King's Arms Tavern

The pewter salt cellar feels cool and slightly gritty to the touch; it sounds a soft clap when replaced on the wooden table. The reproduction Chippendale and Queen Anne furniture, and the maps and other prints on the painted wooden walls of the King's Arms Tavern's tightly packed eleven rooms, represent styles favored by the well-off planters and other ladies and gentlemen in the very stratified society of colonial Virginia.

The King's Arms opened in 1772, although during the War for Independence its name was changed to Mrs. Vobe's, after its owner, and later to Eagle Tavern. Today it operates under its original name, and offers a comforting continuity in Colonial Williamsburg, where other eating establishments change format frustratingly frequently.

Taverns like the King's Arms, as well as coffeehouses, figured prominently in the birth of the American republic. Mrs. Vobe's provided food, drink, and lodging to American soldiers. George Washington sometimes dined there when visiting Virginia's capital.

They also provided venues for men catch up on the news and debate events of the day. In the 21st century, sporadically pleasant servers in period costume bring baskets of bread lined with reproductions of the Virginia Gazette.



The Tavern offers 18th-century menu choices including peanut soupe, fried chicken, and game pye, which features venison, rabbit, and duck. They have a daily pasta dish, and call it macaroni. The meaty fare smells hearty, and it is--soft, salty comfort food whose flavor comes from its main ingredients rather than blends of spices and herbs.

Sadly, like most everything at Colonial Williamsburg, it is overpriced. Baron von Steuben once ran up a bill of 300 Spanish dollars for food, drink, and lodging there, and it's not hard to imagine how. A couple today could easily spend above $100 in today's American currency on a single soupe-to-syllabub dinner with drinks, and, frankly, the food isn't worth it. But like Mrs. Vobe's clientele, today's visitors are paying for the atmosphere and the location near the Capitol. And travellers who truly want to include a tavern experience in their Williamsburg visit may well find it worth planning for a meal at the King's Arms Tavern.

Thank You, Sen. Webb!

Never thought you'd see those words on this blog, huh? Well, neither did I.

But yesterday, Senator Jim Webb, who rarely does anything of which I approve, stood up to President Barack Obama and the national-security nincompoops in his Administration who have decided to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his band of thugs as criminals in New York. "Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants," said Sen. Webb, a former Marine, former Secretary of the Navy, and (like me) former Republican. "They do not belong in our country[;] they do not belong in our courts, and they do not belong in our prisons."

After the disgusting display of last fall, it's refreshing to see a prominent Virginia politician standing up to a president of his own party on a matter of grave importance to America's well-being. From time to time, I ask you to call Sen. Webb and ask him to vote a certain way on some legislation. Now I'm asking you to do something a little different. If you are a Virginian outraged by the decision to treat terrorists like regular criminals, please call Sen. Webb's office at (202) 224-4024 and thank him for standing up to President Obama.

Bush: "I went against my free-market instincts."

Former President George Bush XLIII delivered a speech yesterday in which he warned against the kind of government meddling that he perpetrated last fall.

This 55-second clip reveals a wealth of mushy thinking, and shows that the former President still doesn't grasp how deeply he harmed this country:

"I believe the role of government is ... to create the conditions that allow entrepreneurs and innovators to thrive."

No, it isn't, and it's arrogant and misguided for politicians to presume that government can "create the conditions" that foster prosperity. Freedom fosters prosperity, and freedom is natural; it needs no government to create it. Limited government is needed to protect the rights of those entrepreneurs and innovators and others so that they can create wealth. When government robs Peter to pay Paul, in other words, when it robs small-business owners and middle-class families to bail out big corporations, it undermines the very freedom on which prosperity depends.

"I went against my free-market instincts and approved a temporary [??] government intervention to unfreeze the credit markets so that we could avoid a major global depression."

Economic freedom is not a matter of "instinct". It is a matter of principle and common sense, backed by the lessons of history. If the former president had a stronger foundation in the philosophy of freedom, he could have understood at the time how the bail-out Band-Aid was really a poison pill.

"As the world recovers, we're gonna face a temptation to replace the risk-and-reward model of fr-- the private sector with the blunt instruments of government spending and control."

We've been failing in the face of that temptation for the last century, and we're paying a high price for it. Former President Bush XLIII was simply continuing the 20th-century trend of arrogant politicians presuming that they can somehow sponsor prosperity.

"History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement but too much."

And history will record President Bush XLIII as having greatly increased that threat.

It would be nice simply to say, well, gee, it's too bad that he still doesn't get it. But he's far from being alone. Too many of the politicians still in power, and too many of the voters who keep them there, have the same mushy understanding of the role and capabilities of government. Our country desperately needs a renaissance of the philosophy of freedom, a reawakened, well-considered understanding that freedom nurtures prosperity, and that government will always be a threat to both.

Thursday on WTJS

My SamSphere friend Ken Marrero is slotted to sub for Mike Slater on WTJS in Jackson, Tennessee, on Thursday, and he's scheduled me to chat about Slaying Leviathan at 6:30 am. I hope you'll tune in!

Happy Birthday, U.S. Marine Corps!

Thanks for standing on the wall!