Derb on The Ron Paul Newsletters: What's All the Fuss About?

John Derbyshire, at V-Dare.com, where he occassionally publishes articles that are too hot for National Review:

An elderly character in one of Barbara Pym's novels grumbles, in the presence of some youngsters, about the awfulness of the pop music they are listening to. One of the youngsters turns on her rather nastily: "Of course you don't like it. It's not for you. Nothing's for you any more."

This came to mind while I was reading the "last testament" of the writer George MacDonald Fraser, who died January 2. Fraser was 82 when he died, and quite out of tune with the Britain where he had been born and spent most of his life. Fraser wrote a great many books, both fiction and nonfiction, but he is best remembered for the Flashman series of comic-historical novels.

The "testament" is in fact a curmudgeon's rant, sputtering angrily against political correctness, Dianafication (that's the British word for "Oprahfication"), the collapse of standards, "the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment, determined to impose its views", and political parties ("inventions of the devil") etc.

(Amusing to see Fraser say that "My favorite prime minister was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not because he was on the Right, but because he spent a year in office without, on his own admission, doing a damned thing." The U.S.A. has been blessed with a number of Presidents who likewise clove to the wu wei principle. We had, for example, Ronald Reagan, inspiration for the quip that saying "I have slept with the President" meant you had attended cabinet meetings. We also had Calvin Coolidge, of whom Will Rogers said: "He didn't do anything, but that's what the people wanted done." Ron Paul would be another in this illustrious line of presidential snoozers, if we can somehow get him elected)...

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