{"id":63702,"date":"2017-07-04T11:21:43","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T16:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=63702"},"modified":"2017-07-04T11:24:03","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T16:24:03","slug":"before-it-was-cool-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=63702","title":{"rendered":"Before It Was Cool – Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Williamson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Americans can be \u2014 and often are \u2014 everything our critics say we are: impulsive, vulgar, oafish, clumsy, greedy, vain, belligerent, sanctimonious, hypocritical. But we are something else: a catalyst.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had 241 years of hit-and-miss government, but imagine going back to 1776 with a prophecy that one day, in the not-too-distant future, the English, French, Germans, Spanish, and Italians \u2014 to say nothing of the Israelis and the Japanese and the Indians \u2014 would form a restive and sometimes turbulent but enduring alliance against tyranny and oppression, and that this alliance would be loosely and imperfectly organized around something like the ideals ratified on July 4, 1776.<\/p>\n

We have our political, economic, and religious disagreements with our friends and allies, but everywhere in the world where people fight against tyranny, we hear an echo of 1776. Everywhere in the world where people risk everything they have to tell the king, f\u00fchrer, caudillo, secretary general of the central committee, dear leader, ayatollah, or president for life to kiss their asses, we see something of ourselves. When things get bad enough, we join in, and have spent untold blood and treasure in the pursuit of other people\u2019s liberty. Why? What\u2019s in it for us? It is in our nature. We aren\u2019t our politics. We aren\u2019t our government or our president or even our Constitution, which is subject to revision from time to time. We are the people who decided that rather than just change kings, we\u2019d do away with kings altogether under the radical theological premise that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, irrespective of the king\u2019s good opinion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing when you get a moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Williamson: Americans can be \u2014 and often are \u2014 everything our critics say we are: impulsive, vulgar, oafish, clumsy, greedy, vain, belligerent, sanctimonious, hypocritical. But we are something else: a catalyst. We\u2019ve had 241 years of hit-and-miss government, but imagine going back to 1776 with a prophecy that one day, in the not-too-distant future, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-63702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-kevin-williamson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63706,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63702\/revisions\/63706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}