The Latest(ish)

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive–at least if you were Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d’Estaing. The one-term president of France was awarded the job in 2002 of chairing the convention responsible for designing a constitution for the European Union. He compared his fellow delegates–a dismal, handpicked, largely Eurofederalist claque–with America’s Founding Fathers, and, splendidly de haut en bas (however tongue-in-cheek), told this self-important rabble that, in the “villages” they came from, statues would be put up in their honor–”on horseback” no less. But that’s not quite how it worked out. When the villagers saw the hideous [...]

Resistance Is Futile

December 28, 2009

The Weekly Standard

France is a famously volatile place. Talk of cake can trigger a revolution. The British are made of more phlegmatic stuff. Pastry alone would never do the trick. What it takes, it turns out, are a tea caddy, jellied eels, vitamin supplements, a sandwich cage (I have no idea), Scotch eggs (don’t ask), dog food, a stainless steel dog bowl, a leather bed, six “leather-effect” dining chairs, a leather rocking chair, a leather sofa, a pink laptop, toilet seats (one of which was “glittery”), horse manure, Christmas tree decorations, potpourri candles, hanging baskets, an HD-ready 32-inch television, a 26-inch LCD [...]

Paying for the Piper

December 13, 2009

The Weekly Standard, Volume 014, Issue 38

So far, so predictable. The now infamous referendum amending Switzerland’s constitution in a way that prohibits the construction of any more minarets in the land of Heidi (there are already, um, four) has been damned by the usual suspects, including a gaggle of Christian clergymen, a babble of media, crazy Colonel Qaddafi, Turkey’s thuggish Islamist prime minister (the one who once referred to minarets as “our bayonets”), Iran’s thuggish Islamist foreign minister, Egypt’s Grand Mufti (try building a new church in Egypt), a collection of Saudi “scholars” (don’t even think of building a church in Saudi Arabia), and, of course, [...]

Swiss, Cross

December 10, 2009

National Review Online

One of the most remarkable aspects of Winston Churchill’s sprawling epic of a life was the way that he was able to cram it all in — to do all that — in a mere 90 years. It is only marginally less miraculous that Paul Johnson has now managed to make an excellent job of summing up that life — and, no less important, offer up a good measure of the man who lived it — in a book of a little under 200 pages. This is not a “definitive” Churchill. For that, turn to the massive official biography begun [...]

Walking With Destiny