Cock-a-doodle-doo

Tony Blankley: "On June 25, the following resolution was tabled in the House:

"'That this House, while paying tribute to the heroism and endurance of the Armed Forces, in circumstances of exceptional difficulty, has no confidence in the central direction of the war.'

"That would be June 25, 1942. The House would be the House of Commons in London, England. And the government in which no confidence was expressed was that of Winston Churchill."

It is sheer stupidity to let the fox guard the henhouse. It is just as great a folly to let the chickens guard the henhouse. Foxes, you see, are not the only danger to hens. Chickens are a danger to themselves.

Three years of unrelenting defeat. The Japanese Navy and the German army could not be stopped. But during all that time, Churchill "had been busy firing or re-assigning the generals who were not bringing victories.... Finally he found a general who could win -- Bernard Law Montgomery."

For quite some time the foxes seemed to run free in the barnyard. The hounds had followed a false scent. But their baying is near now, and the foxes are uneasy. The chickens, cooped up as they are, scratching after worms, are not even aware that the foxes are there. As for the hounds, chickens fear hounds more than foxes.

"Of course, there are vast differences between WWII and [now]. ...For one thing, in 1942, the British Parliamentarians were not proposing bringing the British troops home and surrendering to Hitler and the Japanese. They merely thought another leader ... might better lead Britain to victory."

The rooftop chickens busy themselves with clucking. They seem to be worried that the sky is falling. Below them in the fields the hounds are routing the foxes, but the ceiling biddies shake their feathers and the capons threaten the sky with their mighty crowing.

The old-time Brits did understand "that for England, it was victory or death -- while for many of the Washington defeatists in this dismal summer of '07 they are under the delusion that America in all its might and glory can simply surrender to al Qaeda without potentially mortal consequences."

Our chickens do not believe in foxes. If there are foxes, our chickens believe they are good foxes. They believe that chickens do more harm than foxes do. They despise the hunting dog as stupid and unclean, and they hate the eagle for his wings. Even when the fox came and snapped off one of their heads, the chickens thought that because the body still ran about the yard, no real harm had come. A chicken, after all, doesn't need a brain.

A fable, of course -- rather heavy-handed and obvious, but there it is. The moral of the story is that we should not let chickens run the farm. They are by nature stupid and cowardly.

It took Lincoln three years to find his Grant. Isn't there a lesson somewhere in this? Isn't there a moral?


J