Another busy weekend with family awaits me, so blogging will be light until Sunday afternoon at the earliest. In the meantime, here are a few things worth reading.
First, over at Opinion Journal, Mark Helprin says we are making strategic errors that may come to haunt us:
The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America’s borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.
Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation’s presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.
Next, Cicero looks at the aftermath of Katrina and says that its the American people, not our institutions that define our greatness.
America?s greatness ? and humanity?s, for that matter ? was never defined by institutions. It was defined by people ? by the bold, the creative, and the loving; by the giving, the adamant and the humorous. By us. If culture has become only a pretty thing that is stripped away from community, it doesn?t earn preservation. History is full of rich cultures that didn?t survive. If all we have built are museums and amusement parks where culture is just a theme and communities are lifestyle choices, we must find ourselves again. All of us.
Next, over at Slate, Jack Shafer makes the case for not rebuilding New Orleans
New Orleans puts the “D” into dysfunctional. Only a sadist would insist on resurrecting this concentration of poverty, crime, and deplorable schools. Yet that’s what New Orleans’ cheerleaders?both natives and beignet-eating tourists?are advocating. They predict that once they drain the water and scrub the city clean, they’ll restore New Orleans to its former “glory.”
Finally, Stephen Green gives us a classic Vodkapundit rant on the Bush Adminstration’s stem cell position.
China is going to pursue biotech with fervor. South Korea already does. Italy, bless her heart, is trying to get in the game. Even Castro is still around, keeping himself in power with biotech dollars. While all those countries pursue the wealth and dreams and lives of the 22nd Century, we have a President with a bioethics council stuck in the pre-industrial age.
The race is just beginning. This moment, right now, is when we need to be building the highest-tech research centers. We need to have our best minds working on the problem ? and if we don’t have enough of the best minds, we need to hire them away from other countries. We need to encourage our college-bound kids with promises of wealth and glory, and then we need to deliver on those promises.
But we’re not doing those things.
Read all of them and enjoy.
