Three Assists for NRO

At least three pieces from National Review Online in the past few days point to a clarifying hope and the need for steadfastness as we seek to quiet shrillness and resurrect debate.

Here's the mushroom harvest:

1. As part of his SOTU analysis, Gleaves Whitney gives us an overhead view of why the political fruits of cultural change require some patience before we do history:

Total victory is often denied to those who set historic change in motion. Even Moses did not reach the Promised Land. Likewise, it was not on Abraham Lincoln's watch that a war-torn nation got stitched back together, but on Andrew Johnson's; not on Franklin Roosevelt's watch that the Axis powers surrendered, but on Harry Truman's; not on John F. Kennedy's watch that civil-rights bills were passed, but on Lyndon Johnson's; not on Ronald Reagan's watch that the Berlin Wall came down, but on George H. W. Bush's. Again and again, history counsels humility and patience.

2. TM Lutas describes a pragmatic consequence of Poland's (relatively) recent cultural and economic inclusion from Jay Nordlinger.

3. Oswald Sobrino puts his finger on the reason why the self-appointed hand-wringers of the world will not carry the cultural day from Victor Davis Hanson.