WHEN THE MODERN WORLD BEGAN.

On today’s date in 1558, Mary I of England died, and her half-sister the Princess Elizabeth succeeded her as Queen. Elizabeth would reign almost 45 years and change the world. Americans should think of her as our Founding Mother; although Sir Walter Raleigh’s attempt at a colony failed, from her reign on the English planned the establishment of major settlements in what is now the United States. She patronized Shakespeare and presided over what is still the most glorious era in the history of English literature. She did her best to promote some kind of religious tolerance in an age of bigotry and religious war, and it is to her that we owe the survival of the beautiful liturgical music of the Church of England. . . . If she hadn’t been around, or been as clever or as forward thinking a ruler as she turned out to be, the world would be a much uglier place. As the daughter of an executed traitor (Anne Boylen, for in those days adultery against the king counted as treason), and a focal point for opponents of Mary’s rule, Elizabeth led an often terrifying life. She seems to have been sexually approached by one of her adult guardians when she was still a girl; she was sometimes heir to the throne, sometimes under suspicion of treason and once confined in the Tower itself; yet out of this life of insecurity and fear she somehow managed to find the strength of character to give her subjects a stable government under which Parliament began to recover the liberties lost under her tyrannical father. Her life wasn’t easy, and not all of her deeds were good, but on the whole she did her job well in the place where God placed her, and that is about as much as any of us can hope to do.

And better than many manage.

LIFE INSIDE THE “URBAN COCOON.”

AT AMAZON, Countdown To Black Friday Lightning Deals. New ones appearing all the time — check frequently!

ANN ALTHOUSE: More sexism displayed in efforts to defend Susan Rice, this time from Wisconsin member of Congress Gwen Moore.

Women serving in positions of power are subject to the same criticisms as men, and efforts to defend them that are premised on the idea that women deserve special protection, solicitude, or respect or that deploy metaphors from the realm of domestic violence are perversely implying that women do not belong in power. It is absolutely disgusting to defend Susan Rice this way. If we were required to moderate our criticism of women in power, we would need to oppose having women in power in order to preserve our freedom as American citizens.

The suggestion — even implicit — that there is a requirement like this is offensive and retrograde.

Indeed. Who knew that the 21st Century legacy of 20th Century feminism would be a bunch of fainting pearl-clutchers defined by their lady parts?

CHANGE: Ranchers, farmers brace for ‘death tax’ impact.

FLIGHT CAPITAL: “Foreign money is flowing heavily into US real estate markets. Now some think that foreign money is going to prop up the entire market but this is simply not the case. The money flowing in from abroad is going specifically into targeted markets. This isn’t necessarily a US trend only. Canada is experiencing a massive housing bubble from money flowing in from China in particular. Here in Southern California many cities are seeing solid money flowing in from Asian countries. You have this occurring while big fund domestic investors are buying up low priced real estate cross the country as investments. What occurs then is the crowding out of your typical home buyer. . . . I’m always wary about home prices rising so fast while incomes remain stagnant. This is a hot money scenario.”

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off on Power Tools.

DANA MILBANK: “Obama’s over-the-top defense of Rice was surprising, particularly in contrast to the president’s relative indifference in accepting the resignation of CIA chief David Petraeus, one of the most capable public servants. And it was disappointing, because McCain, even if wrong on the particulars, is right about Rice. She is ill-equipped to be the nation’s top diplomat for reasons that have little to do with Libya.”

WELL, REMEMBER, THEY DON’T HAVE EMAIL IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY: Taliban accidentally CCs everybody on its mailing list.

WELL, THEN, IT’S SETTLED: Nate Silver: Democrats Unlikely To Regain House in 2014.

AS YOU DO YOUR CHRISTMAS AND HANUKKAH SHOPPING, remember that you can get a one-month free trial of Amazon Prime. But I warn you, once you try it, you’re very likely to keep it.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Ellen DeGeneres Has A Conversation With Rihanna’s Vagina.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Love Me, Don’t Love My Dog. “No sane man is going to put up with a ‘mature’ woman who refuses to train her dog on the grounds that she shouldn’t have to ‘compromise’. No man with an ounce of sense is going to want to be tethered to a woman who thinks that her tiny dog is a source of protection.”

FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE: Belly Button Biodiversity. No, it’s not about innies vs. outies. “BBB grew the bacteria from hundreds of swab samples and found that most people’s belly button ecosystems are pretty unique.”

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Wax-filled nanotech yarn behaves like powerful, super-strong muscle. “New artificial muscles made from nanotech yarns and infused with paraffin wax can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 times more mechanical power during contraction than the same size natural muscle, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and their international team from Australia, China, South Korea, Canada and Brazil.”

MORE ON THE CENSORSHIP SCANDAL AT FORDHAM: “Father McShane isn’t available for an interview, I’m afraid.”

Plus, Fordham’s speech hypocrisy.

STANFORD LAW STARTS a Religious Liberty Clinic.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Hillary and Libya: The policy failure goes beyond the murder of her deputies in Benghazi. “Mr. Petraeus wasn’t responsible for lax consulate security or the U.S. policy that led to the Libya debacle. That’s Mrs. Clinton’s bailiwick. Last month in interviews from deepest Peru, the Secretary of State said ‘I take responsibility’ for Benghazi. Except she hasn’t. She was conveniently out of the country for this week’s House Foreign Affairs hearing, and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry refuses to hold any hearings on Benghazi. His loyalty may get him a cabinet job, while Carl Levin’s Armed Services Committee also pretends nothing much happened in Libya.”

Hmm. Is Carl Levin vulnerable in 2014?

PAUL RAHE: “Barack Obama is not likely to have a pleasant second term. Few second-term Presidents do, and he is especially ill-placed.”

JOURNALISM: Fraud: CNN Uses Video Footage Of Faked Palestinian ‘Injuries.’

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Complicated Geopolitics of Decline: Germany & Russia Edition. “Few things are more obvious in geopolitics than the decline of Europe compared to other parts of the world. It’s one of the oldest and most marked trends in world affairs. In 1914 European powers ruled most of the world, and the past hundred years have seen a steady decline: the collapse of the great empires, the eclipse of Europe by the superpowers during the Cold War, and, since the Cold War, the rise of Asia and lately the euro crisis have all marked new stages in Europe’s decline. Within that broader story, however, is a story of German success relative to other European countries, if not necessarily to the world as a whole.”

KATRINA ON THE ATLANTIC: Post-Sandy, Long Island residents buried under uncollected trash. “Plagued by filth, health concerns are mounting on Long Island’s South Shore. Streets in one local community are still buried in more than two weeks of trash build-up and another is pumping out rivers of raw sewage.”

WHEN THE NERDS GO MARCHING IN: How a dream team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google built the software that drove Barak Obama’s reelection. Interesting story. I wonder if this will hurt their brands among people on the right?

INTERVIEWED IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Greg Lukianoff weighs in on the Fordham censorship scandal. “This was the longest, strongest condemnation of a speaker that I’ve ever seen in which a university president also tried to claim that he was defending freedom of speech.”

I recommend his new book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship And The End Of American Debate.