Weekend Assignment

A round-up of interesting reading and good writing for the weekend...

From Mark Steyn, his 2001 Remembrance Day piece:

Citizenship is about allegiance. We benefit from our rights as citizens of the state and in return we accept our duties as citizens of the state.

From Thomas Sowell, who asks Where Is The West?:

The achievements of western civilization are buried in histories that portray every human sin found here as if they were peculiarities of the west.

The classic example is slavery, which existed all over the world for thousands of years and yet is incessantly depicted as if it was a peculiarity of Europeans enslaving Africans. Barbary pirates alone brought twice as many enslaved Europeans to North Africa as there were Africans brought in bondage to the United States and the American colonies from which it was formed.

How many schools and colleges are going to teach that, going against political correctness and undermining white guilt? How many people have any inkling that it was precisely western civilization which eventually turned against slavery and began stamping it out when non-western societies still saw nothing wrong with it?

And from Ann Coulter, who brings perspective to the Democrat victory in the US mid-term elections:

In fact, if the Democrats' pathetic gains in a sixth-year election are a statement about the war in Iraq, Americans must love the war! As Roll Call put it back when Clinton was president: "Simply put, the party controlling the White House nearly always loses House seats in midterm elections" -- especially in the sixth year.

In Franklin D. Roosevelt's sixth year in 1938, Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and six in the Senate. In Dwight Eisenhower's sixth year in 1958, Republicans lost 47 House seats, 13 in the Senate. In John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson's sixth year, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate. In Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford's sixth year in office in 1974, Republicans lost 43 House seats and three Senate seats. Even America's greatest president, Ronald Reagan, lost five House seats and eight Senate seats in his sixth year in office...

During eight years of Clinton -- the man Democrats tell us was the greatest campaigner ever, a political genius, a heartthrob, Elvis! -- Republicans picked up a total of 49 House seats and nine Senate seats in two midterm elections. Also, when Clinton won the presidency in 1992, his party actually lost 10 seats in the House -- only the second time in the 20th century that a party won the White House but lost seats in the House.

-- Nick