Scott Walker's Underappreciated Strengths

From American Thinker

By Bruce Walker

Scott Walker has a bundle of connected political virtues – a strength that will remain largely hidden but which will become increasingly apparent as his public career unfolds.  Most presidential candidates fail and most presidents in office fail.  Walker will not be among that gaggle of losers.  He will, instead, be among that select number of presidential winners.

Consider the two most politically successful presidents since the end of the Second World War: Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Eisenhower and Reagan won every election in which they were candidates.  Both men won their first presidential election with a majority of the popular vote and an electoral landslide. 

Eisenhower in 1952 swept Republicans into control of both Houses of Congress while Reagan in 1980 gave Republicans control of the Senate and huge gains in the House.  Eisenhower in 1956 and Reagan in 1984 won reelection by bigger landslides than the first time around.  When these two men left office after eight years, they were genuinely popular among the American people.

Conservatives need not laud the policies of Eisenhower, who was definitely a RINO, but Eisenhower was very effective in actually implementing his policies.  Reagan, who we all love, was as successful in implementing his policies as any president since Eisenhower; and more than that, Reagan was more successful implementing conservative policies than anyone in American history.   Walker naturally possesses those qualities that made Eisenhower and Reagan successful presidents.    

First, Walker strikes no one as an egghead or a wonk. He has the personality of an ordinary, good-hearted American – the kind of guy who coaches youth baseball teams or teaches Sunday School classes or gives us a ride to work when our car is in the shop.  We see this as an understated but palpable decency – not sainthood or anything that fancy, but rather inherent American goodness.  

Second, Walker speaks plainly.  Reagan was eloquent and Eisenhower was not, but both men talked like the Midwesterners they were.  Forget speeches.  Think, instead, of Reagan after he was shot and facing death, telling the doctors treating his gunshot wound “I hope you are all Republicans” or to Nancy as she was rushed to his side, telling her “Honey, I forgot to duck.” 

Think of Eisenhower responding to a reporter’s question about how much German he knew (regarding an upcoming presidential visit to Germany), when Ike answered:  “One word:  Eisenhower.”  Or think of Eisenhower’s written statement, to be used if D-Day failed, accepting personally all the blame.  This plain and honest language is the utter antithesis of everything Americans have come to hate in politicians. 

Third, this plain talk followed by clear action is courageous because it rejects all the qualifications guided by polling data or political advisers.  This sort of courage itself is the third aspect of successful presidents.  When was the last time a politician displayed the same sort of political guts that Walker showed when legions of union goons overran Madison?  It was when Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers, who threatened to paralyze civil aviation in America. The ripples of that boldness reached the Kremlin, which grasped that a tough and decisive leader now confronted them on the world stage.

Fourth, because pseudo-intellectuals who pine to lead and to lecture us scorn ordinary decency, plain talk, and simple courage, these cloistered monks of Leftist orthodoxy invariably underestimate men who embody those vital virtues.  So right up to the eve of the November 1966 general election, Leftist news anchors confidently predicted that Reagan would lose his bid to become California’s governor and then told us Reagan would be voted out in 1970 and that he could not win the 1980 presidential election.  Only in 1984 did the Left, slobber-knocked so many times by Reagan in general elections, concede that Reagan would win re-election.

Watch how Scott Walker’s unfolding campaign is covered by the media.  The very strengths that let Reagan not only win election but implement policies will be sneered at in Walker by a Leftist oligarchy that has no real notion of decency, sincerity or guts.  Note that Walker has already said that his goal is not to win elections but then to do something with that victory (i.e. simply gaining power is not important.)  This sort of talk befuddles Leftists who love power for its own sake and love, really, nothing else. Do not be surprised if Scott Walker becomes our long lost dream, the Next Reagan.  

Cathedral Chests Thought to Contain Remains of Early Royal Family

From ITV News

Chests in Winchester Cathedral that are thought to contain the remains of Royal Families of Wessex and three bishops.

A discovery in Winchester Cathedral could provide clues to the birth of our nation.

The chests are being analysed after its thought the bones of early royal families of England and three bishops could be inside.

Experts from the University of Oxford and Bristol are working to record and analyse the chests' contents and find out what they could uncover about the nation's history.

"This is an exciting moment for the Cathedral when we seem poised to discover that history has indeed safeguarded the mortal remains of some of the early Saxon Kings who became the first monarchs of a united England.

Winchester holds the secrets of the birth of the English nation and it does seem that some of those secrets are about to be revealed as future research continues.

The presence of the bones in the Cathedral, where they would have been placed near the High Altar and the relics of St Swithun, remind us just how significant the inspiration of the Christian faith was for the foundation of our national life.”

– The Dean of Winchester, The Very Revd James Atwell

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge - "Come Down, O Love Divine"

A Scrupulous Historian and Churchill Biographer

The late Martin Gilbert brought to his work a classic devotion to accuracy and original sources.

 

Historian Martin Gilbert in 1968, working at his home near Oxford, England. Photo: Keystone Features/Getty Images

From The Wall Street Journal

By Larry P. Arnn

In summer 1940, as war raged, the British government sent several hundred children, including 3-year-old Martin Gilbert, to safety in Canada. The children berthed aboard the Duchess of Bedford in a 50-ship convoy, and after the destroyer escort turned back, the convoy was attacked by the Germans and five ships sank.

The Duchess sailed on safely, past the icebergs of Labrador, “marvelous for children to behold [and] among my first memories,” Gilbert wrote. Soon after, another boat with 77 children evacuees was sunk by the Germans, drowning them all, and the scheme was abandoned.

In summer 1944, Winston Churchill —who from the start had disliked the idea of sending British children overseas, calling it a “scuttle”—arranged for many of the young evacuees, including Gilbert, to return aboard an American troopship from New York.

Churchill specifically asked the Admiralty to make sure, amid other responsibilities in the aftermath of the Normandy landings, that there be enough life jackets for the extra children.

So began the life of Sir Martin Gilbert, who died at age 78 on Tuesday in London. He is best known as Churchill’s official biographer. He served as adviser to Prime Minister John Major and was soon after awarded knighthood in 1995.

Gilbert taught as a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He wrote 88 books, including histories of the Holocaust, of the world wars and of the 20th century. Regarding the Holocaust, he said that the “tireless gathering of facts will ultimately consign Holocaust deniers to history.”

The Churchill biography is a thing of magnificence. It is the largest biography ever written, befitting one of the largest lives ever lived. It is now 25 volumes and more than 25,000 pages, with six document volumes that Hillsdale College, in Hillsdale, Mich., has been tasked with completing in his absence.

Churchill was prolific: hundreds of speeches, 50 books, and thousands of articles, memos and official minutes. Thus, Gilbert’s biography is monumental. To do this work, he had the “treasure trove” of the Churchill archives, traveled to public and private archives throughout Britain, and corresponded with hundreds of Churchill’s contemporaries, many of whom became his friends.

Gilbert utterly rebelled against the view that the facts of history change with time. In this way he agreed with the classics. He wrote the biography faithfully, from primary-source materials and with the greatest care to tell the story as it happened. Gilbert’s stewardship is significant, as Churchill is a man of our time and one of its greatest blessings.

I was privileged to work as research assistant to Gilbert on the biography in the 1970s and continue as his friend and colleague afterward. For years I witnessed and wondered at the care and energy he put into his work. He desired original sources, nothing less. “You must get everything. We must have it all here,” he once told me.

He would say, “You have a good memory, and I have a good memory; we do not rely upon our memories.” I learned to look things up again and again. If you used the term “perhaps,” his eyebrows would go up, and he would say, “Perhaps not!”

I have never known anyone so tireless in his vocation. Once he was stricken with Bell’s palsy, which paralyzed part of his face, yet he worked regardless, the same hours, holding his pen in one hand and in the other a handkerchief pressed against his mouth to keep it closed.

Gilbert’s Oxford tutor, the historian A.J.P. Taylor, told him in 1960 that “if you go in for historical research, you will work for weeks on end and find nothing.” Gilbert was persevering and fierce, but his manner never so.

He sought to give life and breath to history. In 1997, he said in an interview with C-Span that he wanted to be remembered “as someone who brought ordinary people, or people, into the equation, not merely governments and powers and themes, but human beings with flesh and blood and names and ages.”

 

Mr. Arnn is president of Hillsdale College. 

 

Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill Scholar Who Defended Pius XII, Dies

The noted scholar, also the official biographer of Winston Churchill, was called ‘an inspiration for all of us who seek the truth.’ He was 78.

 

ROME — Sir Martin Gilbert, a widely respected British-Jewish historian who strongly defended the wartime record of Venerable Pope Pius XII, died Tuesday at the age of 78. He had been suffering from cancer for some time.

Read more at National Catholic Register >>

Rick Warren: Protestants, Catholics Must Unite to Defend Life, Sex, Marriage – ‘We’re on the Same Team’

Pope Francis and Pastor Rick Warren. (Photo: Courtesy of Rick Warren)

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren, who leads the eighth largest church in America, Saddleback Church, and is the author of the hugely popular book The Purpose Driven Life, said that Protestants and Catholics must form a “unity of missions” to defend the sanctity of life, sex, and the family, stressing that, “If you love Jesus, we’re on the same team.”

“We have far more in common than what divides us,” said Pastor Warren in an interview with Catholic News Service. “When you talk about Pentecostals, charismatics, evangelicals, fundamentalists, Catholics, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, on and on, they would all say we believe in the Trinity.”

“We believe in the Bible,” he continued. “We believe in the resurrection; we believe in salvation through Jesus Christ. These are the big issues.”

Warren, along with leaders of other faiths and denominations, attended a conference at the Vatican in November – the “Complementarity of Man and Woman” -- to discuss and defend the family and marriage as being between one man and one woman, and related topics. He made his comments in the video in December.

At the conference, Warren re-emphasized that “marriage can only be between a man and a woman, explaining that marriage reflects Christ’s love for the church.

Court Rules Breakaway SC Episcopal Churches Can Keep $500 Million in Property

From The State
By John Monk

A S.C. Circuit Court judge ruled Tuesday that the Diocese of South Carolina that withdrew three years ago from the national Episcopal Church can keep more than $500 million in church property.

The parishes have been at the center of a dispute between the diocese and The Episcopal Church since Bishop Mark Lawrence broke away from the national church in 2012, taking 36 parishes with him.