All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

6/30/2006

Worthy of Reprinting

A Torrent of Darkness, Part II

”Frederick the Great was once asked why it was that he chose his officer corps only from the Junkers of Prussia, rather than other groups. Why not a clever baker's son from Dresden? What's wrong with a solid farmer from Pomerania?

"Nein," he replied, explaining his preference for the Junkers, "Because they will not lie and cannot be bought."

Great empires depend on a reliable professional class of military officers, administrators and businessmen. Britain had them when it ruled the waves. They came out of the public (we would call them private) school of "Tom Brown's School-days," and were packed off into the Her Majesty's civil service. Many were incompetent. But few were dishonest.

America never really had a specific class of civil servants; the place was always too big and too mobile. As good a military man might spring from the coalmines of West Virginia as from the citadels of the East Coast elites. So might a good businessman arise from the cattle ranches of Texas as from the counting houses of San Francisco. The history of World War II, for example, is the tale of how they came together and got the job done. They too were often hopelessly naïve and incompetent - compared, say, to the more experienced Germans. But very few stole. Very few lied. Very few shirked, ducked, or jived.

If I ever run for public office I think I’ll borrow from Fredrick’s answer and use it for a campaign slogan:

“I won’t lie and I refuse to be bought.”

What a refreshing thought if our Congresscritters and civilserpents started embracing it now.

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