But we have to hand it to 'em on mayonnaise

I'm reading (too slowly) Richard Brookhiser's What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers. I'm in chapter 3, but there is a great paragraph in chapter 1. I find it to be an interesting response to those who look longingly to our Old World brothers as if they hold all the answers to our problems. After all, those countries are centuries, even millennia, older than ours. Aren't we just too big for our britches if we ignore their political example? Brookhiser writes:

At the same time, our new country has unusually old institutions. The presidency and the Supreme Court go back to 1789. The army goes back to 1775 (a year before there was a country). Congress first met in 1774. Older countries, perhaps more confident of their identity, burn through their institutions with the insouciance of high-living heirs. In 1777 Louis XVI entered into an alliance with the United States, an embattled one-year-old. In July 1789, three months after Washington’s first inauguration, the Bastille was stormed (the Marquis de Lafayette sent Washington the key), and a few years after that the king was deposed and executed. Louis was followed by five republics, two empires, two kingdoms, and fascism. In November 1797 when the first American ambassador to Prussia came to Berlin to present his credentials, the lieutenant who opened the city gates for him at night had never heard of the United States. Since then Germany has been a collection of independent countries, an empire, a republic, the Third Reich, and two republics, one of them a communist sham that was ultimately subsumed into the other. We are aged children, or sprightly oldsters. Our founders are close by, and they cast long shadows.

The same could be said of Russia, Spain, Italy, Greece, and most of the "leading lights" of Europe. As Americans, we need not be intimidated when people try to bully us into line with these "enlightened" nations. To echo the Miller High Life ads from a few years ago --It's hard to respect the French when they can't seem to maintain any form of government for more than 50 years. But we have to hand it to 'em on mayonnaise.

"It would be nice if there was a football game every Saturday known to man."

~Drew~

Planned Parenthood, Obama's Most Adoring Fans

Grab a barf bag and watch this condensed video of the latter-day messiah pandering to his buds (budettes?) at PP. I guess this is his "vision" for "change." So, would Margaret Sanger be considered John the Baptist in this scenario?

Don't forget the barf bag and click below.

This is what it means to believe in "one holy catholic and apostolic Church"

The Christian religion, as I understand it, is the brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the character of the eternal, self-existent, independent, benevolent, all powerful and all merciful creator, preserver, and father of the universe, the first good, first perfect, and first fair. It will last as long as the world. Neither savage nor civilized man, without a revelation, could ever have discovered or invented it. Ask me not, then, whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian. As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow-disciple with them all.

John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 1810

"WELL ‑‑ What are ages and the lapse of time

Match'd against truths, as lasting as sublime?

Can length of years on God Himself exact?

Or make that fiction, which was once a fact?

No ‑‑ marble and recording brass decay,

And, like the graver's memory, pass away;

The works of man inherit, as is just,

Their author's frailty, and return to dust;

But Truth divine for ever stands secure,

Its head is guarded as its base is sure;

Fix'd in the rolling flood of endless years,

The pillar of the eternal plan appears,

The raving storm and dashing wave defies,

Built by that Architect who built the skies."

                                      WILLIAM COWPER

Yummmm . . .

(Non-alcoholic) Sangria and a Steak Burrito

Grilled Pizza Buffet

Barbecued Pork; Blue Cheese, Onion, and Mushroom; Margherita; and, of course, Pepperoni!

"I live to learn their story, who suffered for my sake; To emulate their glory, and follow in their wake; Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages, and nobles of all ages, Whose deeds crown History's pages, and Time's great volume make.  I live for those who love me, for those who know me true; For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits my spirit too; For the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, and the good that I can do."

~Dr. A. W. Chase, 1870~

Torta de Jamón

Basically, a ham sammich!

He who lives upon hope will die fasting.

~Benjamin Franklin, from The Way to Wealth~

John Adams Miniseries

Well, posterity, you will never know what it cost us to preserve your freedom. I only hope that you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.

 ~John Adams~

These were the closing lines of the final episode of the John Adams miniseries on HBO.  Fantastic.  You need to see it.  The above lines really put the whole thing into perspective.  I also liked the scene tonight when Adams chews out John Trumbull, who painted the famous depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  He scolds him for the inaccuracy of the painting, which shows the entire Continental Congress gathered for the signing, and reminds him that, "We were at war!  Men were in and out of Philadelphia all summer to affix their names to Mr. Jefferson's hallowed document!"  Well, who knows the accuracy of that encounter?  But I love the sentiment!

Oh, and it's still amazing to me that Adams and Jefferson both died the same day--July 4, 1826.

“The church is a perpetually defeated thing that always survives her conquerors.”

~Hilaire Belloc~