Find The Boots

Rantings from a few corporate types about life, technology, travel, guns, politics, and everything good in the world.

Fred Thompson and Backbone

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Fred Thompson's April 25 article on National Review is a thing of beauty. He points out the dangers of giving into fanatics that demand we rewrite history to their liking. From the article:

Now, according to a study funded by the British government, we find out that some schools in Great Britain have stopped teaching history that is offensive to Muslim students. The topics that have been erased from the curriculum, the study found, include both the Nazi genocide and the Crusades.

....History books that present these events in any other light, they [Muslim Parents] believe, are part some giant conspiracy designed to attack their very religion.

If anybody needs to hear these facts, it is the children who are being abused by those who are teaching the same hateful lies that have helped turn the Middle East into the self-destructive and often suicidal mess it is today.

Is there anyone on the DemCong side of the aisle that would have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say something like that? On the contrary, I wonder if Hillary assumes a middle eastern accent when speaking to a CAIR group?

Thompson, more than any other candidate, understands the difference between accepting people's rights to express/hold ideas and accepting those ideas. It's one thing to say "Isn't it great that in our free society anyone can say anything?". It's quite another to start to base government policy on the acceptance of ideas because in the liberal relativistic world all ideas have equal merit. When you make government policy based upon a desire not to ever offend anyone, you are implicitly granting equal weight to these ideas. Thompson wraps it up far better than I:

This would be a good place to quote an important British writer, George Orwell, who wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Even in America, our children are often taught a watered down, inoffensive, and culturally sensitive version of events ranging from the Crusades to the battle at the Alamo.

It’s time for people who believe that they have a stake in Western civilization and its traditions to get a little backbone — even if it offends somebody.

I would SO love to have a president with backbone again. Run Fred Run!

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Find The Boots

An executive goes on a business trip. When he arrives, it's raining cats and dogs. To avoid ruining his shoes, he purchases a pair of galoshes for $15, which he expenses under "Misc." on his expense report. A week later, the accounting department rejects his expense report, with a post-it note that says that the company does not reimburse for items of clothing. The next trip, the executive turns in an expense report without the galoshes, but with a post-it note that says "FIND THE BOOTS!".