jvjv at posthaven

[I got this via Time.com.]

Here's what the game operations manual says regarding the national anthem, according to an NFL spokesperson:

Now that the concussion industry has Trump to hate on, the left will suddenly LOVE football.

A member of Ricochet.com posted this chilling and inspiring story in remembering Col. Stanislav Petrov, who died recently.

It’s an era where those of us of a certain age seem inundated by the deaths of people important to our lives. Against that backdrop, it would be a shame to allow the death of one of the most important, but least known, to pass unnoticed.

On September 26, 1983, the USSR’s early warning system for a nuclear attack indicated that five Minuteman missiles had been launched and were headed east. Col. Petrov, then on duty, was charged with monitoring the system and notifying his superiors, so that consultation about retaliation could be held with Yuri Andropov, the Putin of his time. Had Petrov simply followed this protocol, and, considering the state of US-USSR relations at the time, it is likely (maybe more than likely) that nuclear retaliation, and nuclear war, would have followed.

But Petrov was unmoved. While this brief remembrance cannot do justice to the entire episode, Petrov made a call–on his own and within the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. He decided that there was a malfunction, and, based on his personal assessment that a first strike with only five missiles made little sense, he declined to act. According to Petrov, he had a “funny feeling in my gut.” He was right. And there’s a good chance many of us are here today as a result. RIP to a man who thought for himself and was correct.

Commentary lavishes fulsome praise on President Trump's foreign policy vision: defend the postwar liberal world order wherein free, sovereign nations become allies with the United States in the cause of Freedom. But Trump's vision rejects the cookie cutter idea that freedom means "be more like us--secular, relativistic, etc" and returns to the traditional foreign policy of working as allies, each with an Enlightened Self-Interest to pursue as well. And that means standing up for the allies against bullies.

Historian Bruce Catton, comparing Grant and Lee:

Lastly, and perhaps greatest of all, there was the ability, at the end, to turn quickly from war to peace once the fighting was over. Out of the way these two men behaved at Appomattox came the possibility of a peace of reconciliation. It was a possibility not wholly realized, in the years to come, but which did, in the end, help the two sections to become one nation again . . . after a war whose bitterness might have seemed to make such a reunion wholly impossible. No part of either man’s life became him more than the part he played in this brief meeting in the McLean house at Appomattox. Their behavior there put all succeeding generations of Americans in their debt. Two great Americans, Grant and Lee–very different, yet under everything very much alike. Their encounter at Appomattox was one of the great moments of American history.

And here’s The Columbia Desk Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition. 1975

Of admirable personal character, Lee was idolized by his soldiers and the people of the South and soon won the admiration of the North. He has remained a Southern ideal and an American hero.

To these considered judgments, add the fact that Lee opposed slavery all his life and acted from a sense of duty to his family and friends in the agrarian society into which he was born. His vision called not for exploitation, but for a dutiful paternalism we reject today but cannot dismiss out of hand.

Satirical Poster depicting an actual case.

First rate explanation of an arcane subject.

from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Tom Wedgwood on September 16, 1803

For 5 months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken the paper with the intention to write to you many times; but it has been all one blank Feeling, one blank idealess Feeling. I had nothing to say, I could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very Dreams make known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy Tale of my Health. While I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking I can keep the fiend at Arm's length; but the Night is my Hell, Sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake--and my frequent Night-screams have almost made me a nuisance in my own House. Dreams with me are no Shadows, but the very Substances and foot-thick Calamities of my Life. Beddoes, who has been to me ever a very kind man, suspects that my stomach "brews vinegar."… I myself fully believe it to be either atonic, hypochondriacal Gout, or a scrophulous affection of the mesenteric Glands. In the hope of drawing the Gout, if Gout it should be, into my feet, I walked, previously to my getting into the Coach at Perth, 263 miles in eight Days, with no unpleasant fatigue: and if I could do you any service by coming to town, and there were no Coaches, I would undertake to be with you, on foot, in 7 days. I must have strength somewhere; my head is indefatigably strong; my limbs too are strong; but acid or not acid, Gout or Scrofula, something there is [in] my stomach or Guts that transubstantiates my Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of the Devil-Meat and Drink I should say for I eat but little bread, and take nothing, in any form, spiritual or narcotic, stronger than Table Beer... .

To diversify this dusky letter I will write as a Post script an Epitaph, which I composed in my sleep for myself, while dreaming that I was dying. To the best of my recollection I have not altered a word. Your's dear Wedgewood, and of all, that are dear to you at Gunville, gratefully and most affectionately,

S. T. Coleridge.

Epitaph.

Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without Screaming,

Who died, as he had always liv’d, a dreaming

Shot dead, while sleeping, by the Gout within,

Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn.

And they wonder why so many people cheer press layoffs.