The Way We Are, No. 5 by Clyde N. Wilson • May 27, 2009 • Printer-friendly

Your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth; with this difference; that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without and your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country, by your own institutions. —Thomas B. Macaulay

The wisdom to be found in real country music is timeless and often matchless. Here is Kitty Wells from the 1950s:

You didn’t count the cost.
You gambled and I lost
In a back street affair.

Sounds just like the banker bailout and the rest of us.

Look at the bailout carefully. The whole business constitutes an astonishing evasion of moral responsibility on the part of a ruling establishment. A plan by which the ordinary citizens and their descendants are made to pay for the mistakes of the capitalists and politicians and to continue to provide them with the wealth to which they have become accustomed.

Morality, properly understood, involves obligation. But American political morality consists entirely of claims to benefits and privileges.

Richard Weaver, a half century ago, described how the mass media, particularly radio, were destroying piety and decorum. The U.S. has now proved beyond any doubt that it is not possible to maintain civilisation in a country with commercial television.

Consider the difference between “a friend of the working man” and “a champion of the international working class.” Which do you think better describes liberals and neoconservatives?

Anyone who thinks Americans lack fervour in their religion has never attended a major sports event.

Whatever happened with that great urban crime remedy, night basketball?

What is the difference between an “American” and a Christian?

Nobody is more patriotic than a politician in election years. —Fred Reed

Tagged as: Bailout abc123″>11 Responses<a href="#respond"