Seven years later.

Sad news today about a man with integrity, decency, and affability uncommon to contemporary public life, who finally succumbed in his long bout with colon cancer.

Via American Thinker, here is quotable wisdom Tony Snow shared in a May 2007 commencement speech, advice to “live boldly, to live a whole life”:

1. Think; use your brains.

2. Take risks; don’t be content with what you know.

3. Commit to God. Faith is as natural as the air we breathe. Religion is the introduction to the ultimate extreme sport.

4. Get out and experience life. Get your fingernails dirty… and laugh, a lot, at yourselves. ..the pain, the poignancy, the aches are essential; they bring us together.

5. Love. It is everything…to love is to acknowledge that life is not about you…to submit willingly, heart & soul, to things that matter. Think not only of what it means to love but what it means to be loved. I have a lot of experience with that. Since the news that I have cancer again, I have heard from thousands and thousands of people and I have been the subject of untold prayers. I’m telling you right now: You’re young [and you feel] bullet-proof and invincible. [But] never underestimate the power of other people’s love and prayer. They have incredible power. It’s as if I’ve been carried on the shoulders of an entire army. And they had made me weightless.

Rest in peace, Tony Snow (1955-2008). Condolences to his family and loved ones.

It was 145 years ago today that one of the more heroic and decisive – if also perhaps too well-known – actions in our nation’s Civil War took place. If you’ve seen the movie Gettysburg, then you know just what I’m talking about: The daring and desperate charge by the 20th Maine volunteer infantry regiment from its position on the far left flank of the Union line.

Led by Colonel (and future Governor) Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the 20th Maine swung down Little Round Top in the late afternoon of July 2 and captured numerous members of a Confederate raiding force that threatened a critical breakthrough in its own desperate Pennsylvania invasion. Chamberlain and the 20th Maine’s successful counter-charge played a pivotal role in setting the stage for General Robert E. Lee to dare the ill-fated Pickett’s Charge the following day.

Huzzah to Colonel Chamberlain and his 358 men, 131 of whom were killed or wounded atop Little Round Top that day. And to other lesser known regiments who paid an especially brutal price in the three-day fight at Gettsyburg, especially the 24th Michigan and 1st Minnesota.

Once in awhile, the U.S. Supreme Court gets it right. Today that’s the case with the 5-4 landmark ruling in DC v Heller that overturns the Washington, D.C., gun ban and sets the Second Amendment on the solid terrain intended by our nation’s Founders. Around the Independence Institute, where research director Dave Kopel is one of the most renowned experts in the field, this makes for a busy day, and one of celebration.

Dave authored a friendly brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Institute and numerous law enforcement organizations, providing evidence of how citizens owning firearms is important to public safety. Dave also was one of three attorneys who sat at plaintiff Heller’s table during the oral arguments before the Supreme Court earlier this year – an experience he recounts for an iVoices podcast with Jon Caldara.

Dave already gave an interview with local news giant 850 KOA this morning (and who knows what other interviews). He also said he’s working on articles for Pajamas Media, Human Events, and Reason – so you may want to check all those sites for more of his erudite commentary.

In the meantime, the SCOTUS blog has a full copy of the decision (something I have yet to read) and lots of relevant commentary.

I’m waiting for Constructively Reasonable – a law student friend and 2nd Amendment fan – to weigh in.

But all told, Heller is a hugely important favorable decision that will yield lots of analysis and discussion in the coming days. Major congrats and thanks to Dave Kopel for his years of work on the issue, and a major sigh of relief that hopefully proves more than a respite among a recent spate of bad news from our courts and elected legislatures.

And today’s announcement of the decision is remarkably coincidental timing for the Independence Institute’s (sold out) ATF Party!

Jason Janz – a personal acquaintance I met through his launching and running the successful Christian website Sharper Iron – wrote a Speakout published in today’s Rocky Mountain News about Denver’s upcoming Juneteenth celebration:

I am not African-American and I am going to Juneteenth. In fact, I believe that people of all ethnicities should attend if they are able. Why? Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom and equality, values that every American should embrace. Just because the peak of the civil rights movement has passed does not mean that racial tension in our community is gone. There is still much work to do. By standing next to the African-American community, you are showing solidarity with them as a partner for peace and harmony in our city.

I also believe that celebrating another culture will enrich your life. Learning about another culture will teach you much about your own. You cannot fully understand your own culture unless you understand others. Saturday will be a study for you in similarities and differences. You will see commonalities that show that all people are more alike than different. At the same time, you will see the differences between your culture and African-American culture as unique gifts from God to make this city a beautiful place to live and work.

Jason and his family left their more comfortable place in a suburban church ministry to start the multi-ethnic Providence Bible Church. If you are a Christian believer, please consider supporting the Janz family and their labor of love with your prayers. Or maybe you can join them at this Saturday’s Juneteenth celebration.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.

Today, pay your respects to a fallen soldier, sailor, airman, Marine – and to their loved ones still with us. And don’t forget to thank the troops you meet for their service to us all. Happy Memorial Day!

Other local Memorial Day written and visual remembrances from Michael at Best Destiny, Jim at Thinking Right, Joshua at View from a Height, and Rossputin.

From farther afield, Maggie Thurber shares the history of Memorial Day, Fort Hard Knox posts the President’s Prayer for Peace, and Chuck Muth recounts the heroism of four recent Medal of Honor winners.

Obscure question: What special connection does the name Katie Casey have to baseball aficionados today? Well, it was 100 years ago today (May 2, 1908) that America’s universal musical standard Take Me Out to the Ball Game was published. Jack Norworth penned the words; Albert von Tilzer the unforgettable melody.

To clear up the connection, Norworth’s and Van Tilzer’s Tin Pan Alley creation was written to be sung by a young female character:

Only a handful of fans realize that the two verses of the song are about Katie Casey (later changed to Nelly Kelly), a girl who was mad with baseball fever as she asked her young beau to take her to a ballgame rather than a show. This faint whiff of romance added to the song’s success on vaudeville, where singers (including Norworth’s wife and star, Nora Bayes), actors, even acrobats, incorporated the hit into their acts. Also adding to its immense popularity, the song was featured during intermissions at the early twentieth-century nickelodeons where it was accompanied by “lantern slides,” photos touched up with paint that provided the audience with a visual component to the song as the lyrics scrolled across the bottom of the screen. This way, when Katie Casey made the pitch to her date, everyone in the audience could respond in song: “Take me out to the ball game…”

Next time you’re enjoying America’s pastime at one of her beautiful ballparks, and you rise for that 7th inning stretch, think of Katie Casey and an enduring classic that has lived for a full century.

Of course, the question remains: Would Norworth’s and Von Tilzer’s character recognize the sport, and would she want to be taken out to the ball game today?

Today we remember the Last Supper and Christ’s betrayal. Though there are many passages to choose from, in particular I am reminded of the Savior’s ultimate example of service and his incomparably fervent prayer (both from the New American Standard Bible):

John 13:3-5
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God, and was going back to God, rose from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself about. Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.

Luke 22:41-44
And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.

It’s not often we get to wish one another Happy Leap Day – the only other time for this blog was in the very early days of its existence. So let’s celebrate the opportunity to catch our calendars up to the earth’s solar revolution schedule, and enjoy the irony of what this day means.

One of my favorite February 29 memories comes from my freshman year in college, walking to the buildings on “the Hill” and seeing homemade signs posted urging us to wish fellow student Sam a happy 5th birthday. No, Sam – whom I later got to know and appreciate for his good nature and good humor, not to mention his artistic and literary gifts – wasn’t some sort of amazing prodigy. He was what Wikipedia informs me is called a “leapling.” Another “leapling” is the legendary Al Gansee, who – depending on your reckoning – is either 80 or 20 today.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be one of the more than 200,000 Americans who three-fourths of the time have to borrow somebody else’s birthday. Well, today, all ye leaplings, enjoy this day all your own. But does anyone know what else one is supposed to do to commemorate the quadrennial arrival of February 29?

Over at Pajamas Media, Scott Johnson eulogizes the late William F. Buckley, Jr.. First, probably his most significant accomplishment:

When Buckley founded National Review as the voice of the [conservative] movement, he performed two acts of statesmanship that were vital to the movement’s ultimate, if unlikely, success: he reserved exclusive ownership of the magazine to himself so as to prevent the kind of sectarian brawls that had killed other such magazines, and he prohibited John Birchers and other kooky anti-Semitic organizations from the magazine’s precincts.

Johnson also observes what is left undone:

Until [Buckley] gave up public speaking in 1998, his frequent campus speaking engagements were part missionary work, part performance art, and like nothing else available on the campuses he visited. In the decades following the founding of National Review, the conservative movement experienced successes that must have exceeded even Buckley’s visionary imagination. Yet the university remains almost entirely untouched by Buckley’s call to action. In fact, it understates matters considerably to say that circumstances on campus have not improved since the publication of God and Man at Yale in 1951.

Except for my quibble based on the fact that I distinctly remember attending a Buckley debate at Penn State in 2000 (after the 1998 cited here), I think this is a larger point that has been overlooked by some. While we certainly ought not diminish Buckley’s giant and consequential legacy, Johnson reminds us – in the spirit of President Abraham Lincoln – of “the great task remaining before us.”

As though a reminder were needed, El Presidente today focuses on a clash of politically incorrect student journalism and the university Free Speech police. While we mourn Buckley’s passing, the world keeps on turning.

Via K.J. Lopez at the Corner, news comes today that the great William F. Buckley, Jr., has passed away.

While very few writers and speakers have ever had a greater facility with the English language than Buckley did, there was much more to him than the elegance of his prose. He was an intellectual champion for conservatism long before there was any popularity to be gained by it. From his seminal book God and Man at Yale to his great legacy in the founding of National Review, he did as much as any American in the 20th century to advance the conservative cause through logical, forceful, and passionate argument, as well as through refined wit and good humor.

To get a glimpse of the man – his ideas and his rhetoric – you can search a comprehensive online database of Buckley’s writings and speeches – created by my alma mater Hillsdale College.

In November 2006 we lost the great Milton Friedman, and now Buckley. Together they represent perhaps the two greatest minds in the broader conservative movement and the two most influential voices for free markets, limited government, and personal freedom – not to mention the strong roots and high ideals of Western Civilization – America had in the 20th century.

It’s a sad day for the conservative moment and for anyone in this nation who respects a good, vigorous, civil, and intellectual policy debate. But condolences especially to his family and dear friends. I’m sure far more eloquent elegies will be written in the coming days, but wanted to add my two cents while the news is fresh on my mind.

R.I.P., William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008)

Diverting from our regular blogging fare on this Friday, we pause to remember the 46th anniversary of the decisive and destructive Battle of Cambria. It is also the 12th anniversary of the founding of Cambria Tours (Facebook account required to view page).

The ill-fated, crushing defeat of February 22, 1962, along the frozen pond and quiet streets of a midwestern hamlet, marked the ultimate demise of the small and short-lived Socialist Union of Al Gansee. It’s all chronicled in the biography of the quixotic and eccentric, Michigan-born dictator, Passion and Purpose: The Rise and Fall of Al Gansee. Rumor also has it that the battle’s story is being adapted into a screenplay. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.

Questions linger regarding how much of the story is a figment of the author’s vibrant imagination.

Maybe some of you get a paid holiday from work to celebrate the likes of Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, Benjamin Harrison, Warren G. Harding, and Gerald Ford, but not this think-tank scribbler. Yet even though it’ll be like a normal day of work for me, that won’t stop me from wishing you all a very low-key, lukewarm, and laid-back Presidents Day. Happy Monday to the rest of us.

I launched Mount Virtus four years ago today. On February 6, 2004, I was a complete neophyte in the world of blogging. Today, I am practically a blogging grandfather, but far from the bigtime.

A lot has changed in four years. My how heady those early days were – ready to change the world, waiting for the 1,000th visitor, thrilled to receive a link or comment from anyone. (Someone noticed what I wrote?) Over the years, I’ve taken occasional breaks (never too long) from putting up posts here, and once or twice even contemplated letting it go. But here we are, two election cycles later, still hovered over my laptop, wearing my pajamas, typing away, trying to share a serious thought here and there.

Okay, time to ditch the sentimentality (not to mention the self-referential postmodernism) and move on to the practical lessons. Well, actually I’m too tired to talk about lessons, so here’s just just one: Persistence and continuity may not be enough to become a successful blogger, but they are needful if you wish to come close to ascending the blogosphere’s heights. (When I come close myself, I’ll let you know).

Four years old, how fast they grow up….

Tomorrow is the annual Blogs for Life conference at Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, DC, a somber commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the terrible and infamous Roe v Wade decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

A provocative NewsMax essay today from Joseph Sobran summarizes three and a half decades of the debate:

Note the strange progress of the advocates of abortion. A generation ago, just before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that virtually all legal restrictions on abortion violated the U.S. Constitution, these people agreed that killing the unborn was evil; but they held that its evil might be minimized by legalizing and regulating it.

Then they shifted to what might be called an agnostic position: that nobody could say whether abortion is right or wrong — the question was always vague: “individual,” or “religious,” or something. Finally they arrived at a third position, flatly contradicting the first two: that abortion is a positively good thing, or as some put it, “a fundamental human and constitutional right.” Fundamental!

The more abortions, it follows, the better. At each step of the political battle, the reason is different, but the practical conclusion is the same. This is how the controversy has gone for a full generation now. At the same time, the anti-abortion side has never budged an inch. It is still exactly where it stood on Jan. 22, 1973. Neither its premise nor its conclusion has varied.

The pro-life movement has a long way to go, that’s for sure. The battle for hearts and minds is crucial. But, legally speaking, we should continue to persuade moderate-minded citizens that Roe v Wade should be overturned so states can decide this important question, and to elect officials who will nominate and confirm justices with originalist views of the Constitution who inevitably would make that happen. These are the next steps on which serious pro-lifers need to stay focused.