At last: some war-mongering that I can get on board with. A battle-cry that libertarians, anarchists, feminists, and all who value decent and rational conversation can join in, full-throatedly.

Carthago Delenda Est, in English, means, Carthage must be destroyed.

Have a nice day. Peace be with you. Good luck. Best wishes. Good bye. God bless. Good night. Thank you very much. All might be ways to end a talk. But in the days of the Roman Republic, Cato the Elder is said to have uttered that phrase of curse to Carthage, or one similar to it, at the close of every one of his speeches on the floor of the Senate, regardless of the subject matter.

That phrase became the rallying cry of the Punic Wars (like, Remember the Alamo), and Carthage was, utterly destroyed. As Wikipedia reports, Carthage was, ploughed (sic) over and surviving inhabitants sold into slavery.

Well, I’m going to strive to follow in Cato’s footsteps.

I’m going to try, as often as I remember, until it’s a habit, to close all my blog posts with the phrase, Hardball delenda est.

But my ambitions are more modest than genocide. I merely want to see MSNBC’s Hardball booted off the air, with no hope of anything like it in replacement, and Chris Matthews himself standing behind a counter somewhere, wearing a paper hat, and asking those who still line up to see him, Would you like fries with that?

Hardball delenda est.

—Jim Babka @ Positive Liberty (2008-01-19): Delenda Est

What is it that unnerves me so much about the media’s duly-appointed Presumptive Republican Front-Runner, Senator John McCain? Is it the rampaging militarism? The austerely fascist aesthetic of his campaign materials? The newsmedia’s idiotic enthusiasm for any politician who can, in some sense or another, be packaged as a straight talker, without consideration for what the content of the straight talk might be? (So he says, with some conviction, that we ought to bomb the world. Great.)

Well, yes, yes, and yes, but there’s something that runs deeper, too. Just something about him, a certain I-know-not-what about the way he holds himself, and the way he talks, and the way he rallies his troops, that I can’t quite put words to. Where have I seen this before? Oh, wait…

Yeah, that’s it.