Monday, July 02, 2007
An article on the conservative side that I enjoyed: Bruce Thornton, a regular contributor to Hanson's web site, writes about The Passion of the Left. It has in it the assertion that, judging historically, the Vietnam war was basically won by the US military and then lost by Congress. I've seen that a couple different places and would be interested in seeing how that's reasoned out. Not that I disagree with it—I'm not informed enough on the matter—but that it runs counter to what so many of us were taught over the years when we were younger.
I googled quickly for "who won the vietnam war" and picked a couple articles. Here's one saying essentially what Thornton was saying. There are a couple of articles here and here saying that economically we won while having lost on the battlefield. What I don't like about the second two is that they ignore the events and brutality of the communist takeovers that succeeded the US withdrawal—as if the economic successes experienced later are actually equivalent to winning the war—and the Left's responsibility for pressuring for withdrawal. I do think there's a case to be made that had it not been for the extreme Left and Watergate, we were well on the way to winning the war militarily which would have been far preferable to what actually happened.
Again, on the conservative side—I don't often see much on the liberal side that appeals to me, but I try to be open-minded—Rich Lowry writes about the death of the recent immigration reform bill, mentioning that bloggers and talk radio hosts had a democratic effect in shutting down a bill that legislators wanted passed, essentially over the wishes of their constituents. He cites their picking apart of the bill and making parts of it known that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
So, I decided to go see if I could find the text of the bill. It took me all of two minutes to find it right here, the whole thing right online for anyone to see on the Library of Congress Thomas website. What that means is that today, if you have a connected PC or can walk or crawl to a public library, you can read and at least attempt to have an informed opinion on any legislation as it is going through the Congress. I don't remember this actually being feasible before. I'm all for it.
I googled quickly for "who won the vietnam war" and picked a couple articles. Here's one saying essentially what Thornton was saying. There are a couple of articles here and here saying that economically we won while having lost on the battlefield. What I don't like about the second two is that they ignore the events and brutality of the communist takeovers that succeeded the US withdrawal—as if the economic successes experienced later are actually equivalent to winning the war—and the Left's responsibility for pressuring for withdrawal. I do think there's a case to be made that had it not been for the extreme Left and Watergate, we were well on the way to winning the war militarily which would have been far preferable to what actually happened.
Again, on the conservative side—I don't often see much on the liberal side that appeals to me, but I try to be open-minded—Rich Lowry writes about the death of the recent immigration reform bill, mentioning that bloggers and talk radio hosts had a democratic effect in shutting down a bill that legislators wanted passed, essentially over the wishes of their constituents. He cites their picking apart of the bill and making parts of it known that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
So, I decided to go see if I could find the text of the bill. It took me all of two minutes to find it right here, the whole thing right online for anyone to see on the Library of Congress Thomas website. What that means is that today, if you have a connected PC or can walk or crawl to a public library, you can read and at least attempt to have an informed opinion on any legislation as it is going through the Congress. I don't remember this actually being feasible before. I'm all for it.
# posted by goldpython @ 7:48 AM 
