Sunday, January 8, 2012

Alan Caruba: Barack Machiavelli

Canada Free Press  "We have witnessed and been victimized by a Democrat-controlled Congress that forced Obamacare on an unwilling public. We have seen the rise of Islamic fanaticism as the result of his failed policies toward Iran and the Middle East. We have had record breaking debt imposed on us by his failed “stimulus” policies. We have seen continued efforts to reduce our military power and to thwart access to our ample energy resources of oil, natural gas, and coal.
"It is a long list of usurpations of power that endanger the nation domestically and internationally. Whether it was done out of stupidity or a deliberate effort to harm the nation can be debated, but the most outstanding attribute of Obama has been his continual lying and Machiavelli notes that “the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived.”"

Machiavellian: suggesting the principles of conduct laid down by Machiavelli; specifically : marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith

DEFINITION: Machiavellianism*:   "The theory and practice of power politics elaborated from Machiavelli's The Prince: envisaging (1) seizure, maintenance, and extension of absolute power by the nicely graduated use of guile, fraud, force, and terror; (2) control by the ruler of all avenues of communication, thus facilitating the deliberate molding of public opinion; (3) the employment for surveillance and terrorist activities of subordinates who can be disowned and liquidated by the ruler, who thus escapes the blame for their atrocities." 


*How ironic that this site applies the analogy to President George Bush while the term is used by Mr. Caruba for Obama. I'd go with Mr. Caruba's application.


New website about the battlefield of Gettysburg

Battle of Gettysburg Buff    (If that link fails to work, try this one.)
I discovered this site through a Facebook link here.  The Facebook page originates in the UK and is a roundtable for those in Great Britain who are students of the American Civil War, but many of us Yanks like to visit there including Randy Drais, the webmaster of this site. Randy  writes this about his new website:


..."Why? As a descendant of a Union soldier wounded at Gettysburg and fortunate enough to live only 30 miles away from the battlefield during my entire life, I have traversed various areas of the battlefield and town on my own or on "Battle Walks" conducted by National Park Service Rangers over 350 times, and yet I am still able to find new areas and topics to learn about and explore. That then, is the intent of this website --- to help provide you with new areas and topics to learn about and explore !!!
      You will also find more than 900 photographs and over 100 links scattered throughout my website, in addition to a page devoted to listing, in what I think is in an organized fashion, other websites of interest. I will continue to expand this website by adding pages, topics, photographs, and links, as well as updating information and photographs when necessary."



Mr. Drais gives us pictures of the old, ugly Cyclorama building...
...and the new one:


I also found this UK Civil War website very interesting as well.