Is the American Dream still alive?
That's what I'll ask my guests on this week's edition of The Patriot Insider, 9-11 a.m. Saturday on AM 1280 The Patriot.
The show was prompted by Quentin, an immigrant who came to this country 20 years ago with nothing and has built his own business. Now his son, who just turned 18, is starting his own business. Quentin called in last week during my interview with the Libertarian Guys. His quote of the week was: "America is still the only place on Earth where you can come with nothing and make something of yourself."
Other guests will include Brian McMahon of University United, which oversees University Avenue development. And Tony Mattera and Rick Bonadeo, first-generation Americans who will talk about what they learned from their immigrant parents and how it has shaped them.
Should be a good show.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
This week on The Patriot Insider
First off, my apologies to all my adoring fans who had to sit through two hours of The Nihlist in Golf Pants hosting the show last week. I tried to get Sisyphus, but he refuses to come out of his shell.
I was out of town on an emergency. I went to give blood a few weeks back and the nurse told me that plasma had overtaken extra virgin olive oil as the primary liquid flowing through my veins. So I had to go to my beloved Brooklyn for a transfusion (more on that in a future post).
The show returns to its usual stellar heights this week. In the first hour, we'll have Alan Fine (http://fineforcongress.org/), the Republican candidate for the Fifth Congressional District. Frankly, this otherwise sensible, well-spoken man doesn't stand a chance with the loopy, looney voters of Minneapolis. But we'll ask him about key issues in the race ("Have you ever given money to the Nation of Islam?" and "If elected, will you change your name to Osama bin Laden Farrah Aidid?").
The second hour will feature Corey Stern and Lee Brennise of the Libertarian Party, talking about issues both local and national, including the maverick candidacy of Sue Jeffers, owner of Stub and Herbs, the U of M hockey bar where Sisyphus and Skum drown their sorrows every time the Wisconsin Badgers come to town.
And, of course, we'll have the usual surprise guests, skits, chatter and everything else that has made The Patriot Insider the No. 1 local talk show on The Patriot (yes, that includes the Northern Alliance, most of whom will be too hung over from Keegan's Scotch and Cigar night to put in a good performance this week). Canada phone cards India phone cards France phone cards Russia phone cards UK phone cards USA phone cards
I was out of town on an emergency. I went to give blood a few weeks back and the nurse told me that plasma had overtaken extra virgin olive oil as the primary liquid flowing through my veins. So I had to go to my beloved Brooklyn for a transfusion (more on that in a future post).
The show returns to its usual stellar heights this week. In the first hour, we'll have Alan Fine (http://fineforcongress.org/), the Republican candidate for the Fifth Congressional District. Frankly, this otherwise sensible, well-spoken man doesn't stand a chance with the loopy, looney voters of Minneapolis. But we'll ask him about key issues in the race ("Have you ever given money to the Nation of Islam?" and "If elected, will you change your name to Osama bin Laden Farrah Aidid?").
The second hour will feature Corey Stern and Lee Brennise of the Libertarian Party, talking about issues both local and national, including the maverick candidacy of Sue Jeffers, owner of Stub and Herbs, the U of M hockey bar where Sisyphus and Skum drown their sorrows every time the Wisconsin Badgers come to town.
And, of course, we'll have the usual surprise guests, skits, chatter and everything else that has made The Patriot Insider the No. 1 local talk show on The Patriot (yes, that includes the Northern Alliance, most of whom will be too hung over from Keegan's Scotch and Cigar night to put in a good performance this week). Canada phone cards India phone cards France phone cards Russia phone cards UK phone cards USA phone cards
Monday, July 03, 2006
From Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer
The case for America, consummate war-winner
A professor counts the ways the U.S. has been militarily victorious for 200 years, seeing a fundamental belief in "sanctity of life" as the reason why.
America's VictoriesWhy the U.S. Wins Warsand Will Win the War on TerrorBy Larry Schweikart
Sentinel. 352 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Mark Yost
Even the most vehement critics of the war on terror will admit that our soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are some of the best that have ever stepped onto a battlefield. University of Dayton history professor Larry Schweikart argues that America's troops have always overcome adversity, poor equipment and yes, unpopularity to win wars and do so with aplomb.
How and why are detailed well in his new book, America's Victories: Why the U.S. Wins Wars and Will Win the War on Terror. With the U.S. Marines of Haditha already convicted in the court of public opinion, this book couldn't come at a better time.
Schweikart reviews 200 years of American military history and notes that U.S. troops - often underfunded, ill-prepared and overmatched - "have whipped the British Empire (twice), beaten a Mexican army (against all European expectations), fought a fratricidal civil war that resulted in higher casualties than all previous wars put together (due to the fact that officers and soldiers on both sides were deadly effective), and rushed the Plains Indians with a minimal number of troops. American forces then dispatched the Spanish in less than a year (when again, most Europeans thought Spain would win), helped the Allies evict the Germans from France, and dominated an international alliance that simultaneously beat the Nazis, Japanese warlords, and Italian fascists."
How did we do it? The American soldier has been the most decisive factor in warfare, evolving from a ragtag militia to a draftee army to today's all-volunteer force, which is fighting, and winning, in some of the toughest conditions ever seen. As the soldier has evolved, so has U.S. military doctrine.
"It is a distinctly American military character replete with individual initiative and unprecedented autonomy for soldiers and officers, all supported by free-market production concepts... . America's victories have been undergirded by the principles establishing the sanctity of life that permeate our founding documents, and that temper our treatment of enemies and inspire us to save fallen or captured warriors like no other society and history has done."
This last point is important, for it provides context and perspective to the often-myopic analyses of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Haditha. In the chapter titled "Gitmo, Gulags, and Great Raids," Schweikart recounts how the Japanese treated their prisoners following the World War II Battle of Bataan:
Immediately the Japanese engaged in brutality, massacring the 400 men of the Filipino 91st Division, who, hands tied behind their backs, were lined up along a narrow ravine, and shot. Imperial soldiers marched into the two main field hospitals, defecating and urinating next to the wounded.
During the Death March of Bataan, captured U.S. soldiers crawled on their hands and knees, "aware that if they stopped, they could expect a bayonet or a slow death by starvation or thirst." In 1944, when American Liberator bombers flew over the Puerto Princesa prison camp in the Philippines, the Japanese herded their prisoners into an air raid shelter, not for protection, but to douse them with aviation fuel and burn them alive rather than let them go free.
Compare this to the conditions at Guantanamo Bay, where al-Qaeda prisoners are forced to listen to Christina Aguilera, and the cries of protest from the antiwar left truly ring hollow. That's because even at their worst, American soldiers still hold the moral high ground when it comes to fighting wars and winning the peace. And they're doing it again.
"The very antiwar activism that infuses a substantially antimilitary media results paradoxically in a high profile for leftist sentiments that are not shared by the majority," Schweikart writes. "In turn, the antimilitary Left feeds the tendency of others to underestimate the American willingness to fight, and, if we stick it out, usually to win."
How true. Bizon phone card Jupiter calling card Mozart calling card Continental calling card
A professor counts the ways the U.S. has been militarily victorious for 200 years, seeing a fundamental belief in "sanctity of life" as the reason why.
America's VictoriesWhy the U.S. Wins Warsand Will Win the War on TerrorBy Larry Schweikart
Sentinel. 352 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Mark Yost
Even the most vehement critics of the war on terror will admit that our soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are some of the best that have ever stepped onto a battlefield. University of Dayton history professor Larry Schweikart argues that America's troops have always overcome adversity, poor equipment and yes, unpopularity to win wars and do so with aplomb.
How and why are detailed well in his new book, America's Victories: Why the U.S. Wins Wars and Will Win the War on Terror. With the U.S. Marines of Haditha already convicted in the court of public opinion, this book couldn't come at a better time.
Schweikart reviews 200 years of American military history and notes that U.S. troops - often underfunded, ill-prepared and overmatched - "have whipped the British Empire (twice), beaten a Mexican army (against all European expectations), fought a fratricidal civil war that resulted in higher casualties than all previous wars put together (due to the fact that officers and soldiers on both sides were deadly effective), and rushed the Plains Indians with a minimal number of troops. American forces then dispatched the Spanish in less than a year (when again, most Europeans thought Spain would win), helped the Allies evict the Germans from France, and dominated an international alliance that simultaneously beat the Nazis, Japanese warlords, and Italian fascists."
How did we do it? The American soldier has been the most decisive factor in warfare, evolving from a ragtag militia to a draftee army to today's all-volunteer force, which is fighting, and winning, in some of the toughest conditions ever seen. As the soldier has evolved, so has U.S. military doctrine.
"It is a distinctly American military character replete with individual initiative and unprecedented autonomy for soldiers and officers, all supported by free-market production concepts... . America's victories have been undergirded by the principles establishing the sanctity of life that permeate our founding documents, and that temper our treatment of enemies and inspire us to save fallen or captured warriors like no other society and history has done."
This last point is important, for it provides context and perspective to the often-myopic analyses of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Haditha. In the chapter titled "Gitmo, Gulags, and Great Raids," Schweikart recounts how the Japanese treated their prisoners following the World War II Battle of Bataan:
Immediately the Japanese engaged in brutality, massacring the 400 men of the Filipino 91st Division, who, hands tied behind their backs, were lined up along a narrow ravine, and shot. Imperial soldiers marched into the two main field hospitals, defecating and urinating next to the wounded.
During the Death March of Bataan, captured U.S. soldiers crawled on their hands and knees, "aware that if they stopped, they could expect a bayonet or a slow death by starvation or thirst." In 1944, when American Liberator bombers flew over the Puerto Princesa prison camp in the Philippines, the Japanese herded their prisoners into an air raid shelter, not for protection, but to douse them with aviation fuel and burn them alive rather than let them go free.
Compare this to the conditions at Guantanamo Bay, where al-Qaeda prisoners are forced to listen to Christina Aguilera, and the cries of protest from the antiwar left truly ring hollow. That's because even at their worst, American soldiers still hold the moral high ground when it comes to fighting wars and winning the peace. And they're doing it again.
"The very antiwar activism that infuses a substantially antimilitary media results paradoxically in a high profile for leftist sentiments that are not shared by the majority," Schweikart writes. "In turn, the antimilitary Left feeds the tendency of others to underestimate the American willingness to fight, and, if we stick it out, usually to win."
How true. Bizon phone card Jupiter calling card Mozart calling card Continental calling card
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