Letters from Spectator readers, July 2024

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare

On the right flank the aristocrats of the conservative intelligentsia dominated by the likes of Max Boot, David Frum, David French, Bill Kristol and George Will would rather compromise than soil their false pride; the haughty intellectual snobs are thus perfect targets for Alinsky’s “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules” — aristocratic intellectual elites that would rather die than support a judicial and policy juggernaut with bad table manners. As Victor Davis Hanson observed, Marquess of Queensberry Republicans would rather lose nobly than win ugly.

—…

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare

On the right flank the aristocrats of the conservative intelligentsia dominated by the likes of Max Boot, David Frum, David French, Bill Kristol and George Will would rather compromise than soil their false pride; the haughty intellectual snobs are thus perfect targets for Alinsky’s “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules” — aristocratic intellectual elites that would rather die than support a judicial and policy juggernaut with bad table manners. As Victor Davis Hanson observed, Marquess of Queensberry Republicans would rather lose nobly than win ugly.

— Adler Pfingsten

Will Cherelle Parker become the next ‘America’s mayor’ in Philadelphia?

Philadelphia has local regulations that negate state laws on law-abiding people arming and defending themselves. I wish the mayor well, but she has Larry Krasner, funded by Soros, and if she is at all effective he will find something on her to prosecute. It is also being roiled, on every one of the city’s many campuses, by pro-Hamas demonstrators. As a city, Philly is close to collapse.

— Dee C.

As a Philadelphian, I do hope she succeeds even a bit after our previous mayor spent his entire second term banning plastic bags and boarding up statues of deceased Italians…  

— John F. Kerrigan

AI and the new way of war

The top of a very slippery slope. War needs to be personal, so that those involved in making kill decisions — no matter if they are face-to-face with their adversary or sitting with a joystick directing a remote missile drone in some tin shed thousands of miles away — own and are affected by those decisions, no matter right or wrong.

— David Gerber

The case for cartel wars

Very insightful. We need to react to this as a hostile power on our southern border. Given the corruption in Mexico’s government, it would make more sense to consider Mexico an adversary and use both military and diplomatic efforts to stop the flow. New immigration laws are also needed, but this isn’t just an immigration problem anymore.

— James Walch

I could agree with the author’s suggestion but only if it is conducted in the right way. That is, all-out war, no holds barred, with the intent to WIN and to DESTROY the enemy. That is the proper role of a military, but the US military too often has its hands tied and is not permitted to win. Not for lack of ability, but for lack of the political will to do whatever it takes. America is not ready to see more of its sons and daughters die in a “cartel war” from which the US would probably withdraw after another twenty years of spending and suffering, having accomplished nothing. Sound familiar?

— Rick Caverly

A skillful retelling of one of World War Two’s most dramatic stories

This would seem to continue the fiction that the French were not a defeated people deeply collaborative with their German overlords. The Resistance was
a mockery until it was clear the Allies would win, and then it grew immediately after the war so that every male claimed to have been a member. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys indeed.

— Jerry Carroll

When it was discovered that a friend, drafted into the USMC the day he finished med school in ’43, was completely fluent in German due to a junior high school year abroad, he was drafted into the OSS. The first time he was parachuted into France, he got out only with the help of French resistance folks who clearly risked their lives to help him. He only spoke to me one time about his experiences but was VERY sure he owed his life to their bravery.
— Anonymous

On D-Day at eighty

I went to the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day five years ago. Next week I’ll head back to attend the eightieth’s festivities. On my first trip, I expected a somber occasion, reverential and appropriately dignified. What I was met with was celebration. Military-vehicle enthusiasts descend on Normandy by the thousands. There are reenactment camps, dances, parties, mostly Europeans from France, England and the Czech Republic drive in on their Willys jeeps or deuce and a halfs, dressed as their best Lee Marvin, enjoying themselves to full measure. It took me all of half a day to realize that this was the most appropriate behavior. THIS was what those men fought and died for. For the rest of us to be free to live. I had the honor of meeting the niece of Major Thomas Howie, the infantry officer who heroically secured the strategic position in Saint-Lô before his death. I asked her what she thought of the revelry, if she felt it appropriate. Her response was simple. “I don’t care how they remember. I just care that they do.”

— Anonymous

Kippers could save your life

The best kipper I remember in my youth was fifty years ago: on the 8 a.m. train from Euston to Birmingham. Crisp white tablecloth, really good coffee, toast and marmalade. All that was apparently needed to improve things was revealed when the gentleman at a nearby table (the Conservative minister of housing, also going for the kippers) added “and a bottle of Beaujolais!”

— Winston Smith