Sipsey Street Irregulars: Cautionary Tale: "The mighty combustion of small events."

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Cautionary Tale: "The mighty combustion of small events."

Governor Malloy of Connecticut and Sen. Harry Reid ought to read both of these articles and contemplate what relevance they have for each of them today. The mighty combustion of small events, and other lessons from the First World War and How Nicky and Willy could have prevented World War I.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Both of them, like most of those belonging to what you call "the Mandarin Class", are too self- centered and conceded to get it..; July 28, 2014 at 5:08 AM
Anonymous said...: You are making the assumption that they did not want WWI.; July 28, 2014 at 6:08 AM
BadCyborg said...: It looks to this observer that the problem lies not so much in the "leaders" but in the underlings. Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria unquestionably started the ball rolling, but I think the one truly responsible for the war getting started was the German Chancellor.

I found this paragraph in the "Nicky and Willy" story to be very enlightening:
[b][i]The kaiser told the German chancellor to communicate this proposal to Vienna. But the chancellor privately opposed the “halt in Belgrade” policy and did not deliver the message clearly. Instead, he instructed his ambassador in St. Petersburg to tell the Russian foreign minister that if Russia continued preparing troops for battle against Austria, Germany would also mobilize and “a European war could scarcely be prevented.”[/i][/b]

It would appear from Nicky's subsequent cables that, had Willy's chancellor relayed his Kaiser's wishes more faithfully, the 1st world war might have never occurred. Imagine a world where a certain failed painter was never in battle, never wounded (gassed) and never really developed the full virulence of his hatred for the Jews. A world where, absent the war, there was no "Treaty of Versailles". Might never have been a 2nd World War. Would the Japanese still have attacked Pearl Harbor absent the Berlin, Tokyo, Rome Axis? Alas, we shall never know. That pissant Chancellor ordered his Ambassador to say what he did and everything proceeded from there.

Sidenote: Both "Kaiser" and "Tsar" are derived from "Caesar". So the two loving cousins held the same title.; July 28, 2014 at 8:58 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Cautionary Tale: "The mighty combustion of small events."

3 comments:

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