I.

For my peace of mind, it is good that Ronald Reagan began to become senile shortly after he left the White House. I think it may have prevented him from going the way so many old conservative heroes go.

He had already begun the routine process of trading in his conservative credentials for praise in the press. He began by endorsing the Brady Bill.

It would have gotten worse, much worse. Each time there was a confrontation between the Clinton White House and conservatives, Ford and Bush were out there holding a joint press conference to nobly support our beleaguered Chief Executive. I'm afraid Reagan would have been out there with them.

Bush and Ford are little men, and nobody expected them to do anything but stab conservatives in the back. After all, they had been doing that for decades. But with Reagan, it would have hurt.

II.

There is lot of discussion about whether the Serbians have committed "war crimes."

As a supporter of the Confederacy, I can comment on that. We had an officer hanged for "war crimes."

Major Henry Wirz, Swiss-born Confederate commander at Andersonville prisoner of war camp, was tried by the Yankees after the War. Many of his witnesses were not allowed to testify. He was hanged.

Available statistics indicate that, despite the fact that the Yankees had PLENTY of food and clothing, and despite all the talk about Andersonville, as many of us died in their prisons as Yankees did in ours. AND they were holding LESS of OUR prisoners than we were of theirs!

There are many complicated aspects to the whole concept of "war crimes." But there is one thing on which all precedents are absolutely agreed. There is actually only ONE thing that every "war criminal" has in common:

Losing.

No one on the WINNING side has ever, in all history, been ACCUSED of a war crime, much less CONVICTED of one. The Serbs will have committed war crimes if they lose the war. If they win the war, what they did will be like Sherman's March, it will be like the starvation and freezing of Confederate prisoners in Yankee prisons, it will be like what Stalin's troops did in
World War II, or like the allied bombing raids on Dresden -- just "regrettable necessities of war."

"Just following orders" and "the regrettable necessities of war" only become war crimes if you LOSE.

III.

Shades of Vietnam!

Lord, it is just like a news flashback. The State Department spokesman for the Clinton Administration on the Serbian war is a carbon copy of the Harvard intellectuals who were spokesmen for Kennedy as we got into the Vietnam conflict. He has the pencil neck. He has the BOWTIE!

David Halberstam wrote about these people -- whom he knew personally -- in his book "The Best and the Brightest." I used to watch them parade in front of the TV cameras in the early '60s.

This guy is pure déjà vu!

No one remembers that the Harvard types got us into the Vietnam War. No respectable conservative has a memory. That's what makes him respectable.

IV.

Speaking of our national habit of forgetting, I remember that it was the Bush Administration that first got us into this Yugoslavian mess. After Tito died, his Serbian successors ruled the country. Then the Communist regime was overthrown.  During the Bush Administration, Croatians and others began seceding. The Bush Administration back then had the usual attitudes about secession.

Nobody REMEMBERS this, of course, but just before the USSR began to split up, the whole idea of the USSR splitting up was considered laughable. Cartoon after cartoon back then showed the people talking about national autonomy in places like the Ukraine in CONFEDERATE uniforms, to show how silly the idea was.

Funny, you never see any repeat of those cartoons now. That piece of media wisdom went right down the Memory Hole.

My understanding is that the Bush Administration showed the same sort of wisdom when Croatia and Macedonia began to talk about secession. I understand that State Department reps of Bush and James Baker, being good, solid, old-fashioned carpetbagger Republicans, said that the United States realized that secession had to be dealt with sternly. America had had to take strong measures to preserves ITS union. The Serbians were happy to hear about that attitude. Their secessionists WERE dealt with sternly. But since then, all talk of this Bush Administration wisdom has disappeared down that same Memory Hole.

I seem to have another memory which everyone else does not share. Back when Saddam invaded Kuwait, it was very reliably stated that a representative of the Bush Administration in Iraq had indicated to Saddam that the United States would not look too unkindly on such an invasion. How could such an indication have been given?

Well, I remember something else: right after Iraq took over Kuwait and the US threats began, Saddam was asked whether he planned to leave Kuwait. He answered that he did not plan to withdraw from ANY of the PROVINCES OF IRAQ. Kuwait was historically part of Iraq, he said, and he planned to preserve THE UNION OF HIS COUNTRY.

I wonder if that "unionist" mentality that was conventional wisdom in the press, and especially in the fanatically Lincolnesque Bush Administration, may not be the basis of many of our present-day problems?

According to American history, you can do anything you want to anybody if your aim is to preserve your union. It would not have taken much for a Saddam or a Milosevic to take a message like that from any kind of hint.

One more memory which only I seem to have: when Bush began to react to the brutal Serbian suppression of secession in Yugoslavia, black leaders began to attack him for being an evil racist.

Minority groups began to say that Bush was worried about human rights in WHITE Yugoslavia, but not in BLACK Somalia.

So Bush went into Somalia. That experiment in "nation building" ended up with the corpses of American soldiers being dragged through the streets while the locals CHEERED! The media, of course, have totally forgotten that it was Bush's exercise in total wimpishness in yielding to minority pressure to get into Somalia that caused that disaster. That might put his version of "appealing to minorities" into perspective! We couldn't have that, could we?

V.
While we are reexamining all the fashionable reasons given for the mess we are in right now, we should take a look at the cry of "ethnic cleansing." How does THEIR ethnic policy compare to OUR ethnic policy?

VI.

THE SARAJEVO EFFECT:

In 1914, the Austrian Grand Duke was assassinated at Sarajevo. Every European major Power was a part of an alliance, and as one declared war, all the rest were pulled into it. World War I was under way. Today, the respectable conservatives, like George Will and Senator McCain, are saying that this war doesn't make any sense, but we have to fight it all the way because we are part of NATO. Some things never change

For the first time since the Fugitive Slave Acts, the United States has given a name to Americans trying to escape, and is actively using force to prevent it.

This form of escape is called "white flight." When a few whites are allowed to escape from communities into which nonwhites are moving, the rest follow. A few whites escape, then other whites follow them. Finally even the whites who hate whites most, good leftists, join the exodus. So the new Fugitive Slave Policy goes into effect. Busing and "low cost" housing are used to enforce multiculturalism.

The community goes downhill. A few whites abandon their investment, and escape. The Fugitive White Policy begins again. This happens over and over.

Every professor who wants to keep his job assures us that multiracialism and multiculturalism are wildly successful and make people happy. All the media assure us that practically everybody is wild about multiculturalism and multiracialism. But, like the Communists, they demand that every single stray white person be chased down and jammed into a multiracial community.

Now, I wonder why that is? Liberals generally insist they are all for "devolution" - local independence - but only if it constitutes no threat to them. They cannot allow there to be a place on earth where whites are able to live in their own communities, because they know very well that most whites will want to go there.

Liberals are always quoting surveys where people tell them what they want to hear --- that multiracialism is wildly wonderful and popular with everybody. But, oddly enough, they will never allow any competition with it. Every last white person must be chased down.

One interesting historical note is that Republicans today take exactly the same position on Fugitive White Laws that they took on Fugitive Slave laws in 1860. The 1860 Republican platform makes interesting reading in this respect. It insists, over and over, that a republican Administration will enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts completely.

Today, Republicans leaders bust a gut insisting they will take the lead in chasing down every last white who tries to escape. If anybody tries to set up a private school because they don't want their kids in a ghetto environment, you can count on Republicans to push liberals out of the way, and lead the lynch mob out to get such parents.

Back in the late 1970's, my little group did free press conferences for antibusing marches, along with other grassroots conservative movements. Republicans said the reason there was busing was because the Democratic Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee tied all antibusing initiatives up in his Committee.

But Republicans took over the House in 1995, and the judges still send any kids they want into a ghetto environment. Every one of those judges, of course, sends his own grandchildren to private schools. But the Republicans are not going to change any of that.

After all, the only person who would change any of that will be called anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews. What mere child could be worth THAT?

So Republicans take the lead in enforcing the Fugitive White Acts. As the Republican chairman just said, there is no room in the Republican Party for anything liberals choose to call "racism."

In other words, nothing basic has changed since 1860.