Barack Obama is 47.\u00c2\u00a0 In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was 33.\u00c2\u00a0 John Hancock was 39.\u00c2\u00a0 James Madison was 25.\u00c2\u00a0 Patrick Henry, who advocated change more fiercely than most, was 40.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas Paine, who did likewise, was 39.\u00c2\u00a0 And George Washington was 44.\u00c2\u00a0 If charismatic young men like these hadn’t advocated change, we’d likely still be singing “God Save the Queen” today.\u00c2\u00a0 (I have often said that the descendants of people who were conservatives in 1776 have a special name–Canadians–because that’s how I came to be the descendant of a gentleman who scooted across the border from New Jersey to New Brunswick and stayed there.)<\/p>\n
Many Cubans still hold a deep grudge about what happened at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and I know several who will never vote for a Democrat because they hold Kennedy and his cronies personally responsible for that.\u00c2\u00a0 However, even the most cursory examination of history will show that the Bay of Pigs was the Dulles brothers’ idea, that they’d gotten it pretty well set up to go before Kennedy was even elected, and that they were part of the Eisenhower administration while they did so.\u00c2\u00a0 They went ahead with it under the assumption that once it was under way, Kennedy would have no choice but to send in American troops in support.\u00c2\u00a0 Kennedy proved he did indeed have another choice, and he took it–but he was man enough to publicly accept the responsibility for what happened next.<\/p>\n
John McCain is 72.\u00c2\u00a0 In 1961, Allen Dulles was 68. John Foster Dulles was 73.\u00c2\u00a0 Dwight D. Eisenhower was 71.\u00c2\u00a0 Should the Cuban who wrote the letter not be thundering about old men who thought they were still warriors, acted accordingly, and OMG LOOK WHAT HAPPENED?\u00c2\u00a0 Had the Bay of Pigs not happened, Castro would not have had a readymade propaganda victory at the very beginning of his rule, and what might have happened in Cuba as a result?<\/p>\n
Obviously, both sides of that particular argument are hogwash and the comparisons they make are specious in the extreme.\u00c2\u00a0 Obama is no Castro and McCain is no Dulles.\u00c2\u00a0 To vote for or against a presidential candidate because some other guy in some other time and\/or place did something is absurd.<\/p>\n
But it seems that once again, a lot of people who, as Santayana said, know nothing of history, are once again doomed to repeat it.<\/p>\n
Let me begin this by saying that I don’t particularly like either of the major candidates running for president this year.\u00c2\u00a0 While both of them have numerous admirable qualities and good ideas, they also both have numerous faults and failings … Continue reading ![\"Creative](\"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/wp-content\/plugins\/photo-dropper\/images\/cc.png\")
<\/a> photo credit: Obese Seagull Productions<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"