The whole "Hispanics are socially conservative" meme is false anyway. Hispanics have amongst the highest rates of bastardy, underage childbirth, and crime rates in the country. Their "high rates of church membership" seem to mean squat in actual practice. Church membership rates for non-whites seem to mean very little when it comes to the actual things churches teach. Black voters have huge rates of church membership and attendance too. They have the same social ills as Hispanics. Both groups overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

Statistically, church membership is only a reliable predictor of social values and political trends among whites. You can not only break down attitudes and voting trends via religiosity among white voters, but if you can determine religious branches of said voters, you can get even better predictors. Church membership seems to mean zip for other peoples when it comes to voting habits.

My oldest son graduated a few weeks ago. The principal began the ceremony by warning screamers that they'd be removed from the builing, to save the congratulations for after the ceremony, and how the ceremony was for all the graduates and a few screamers wouldn't be allowed to disrupt it for everyone.

Midway into the ceremony, two or three families screamed and used air horns and acted like too-old extras from Animal House, trying to make it all about their kid. Nothing was done to them, as apparently, they knew the threats were empty.

Julius Caesar did. "Better that I had no children". But this says more about Caesar's character... and the way he raised his children... then it does about parenthood.

My children are the greatest thing that ever happened to me. They're precious and make me happy. I feel sorry... honestly... for friends that didn't have them in order to have more money and keep the uptempo social life. When I'm old, I'll have sons and grandchildren at my deathbed. These people will have... what, their cats, maybe?

Mass Hispanic immigration will change the United States for the worse, and for precisely the cultural reasons you indicated: these are peoples who come from cultures where the conservative position is slavish loyalty to the Leviathan state. They're not here for freedom or American ideas. Just American dollars. And they think they can have that and a nanny state. Like American liberals, they see no mental disconnect whatsoever.

Yep. I adored my grandfather. Idolized him. But I've come to realize his generation was not only not the "greatest", but is the one that made a devil's pact with government. There really isn't a generation that compares to the Founders. But I also think that if the Founders could peer into the future and look at the choices we've made, they might well have gone "Why did we even bother?"; would men build great things if they think their children will only squander or corrupt those things?

What are you going to do when the EU embargoes the Swiss with their own version of an Anaconda plan? Because sooner or later, they're not going to take "no" for an answer, and the Swiss will join the collective.

If there was a place to go, I'd take my family there. But there isn't a place to go. 

One thing missing from this equation is how China... with relatively little arable farmland in relation to its population... frees up even more space for growing crops by moving people out of the country into large vertical cities that take up little ground space, and then mechanizes agriculture more to maximize that now-freed up land.

I think you're too optimistic here, and that any "reform" in Iran will always be relative. These people chose this life in 1979, and while the youth may be chaffing somewhat, ultimately, if I had to put money on it, I'd put money on them eventually sticking with the system.

What I despair of is our ever learning. Carter supported Khomeini early on. Dubya backed Lebanese revolutionaries. Obama backed the "democracy movements in Egypt and Libya.

And what kind of governments did these countries wind up with, every single time?

Reagan supported the Mujaheddin in the 80's (for good strategic reasons, necessary at the time) but the results were the same: Islamic governments.

Even Turkey... the quintessential "secular state of the Muslim world"... is re-embracing it's Islamic identity more every day.

As Islam...what the peoples of these areas put their hopes and trust in... sees no legitimate separation of authority between religious and state rulers, what makes you think anything is going to change?

And for the life of me, I can't understand why there's a statue of him on Parliament grounds. It'd be a like a statue of Jefferson Davis in front of the Congress. 

I forget who it was, but a comedian used to have a line about this in his routine: "Minimum Wage means If I could pay you less, I would".

Amen

Actually, Canada's Tories have been emphatically re-emphasizing their proud... and glorious... military history and traditions, most recently by chucking the whole postmodern nomenclature that the liberals put into place in the 60's and 70's and emphasizing royal ties and traditions. Maritime Command is the Royal Canadian Navy again, just as the Air Command is the Royal Canadian Air Force once more.  I got quite the chuckle out of the way you all made your liberals scream about bringing "Royal" back. Don't look for that kind of courage or principle from US leaders anytime soon.

From Rule Britannia to Not So Great Britain.

I bet Rob has stories. He should chime in on this.