Skip to main content

We hold these truths to be self evident...

In the 231 years of American independence, the United States has stood for many things, from the opening up of a new frontier to becoming a bastion of democracy in the cold war. Yet while by and large the country has much to be proud of, it has also had much to regret. The strange persistence of slavery in the Land of Liberty and bigotry and racist violence have persisted even to our own day. The astonishing despoliation of the land that must have truly seemed like Paradise to the early settlers by ugly strips and endless suburbs also takes some getting used to- and the pollution and waste that the American dream produces are not far from shocking.

As the lamest of lame duck Presidents adds to his grim legacy of failure by pardoning a former associate for his crimes, it is clear that the US is undergoing a period of reflection, a dark night that will only lift when the 43rd President and his unpleasant gang are out of office.

The fall-out of the Bear Stearns funds collapse is unsettling markets that are already jittery over the sub prime collapse- and the consequences may prove to be extremely unpredictable. Indeed it is hard to construct very many positive scenarios that solve the growing economic imbalances that are emerging across the globe.

Yet the US remains a flexible and dynamic place- and a great country, despite its pygmy President- so to the many American readers of this blog I wish you a great holiday - it is good to know that despite the little unpleasantness 231 years ago (and indeed the slap that we were compelled to deliver in 1812) we are still bound together by ties of fellowship: democracy, loyalty and history and of course the easily understood variants of our common language.

Happy Birthday America!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Indeed Cicero,

Most unfortunate while we dealing with the Dictator Napoleon, that we had to burn the Govt Buildings in Washington in response to the sack of Toronto.When the Americans came back they simply whitewashed the Walls. Hence the White House is the White House! All friends now, as you say Happy Birthday. I await you on the previous thread. BTW I hope you caught me on Rome last night. Your end is near!

Lepidus
3:26 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are the Liberal Democrats Libertarian?

A few days ago Cicero met with one of the better known figures in the Libertarian Alliance, Brian Mickelthwait . Brian writes for various blogs that I enjoy reading- including Samizdata . Ahead of our meeting Brain expressed "scepticism" about the Libertarian credentials of the Liberal Democrats: "My charge was that when you meet a Liberal Democrat you never know what he will believe. The one who talks to you is likely to say what you want to hear. But the others will simultaneously be telling other people with quite different views what they want to hear. So don't vote for these lying creeps." Political parties- all of them- are coalitions of people who quite often disagree with each other. Apparently we are not supposed to "air our dirty linen in public", but actually one of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats appealed to me was that they were prepared to talk about issues and policies amongst themselves in public. The eclipse of the Liberal Party...
18 comments
Read more