Battleship

December 30, 2025 by Leave a comment

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USS Alabama leds the Line of Fast Battleships entering Tokyo Bay, Japan on Sept. 5th 1945

Is there anything that showcases as nation’s power better than battleship? Whether it was an Athenian trireme at Salamis, a Roman galley patrolling off Cathage, Viking longships ranging from North America to Iceland to Spain, and down the rivers of Eastern Europe and into Constantinople, the Venetian galleys transporting the Crusaders to the Holy Land, HMS Victory leading the Royal Navy into battle at Trafalger, USS Olympia leading the US Asiatic flotilla into Manila Harbor, the drawn battle at Jutland, or USS Missouri leading the US Fleet into Tokyo Bay in 1945, the battleship was always the pride of the fleet, the mark of a nation that could project power.

The American Iowa class were the last into battle, in Operation Desert Storm, to liberate Kuwait. The Bitish completed the last one in 1946. One day in Korea a North Korean 155mm gun hit the Wisconsin, scraping the paint. the Wisconsin swiveled her main battery, and nine 16 inch shells elimated the hill the gun was. The cruiser behind her signalled, “Temper, temper.”

But the four Iowas (there supposed to be six) were the final word in battleships (BB), even though the navy had let contracts for four more, the Montana class, much like the Iowas, only about 29 knots and with four turrets at total of 12 of the same 16in 58 caliber guns as the Iowas. in fact they started procurement and laying the keel (in Kentucky) when it was decided the money should reallocated to building more Essex class carriers. a good decision.

There have been several plans to recommision the Iowas, which have joined the second most powerful fleet in the world, the US museum ships, but its hard to make a case for the large crew, and short range of big guns, no matter how impressive they are.

Now there is a new idea, the guided missle battleship, with multiple times the missjle loadout of even the Ticonderoga class cruisers which are nearing end of life. These are envisioned as well enough protected to go into harm’s way, even alone, or with a surface action group. I really like this idea,

When I first started reading on the internet, Bill Whittle was one of my favorite authors. He still is. Let’s see what he thinks.

Bill is correct about that British policy but it’s also true that they were rather relieved, when the German High Seas Fleet, which had, pursuant to the Versailles Treaty ending the Great War, scuttled iself instead of surrendering. You see, the US, had made a policy that the US fleet would henceforth be at least as large as the next two fleets. The British knew thet could not outbuild the Americans, if they tried, it would bankrupt them. And the Americans were already looking askance at the Japanese, who were allied with the British.

Remember this is about the control of the sea which Britain seized with what Mahan called, “those distant storm tossed ships” which confined the European powers to Europe, and kept them from reclaiming their colonies in the new world and kept that trade for Britain and th US. That is why George Canning proposed what became the Monroe Doctrine to the  United States, and while the US proclaimed it unilaterally, the Royal Navy enforced until the Spanish-American War.

The role is just as important now as it ever was. It remains as Sir Walter Raleigh stated, and Fleet Admiral Nimitz quoted:

“whosoever commands the sea commands the trade;

whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world,

and consequently the world itself“.

Since the Spanish Armada that has been the British and then the Americans, because of it the new world is free, the slaves have been freed, and people are far richer than any time before. This is our heritage  and our bequest to the future.

Filed under Culture, Donald Trump, Freedom, History, History ofTechnology, Leadership, Military, The Leaders, United States, Video Tagged with , , , ,

Ordinary Joes

December 29, 2025 by 2 Comments

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HST, Attlee and Mackenzie-King

Yesterday, I noted Jess’s article on St. Joseph had a follow up? This is it, fom 2012. shortly after Romney had (deservedly) been defeated by Obama. I clearly remember John Charmley asking if that was the best we could do? The answer was a rueful “Yes, it was.” then but that changed in 2015. Jess spoke to us thirteen years ago about acoule of men, whose ideas had there flaws but who were indeed representatives of their people. Let’s have look at what she said.

On my own blog yesterday I wrote a post on St. Joseph – ‘an ordinary Joe’. I hope no one finds it in poor taste to call a Saint that, but for me that’s the point of him for us other ordinary folk. Neo here speaks, like so many of those who post here, as one of ‘we the people’. From where I sit a long a way aways, the problem I see is the one you guys have – no one is listening to Ordinary Joes.  We, like you, have a bunch of Fancy Dans, guys and gals for whom politics is everything and who get a good living from it; but like you, we don’t think they understand us – or even want to.

The politicians aren’t like us – they are obsessed with politics for a start. Through my co-author I know a few professional politicians, and when they come home they are full of who is ‘in and who is ‘out’ and what job x is getting, or who y is sleeping with; they are fixated on the process. Perhaps they weren’t all like this, and of course we know they are not and that there are some, like Rebecca Hamilton, who set the most marvellous example; but do these politician prosper in their profession? How many of them get to ‘the top’?

When that smooth-talking guy Tony Blair wooed us UK voters, I was in my teens, and because I am not easily impressed by such guys, I kept a tight hand on my virtue; I wish others had, as he thoroughly debauched the economy and political life. He rode the great tide of easy money and he made the sorts of promises which seducers maake to innocent young ladies; but when she woke up and found herself pregnant, where was he to be found? Why, nowhere, he’d found another mistress – money.

There was a time when politicians paid to be politicians because they were wealthy enough to spend their own money on public life. Men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not plutocrats or millionaires, but they had enough and they lived off it and served the Republic. Even very recently, someone like Harry S Truman could leave public office no wealthier than he entered it. Over here the other successful Labour leader, Clement Attlee, had his wife drive him round when he campaigned against the great Winston Churchill in 1945. They used to stop by the side of the road and have a picnic, and then she’d drive Clem off to give a speech somewhere. He, too, left office no richer than he had entered it.

Ordinary Joes could relate to Harry S or Attlee. No one had to agree with their politics, and they could be nasty ‘sobs’ when they wanted, but they were like us – they lived in the world we lived in. Attlee looked like a provincial bank manager, Truman like he ran a drapers store or sold dry goods. When Attlee was pictured smoking a pipe it was because he smoked a pipe; when his later successor, Harold Wilson was so pictured, it was because it was a good ‘image’; made him look down to earth and one of the people, even when he wasn’t.

But hey, at least back then they wanted to look like us. Now they don’t care, they flaunt their wealthy connections and their jets and their privilege. Nothing is too good for the representatives of the people. Shame about the people themselves – where’d it all go wrong?

That’s about as good a description of the grifters all of us in the west are infested with as I’ve read. One thing she missed though; George Washington was one of the richest men in the American Colonies, yer he volunteered to put his neck in the noose, and to live almost eight years in a tent, then serve eight years as President. Then he gave it all up, even though the country didn’t want him too. When King George heard this he commented to John Adams, then Minister to the Court of St. James (England) and the kings friend, “Then he shall be the greatest man of the age”.

But Jess is right, the aristocratic Virginian, and the Labour politician, whose policies nearly bankrupted the United Kingdom, were authentic, and they were men you understood and reflected their people.

But for us something changed after the ‘Reign of Error’, quite suddenly in 2015, an orange man came down a golden escalator. My how he scared and still scares the grifters in both parties. I was slow to see it, I liked and still like Ted Cruz, but the people, the Demos, the Populi, saw more clearly.

You can take this too far, easily in fact, President Trump acts more like Andy Jackson or maybe his favorite, Theodore Roosefelt, but are also echoes of Washington there, in the willingness to spend his own wealth on the country, and strict adherence to the law. Don’t forget Washington took the field as Commander in Chief,  when whiskey distillers in western Pennsylvania refused to pay the excise tax on their product. Wonder what he would have done with our illegals? They’re probably lucky Trump is President. Even to ordering the six frigates (including USS Constitution) to protect our commerce from the French, and the Barbary pirates.

By the way, after Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess got in their personal car and drove home to Missouri.

Filed under Corruption, Donald Trump, Duty, Election, History, Personal Responsibility, Politics, Rule of Law, The Founders, The Leaders, Uncategorized, United States Tagged with , , , ,

An Ordinary Joe

December 28, 2025 by Leave a comment

ImageJessica had a knack, maybe because she trained as a primary school teacher, maybe it was just innate to her, to take things we never thought about and make them both relevant and important. This Christmas reflection from her blog is an excellent example.

It must have been a hard coming to Bethlehem. At that time of the year the weather there can be cold and inclement; not the time to take a heavily pregnant young woman on a long journey. Whether it was poverty or poor planning, the inn keeper’s stables were better than the open air; but not by much. What a time they had had; what a time was to come. Of the birth itself, the first Christians created legends; but we know nothing save what was needful: the young mother and the baby did well.

Where there had been Mary and Joseph, there was now the Holy Family. The man and the woman were brought into a new configuration by the baby; that is the human condition. No more would Joseph labour only for himself and his betrothed; he was a family man now; for this he had left his father and his mother; the same was true for her.

We are told little of him, Joseph, the almost anonymous protector of the sweet Virgin and her precious Baby. What manner of man was he?  We know more than we think. He was the man to whom these burdensome treasures were consigned. We know they were treasures, but for him, he had the task of bringing up a child not his own; he also had to cope with the consequences of Mary’s pregancy and of her choice. She had chosen this path with the aid of her Immaculate Conception; Joseph did what he did full of the burden of original sin.

Please keep reading at All Along the Warchtower.

It’s true you know, in that world, as in a large part of the Islamic world today, Mary and the Baby Jesus would have had a very hard row to hoe. A teenaged single mother, baby in tow, in the fringes close to the borders of two empires, both of which thought of women as property. As one of  Jess’s commenters noted, St Joseph was indeed a good man.

There is a followup to this post, from the next day, that we will look at tomorrow.

Filed under Christianity, Christmas, Culture, History, Western Civilization Tagged with , , , ,

New National Security Policy

December 27, 2025 by 10 Comments

ImageThis is from John Hinderaker at PowerLine. It follows on from yesterday’s post. The article is mostly quotes from the Policy with John making excellent comments, not least because I agree with him. I’m confining myself to quotes from the policy, formatted as bullet points. Read Jon’s article here, and follow the link to read th whole thing.

  • We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine;
  • We want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials;
  • We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity;We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass while avoiding the “forever wars” that bogged us down in that region at great cost; and

    We want to ensure that U.S. technology and U.S. standards—particularly in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—drive the world forward.

  • Focused Definition of the National Interest – Since at least the end of the Cold War, administrations have often published National Security Strategies that seek to expand the definition of America’s “national interest” such that that almost no issue or endeavor is considered outside its scope. But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.Peace Through Strength – Strength is the best deterrent. ….

    Predisposition to Non-Interventionism ….

  • Flexible Realism – U.S. policy will be realistic about what is possible and
    desirable to seek in its dealings with other nations. We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories. We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours even as we push like-minded friends to uphold our shared norms, furthering our interests as we do so.Primacy of Nations – The world’s fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty.

This is, I think, extraordinarily good. It avoids both the Scylla of 1930’s style isolationism, which helped bring on the Second World War as well as the Charybdis’ of nation building and ‘forever wars. A few more points.

  • Pro-American Worker – American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth, and it will prioritize our own workers. We must rebuild an economy in which prosperity is broadly based and widely shared, not concentrated at the top or localized in certain industries or a few parts of our country.
  • Fairness – From military alliances to trade relations and beyond, the United States will insist on being treated fairly by other countries. We will no longer tolerate, and can no longer afford, free-riding, trade imbalances, predatory economic practices, and other impositions on our nation’s historic goodwill that disadvantage our interests. … In particular, we expect our allies to spend far more of their national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on their own defense, to start to make up for the enormous imbalances accrued over decades of much greater spending by the United States.
  • Reindustrialization – The future belongs to makers. The United States will reindustrialize its economy, “re-shore” industrial production, and encourage and attract investment in our economy and our workforce, with a focus on the critical and emerging technology sectors that will define the future. We will do so through the strategic use of tariffs and new technologies that favor widespread industrial production in every corner of our nation, raise living standards for American workers, and ensure that our country is never again reliant on any adversary, present or potential, for critical products or components.
  • Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness.But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.

    Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.

There’s much more, and it’s the clearest and most rational plan since, at least, the end of the Cold War. congratulation to  Michael Anton and Marco Rubio for writing it, and above all to President Trump for formulating it.

 

Filed under Conservatism, Donald Trump, Economy, Europe, Foreign Policy, History, Leadership, Rule of Law, The Leaders, Theory of Government, United States, Western Civilization Tagged with , , , , ,

Boxing Day

December 26, 2025 by 3 Comments

Welp we survived another Christmas, and so Happy Boxing Day (or for Americans, gift return day. 😉

Meantime, the new US strategic survey, has angered Europe, as usually happens when a mirror is held up tyrants.

This explains it well, although be advised, I suspect part of this, specifically Victor Davis Hanson’s part, may well be AI. VDH has suffering aglut of it lately.

Pretty good summary, I think, of a continent being destroyed by its globalist ruling pseudo-elite.

And a little something for Boxing Day

Enjoy

Filed under Catholicism, Christmas, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Europe, Foreign Policy, Freedom, History Tagged with , , , ,

Christmas

December 25, 2025 by 7 Comments

Merry Christmas, if you’re reading today, I’m a bit sorry for you. But we all know that life happens, and as my niece reminded me today, we ain’t as young as we used to be, Maybe it was the chemo she finished lately, or the kidney doctor I’ll be seeing soon but we both think a quiet Christmas is in order. I think we’ll start with Jess’s favorite Christmas song, it’s in my top five as well

Somehow feels very appropriate to me, I hope not you.

Back in 2013, while I was back east, Jess wrote about the meaning of Chistmas. I think It one of her best, better than anything I could write so enjoy.

Christmas

Well, Neo and I are both, in our ways, in the bosom of our families, and we both hope that you are too – but perhaps like us, you are just looking at that Reader in the intervals of good cheer and fellowship. We are all, of course, extremely fortunate, and when you think of the many Christians in the Holy Land and its environs who live in fear, it makes you glad for what you have – but sorrowful for them; it puts our woes into perspective.

We are so used to Christianity that we tend to think of it as our religion in the sense that it is something of the West – which is in a way a tribute to our Faith. It has spread across the globe, and it has adapted itself to so many different cultures because it appeals to something we all have in common – a sense of brokenness, of incompleteness, of loss and separation. In Jesus, God speaks to us directly. This is not some voice from on High, not even a burning bush or a vision; no, it is a man, one like us who was, nonetheless, the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Men and women like us met Him, talked with Him, saw Him die – and rise again from the dead after three days. The Apostle Paul tells the doubters that more than five hundred people, including many known to his listeners, had seen the Risen Lord. He was not born in a Palace, and he didn’t wear fancy clothes, nor did he use complicated words and ideas – no, he talked to us as one of us. He told us something so simple that even after all this time we have trouble with it: we need to repent, we need to confess He is Lord, and we need to follow Him – and we’re saved. How hard is that?

It turns out it is very hard. Men have needed to see more than that. Surely there are conditions, catches, things we ought to do or else? The earliest Christians were Jews, and they took their Temple-style worship with them when they left the synagogues; used to solemn ritual, they kept it. Many Christians have done so to this day, and as one whose Church uses incense and icons, I am not going to say anything bad about it, because it all helps me worship; but I know it is an additional extra; something God given, to be sure – but if I never saw an icon again, it would make no difference to God’s love for me.

It is to that love we all respond. Jesus told us to call God “abba”, which is, in the Aramaic, something akin to “Daddy”.  We can have all sorts of dressing up games with Daddy, and we can be safe because we know Daddy loves us. It is that sort of child-like faith Jesus tells us we need.

Keep reading the rest at Christmas.

Or perhaps…

Then there’s this

Sadly no one wants to sing this with me

Have a happy day, and Merry Christmas!!

Filed under Christianity, Christmas, History, Music, Political Uncorrectness

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