to a neutral contry. Britain was doing all it could to stifle the speach and imprison people who spoke out. The man who worked to send him to jail…. Churchill.