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Mark Steyn on Memorial Day:"The loss of proportion"

 
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Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503

PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2007 5:39 am    Post subject: Mark Steyn on Memorial Day:"The loss of proportion" Reply with quote

This Memorial Day weekend we, in this forum I'm confident, all have our personal antennas tuned to commentary elevating and extolling the significance of our annual tribute to The Fallen.

I thought I'd drop by Mark Steyn to see what he had to offer and was not disappointed by the reprise of a column from 2004...it got better with age.

Here's a taste...drop by his website for the main course...

Quote:
The loss of proportion
by Mark Steyn
from The Chicago Sun-Times, May 30th 2004

Playing by Gore-Kennedy rules, the Union would have lost the Civil War, the rebels the Revolutionary War, and the colonists the French and Indian Wars. There would, in other words, be no America.

SteynOnline
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy


Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston

PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2007 2:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The last four paragraphs are Steyn at his best.

Quote:
More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War - or about 1.8 percent of the population. Today, if 1.8 percent of the population were killed in war, there would be 5.4 million graves to decorate on Decoration Day.

But that's the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screw-ups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else.

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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy
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Fort Campbell
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 896

PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2007 10:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

An excellent editorial. Well worth the read on this Memorial Weekend.
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