Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader would remind you all that on this day in 1965, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill died at his home in London, England.

Churchill has always been a personal hero of your Maximum Leader’s. Your Maximum Leader was quite disappointed with Time Magazine when they didn’t select him as the “Man of the Century” for the 20th Century. (Okay, he had already been declared by Time Magazine the man of the half century in 1950… But still… BTW, does anyone care about Time Magazine anymore?) Sadly, your Maximum Leader is finding that many of the details of Churchill’s life that he used to be able to cite from memory are slipping from his memory. (As are so many other tidbits…) Your Maximum Leader has decided, as a result, to relearn what he’s been forgetting. He’ll pull some volumes out of his expansive Churchill Library and set himself to reading.

You all should, in the words of the monument set inside the main doors of Westminster Abbey, “Remember Winston Churchill.” Without Churchill there is no telling how much worse off the world would be today.

Carry on.

PS from your Maximum Leader: Mitt Romney is the only Republican presidential candidate who has pledged to return to the Oval Office the bust of Churchill returned to the British Ambassador by President Obama. Why can’t we get a debate moderator to ask the rest of the candidates their position on this esoteric (but important to your Maximum Leader) issue?

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader hopes to be updating a little more in the coming days and weeks. He laptop has arrived at the Villainschloss and he’s got it all formatted up right… So he may now start posting from places other than his old desktop. (This news may or may not - depending on your point of view - be an improvement over this spacing sitting idle most of the time.)

Your Maximum Leader wanted mark the date. Today is the 137th anniversary of the birth of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. In the pantheon of great men that your Maximum Leader keeps, Winston Churchill is the greatest. Your Maximum Leader should, one day, take a photo of his Churchill book collection. (He’s got lots o’ books by and about the great man.)

If you would like to learn more about Churchill, you should visit the Churchill Centre website.

Your Maximum Leader will have a scotch and toast the great man tonight at dinner and regale the family with tales of Winston. Your Maximum Leader suggests that you all do the same…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader should note that in addition to it being Winston Churchill’s birthday, it is also Saint Andrew’s Day. Thus we have a triple whammy of events. The anniversary of the birth of the Great Man himself. The national holiday of Scotland (the home of many of your Maximum Leader’s ancestors). And the religious celebration of Saint Andrew the Apostle.

So, if you need instruction on how to commemorate the day… You should go to church, drink scotch and be bitter and humourless.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader thought this was very funny.

Sadly, your Maximum Leader closed the tab containing the link to the blog where he first saw this video. Sadly, he cannot give appropriate linkage to the blog author. He apologizes for this…

Carry on.

NB: This is nearly a complete repost of the entry for October 21, 2009.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will be lifting his glass today to toast Admiral Lord Nelson and the hearty tars of the Royal Navy as he celebrates the 204th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

On this day in 1805, Lord Nelson led the fleet into combat against the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar. By the end of the day the Franco-Spanish force was destroyed or driven to port. Any hope Napoleon had for invading Britain was dashed that day. The battle also resulted in about 100 years of complete naval supremacy by Britain over the seas of the world.

The late and very lamented hero of the hour:

Lord Nelson.

Nelson’s plan called for the fleet to be divided into two columns. The two columns would be sailed (under tremendous fire) into the Franco-Spanish line in a way that would bisect that line in two places.

Before the battle Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, flew the following signal:

England expects that every man will do his D - U - T - Y.

And over the course of the day, every British sailor did his duty.

During the course of the fighting Nelson was killed by a sniper.

Nelson’s body was preserved in rum and returned to a joyful nation who interred the hero in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Your Maximum Leader hopes that all you Anglophiles (and lovers of the fruits of the Anglo-Western tradition that we continue to enjoy in the US) will remember the great service done on behalf of civilization by Lord Nelson and the men of the Royal Navy over two hundred years ago.

Two years ago when this post first ran, there was some discussion in the comments as to whether Trafalgar was (as you Maximum Leader billed it) the greatest naval victory in the history of the world. Among the other contenders were: Salamis, Actium, Lepanto, Tsushima and Midway.

Your Maximum Leader will let you all decide which of these famous battles might be the greatest naval battle in the history of the world…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must be behind on reading some of his favorite blogs… He just read this great little post over at Athens & Jerusalem entitled Fantasy Football Edition.

Reading that post both filled your Maximum Leader with self-satisfaction and self-loathing. On the one hand, he recognized almost every name on the list and why they were listed in that position. But on the other hand, the two names he did not recognize made him feel stupid and uneducated.

Of course, Winston Churchill would likely recommend himself for all three cabinet positions for which he is recommended…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader didn’t post anything on September 11. He didn’t watch much of the saccharine and overly melancholy memorial services on television. He remembered our dead from that day and those who have died around the world in our fight against terrorists since that day.

Many others commented in meaningful ways on or about that anniversary. Many said things with which your Maximum Leader could agree. But deep down your Maximum Leader started to wonder when exactly our nation started to thrive on the melancholy?

Please do not mistake that question for callousness to the families of victims or servicemen and women. (Your Maximum Leader has a number of relatives on active duty who have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.) But it seems as though our media coverage of the event was seen through eyes that focus on the sadness, the loss, the pain. There seemed to be an air of helplessness and woe that pervaded everything broadcast. When did quiet respect and solemnity become equated to restrained mourning and lamentation?

Perhaps your Maximum Leader is having a hard time writing down his impressions of the anniversary. He perceived that the undercurrent of all the coverage was helplessness and even defeat. There didn’t seem to be anything uplifting about the coverage of the day as seen through the media.

Is this an outward sign of PC/secularism? Is it that without the ability to appeal to either religion or at least some sort of universal theism or morality that we can’t try to remember the dead in an edifying manner?

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know. But what he does know is that he has moved on from the melancholy remembrance of September 11, 2001. He has resolve that we should track down and destroy the expanded networks of enemies our nation has around the world. He is respectful of the dead and holds them in his heart. But he is not wallowing in pity, victimization or sadness.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader yells out “Rabbit” at you all. (Since it is the first of the month.)

Your Maximum Leader is a bachelor this week. His lovely wife and kids are at the beach, and he is alone in the Villainschloss. He will be consuming the finest meats and cheeses in all the land! He assures you since he went to Wegmans a few hours ago and purchased himself (modest) quantities of the finest victuals for himself…

Sadly, while unloading the meats and cheeses from the car, he hit his knee on a corner and fears it is swelling badly. He is beginning to hobble some. He’s got ice, but the pain is really something…

Speaking of pain…

Your Maximum Leader was introduced to a new drink (new to him at any rate) this weekend. It is a Painkiller. Ingredients: 1 part pineapple juice, 1 part orange juice, 1 measure coconut cream, 1 part rum. Mix with ice in cocktail shaker. Garnish with nutmeg. It is very very tasty. He has now made himself one (and served it in a tiki mug from the official supplier of tiki mugs for the MWO - Tiki Farm).

And while we are speaking of alcohol… A person found this blog due to a post from a few years back concerning alcohol and an old and dearly departed friend and mentor of your Maximum Leader, Professor Richard T. Couture. The post was about parties and Fish House Punch. NB to Linda: Your Maximum Leader will be sending you an email soon.

Your Maximum Leader was going to write more… But he is going to make himself another painkiller and slink off to bed.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must be channeling FLG today on the blog.

Readers of FLG’s blog will know that he (FLG that is) has a category labeled “Object Sex.” In the object sex department this little bit from the Huffington Post (via Jonah Goldberg): Hitler Gave Nazi Soldiers Blow-up Sex Dolls to Combat Syphillus. The money quote (ahem): “…the project was reportedly canned when soldiers refused to carry the dolls in fear of embarrassment if captured.”

This little tidbit comes from a book entitled “Mussolini’s Barber.”

Interesting.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader gets piles of enjoyment from reading FLG when his dander is up about Plato or Alexander.

Like this post for example.

Enjoy.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wishes all his Francophile readers (and any French readers he may have) a happy Bastille Day. May you day be filled with liberty, equality and brotherhood.

Of course, looking at his own blog, your Maximum Leader feels like something of a jack-hole for not wishing his own countrymen a happy 4th of July… He has no excuse. He was out celebrating himself and didn’t think about blogging. As atonement, your Maximum Leader will light off some leftover fireworks in honor of the taking of the Bastille. He’ll also swill some French wine too. He might even think about Mélissa Theuriau, Carla Bruni, Sophie Marceau, and a bevy of French women…

That will be punishment…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been away. He’d say he’s sorry about that, but it would be a lie. He’s taken a little vacation and then has been rather busy. So there it is.

By the way… Since it is the first of the month… Rabbit!

Since it is the first of July, Happy Canada Day to those of you in the great white north.

Your Maximum Leader might post some photos of his vacation here when he gets them all of his camera and phone…

And of course, we Americans will be celebrating the Glorious Fourth of July this weekend. It remains your Maximum Leader’s favorite holiday of all. This year he’ll be celebrating with some fireworks he bought while on vacation in Tennessee. And let us say that some of these fireworks are “difficult” to “obtain” in the great Commonwealth of Virginia. We’re watering the area around the launch site as a precaution starting today…

A friend of your Maximum Leader send him a little message containing some interesting tidbits. Your Maximum Leader can’t vouch for the accuracy of any of these items, but if they are true - or nearly true - they are fun.

There’s a 1-in-6 chance the beef on your backyard grill came from Texas. (The Lone Star State is the leader in the production of cattle and calves)
More than 155 million hot dogs will be consumed
68.3 million cases of beer will be sold this weekend (4th of July is the top holiday for beer sales)
There’s a 1-in-3 chance that your side dish of baked beans originated from North Dakota.
$111 million will be spent on popsicles alone this weekend

Your Maximum Leader is willing to accept the truthfulness of all of those except the popsicles one. That seems like an astronomical number for popscles. But it may well be true.

Your Maximum Leader may post more over the weekend if he gets a chance…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader owns a number of books that used to reside in various public schools throughout the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These books were either purchased by your Maximum Leader (or his friend Smallholder) when the books were going to be purged from the school library. Although some of the titles he’s purchased have turned out to be lamentable works of scholarship; all in all your Maximum Leader (and Smallholder) have felt that it was better that the books live out our natural lives on a shelf in a home rather than being reduced to pulp or landfill fodder.

When these purged books wind up on his shelf your Maximum Leader has felt he’s done a good thing. High school libraries are not places of scholarship. Libaries in high schools are for reference. The old and out dated should be moved to make room for the new. It seems to be in the natural order of things.

But your Maximum Leader feels very differently about college/university libraries. Collectively, colleges and universities libraries are the storehouse of the accumulated knowlege of humanity. Every college, big and small, plays a role in preserving the history of humanity. The good. The bad. The lamentable. The very poorly written. The classic. The obscure. All works have a place in the libraries of the world.

Your Maximum Leader loves the very smell of “the stacks” of a college library. The older the better. (NB: The book preservationist would likely say that the smell your Maximum Leader likes is decaying paper. Sad thought…)

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t think that a book that finds its way into a college library should ever be purged.

Sadly… That is not the case as Professor Mondo details in a recent post. Here is the hardest part to read:

Finally, there was the sense that I was engaged in a kind of intellectual Black Mass, inverting the sacrament that I was meant to perform. I love my students, but I also love the worlds of literature and ideas; indeed, I show my love to my students by offering them these other things I value so much. These books, these ideas in them, matter so much to me that I’m devoting my life to the business of letting those stories and ideas survive another generation. But instead, I spent today making it that much less likely that a Mondovillian might encounter someone’s story or idea, even through a confluence of idleness and serendipity. Education is meant to help the mind grow, and I see libraries as symbols of the growth that has gone before us. Instead, I spent today making our symbol shrink. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the opposite of what I do.

Go thee and read the good Prof’s piece.

After reading the piece it makes me want to call my alma mater and make a donation and specify it goes to the library fund…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader notes that today, April 12, is the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War (or the War of the Insurrection as the official US Army history of the conflict calls it).

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t stop to think of the Civil War often. He finds himself contemplating many other historical conflicts. He doesn’t think too much of the Civil War because the outcome never seemed to be in doubt. Perhaps your Maximum Leader is very blase about the conflict; but the only interesting point (militarially speaking - to your Maximum Leader) is how the Confederacy lasted as long as it did. For many years your Maximum Leader was willing to chalk up the Confederacy’s durability to the outstanding leadership of southern generals. Then he abruptly changed his mind and was willing to go with the ineptitude of Union generals. Now he feels that it was a combination of the two, combined with stubborness. As is often the case with democracies throughout history a total victory must be won before the fighting can end.

No matter why it lasted as long as it did, the outcome was never really in doubt. And so, your Maximum Leader doesn’t muse over the war.

Your Maximum Leader does mull over the issue of slavery and how slavery (and the Civil War broadly speaking) formed (and deformed) our republic - even to the present day. Your Maximum Leader is sure that the Civil War will come up again and again over the next four years; and he’ll comment as the moment is upon him.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Mubarak has resigned in Egypt. Your Maximum Leader is tenatively pleased. Mubarak is gone and now his Vice-President and the military seem to be running the show. All this has been done with minimal bloodshed and violence.

These are all positive signs.

Furthermore, so far the overthrow of Mubarak seems to have been accomplished by secular forces. This is another positive sign.

But forgive your Maximum Leader for not being too over elated…

You see, this is the first of many steps and one never knows how these things will turn out. Sure Mubarak is out, but his people and supporters are firmly ensconced in power. They can send the crowds home and get everything back to “normal.” Then how will they implement promised reforms? Will they be swift? Will reform be dragged out? How about those elections? Sure we’ve had mostly secular forces at work right now, but when you start to have every Egyptian voting for a new government will that government be secular?

To draw an imperfect analogy, after the Tsar abdicated and the Provisional Government was set up in Russia during 1917 didn’t people think the worst was past and the revolution set on a good and reformist path?

Then there was 1918…

Just sayin’…

In the meanwhile, may the people of Egypt celebrate this day. They have accomplished that which many thought couldn’t be done (or couldn’t be accomplished without great sacrifice of blood). They have every right to be proud of what has happened.

Carry on.