Bookworm Room

Tweet Defending your home against a break-in is about as personal as it gets.  The following email is a good example of taking that personal principle, then expanding to a narrative about a single third party, and finally discussing the broader policy implications that affect all citiziens (h/t Earl): A LESSON FROM HISTORY: You’re sound [...]

5 Comments »

Tweet It’s no wonder Brits, contra Obama, want out of the EU.  Aside from exerting nit-picky control over every aspect of British life, the EU makes it virtually impossible for Britain to stem the endless tide of immigrants coming in, legally or not, and immediately getting public benefits that are not available to the Brits [...]

1 Comment »

Tweet Words matter, President Obama once said.  He’s right.  How we choose words gives a very good insight into our feelings upon the subject under discussion. In the current debate regarding the Second Amendment, conservatives have made the mistake of ceding oratorical control to the Left.  How?  By accepting the phrase “gun control” as the [...]

9 Comments »

Tweet (I find that I’m too thrifty not to get the most mileage out of my writing.  People who get my newsletter — and if you don’t, you can fill out the subscription form to the right — will have seen this post already, but I couldn’t resist a slightly wider audience for it.) I [...]

9 Comments »

Tweet I grew up deathly afraid of guns.  This wasn’t like my fear of snakes and spiders, which seems to be pretty atavistic.  Instead, this was a learned fear:  Guns kill people.  Guns also kill innocent animals that should, instead, die nice clean deaths in factory farms, before being sliced up and packaged in cellophane.  [...]

35 Comments »

Tweet In today’s Britain, when something bad happens, all people of good will are trained to stand by.  They watch and hope that the omnipresent CCTV will alert the authorities that someone needs help.  Indeed, they’re so well-trained that, sometimes, even the authorities stand aside in order to take a break or follow department rules.  [...]

6 Comments »

Tweet I’ve been following a free speech story out of England and have been meaning to blog about it.  Since the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, I never did get around to writing that post.  Fortunately, someone else did, and a whole lot better than I would have done so.

1 Comment »

Tweet Perhaps I’m misunderstanding things here, but as I read this article, five British police officers got badly mauled by a single dog because none had a gun.  It wasn’t until a SWAT team arrived that the attack ended. In America, the police are minutes away when seconds count.  In England, the police are there, [...]

8 Comments »

Tweet When I lived in England, those who could afford to escape from government medicine by paying twice did so.  I addition to their high taxes, they bought a private insurance that I remember rejoiced in the name BUPA.  Things haven’t changed.  I don’t know why I’m on the mailing list, but I just got [...]

3 Comments »

Tweet Have you watched Downton Abbey yet?  Or perhaps a better question is, have you even heard of Downton Abbey?  I’ve been aware of it for a couple of years, because I read Britain’s Daily Mail.  The show has been a monster hit there and, during the season, the Daily Mail has a steady stream [...]

6 Comments »

Tweet You know what the number one song in Britain is this Christmas?  “Wherever You Are” a beautiful choral song, with lyrics based upon a poem drawn from letters between British service men and their wives, sung by those wives: By the way, if you buy the song, not only will you have beautiful music [...]

1 Comment »

Tweet A few stories from England’s Daily Mail, all showing that the country is not in the best of health.  Each of these stories highlights, not the horrible things individuals can do, because those crimes transcend national boundaries, but the way in which England has rendered itself unable to react in any way to the [...]

2 Comments »

Tweet Britain, apparently, has solved the puzzle of criminal recidivism (H/T Melanie Phillips of the Spectator). I know that this story provides us with a most important clue as to the greater disease that afflicts Western Civilization. I really just don’t know what to do with this story, so I am passing it on to [...]

31 Comments »

Tweet In 1931, Nancy Langhorne Astor’s son Robert Gould Shaw III was arrested for committing a homosexual act (in a park, I believe).  This was a continuation of a long-standing British public policy of prosecuting “sodomists.”  Arguably the most famous prosecution was that against Oscar Wilde, for public indecency.  The trial, scandal and imprisonment destroyed [...]

4 Comments »

Tweet Yes, my friends, it’s matched set time again.  I just love pairing stories (or, here, a prescient video and a current story), for your enjoyment and edification. I’ll start first with a couple of stories that have their genesis in San Francisco and that have made it to the media this past week.  I’ve [...]

2 Comments »

Tweet England is not one of my favorite places anymore, because of the raging antisemitism that characterizes her politics and her street.  Nevertheless, she is our ally and has been our staunch ally for more than a century.  For Obama to abandon her over the Falklands is disgusting.  At Power Line, in a few words, [...]

14 Comments »

Tweet When parents think about what a school should do for their children, they think in terms of the three “Rs,” plus a lovely layering of science, history, and other subjects that maketh a full (and employable) man.  The politically correct Nanny State, however, cares little for education and a great deal for ideology.  It [...]

4 Comments »

Tweet If I were devising a citizenship test for Great Britain, I can think of some things I would ask.  Broadly, I would ask about her  history (what makes Britain British?), her form of government (details about Parliamentary Democracy), and the duties of a citizen. But you see, I’m not writing the test one needs [...]

1 Comment »

Tweet Britain’s NHS, which is government-run (i.e., Communist) medicine, has, unsurprisingly, Communist outcomes.  Lots of people die unnecessarily in England under the government’s beneficent care: British health care is little better than that of former Communist countries, which spend a fraction of the billions poured into the NHS. A survey published yesterday by the Organisation [...]

1 Comment »

Tweet Disillusioned members of the World War II generation state honestly that, had the England that now exists been the England in 1939, they would not have believed it was a country worth saving.  Most feel that their fellow veterans, those who died in the fight, are rolling in their graves as they look at [...]

6 Comments »

Tweet Just so you know, Britain, the ne plus ultra of single payer care, is having a little bit of death panel trouble: Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn. They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug [...]

2 Comments »

Tweet The Daily Mail has the data to prove what we all knew:  a political party that shifts the tax burden to less than 50% of the population, while leaving more than half the population dependent on government largesse, wins in perpetuity (or until the country implodes, whichever comes first).

7 Comments »

Tweet The other day, the Daily Mail ran an article about the exponential increase in stranger attacks in England, a byproduct of the public drunkenness that is increasing at an even faster rate than the violence.  I still remember when England was a remarkably safe, clean little country, except in the worst neighborhoods of the [...]

9 Comments »

Tweet We’re not talking about the way distant past here, we’re talking about Britain in the 1950s, a place some found stable, safe and charming, and others repressive and stultifying.  I’m a stable, safe and charming gal myself, so I developed a real sense of nostalgia reading about a place and time I never knew. [...]

8 Comments »

Tweet If there was ever an example of misguided compassion, this story out of Britain must rank at the top of the list: A psychopathic Satanist, given a ‘life means life’ sentence for strangling his cellmate whilst already serving life for murder, has had that cut to 20 years on appeal in order ‘to give [...]

1 Comment »