Christmas List 2011 - A Conservative Library
Dearest Santa, one of the hallmarks of Christmas is giving and sharing. One of the things I’d just love for Christmas is my very own library, completely with a building (with all the taxes taken care of), some considerable property, and the Conservative books and media to go with it.
My library wouldn’t just be any library. My library would not only have ample shelves of books, plus music, audio and video recordings, microfiche files of the newspapers of records for historians to research and computers for Internet access, but a small auditorium as well, for speakers to address patriotic Americans concerned about their country.
There would also be meeting rooms of various sizes for groups to plan strategies for waking America up. I’d also set up a comfortable lounge for more informal gatherings of Tea Partiers just to hang out and talk about the latest news.
My library would be a two-story, colonial building with a sweeping staircase, like the one in the American Red Cross Building in Fairfield, N.J. I’d like the library to be along some fairly well-traveled thoroughfare. The property should have a wide front lawn so the Tea Partiers here in New Jersey would have a place to rally in peace.
The library would have programs for young historians of every age. We would highlight specific dates in history, like today: December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. We would have showings of popular historical movies like Tora! Tora! Tora! and we would recommend the books upon which the movies were based – in this case, Tora! Tora! Tora! (it basically means, Attack! Attack! Attack!; literally, the words mean torpedo attack) and The Broken Seal.
We would have paintings of famous Americans like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Alva Edison and the Wright Brothers, and feature their biographies during their birthday weeks. We would also highlight great American authors like Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Conservatives need a library to call their own, a place where they can meet and exchange ideas in peace without calling into question partisanship and political correctness. I’ve been busy typing up my own list, Santa. It’s a sort of political naughty and nice list, with books on communism as well as capitalism, so students understand what’s at stake and what the enemies of freedom have in mind.
I have a small, personal library of my own. I just reached the limits of my expenses and my bookshelves. It’s quite a tall order of reading, but I’m going to do my best. One of the last books to arrive, Santa, was Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s China Will Rise Again. The book has long been out of print, as has been her husband’s. This book was published in 1941. Here’s what she wrote on page 13
“How can we, the so-called intellectuals, contribute to the great task of preparing our people to give their full assistance to the work of national resistance [to communism] and rehabilitation?
“No matter how efficient and honest our government officials may be in the performance of their duties, we cannot build up a strong, virile China if our people themselves continue to remain without understanding of, and cold to, the ideals of freedom?”
My parents urged me to read Chiang Kai-shek’s and Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s work at some point in my life. I never dreamt how difficult it would be to find the books. I imagine my local and college libraries have them. But when I saw that the books were out of print, I suspected that these were volumes that needed to be purchased, safe-guarded and cherished. Just a perusal of China Will Rise Again confirmed my suspicions and vouchsafed the expense of purchasing it. The book by Chiang Kai-shek was actually a reproduction of an old book.
Kindle and Nook are fine, Santa. They’re fun, even. But the only real safeguard of our history and our posterity is the library. We should support our public libraries all we can. We must prepare for the eventuality, however, that they could also be stripped of their treasures and their funds in the wink of an eye.
My condo is so small, I don’t even have a vent shaft you could stuff a Christmas ornament down, Santa, much less a library about the size of the White House. Many pundits are saying that America is past the point of no-return. Still, like little Susan Walker (whose mother was a Progressive) in Miracle on 34th Street, I’ll go on telling myself, “I believe. I believe. I believe. I believe.”
My library wouldn’t just be any library. My library would not only have ample shelves of books, plus music, audio and video recordings, microfiche files of the newspapers of records for historians to research and computers for Internet access, but a small auditorium as well, for speakers to address patriotic Americans concerned about their country.
There would also be meeting rooms of various sizes for groups to plan strategies for waking America up. I’d also set up a comfortable lounge for more informal gatherings of Tea Partiers just to hang out and talk about the latest news.
My library would be a two-story, colonial building with a sweeping staircase, like the one in the American Red Cross Building in Fairfield, N.J. I’d like the library to be along some fairly well-traveled thoroughfare. The property should have a wide front lawn so the Tea Partiers here in New Jersey would have a place to rally in peace.
The library would have programs for young historians of every age. We would highlight specific dates in history, like today: December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. We would have showings of popular historical movies like Tora! Tora! Tora! and we would recommend the books upon which the movies were based – in this case, Tora! Tora! Tora! (it basically means, Attack! Attack! Attack!; literally, the words mean torpedo attack) and The Broken Seal.
We would have paintings of famous Americans like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Alva Edison and the Wright Brothers, and feature their biographies during their birthday weeks. We would also highlight great American authors like Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Conservatives need a library to call their own, a place where they can meet and exchange ideas in peace without calling into question partisanship and political correctness. I’ve been busy typing up my own list, Santa. It’s a sort of political naughty and nice list, with books on communism as well as capitalism, so students understand what’s at stake and what the enemies of freedom have in mind.
I have a small, personal library of my own. I just reached the limits of my expenses and my bookshelves. It’s quite a tall order of reading, but I’m going to do my best. One of the last books to arrive, Santa, was Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s China Will Rise Again. The book has long been out of print, as has been her husband’s. This book was published in 1941. Here’s what she wrote on page 13
“How can we, the so-called intellectuals, contribute to the great task of preparing our people to give their full assistance to the work of national resistance [to communism] and rehabilitation?
“No matter how efficient and honest our government officials may be in the performance of their duties, we cannot build up a strong, virile China if our people themselves continue to remain without understanding of, and cold to, the ideals of freedom?”
My parents urged me to read Chiang Kai-shek’s and Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s work at some point in my life. I never dreamt how difficult it would be to find the books. I imagine my local and college libraries have them. But when I saw that the books were out of print, I suspected that these were volumes that needed to be purchased, safe-guarded and cherished. Just a perusal of China Will Rise Again confirmed my suspicions and vouchsafed the expense of purchasing it. The book by Chiang Kai-shek was actually a reproduction of an old book.
Kindle and Nook are fine, Santa. They’re fun, even. But the only real safeguard of our history and our posterity is the library. We should support our public libraries all we can. We must prepare for the eventuality, however, that they could also be stripped of their treasures and their funds in the wink of an eye.
My condo is so small, I don’t even have a vent shaft you could stuff a Christmas ornament down, Santa, much less a library about the size of the White House. Many pundits are saying that America is past the point of no-return. Still, like little Susan Walker (whose mother was a Progressive) in Miracle on 34th Street, I’ll go on telling myself, “I believe. I believe. I believe. I believe.”
posted by Belle | 7:58 PM
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