Tag Archives: duty

My New Book Is Out

Posted on by
Reply

Titled A Conservative’s View of the Conduct of Just Wars, it’s available in Kindle format here.  It presents this Conservative’s view of the proper conduct of a just war: when it’s appropriate to join one, how it should be fought once joined (regardless of how or why it was joined), and importantly, what should be done with the nation that unjustly attacked.

Since St Augustine of Hippo’s exegeses of the early 5th century, Western thinkers have attempted to define Just War in their recognition that war is a part of the human condition. Through this, they hoped to limit the onset and scope of war and its damage to those innocently caught in it.

This is a preview of My New Book Is Out. Read the full post (420 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

The VA Fails Again

Posted on by
Reply

This time it’s the Marion, IL, Veterans Administration clinic.

In 1971 Kirby Williams went to Vietnam as a US Army draftee and worked as a finance clerk. In 2010 he went to a Veterans Affairs clinic in southern Illinois where a radiologist took a scan of his kidneys.

Unfortunately, the radiologist missed a 2- to 3-centimeter mass in one of his kidneys, and by last December that mass had grown to between 7 and 8 centimeters. Now the 66-year-old has, at most, two to five years to live.

Williams isn’t the only victim.

This is a preview of The VA Fails Again. Read the full post (398 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Error in Judgment

Posted on by
Reply

A CVS store in Beltsville, MD, was robbed earlier in the week, and the manager, an Army veteran, intervened in the attempt. CVS fired him for the effort.

It seems two men jumped the pharmacy counter and forced the pharmacists to open their safe so the two thugs could steal the controlled drugs inside. Our army vet had his cashiers call the police, and he locked the doors so the thugs couldn’t leave.

In the end, the thugs got away, anyway. When the vet’s boss arrived afterward, he fired the vet—for intervening. The vet, a bigger man than some, said this about his firing:

This is a preview of Error in Judgment. Read the full post (233 words, estimated 56 secs reading time)

State’s Cynical Distortion

Posted on by
Reply

The State Department accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of taking congressional testimony by Secretary of State John Kerry out of context in Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of Congress Tuesday.

What Kerry said in Congressional testimony:

[I]f you have a civilian power plant that’s producing power legitimately and not a threat to proliferation, you could have as many as 190,000 or more centrifuges[.]

What Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:

This is a preview of State’s Cynical Distortion. Read the full post (384 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

“We Don’t Have a Strategy Yet”

Posted on by
Reply

President Barack Obama reiterated, in his speech Thursday, his reluctance to strike Syria, whether to support good-guy rebels or to attack ISIS forces there.

He also reiterated his reluctance to go beyond “humanitarian” air strike potshots in northern Iraq, whether to support the Kurds or to attack ISIS forces there.

He also ruled out any sort of military help for Ukraine by the US in the face of the now open Russian invasion of that country.

He also reiterated his reluctance to provide arms and ammunition to the Ukrainian forces so they could defend themselves, even if by themselves.

This is a preview of “We Don’t Have a Strategy Yet”. Read the full post (264 words, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)

New Publications

Posted on by
Reply

I’m pleased to announce two new pamphlets, A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications and A 21st Century American Crisis.

In Rights and Duties I talk about our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties and their attributes as endowments from and by our Creator, as well as how they and the fact that they’re duals of each other, are a part of the fabric of our existence—both as those individual rights and duties and in the capacity of those duals.

This is a preview of New Publications. Read the full post (436 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

Clinton’s Signature

Posted on by
Reply

Much has been made of the fact that memos that, among other matters, denied requests for additional security for the Benghazi consulate went out over then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s signature.  In particular, the Left insists that it’s entirely routine for others to affix the boss’ signature to correspondence which the boss never actually sees, much less reads, before that correspondence goes out.

The Left is correct in this.  In large organizations, it is a commonplace practice for subordinates to generate and transmit correspondence that the boss never sees but on which, because of the subject matter involved, the boss’ signature is required in order to give the necessary weight to the correspondence.  State is no different in this regard.

This is a preview of Clinton’s Signature. Read the full post (390 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Why Are We Not Surprised?

Posted on by
Reply

The Democrat-controlled Senate Thursday night voted down the House-passed budget that reached zero deficit by 2023.  Then they voted up their own budget, which doesn’t even pretend to try to reach balance, instead adding $7 trillion more to our existing debt over those 10 years.

Via Power Line we learn that Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) offered an amendment to the Senate Budget Committee’s bill as it was being debated on the Senate floor.  Sessions’ amendment, as all of these ought to be, was short, and to the point:

This is a preview of Why Are We Not Surprised?. Read the full post (1164 words, estimated 4:39 mins reading time)

Leadership

Posted on by
Reply

Politico reports, on matters related to President Barack Obama’s claimed agenda, from immigration reform to deficit “pay down” to increasing taxes to… that

after months of buildup and a week since his State of the Union address, key aides on the Hill and at the White House acknowledge that even GOP senators who fit Obama’s vision of bipartisanship—Senators Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma—are all waiting to hear anything from the president.

This is a preview of Leadership. Read the full post (323 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Conservatism and Liberalism

Posted on by
Reply

I wrote yesterday about who a Conservative is; today I’d like to discuss the relationship between conservatism and liberalism, and how the two evolve.

The relationship between the two is fairly stable—conservatism and liberalism have generally oppositional views of how best to support our people and our country—it’s their individual roles in politics that evolve.  Indeed, the two have swapped roles since our founding.

In broad, general terms, an 18th Century Conservative holds a fundamental belief about the role of government in men’s lives similar to the more or less enlightened view delineated by Edmund Burke contemporaneously with our Revolution.

This is a preview of Conservatism and Liberalism. Read the full post (1352 words, estimated 5:24 mins reading time)