As I hope we all know, last Friday was the 200th anniversary of the destruction of a large Franco/Spanish fleet at Trafalgar by a British force under the command of Admiral Nelson -- thus ending the threat of an invasion of England by Napoleon. In the expected politically correct way, official British government celebrations have been muted for fear of "offending the French". See one account of that here.
So I am going to do my little bit here to mark the event and I don't give a damn about whom it might offend.
I want to concentrate on just one thing: Why did Nelson in effect commit suicide during that battle? He stood in full view in a prominent position on his flagship dressed in every bit of the colourful regalia he was entitled to. He made himself as prominent a target as he could, in other words. And he remained there even when his ship came to close quarters with a French ship full of musketeers. One of those musketeers eventually got him, of course.
Why would he do such a thing? He was the most popular man in England at the time and was sleeping with the most beautiful Englishwoman of the day. He can hardly have been depressed. I think the reason is is clear. He was displaying a virtue that is incomprehensible to the politically correct whiners of today: Heroism.
He knew that his fleet was heavily outnumbered and he knew that the fate of England hung on the battle. And as every military man knows, the spirit and morale of your troops is a hugely important factor in who wins a battle. So although his sailors already regarded him as someone not much less than the Messiah who would lead them to the promised land, Nelson wanted to ensure that every one of his men was a lion of courage. And he did that by setting the example personally.
Update
I am delighted to read that, despite initial British government resistance, popular enthusiasm ensured that the great victory and great heroism of Viscount Nelson was in the end properly celebrated in Britain. See here
Babies Incorrect
A nice American Christian family (see here) have just had their 16th child and the invariably vituperative San Francisco far-Left columnist Mark Morford is trying his best to portray that as pathological. Excerpt:
"Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?...
But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Duggar family of 18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17...
It's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land...."
Source
There is really no arguing with someone as hate-filled as that but I suppose I should mention that large families of 10 or more children were normal in 19th century America and Australia and still are in many parts of the world today. I myself am descended from one such family. And Morford's claim that such large families are causing the world to become overpopulated is certainly common Green/Left rhetoric but is totally fact-free in the usual Leftist way. Almost all of the countries of the developed world are in fact at the moment undergoing sub-replacement birthrates. So their populations are in fact in the process of SHRINKING. Only immigration is keeping the numbers up.
