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2004 July

On athletics

“I have often observed in women of her type a tendency to regard all athletics as inferior forms of foxhunting”

– Dr. Kagan, Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh
July 6, 2004 12:33 pm | Link | No Comments »

John Kerry, Lizard Freak

Mr. Gerald Warner, SMOM, our favourite knight in newsprint armor, on Senator Kerry:

“He’s a husband and father. A pilot, a hunter, a hockey player. Tough prosecutor, advocate for kids,” raves the latest Kerry advertisement. “Nineteen years on the Senate foreign relations committee.” Yeah, great. The trouble is, he looks more as if he had spent 19 years on the citizens’ precinct poop-scoop committee. Dubya, in a fit of pique, could nuke Pyongyang tomorrow and Kerry would still look like the weirdo in the upstairs apartment who keeps lizards.

From July 4’s Scotland on Sunday.

July 6, 2004 12:23 pm | Link | Comments Off on John Kerry, Lizard Freak

“…the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God…”


Detail from John Trumbull’s ‘Signing of the Declaration of Independence‘.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Two-hundred-and-twenty-eight years ago today, three men with degrees from St Andrews signed the Declaration of Independence, and thus the United States were born (or so the story goes; their independence was only properly established in 1783). Those three were Mr. Benjamin Franklin (Hon. LLD, 1759), Mr. James Wilson (M.A., 1762), and the Rev. John Witherspoon (D.Div., 1764). Rev. Witherspoon was President of Princeton University from 1768 to his death in 1794, whereas Wilson became a justice of the Supreme Court after it was established. Both Franklin and Wilson went on to sign the Constitution as well, two of only eight people who signed both.

July 4, 2004 10:35 am | Link | 2 Comments »

Totalitarian Pacifism

George Orwell: a man of remarkable prescience.

“The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States…”

– George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, May 1945

Via In Pectore.

July 2, 2004 8:28 am | Link | No Comments »

Shoot!

Well they always get a mention in the Mitre so I reckoned it was time the University of St Andrews Clay Pigeon Club got a mention on andrewcusack.com. Seen here are Grant Thomson and Jonny Armstrong displaying the new gun purchased with a grant from the Rector’s Fund.

The Rector, of course, is Sir Clement Freud, OBE, who during his long life has been a soldier, restauranteur, dog-food promoter, Member of Parliament, ‘relative of most other people named Freud’, and of course, the Honorary Chairman of a certain St Andrews secret society that shall not be named.

Jonny, above on the right, is an all-around nice guy and was a source of good conversation at a recent Dashwood Club luncheon, along with the legend of all legends C. L. whose graduation a few days ago marks a tremendous loss to la société des amusantes in St Andrews.

Among Charlie’s efforts are his attempts to have Queen Victoria disinterred. Lush thinks she had a bastard child after dear Albert died, I think. Charlie’s not the only one who wants to dig up the Imperatrix. Apparently some Hannoverians think she may have been illegitimate herself, which would mean that they are still the rightful heirs to the crown of the United Kingdom. Germans coming over to take the throne of England, again? That thought alone may keep Victoria in the ground.

July 1, 2004 9:04 am | Link | 2 Comments »

Life in Black and White

Mr. James Feddeck ’01 and Headmaster Douglas E. Fleming, Jr. at the 103rd annual commencement exercises of the Thornton-Donovan School.

(more…)

July 1, 2004 2:17 am | Link | No Comments »

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