this blog:
http://www.gormogons.com/2009_11_01_archive.html
the guy is good....
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Prattle
Robert Wright, in the New York Times, writes that conservative writers like Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg are right that the liberal media are trying to cover up Hasan’s crimes by dismissing them as a mere medical issue.
An important admonition, and the only one that explains the lunatic concepts of pre-traumatic stress disorder or second hand flashbacks.
But then Wright concludes that the whole thing is conservativism’s fault, because the right’s pro-military approach to fighting terrorism is what brought us to this.
Re-writing history that would be obviously corrected by the simple act of Googling, Wright says “The American right and left reacted to 9/11 differently. Their respective responses were, to oversimplify a bit: ‘kill the terrorists’ and ‘kill the terrorism meme.’” Perhaps that was the oversimplified bit among his circle of friends, but the Czar recollects that President Bush had a record-high approval rating of 90+ percent when he advocating killing the terrorists...and not their “meme” (a word used by people who are trying to sound hip, and really do not understand what a meme is).
He more than oversimplifies, if his Latin is good enough to translate reductio ad absurdum.
Wright is obviously a liberal—defined not by his position on terrorism, but on his fantasy notion that Hasan must have been created by someone or something. A monster like Hasan cannot come from nowhere: he must be a reaction to something. For liberals, there must be meaning, closure, and feeling.
A monster like Hasan cannot come from nowhere: he must be a reaction to something. For liberals, there must be meaning, closure, and feeling.Wright cannot conceive that a thing like Hasan can simply occur of his own accord and free will; Hasan, in fact, could just happen. A man could wake up one morning and decide that he wanted to follow a dangerous, violent path, and that he could easily select a soft target to carry out a murderous rampage. This cannot be for a liberal: he must have been influenced by the seductive talk of war, of guns, or violence. There must be a root cause for senselessness, and perhaps we could find it if we just think hard enough. No matter how stretched the theory is, the theory is better than the alternative.
Another revealing pot shot: “Contrary to right-wing stereotype, Islam isn’t an intrinsically belligerent religion.” And a delicious left-wing stereotype that right wingers would have such a stereotype. As they might say in Wikipedia...cite? Wright adds that the more right-wingers view Islam as violent, the more Islam turns violent. This backwards post hoc ergo propter hoc fair farting shows how unstable and weak Wright’s position is.
Wright concludes that bin Laden would have viewed September 11th as a minor victory: maybe bin Laden feels the real victory is in drawing Americans into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Why not just ask him what his feelings are. Bin Laden made it quite clear in a series of video and audio recordings: he wants all non-muslims and non-radical followers dead, and he has empowered armies of people to do it...people that our military is now killing before they kill us. Wright can fantasize all he wants about treating terrorists peacefully—which is ultimately what he is unwittingly arguing for—but he is ultimately begging to be spared when it is his turn.
And it makes no difference if the killer is a Muslim or not. He could simply be committing an act of war under orders of someone else, which is how Hasan is being assessed, how he was taken down, and how we will continue to face future threats. Wright needs to mature quite a bit in his assessment of what makes people do violent tasks.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
A German's View of Islam
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'
We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is "the religion of peace" and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.
The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts--the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is "the religion of peace" and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.
The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts--the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
"Global Warming" scam exposed at last
Controversy has exploded onto the Internet after a major global-warming advocacy center in the UK had its e-mail system hacked and the data published on line. The director of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit confirmed that the e-mails are genuine — and Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun report that those e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming (via Watt’s Up With That):
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/20/do-hacked-e-mails-show-global-warming-fraud/
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/20/do-hacked-e-mails-show-global-warming-fraud/
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
media ignored this one
Had it been a Christian attacking a Muslim, it would have led the network news and been the headline in the NY Slimes.
Like, "Anti-Muslim Backlash"
Man arrested for 'anti-Christian mall disturbance' to appear in court again Thursday
Deputy DA keeps bail at $27K, orders Hasim to stay away from Stoneridge Shopping Center
by Emily West
Pleasanton Weekly Staff
Deputy District Attorney Ronda Theisen requested the bail for Abdul Walid Hamid stay at $27,000 as the 22-year-old man was arraigned Tuesday morning on charges of battery, grand theft, exhibition of a deadly weapon and a possible hate crime.
Police arrested 22-year-old Hamid of Hayward Wednesday evening after he reportedly robbed a man and scared others at Stoneridge Shopping Center.
Calling it a bizarre case, Theisen also asked that Hamid, who is still in custody, be ordered to stay out of the mall if he does post bail and leaves jail.
Through an interpreter, Hamid requested a public defender and was scheduled to appear in court at 9 a.m. Thursday where he is expected to enter a plea.
According to reports, Hamid was yelling "Allah is power" and "Islam is great" while holding a pen in a fist over his head and witnesses said he had been shouting anti-Christian comments.
Pleaanton Police Lt. Mike Elerick said the man was not provoked and didn't threaten violence, but he committed robbery when he grabbed and broke a crucifix off a man's neck.
Police said they weren't aware of a prior criminal history for the man.
"We had multiple people calling 911," Elerick said. "One female was crouching down and hiding from him. He definitely scared quite a few people."
Like, "Anti-Muslim Backlash"
Man arrested for 'anti-Christian mall disturbance' to appear in court again Thursday
Deputy DA keeps bail at $27K, orders Hasim to stay away from Stoneridge Shopping Center
by Emily West
Pleasanton Weekly Staff
Deputy District Attorney Ronda Theisen requested the bail for Abdul Walid Hamid stay at $27,000 as the 22-year-old man was arraigned Tuesday morning on charges of battery, grand theft, exhibition of a deadly weapon and a possible hate crime.
Police arrested 22-year-old Hamid of Hayward Wednesday evening after he reportedly robbed a man and scared others at Stoneridge Shopping Center.
Calling it a bizarre case, Theisen also asked that Hamid, who is still in custody, be ordered to stay out of the mall if he does post bail and leaves jail.
Through an interpreter, Hamid requested a public defender and was scheduled to appear in court at 9 a.m. Thursday where he is expected to enter a plea.
According to reports, Hamid was yelling "Allah is power" and "Islam is great" while holding a pen in a fist over his head and witnesses said he had been shouting anti-Christian comments.
Pleaanton Police Lt. Mike Elerick said the man was not provoked and didn't threaten violence, but he committed robbery when he grabbed and broke a crucifix off a man's neck.
Police said they weren't aware of a prior criminal history for the man.
"We had multiple people calling 911," Elerick said. "One female was crouching down and hiding from him. He definitely scared quite a few people."
Saturday, November 14, 2009
what is it with rich liberals?
according to the brilliant VDH:
There must be some syndrome at work of psychological compensation. For many who seek out the high life, but who are cognizant that the big house, the good vacations, the good schools, the nice night life and socializing, are beyond the reach of most, some sort of genuine guilt ensues. One way of squaring that circle is to go hard left in the abstract as a form of psychological penance that costs little in the concrete — the bloodthirsty medieval knight stopping in at the abbey to confess before the gore of battle.
The more Sean Penn praises Castro, the more the perks of Malibu become to his mind OK. Boat around New Orleans after Katrina and you can cruise around the Pacific Coast Highway with a good conscience. Being rich and left-wing is like a 16th-century sinner buying an indulgence through purchasing a few blocks for the dome at St. Peter’s. Moneyed liberalism allows one to feel good at very little personal expense — surely not having one’s child bussed to an inner-city school, or giving up your legacy slot at Princeton for someone more diverse, or waiting at the LA emergency room with a sick child.
more: http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson110909.html
..
.
There must be some syndrome at work of psychological compensation. For many who seek out the high life, but who are cognizant that the big house, the good vacations, the good schools, the nice night life and socializing, are beyond the reach of most, some sort of genuine guilt ensues. One way of squaring that circle is to go hard left in the abstract as a form of psychological penance that costs little in the concrete — the bloodthirsty medieval knight stopping in at the abbey to confess before the gore of battle.
The more Sean Penn praises Castro, the more the perks of Malibu become to his mind OK. Boat around New Orleans after Katrina and you can cruise around the Pacific Coast Highway with a good conscience. Being rich and left-wing is like a 16th-century sinner buying an indulgence through purchasing a few blocks for the dome at St. Peter’s. Moneyed liberalism allows one to feel good at very little personal expense — surely not having one’s child bussed to an inner-city school, or giving up your legacy slot at Princeton for someone more diverse, or waiting at the LA emergency room with a sick child.
more: http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson110909.html
..
.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
interesting assessment of Obama:
He is our stranger in a land he doesn’t understand.
Americans are not war-like, nor does imperial ambition fill their soul. They have done almost nothing for which daily apologies are necessary. Their blood soaks the beaches of Normandy, their graves litter European towns. And their fortune saved millions from the plight of destitution. Americans do not appreciate a man so removed from their history, so out of tune with the American experience, that he reflexively expresses regret for the very conditions that should engender pride.
Perhaps this president will learn. But I am not confident that can happen. His life experience without a father in his home and a mother seeking adventure abroad is unstable. His closest associates vilified the nation he now leads. Is it any wonder his wife said she could take no pride in America till now? The past is to be rejected. Milestones in history are erased from memory as storage cast aside as unnecessary.
read it all here:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=34159
----
Americans are not war-like, nor does imperial ambition fill their soul. They have done almost nothing for which daily apologies are necessary. Their blood soaks the beaches of Normandy, their graves litter European towns. And their fortune saved millions from the plight of destitution. Americans do not appreciate a man so removed from their history, so out of tune with the American experience, that he reflexively expresses regret for the very conditions that should engender pride.
Perhaps this president will learn. But I am not confident that can happen. His life experience without a father in his home and a mother seeking adventure abroad is unstable. His closest associates vilified the nation he now leads. Is it any wonder his wife said she could take no pride in America till now? The past is to be rejected. Milestones in history are erased from memory as storage cast aside as unnecessary.
read it all here:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=34159
----
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Democrats' Policies Based on Dogma, Hopes, Dreams, not Reality
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How is one to rationally explain the Democrats' belief that the government taking over another one-sixth of the American economy is a good thing?
The answer is religion.
Given the huge economic failures that the left itself attributes to Medicare and Medicaid and given the economic collapse or near collapse of these systems in other countries, the left's prescriptions can only be explained in one way: The left has made its views a form of religion.
Most individuals on the left are not religious, but virtually all people, secular and religious, liberal and conservative, yearn to believe in dogma, i.e., absolute beliefs that transcend reason. For people on the left in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, belief in the state -- the notion that the state can do a better job at helping people and making a good society -- is one such dogma. This applies especially to educating the young and to health care.
Examples of left-wing dogmas that transcend reason are as numerous as any religion's catechism. One example is the belief that men and women, boys and girls, are basically the same, that the vast majority of characteristics we ascribe to male and female natures are in fact socially induced. This irrational dogma was virtually universally believed and taught by the left-wing faculty when I attended college, and remains so today.
Another is the belief that manmade carbon dioxide emissions are heating the world to the point of imminent worldwide catastrophe, including island nations disappearing underwater, mass starvation, inundation of the world's major coastal areas and much more. The fact that the world has been getting colder for the last eight years is as irrelevant to most people on the left as the absence of archaeological evidence for the biblical exodus is irrelevant to believing Jews and Christians. That includes me; I do not believe in the Hebrew exodus from Egypt because of scientific evidence, but because of faith. But unlike the left's belief in manmade carbon emissions leading to unprecedented and calamitous heating of the planet, I admit my belief is a leap of faith. And my belief in the exodus will not ruin Western economies. In other words, my non-scientific belief in the Jews' exodus is innocuous while the left's non-scientific beliefs (though shrouded in scientific jargon and promulgated by scientists who put dogma over science) are forced on societies.
One cannot understand the left if one does not appreciate the world of dogmas in which most left-wing thinkers live. What the monastery is to monks, the university and the mainstream media are to the left.
That is the only way to explain the left's belief that government-run health care, having the government take over so much more of society, raising taxes yet again, expanding government even more and increasing the number of people employed by the government will all be good for America.
Dogma explains why it is useless to point out to the left how the left has economically crippled California, once the most prosperous, most adventurous, most successful "country" in the world (it has an economy that would make it about the seventh largest country in the world). Likewise, it does not matter to blacks what Democrats have done to their cities. As they watch their cities crumble, they will once again vote overwhelmingly for the party that oversaw this destruction.
None of these facts matters because religious-like dogmas are not derived from facts.
In addition to dogma, the left relies for its policies on "hope," which it often substitutes for analysis. People on the left rarely vote based on reality. They vote based on "hope." That's why the word "hope" is so much more significant to the left than to the right. The last two Democratic presidents ran as candidates of "hope." The right doesn't have "hope" candidates because conservatives don't live on hope. They live in reality, meaning that people are not born basically good; that investing men and women with great state power leads inevitably to abuse of that power; that people stop innovating if they are taxed too highly; and that a perfect health care system is understood to be impossible.
And, finally, the left dreams. Robert F. Kennedy often cited the statement first made by George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'" The left dreams of an America in which health care will constantly improve, health insurance will be given to every American at the same price irrespective of his or her health, doctors will be fairly reimbursed, there will be no waiting lines, and there will not be a dime's increase in the national debt for all of this.
Frankly, I don't yearn for what is unseen. Rather, having a realistic understanding of the limitations of human beings, I am in awe of what I already see -- the unique American achievement of affluence, liberty, decency, opportunity and medical innovations.
And I see this all being squandered for the sake of left-wing dogma, left-wing hopes and left-wing dreams.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How is one to rationally explain the Democrats' belief that the government taking over another one-sixth of the American economy is a good thing?
The answer is religion.
Given the huge economic failures that the left itself attributes to Medicare and Medicaid and given the economic collapse or near collapse of these systems in other countries, the left's prescriptions can only be explained in one way: The left has made its views a form of religion.
Most individuals on the left are not religious, but virtually all people, secular and religious, liberal and conservative, yearn to believe in dogma, i.e., absolute beliefs that transcend reason. For people on the left in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, belief in the state -- the notion that the state can do a better job at helping people and making a good society -- is one such dogma. This applies especially to educating the young and to health care.
Examples of left-wing dogmas that transcend reason are as numerous as any religion's catechism. One example is the belief that men and women, boys and girls, are basically the same, that the vast majority of characteristics we ascribe to male and female natures are in fact socially induced. This irrational dogma was virtually universally believed and taught by the left-wing faculty when I attended college, and remains so today.
Another is the belief that manmade carbon dioxide emissions are heating the world to the point of imminent worldwide catastrophe, including island nations disappearing underwater, mass starvation, inundation of the world's major coastal areas and much more. The fact that the world has been getting colder for the last eight years is as irrelevant to most people on the left as the absence of archaeological evidence for the biblical exodus is irrelevant to believing Jews and Christians. That includes me; I do not believe in the Hebrew exodus from Egypt because of scientific evidence, but because of faith. But unlike the left's belief in manmade carbon emissions leading to unprecedented and calamitous heating of the planet, I admit my belief is a leap of faith. And my belief in the exodus will not ruin Western economies. In other words, my non-scientific belief in the Jews' exodus is innocuous while the left's non-scientific beliefs (though shrouded in scientific jargon and promulgated by scientists who put dogma over science) are forced on societies.
One cannot understand the left if one does not appreciate the world of dogmas in which most left-wing thinkers live. What the monastery is to monks, the university and the mainstream media are to the left.
That is the only way to explain the left's belief that government-run health care, having the government take over so much more of society, raising taxes yet again, expanding government even more and increasing the number of people employed by the government will all be good for America.
Dogma explains why it is useless to point out to the left how the left has economically crippled California, once the most prosperous, most adventurous, most successful "country" in the world (it has an economy that would make it about the seventh largest country in the world). Likewise, it does not matter to blacks what Democrats have done to their cities. As they watch their cities crumble, they will once again vote overwhelmingly for the party that oversaw this destruction.
None of these facts matters because religious-like dogmas are not derived from facts.
In addition to dogma, the left relies for its policies on "hope," which it often substitutes for analysis. People on the left rarely vote based on reality. They vote based on "hope." That's why the word "hope" is so much more significant to the left than to the right. The last two Democratic presidents ran as candidates of "hope." The right doesn't have "hope" candidates because conservatives don't live on hope. They live in reality, meaning that people are not born basically good; that investing men and women with great state power leads inevitably to abuse of that power; that people stop innovating if they are taxed too highly; and that a perfect health care system is understood to be impossible.
And, finally, the left dreams. Robert F. Kennedy often cited the statement first made by George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'" The left dreams of an America in which health care will constantly improve, health insurance will be given to every American at the same price irrespective of his or her health, doctors will be fairly reimbursed, there will be no waiting lines, and there will not be a dime's increase in the national debt for all of this.
Frankly, I don't yearn for what is unseen. Rather, having a realistic understanding of the limitations of human beings, I am in awe of what I already see -- the unique American achievement of affluence, liberty, decency, opportunity and medical innovations.
And I see this all being squandered for the sake of left-wing dogma, left-wing hopes and left-wing dreams.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
America’s Obama Obsession
Anatomy of a passing hysteria.
By Victor Davis Hanson
For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell. But like all trances, the fit is passing, and we the patient are beginning to appreciate how the stupor came upon us, why it lifted, and what its consequences have been.
HOW OBAMA WON
Barack Obama was elected rather easily because, in perfect-storm fashion, five separate trends coalesced last autumn.
1) Obama was eloquent, young, charismatic — and African-American. He thus offered voters a sense of personal and collective redemption, as well as appealing to the longing for another JFK New Frontier figure. An image, not necessarily reality, trumped all.
2) After the normal weariness with eight years of an incumbent party and the particular unhappiness with Bush, the public was amenable to an antithesis. Bush was to be scapegoat, and Obama the beginning of the catharsis.
3) Obama ran as both a Clintonite centrist and a no-red-state/no-blue-state healer who had transcended bitter partisanship. That assurance allowed voters to believe that his occasional talk of big change was more cosmetic than radical.
4) John McCain ran a weak campaign that neither energized his base nor appealed to crossover independents. McCain turned off conservatives; many failed to give money, and some even stayed home on election day. Meanwhile, the media and centrists who used to idolize McCain’s non-conservative, maverick status found Obama the more endearing non-conservative maverick.
5) The September 2008 financial panic turned voters off Wall Street and the wealthy, and allowed them to connect unemployment and their depleted home equity and 401(k) retirement plans with incumbent Republicans. In contrast, they assumed that Obama, as the anti-Bush, would not do more bailouts, more stimuli, and more big borrowing.
Take away any one of those factors, and Obama might well have lost. Imagine what might have happened had Obama been a dreary old white guy like John Kerry; or had Bush’s approvals been over 50 percent; or had Obama run on the platform he is now governing on; or had McCain crafted a dynamic campaign; or had the panic occurred in January 2009 rather than September 2008. Then the trance would have passed, and Obama, the Chicago community organizer and three-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, would have probably lost his chance at remaking America.
OBAMA'S ASSUMPTIONS
I note all this at length because Obama seems to act as if this right-center country — one that polls oppositely to his positions on most of the major issues (deficits, spending, nationalized health care, homeland security, Guantanamo, cap-and-trade, etc.) — has given him a mandate for a degree of change not seen in nearly 80 years.
Apparently, Team Obama figured that with sizable majorities in both the House and the Senate, Obama would snap his fingers, Congress daily would pass bills redefining America, and Obama would stay in perpetual campaign mode to hope and change the country to accept his agenda. Governing would be like campaigning, as audiences fainted hearing the details of a 1,500-page health-care bill or of ever more sins from America’s past.
But, after just a few months in office, that proved not to be the case. Just as a number of planets had to line up precisely to allow an inexperienced hard-left ideologue to be elected president, so there would have had to be a similar configuration to allow him to govern successfully.
BITTER TRUTHS
1) Obama had to match his unity rhetoric with brotherly action. In fact, he has done the opposite.
At one time or another, Obama and his supporters have, rather scurrilously, insulted doctors, insurers, the police, tea-partiers and town-hallers, opponents of his health-care plan, non-compliant members of the media, and a host of other groups as either greedy, dishonest, treasonous, unpatriotic, moblike, racist, or in general worthy of disrespect.
Fewer and fewer Americans now believe that Obama — after just nine months of governance — is a uniter. In Obama’s world, doctors carve out children’s tonsils for profit, racist morons rant at legislators about losing their private health care, and trillions in borrowed money must be paid back by the greedy rich whose capital was unearned in the first place.
When his base supporters lambaste him for softness, they are lamenting his inability to become an effective partisan — not a lack of partisanship in general. In surreal fashion, liberals demand that the ideologue Obama become more ideological precisely at the time his ideologically driven agenda is souring millions of non-ideological Americans.
2) His opposition is no longer ossified, but decentralized and grass roots. One of the oddest proofs of that statement is the sudden leftist furor at tea parties, town halls, the media, dissent, and free speech. As long as Obama was opposed by calcified Republicans in Congress, there was no real danger to him. But once the opposition proved populist, panicked liberal elites started demonizing populism — and Obama now finds himself opposed to the popular grievance-mongering that was once the mother’s milk of our Chicago organizer’s existence.
3) Obama campaigned on the notion that even if voters might not like his policies, they most assuredly would like him. Even that spell is now lifting. The more the American public gets to know Barack Obama, the less they find him appealing.
On matters racial, their campaign-season unease with his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his toss-offs like “typical white person,” and his stereotyping of rural Pennsylvanians has not been allayed; rather, it has been amplified by Eric Holder’s Justice Department, Obama’s own statement that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in arresting Professor Gates, and the use of the race card by prominent Democrats from the likes of Rep. Charles Rangel to Gov. David Paterson of New York.
Much of the newly stirred public suddenly assumes two things from the Obama administration: that the president himself will periodically say something racially insensitive or unwise; and that his supporters will call opponents of his policies racist. If we have wearied of all that in nine months, think what four years of it will do to the public mood.
In just nine months the phrase “Chicago style” has gone from something old-time that evokes Al Capone or Mayor Daley to something very real, contemporary, and scary — as David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and others try to strong-arm the opposition, demonize the media, and manipulate government largesse to either penalize or reward recipients on the basis of their degree of support for Obama.
Could the most imaginative right-wing political operative have invented the idea of a National Endowment for the Arts official gleefully considering quid pro quo grants, administration officials trying to persuade other media outlets that a network critical of Obama is “not a news organization,” or an administration communications director bragging about how her team sandbagged the American media and took them to the cleaners? We can believe there might be one statement like Van Jones’s slander of “white people,” or Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” boast, or Anita Dunn’s lengthy praise of the mass-murdering Mao, but not an entire series of them. At some point, the American public snaps out of it, and sighs, “Wow, these people really are nuts!”
4) “Bush Did it” was the IV drip of the Obama campaign, always there to infuse a fresh life-saving excuse into every Obama fainting spell. But the problem now is that it has been more than nine months since Bush left office, and Obama’s “mop up” metaphors are getting stale. Worse still, the reasons the public soured on Bush are precisely the reasons it may well sour more on Obama, inasmuch as he took Bush’s problems like deficits, soaring federal spending, bailouts, and unemployment and made them far worse.
Yet Obama has given no credit for the good that Bush did, and therefore must remain mum about the other “Bush Did It”s, like quiet in Iraq; the homeland-security protocols, from renditions and tribunals to wiretaps and intercepts; AIDS relief for Africa; friendly governments in Britain, France, Germany, India, and Italy; and domestic safety since 9/11. If Bush is at least partly responsible for all these things as well, were they therefore bad?
NOW WHAT?
Obama very soon is going to have to make a tough choice, far tougher than his current “present” votes on the option of sending additional troops to Afghanistan.
As the midterm elections near, and his popularity bobs up and down around 50 percent, Obama can do one of two things.
He could imitate Bill Clinton’s 1995 Dick Morris remake. In Obama’s case, that would mean, abroad, cutting out the now laughable apologies for his country, ceasing to court thugs like Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and Putin, keeping some distance from the U.N., and paying closer attention to our allies like Britain and Israel. At home, he could declare victory on his sidetracked agenda and then start over by holding spending in line, curbing the deficit, stopping the lunatic Van Jones–style czar appointments, courting the opposition, and tabling cap-and-trade. I think there is very little chance of any of the above, whatever voters may have thought during the campaign.
Or, instead, Obama could hold the pedal to the floor on the theory that, as a proven ideologue, he must move the country far left before the voters catch on and stop him in his tracks in November 2010. That would mean more of the “gorge the beast” effort to spend and borrow so much that taxes have to soar, and thus redistribution of income will be institutionalized for a generation. He would push liberal proposals no matter how narrow the margin in the Senate. He would keep demonizing Fox News. In Nixonian fashion he might continue to hit the stump, ratcheting up his current “they’re lying” message and energizing his left-wing base by catering to the unions, gays, minorities — and liberal Wall Street special interests.
If he chooses the former, he might well be a more successful version of Bill Clinton given that his appetites are far more in check.
But if, as is likely, he chooses the latter, he will polarize the country in a way not seen since 1968, set back racial relations to the 1960s, do to the reputation of big government what LBJ did from 1964 to 1968, and, in the manner of what Jimmy Carter wrought, turn voters off liberal foreign policy for a generation.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
By Victor Davis Hanson
For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell. But like all trances, the fit is passing, and we the patient are beginning to appreciate how the stupor came upon us, why it lifted, and what its consequences have been.
HOW OBAMA WON
Barack Obama was elected rather easily because, in perfect-storm fashion, five separate trends coalesced last autumn.
1) Obama was eloquent, young, charismatic — and African-American. He thus offered voters a sense of personal and collective redemption, as well as appealing to the longing for another JFK New Frontier figure. An image, not necessarily reality, trumped all.
2) After the normal weariness with eight years of an incumbent party and the particular unhappiness with Bush, the public was amenable to an antithesis. Bush was to be scapegoat, and Obama the beginning of the catharsis.
3) Obama ran as both a Clintonite centrist and a no-red-state/no-blue-state healer who had transcended bitter partisanship. That assurance allowed voters to believe that his occasional talk of big change was more cosmetic than radical.
4) John McCain ran a weak campaign that neither energized his base nor appealed to crossover independents. McCain turned off conservatives; many failed to give money, and some even stayed home on election day. Meanwhile, the media and centrists who used to idolize McCain’s non-conservative, maverick status found Obama the more endearing non-conservative maverick.
5) The September 2008 financial panic turned voters off Wall Street and the wealthy, and allowed them to connect unemployment and their depleted home equity and 401(k) retirement plans with incumbent Republicans. In contrast, they assumed that Obama, as the anti-Bush, would not do more bailouts, more stimuli, and more big borrowing.
Take away any one of those factors, and Obama might well have lost. Imagine what might have happened had Obama been a dreary old white guy like John Kerry; or had Bush’s approvals been over 50 percent; or had Obama run on the platform he is now governing on; or had McCain crafted a dynamic campaign; or had the panic occurred in January 2009 rather than September 2008. Then the trance would have passed, and Obama, the Chicago community organizer and three-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, would have probably lost his chance at remaking America.
OBAMA'S ASSUMPTIONS
I note all this at length because Obama seems to act as if this right-center country — one that polls oppositely to his positions on most of the major issues (deficits, spending, nationalized health care, homeland security, Guantanamo, cap-and-trade, etc.) — has given him a mandate for a degree of change not seen in nearly 80 years.
Apparently, Team Obama figured that with sizable majorities in both the House and the Senate, Obama would snap his fingers, Congress daily would pass bills redefining America, and Obama would stay in perpetual campaign mode to hope and change the country to accept his agenda. Governing would be like campaigning, as audiences fainted hearing the details of a 1,500-page health-care bill or of ever more sins from America’s past.
But, after just a few months in office, that proved not to be the case. Just as a number of planets had to line up precisely to allow an inexperienced hard-left ideologue to be elected president, so there would have had to be a similar configuration to allow him to govern successfully.
BITTER TRUTHS
1) Obama had to match his unity rhetoric with brotherly action. In fact, he has done the opposite.
At one time or another, Obama and his supporters have, rather scurrilously, insulted doctors, insurers, the police, tea-partiers and town-hallers, opponents of his health-care plan, non-compliant members of the media, and a host of other groups as either greedy, dishonest, treasonous, unpatriotic, moblike, racist, or in general worthy of disrespect.
Fewer and fewer Americans now believe that Obama — after just nine months of governance — is a uniter. In Obama’s world, doctors carve out children’s tonsils for profit, racist morons rant at legislators about losing their private health care, and trillions in borrowed money must be paid back by the greedy rich whose capital was unearned in the first place.
When his base supporters lambaste him for softness, they are lamenting his inability to become an effective partisan — not a lack of partisanship in general. In surreal fashion, liberals demand that the ideologue Obama become more ideological precisely at the time his ideologically driven agenda is souring millions of non-ideological Americans.
2) His opposition is no longer ossified, but decentralized and grass roots. One of the oddest proofs of that statement is the sudden leftist furor at tea parties, town halls, the media, dissent, and free speech. As long as Obama was opposed by calcified Republicans in Congress, there was no real danger to him. But once the opposition proved populist, panicked liberal elites started demonizing populism — and Obama now finds himself opposed to the popular grievance-mongering that was once the mother’s milk of our Chicago organizer’s existence.
3) Obama campaigned on the notion that even if voters might not like his policies, they most assuredly would like him. Even that spell is now lifting. The more the American public gets to know Barack Obama, the less they find him appealing.
On matters racial, their campaign-season unease with his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his toss-offs like “typical white person,” and his stereotyping of rural Pennsylvanians has not been allayed; rather, it has been amplified by Eric Holder’s Justice Department, Obama’s own statement that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in arresting Professor Gates, and the use of the race card by prominent Democrats from the likes of Rep. Charles Rangel to Gov. David Paterson of New York.
Much of the newly stirred public suddenly assumes two things from the Obama administration: that the president himself will periodically say something racially insensitive or unwise; and that his supporters will call opponents of his policies racist. If we have wearied of all that in nine months, think what four years of it will do to the public mood.
In just nine months the phrase “Chicago style” has gone from something old-time that evokes Al Capone or Mayor Daley to something very real, contemporary, and scary — as David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and others try to strong-arm the opposition, demonize the media, and manipulate government largesse to either penalize or reward recipients on the basis of their degree of support for Obama.
Could the most imaginative right-wing political operative have invented the idea of a National Endowment for the Arts official gleefully considering quid pro quo grants, administration officials trying to persuade other media outlets that a network critical of Obama is “not a news organization,” or an administration communications director bragging about how her team sandbagged the American media and took them to the cleaners? We can believe there might be one statement like Van Jones’s slander of “white people,” or Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” boast, or Anita Dunn’s lengthy praise of the mass-murdering Mao, but not an entire series of them. At some point, the American public snaps out of it, and sighs, “Wow, these people really are nuts!”
4) “Bush Did it” was the IV drip of the Obama campaign, always there to infuse a fresh life-saving excuse into every Obama fainting spell. But the problem now is that it has been more than nine months since Bush left office, and Obama’s “mop up” metaphors are getting stale. Worse still, the reasons the public soured on Bush are precisely the reasons it may well sour more on Obama, inasmuch as he took Bush’s problems like deficits, soaring federal spending, bailouts, and unemployment and made them far worse.
Yet Obama has given no credit for the good that Bush did, and therefore must remain mum about the other “Bush Did It”s, like quiet in Iraq; the homeland-security protocols, from renditions and tribunals to wiretaps and intercepts; AIDS relief for Africa; friendly governments in Britain, France, Germany, India, and Italy; and domestic safety since 9/11. If Bush is at least partly responsible for all these things as well, were they therefore bad?
NOW WHAT?
Obama very soon is going to have to make a tough choice, far tougher than his current “present” votes on the option of sending additional troops to Afghanistan.
As the midterm elections near, and his popularity bobs up and down around 50 percent, Obama can do one of two things.
He could imitate Bill Clinton’s 1995 Dick Morris remake. In Obama’s case, that would mean, abroad, cutting out the now laughable apologies for his country, ceasing to court thugs like Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and Putin, keeping some distance from the U.N., and paying closer attention to our allies like Britain and Israel. At home, he could declare victory on his sidetracked agenda and then start over by holding spending in line, curbing the deficit, stopping the lunatic Van Jones–style czar appointments, courting the opposition, and tabling cap-and-trade. I think there is very little chance of any of the above, whatever voters may have thought during the campaign.
Or, instead, Obama could hold the pedal to the floor on the theory that, as a proven ideologue, he must move the country far left before the voters catch on and stop him in his tracks in November 2010. That would mean more of the “gorge the beast” effort to spend and borrow so much that taxes have to soar, and thus redistribution of income will be institutionalized for a generation. He would push liberal proposals no matter how narrow the margin in the Senate. He would keep demonizing Fox News. In Nixonian fashion he might continue to hit the stump, ratcheting up his current “they’re lying” message and energizing his left-wing base by catering to the unions, gays, minorities — and liberal Wall Street special interests.
If he chooses the former, he might well be a more successful version of Bill Clinton given that his appetites are far more in check.
But if, as is likely, he chooses the latter, he will polarize the country in a way not seen since 1968, set back racial relations to the 1960s, do to the reputation of big government what LBJ did from 1964 to 1968, and, in the manner of what Jimmy Carter wrought, turn voters off liberal foreign policy for a generation.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Mister Tough Guy
---
Who are the real “Untouchables” here?
By Mark Steyn
Benjamin Disraeli’s most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: “Never complain and never explain.” For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Churchill, Lincoln, and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on Orating with the Stars, Barack Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side. He tried it with health care with speech after speech after exclusive interview for months on end and the more he explained the more unpopular the whole racket got. So he declared that the time for explaining is over, and it’s time to sign on or else.
Meanwhile, to take the other half of the Disraeli equation, Obama and his officials and their beleaguered band of surrogates never stop complaining. If you express concerns about government health care, they complain about all these “racists” and “domestic terrorists” obstructing his agenda. If you wonder why the president can’t seem to find time in his hectic schedule of international-awards acceptance speeches to make a decision about Afghanistan, they complain that it’s not his fault he “inherited” all these problems. And, if you wonder why his “green jobs” czar is a Communist 9/11 truther and his National Endowment for the Arts guy is leaning on grant recipients to produce Soviet-style propaganda extolling Obama policies, they complain about Fox News.
The most recent whine — the anti-Fox campaign — is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House website runs teasers such as: "For even more Fox lies, check out the latest ‘Truth-O-Meter.’” It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week’s president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn’t doing a fast enough job of disappearing his enemies.
George W. Bush: Remember him? Of course, you do. He’s the guy who’s to blame for everything, and still will be midway through Obama’s second term. It turns out he’s in exile abroad. Presumably he jumped bail and snuck across the border on the roof of a box car. But, anyway, he was giving a speech in Saskatoon. That’s a town in Saskatchewan. And Saskatchewan’s a province in Canada apparently. And in the course of his glittering night playing the Saskatoon circuit, he was asked about media criticism of him, and he told the . . . Saskatoonistanies? Saskatchewannabees? Whatever. He told them the attacks never bothered him although his dad used to get upset: “He’d read the editorial pages, he’d watch the nightly news, and I didn’t. I mean, why watch the nightly news when you are the nightly news?”
That attitude, while raising a bunch of other issues, is psychologically healthier. If you’re going to attack the press, you need a lightness of touch, not a ham-fisted crowbar such as the White House wielded on Thursday, attempting to ban Fox from the pool interviews with the “pay czar.” Another bit of venerable Disraelian insouciance, on the scribblers of Fleet Street: “Today they blacken your character, tomorrow they blacken your boots.” For two years, the U.S. media have been polishing Obama’s boots, mostly with their drool, to a degree unprecedented in American public life. But now it’s time for the handful of holdouts to make with the Kiwi — or else.
At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he’d been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don’t know why he’d be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the “community organized” precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the communications director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao’s China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite “political philosopher.”
So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel, and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from The Untouchables — “the Chicago way,” don’t bring a knife to a gun fight — and, given the “pay czar”’s instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it’s easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can’t take the Chicago out of the community organizer.
The trouble is it isn’t tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real “Untouchables” here? In Moscow, it’s Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary Clinton) they’re still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it’s Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use “soft power” and “smart diplomacy” to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama’s soft power is so soft it doesn’t even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders’ very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama’s “smart diplomacy” is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention?
The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever-cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander-in-chief look like a weenie — like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.
The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.
But, if you’re doing the overnight show on WZZZ-AM, Mister Tough Guy’s got your number.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn
Who are the real “Untouchables” here?
By Mark Steyn
Benjamin Disraeli’s most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: “Never complain and never explain.” For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Churchill, Lincoln, and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on Orating with the Stars, Barack Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side. He tried it with health care with speech after speech after exclusive interview for months on end and the more he explained the more unpopular the whole racket got. So he declared that the time for explaining is over, and it’s time to sign on or else.
Meanwhile, to take the other half of the Disraeli equation, Obama and his officials and their beleaguered band of surrogates never stop complaining. If you express concerns about government health care, they complain about all these “racists” and “domestic terrorists” obstructing his agenda. If you wonder why the president can’t seem to find time in his hectic schedule of international-awards acceptance speeches to make a decision about Afghanistan, they complain that it’s not his fault he “inherited” all these problems. And, if you wonder why his “green jobs” czar is a Communist 9/11 truther and his National Endowment for the Arts guy is leaning on grant recipients to produce Soviet-style propaganda extolling Obama policies, they complain about Fox News.
The most recent whine — the anti-Fox campaign — is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House website runs teasers such as: "For even more Fox lies, check out the latest ‘Truth-O-Meter.’” It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week’s president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn’t doing a fast enough job of disappearing his enemies.
George W. Bush: Remember him? Of course, you do. He’s the guy who’s to blame for everything, and still will be midway through Obama’s second term. It turns out he’s in exile abroad. Presumably he jumped bail and snuck across the border on the roof of a box car. But, anyway, he was giving a speech in Saskatoon. That’s a town in Saskatchewan. And Saskatchewan’s a province in Canada apparently. And in the course of his glittering night playing the Saskatoon circuit, he was asked about media criticism of him, and he told the . . . Saskatoonistanies? Saskatchewannabees? Whatever. He told them the attacks never bothered him although his dad used to get upset: “He’d read the editorial pages, he’d watch the nightly news, and I didn’t. I mean, why watch the nightly news when you are the nightly news?”
That attitude, while raising a bunch of other issues, is psychologically healthier. If you’re going to attack the press, you need a lightness of touch, not a ham-fisted crowbar such as the White House wielded on Thursday, attempting to ban Fox from the pool interviews with the “pay czar.” Another bit of venerable Disraelian insouciance, on the scribblers of Fleet Street: “Today they blacken your character, tomorrow they blacken your boots.” For two years, the U.S. media have been polishing Obama’s boots, mostly with their drool, to a degree unprecedented in American public life. But now it’s time for the handful of holdouts to make with the Kiwi — or else.
At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he’d been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don’t know why he’d be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the “community organized” precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the communications director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao’s China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite “political philosopher.”
So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel, and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from The Untouchables — “the Chicago way,” don’t bring a knife to a gun fight — and, given the “pay czar”’s instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it’s easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can’t take the Chicago out of the community organizer.
The trouble is it isn’t tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real “Untouchables” here? In Moscow, it’s Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary Clinton) they’re still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it’s Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use “soft power” and “smart diplomacy” to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama’s soft power is so soft it doesn’t even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders’ very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama’s “smart diplomacy” is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention?
The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever-cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander-in-chief look like a weenie — like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.
The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.
But, if you’re doing the overnight show on WZZZ-AM, Mister Tough Guy’s got your number.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn
Friday, October 23, 2009
'Radio Free America'
By: Cal Thomas, Worthington Daily Globe
WASHINGTON — During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the “captive nations” that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers.
WASHINGTON — During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the “captive nations” that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers. Those dictators did everything they could to “jam” the signals so that their people would only hear what their unelected overseers wanted them to hear. Contemporary versions of jamming and other forms of censorship occur today in Venezuela, Cuba and many other places where dictators believe public ignorance is essential to their unchallenged rule.
While the Obama administration is the product of an election, its approach to Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio and possibly the Internet appears similar to dictators who desire control over the flow of information in order to enhance their power.
The administration’s primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies.
Like those Cold War truth-tellers, Fox is simply delivering information to a rapidly growing audience (partly due to criticism from the White House) that wants to see and hear what the other media are not telling them. Fox — and talk radio — are reporting on the backgrounds and statements of Obama administration officials. Fox didn’t create the statements and actions of Van Jones, the now former “energy czar,” who signed a petition questioning whether Bush administration officials allowed 9/11 to happen as a possible pretext for going to war. Fox didn’t force Jones to advocate for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, or associate himself with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a left-wing radical group with Marxist roots.
No Fox News employee wrote the speeches and comments of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who told graduating high school seniors that one of her “favorite philosophers” is the mass murderer Mao Zedong. Neither did they compose her boast during the campaign that the Obama people “controlled” the news media.
ACORN might never have been exposed for its possibly illegal activities had not an enterprising young duo gone to their offices with a hidden camera and recorded some ACORN workers who were happy to assist them in breaking the law.
As one who appears on Fox as a contributor, I have seen the network grow from its beginning more than a decade ago to its current position of holding accountable those in power. That was once the calling of all journalists until the Kennedy years when reporters started cheerleading and socializing with the people they were empowered to question and cover. This shift in responsibility has greatly enhanced the status and income of too many journalists and commentators. It has also shortchanged the profession and the public it is supposed to serve.
It is no mystery why the White House has made Fox News a target. If its reporting and commentating were not effective in exposing things the administration does not want the public to know, Fox would be ignored. But it is increasingly effective because the public is sensing that the administration has a lot to hide about its personnel, ideology and objectives.
Rather than boycott Fox — if the administration were smart — it would flood the network with its spokespeople. The administration apparently believes it needs an enemy to avert scrutiny from its socialist agenda, the undermining of free speech and the corruption of the U.S. Constitution. Because Republicans have no credible national leader, the administration has settled on Fox News.
Political leaders, going back to our founding, have criticized the press. It never works, because after the politicians leave office, the press remains. If the administration is seeking approval for its policies, it should go on the only channel that will confront, examine and question those policies. If the policies are valid, they will stand; if not, they won’t and they shouldn’t. But perhaps, like those dictators, the administration would rather jam Fox’s “signal” because they don’t want the public to know the truth about what they are doing.
WASHINGTON — During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the “captive nations” that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers.
WASHINGTON — During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the “captive nations” that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers. Those dictators did everything they could to “jam” the signals so that their people would only hear what their unelected overseers wanted them to hear. Contemporary versions of jamming and other forms of censorship occur today in Venezuela, Cuba and many other places where dictators believe public ignorance is essential to their unchallenged rule.
While the Obama administration is the product of an election, its approach to Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio and possibly the Internet appears similar to dictators who desire control over the flow of information in order to enhance their power.
The administration’s primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies.
Like those Cold War truth-tellers, Fox is simply delivering information to a rapidly growing audience (partly due to criticism from the White House) that wants to see and hear what the other media are not telling them. Fox — and talk radio — are reporting on the backgrounds and statements of Obama administration officials. Fox didn’t create the statements and actions of Van Jones, the now former “energy czar,” who signed a petition questioning whether Bush administration officials allowed 9/11 to happen as a possible pretext for going to war. Fox didn’t force Jones to advocate for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, or associate himself with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a left-wing radical group with Marxist roots.
No Fox News employee wrote the speeches and comments of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who told graduating high school seniors that one of her “favorite philosophers” is the mass murderer Mao Zedong. Neither did they compose her boast during the campaign that the Obama people “controlled” the news media.
ACORN might never have been exposed for its possibly illegal activities had not an enterprising young duo gone to their offices with a hidden camera and recorded some ACORN workers who were happy to assist them in breaking the law.
As one who appears on Fox as a contributor, I have seen the network grow from its beginning more than a decade ago to its current position of holding accountable those in power. That was once the calling of all journalists until the Kennedy years when reporters started cheerleading and socializing with the people they were empowered to question and cover. This shift in responsibility has greatly enhanced the status and income of too many journalists and commentators. It has also shortchanged the profession and the public it is supposed to serve.
It is no mystery why the White House has made Fox News a target. If its reporting and commentating were not effective in exposing things the administration does not want the public to know, Fox would be ignored. But it is increasingly effective because the public is sensing that the administration has a lot to hide about its personnel, ideology and objectives.
Rather than boycott Fox — if the administration were smart — it would flood the network with its spokespeople. The administration apparently believes it needs an enemy to avert scrutiny from its socialist agenda, the undermining of free speech and the corruption of the U.S. Constitution. Because Republicans have no credible national leader, the administration has settled on Fox News.
Political leaders, going back to our founding, have criticized the press. It never works, because after the politicians leave office, the press remains. If the administration is seeking approval for its policies, it should go on the only channel that will confront, examine and question those policies. If the policies are valid, they will stand; if not, they won’t and they shouldn’t. But perhaps, like those dictators, the administration would rather jam Fox’s “signal” because they don’t want the public to know the truth about what they are doing.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Confessions of a Cultural Drop-out
By Victor Davis Hanson
October 17, 2009
I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture? I am not particularly proud of this quietism (many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD), but not really ashamed of it either.
Shut up and see a movie?
Take Hollywood protocol—make a big movie, hype it, show it at the mall multiplex. But I went to one movie the last year. Maybe three in the last four years. There is not much choice here—car crashes, evil white men killing the innocent, some gay or feminist heroes fending off club-bearing white homophobic Mississippians in pick-ups. Or you can endure the American war-machine kidnapping, torturing, or murdering even more of the helpless abroad—with Robert Redford, glassed down, tweed in display, or snarly George Clooney sermonizing, like the choruses of Euripides’ tragedies.
The usual themes—some evil corporation is destroying something (fill in the blanks: the environment, the neighborhood, the small town, etc.), some CIA conspiracy is out to ruin a crusading heroic journalist, or some brave professor or writer is exposing a massive cover-up—are, well, boring, even with the sex, the blow-em-up explosions, and some nice scenery. (And all this from a corporate Hollywood—reliant on the security of the American military, crass in its high tastes and destructive in its behavior, and all the while profit and status obsessed! [The world of Halliburton makes the world safe for Botox?])
If it is not all that, we get instead some neurotic suburban psychodrama about a senseless midlife crisis of some aging yuppies, wondering whether their empty lives really have meaning. Then there are always the “action” movies about tomb-robbing, treasure-hunting, or Zombie killing, but even they try to mask emptiness with a politically-correct throw-away line now and then. Can’t they make one movie of the Lewis and Clark expedition or Lepanto, and one less with Tom Hanks as the anguished and caring postmodern man?
Why not DVDs?
If I watch DVDs, they surely are not of recent vintage. I couldn’t tell you a single release in the current most rented 100. I rewatch instead Westerns—Peckinpaugh, John Ford, the classics like Shane and High Noon, the greats like Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, George C. Scott, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, John Wayne, etc., and, as I wrote a few months ago, almost anything with a brilliant, but now forgotten character actor such as a Jack Palance, Richard Boone (cf. Cicero Grimes in Hombre), Ben Johnson, or Warren Oates—if only for their accents, ad-libbed lines, and carriage. Only the greats like DeNiro or Pacino, or a Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and a few others (a Hackman, Eastwood, or Hopkins) approximate the old breed. (A Mickey Rourke, Gary Oldman, or John Malkovich are at least originals and, like real people, look the worse for it). So I find myself replaying something like a Das Boot or Breaker Morant, or supposedly corny 1930s and 1940s classics like How Green Was My Valley or The Best Years of Our Lives. If I want to watch a film that failed at the box-office, I’ll take One-Eyed Jacks or Major Dundee or Pat Garret and Billy the Kid; their failures are better than today’s “successes”.
Today’s under thirty American male actors sound like they either have sinus congestion, or are trying to convince someone they are not as effeminate as their contrived appearance otherwise suggests. If my life depended on it, I could not identify any of the current leading actresses. The country needs a screen presence of a Burt Lancaster or Frederic March and it gets instead a Ben Affleck or Leo DiCaprio.
Musical Time Warp
Ditto music. I don’t know the name of a single rapper. Don’t follow rock anymore. Don’t want to. I like a Mark Knopfler or Coldplay, but mostly missed music’s 21st century. I’m so lost that I think a Bob Seeger and Bruce Hornsby are contemporary mega-stars, though I couldn’t identify a recent hit of either. I haven’t seen any of the kids write as well as Springsteen or Van Morrison. One Otis Redding had more talent than the entire hip-hop industry.
Who is Katie Couric?
Add in television. I haven’t watched a network newscast in 10 years. If I want to see a 60-Minutes hit piece, I’ll watch a You Tube video where the amateurs are far more interesting and honest about their ambush journalism. Do the CBS hit-men still try to jump in and cross-up some poor official, as he stammers while they hammer on? Is Andy Rooney still around?
I don’t know which anchor is where. I bump into them in their re-aired interviews like the Couric/Palin disaster or Gibson with his eyeglasses on his nose as if were a professor of Romance Languages grilling Sarah the Idaho co-ed, but other than that could care less.
I’d take an old paleo-liberal like Eric Sevareid, John Chancellor, or David Brinkley any day over the most conservative on NBC or CNN. The old guys had style, even class; today’s crowd spends more on teeth-whiteners than on books.
Obama is perfect for the age. Like Bush, he had the Ivy-League degrees; unlike Bush he had the pretension that they meant something, even though in his mind the Berlin Airlift, the German language, Auschwitz, World War II, Cordoba, the geography of the U.S., almost anything dealing with history, geography, literature, or well, knowledge in general—well all that is stuff that others less relevant than he learned in college.
Commercial-free TV?
I like C-Span and have always admired Brian Lamb. I used to be a big fan of PBS and PR, but no more. The laudable shows are far outweighed by the race/class/gender agendas, usually someone in a soft drone, talking scarcely above a whisper, about some new heretofore unnoticed pathology of the US military, corporation, or government (pre-Obama) that a particularly angry but heroic professor or investigative reporter is going to enlighten us about.
Well, There’s Always Sports
Next confession: I have not watched a single NFL game–including the Super bowl–for more than 10 minutes during the last decade. In the 1980s I was a big fan. I could not be pried loose from the 49ers and Bill Walsh or Jim Plunkett’s numerous Raider come-backs. Out here Deacon Jones, Dick Bass, and John Brodie were sorta football greats. Not now such heroes. Somewhere around 1990-5 everything went wrong with the big money, big hype, and big egos.
Maybe it is the airs of the sportscasters, and the pseudo-intellectual exegesis of the “analysts.” (I’ll take a Russ Hodges or Dizzy Dean any day, or, god help me, a young Howard Cosell before his decline in the Clay/Ali days). The constant criminality of the players and the egocentric outbursts didn’t help. Then there’s the pretensions of the buccaneer owners, and the extravaganza of the spectacle of the Roman arena, all that turned me off it—despite the courage and drama involved in football, and the science and tension of baseball. But one can find that watching high school or college sports.
Ditto the NBA. I have not watched a complete game in 15 years. Here too I could not name 5 current NBA players. I quit with the old Lakers/Celtics rivalries of the late 1970s and 1980s. (But then I have never played a video game either, and the two now seem to the distant ignorant bystander as about the same thing).
I watched 2 baseball games on television the last 3 years. Again, the melodrama of the sportscasters and writers (a slick Bob Costas as would-be Aristotle in his analyses and Sophocles in the supposed serious tragedy of his modulating voice) assumes the players are Olympians when of course they more or less resemble ego-centric multimillionaires.
Just a dozen selfless players, who keep quiet when they score, give credit to others when they pitch a shut-out, or pass rather than shoot could help things. I don’t mind the constant therapy of the coverage—the personal interest story of the athlete who lost his mother during training, who conquered polio as a child, or who saved a little boy from a surging stream—but it does not make up for the absence of manners and sportsmanship.
Print
Like most of America I do not read the New York Times–maybe once at an airport this year, but not more. (The only Times headlines I see are in history books, and pre-1970 they were quite good). It’s not that just I get most of my news on the Internet, but rather there is no there at the Times. A void. The front-page stories are thinly disguised op-eds and poorly written and sourced, and the op-eds are not disguised first-person rants by Dowd, Krugman, Herbert, Rich, etc. largely embarrassing confessions from a group of well-off, well-connected, status-obsessed elites lecturing the nation outside New York and Los Angeles on its various sorts of illiberality. Life is too short for ground-hog day reads, the same angst over and over.
International Awards
Nobel Prizes I stopped noticing a while back. Literature and Peace Prizes are awarded mostly on either race/class/gender considerations or utopian pacifism; that a Toni Morison won and a John Updike or Philip Roth (neither of whom I was all that fond of) never did, says all you need to know.
Petraeus is a true peace-maker and saved thousands of lives; Carter was not, and his timidity gave the green light to the Soviets who killed over a million in Afghanistan. If Al Gore had found a way to allow the world’s poor to survive malaria epidemics through DDT spraying, or invented a miracle strain of rice, or a new long-life battery, then one could justify the peace prize for world ecological achievement, but not for screaming about global warming climate change while making $100 million in medieval offset penances as the climate cools down the last decade.
So what’s left of the life of American culture? I try to read novels, the older the better—Knut Hamsun, Conrad, James Jones. Historians like a Gibbon, Prescott, or Churchill, they could write. I read everything John Keegan writes. Martin Gilbert is excellent. Andrew Roberts is as well. I’ve reread Weinberg’s A World at Arms twice this year. The memoirists like E.B. Sledge are riveting. I review a lot of books on classics—the best are not written by academic classists. One does what one can.
The Thin Veneer
A final, odd observation. As I have dropped out of contemporary American culture and retreated inside some sort of 1950s time-warp, in a strange fashion of compensation for non-participation , I have tried to remain more engaged than ever in the country’s political and military crises, which are acute and growing. One’s distancing from the popular culture of movies, TV, newspapers, and establishment culture makes one perhaps wish to overcompensate in other directions, from the trivial to the important.
Lately more than ever I try to obey the speed limit, overpay my taxes, pay more estimates and withholding than I need, pay all the property taxes at once, pick up trash I see on the sidewalk, try to be overly polite to strangers in line, always stop on the freeway when I see an elderly person or single woman with a flat, leave 20% tips, let cars cut me off in the parking lot (not in my youth, not for a second), and patronize as many of Selma’s small businesses as I can (from the hardware store to insurance to cars). I don’t necessarily do that out of any sense of personal ethics, but rather because in these increasingly crass and lawless times, we all have to try something, even symbolically, to restore some common thread to the frayed veneer of American civilization, to balance the rips from a Letterman attack on Palin’s 14-year-old daughter or a Serena Williams’s threat to a line judge, or the President’s communication director’s praise of Mao, civilization’s most lethal mass murderer, or all of what I described above.
I don’t fathom the attraction of a Kanye West (I know that name after his outburst), a David Letterman, Van Jones, Michael Moore (all parasitic on the very culture they mock), or the New York Review of Books or People Magazine (they seem about the same in their world view). So goodbye to all that.
Horace called this reactionary nostalgia the delusion of a laudator temporis acti, the grouchy praiser of times past for the sake of being past. Perhaps. But I see the trend of many ignoring the old touchstones of popular entertainment and life as a rejection of establishment culture—a disbelief in, or utter unconcern with, what elites now offer as valuable on criteria that have nothing to do with merit or value. I was supposed to listen to Dan Rather because Murrow once worked for CBS? I am to go to the Cinema 16 because Hollywood once made Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront?
I don’t particularly like the idea that I want little to do with contemporary culture. But I feel it nonetheless—and sense many of you do as well.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/confessions-of-a-cultural-drop-out/
October 17, 2009
I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture? I am not particularly proud of this quietism (many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD), but not really ashamed of it either.
Shut up and see a movie?
Take Hollywood protocol—make a big movie, hype it, show it at the mall multiplex. But I went to one movie the last year. Maybe three in the last four years. There is not much choice here—car crashes, evil white men killing the innocent, some gay or feminist heroes fending off club-bearing white homophobic Mississippians in pick-ups. Or you can endure the American war-machine kidnapping, torturing, or murdering even more of the helpless abroad—with Robert Redford, glassed down, tweed in display, or snarly George Clooney sermonizing, like the choruses of Euripides’ tragedies.
The usual themes—some evil corporation is destroying something (fill in the blanks: the environment, the neighborhood, the small town, etc.), some CIA conspiracy is out to ruin a crusading heroic journalist, or some brave professor or writer is exposing a massive cover-up—are, well, boring, even with the sex, the blow-em-up explosions, and some nice scenery. (And all this from a corporate Hollywood—reliant on the security of the American military, crass in its high tastes and destructive in its behavior, and all the while profit and status obsessed! [The world of Halliburton makes the world safe for Botox?])
If it is not all that, we get instead some neurotic suburban psychodrama about a senseless midlife crisis of some aging yuppies, wondering whether their empty lives really have meaning. Then there are always the “action” movies about tomb-robbing, treasure-hunting, or Zombie killing, but even they try to mask emptiness with a politically-correct throw-away line now and then. Can’t they make one movie of the Lewis and Clark expedition or Lepanto, and one less with Tom Hanks as the anguished and caring postmodern man?
Why not DVDs?
If I watch DVDs, they surely are not of recent vintage. I couldn’t tell you a single release in the current most rented 100. I rewatch instead Westerns—Peckinpaugh, John Ford, the classics like Shane and High Noon, the greats like Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, George C. Scott, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, John Wayne, etc., and, as I wrote a few months ago, almost anything with a brilliant, but now forgotten character actor such as a Jack Palance, Richard Boone (cf. Cicero Grimes in Hombre), Ben Johnson, or Warren Oates—if only for their accents, ad-libbed lines, and carriage. Only the greats like DeNiro or Pacino, or a Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and a few others (a Hackman, Eastwood, or Hopkins) approximate the old breed. (A Mickey Rourke, Gary Oldman, or John Malkovich are at least originals and, like real people, look the worse for it). So I find myself replaying something like a Das Boot or Breaker Morant, or supposedly corny 1930s and 1940s classics like How Green Was My Valley or The Best Years of Our Lives. If I want to watch a film that failed at the box-office, I’ll take One-Eyed Jacks or Major Dundee or Pat Garret and Billy the Kid; their failures are better than today’s “successes”.
Today’s under thirty American male actors sound like they either have sinus congestion, or are trying to convince someone they are not as effeminate as their contrived appearance otherwise suggests. If my life depended on it, I could not identify any of the current leading actresses. The country needs a screen presence of a Burt Lancaster or Frederic March and it gets instead a Ben Affleck or Leo DiCaprio.
Musical Time Warp
Ditto music. I don’t know the name of a single rapper. Don’t follow rock anymore. Don’t want to. I like a Mark Knopfler or Coldplay, but mostly missed music’s 21st century. I’m so lost that I think a Bob Seeger and Bruce Hornsby are contemporary mega-stars, though I couldn’t identify a recent hit of either. I haven’t seen any of the kids write as well as Springsteen or Van Morrison. One Otis Redding had more talent than the entire hip-hop industry.
Who is Katie Couric?
Add in television. I haven’t watched a network newscast in 10 years. If I want to see a 60-Minutes hit piece, I’ll watch a You Tube video where the amateurs are far more interesting and honest about their ambush journalism. Do the CBS hit-men still try to jump in and cross-up some poor official, as he stammers while they hammer on? Is Andy Rooney still around?
I don’t know which anchor is where. I bump into them in their re-aired interviews like the Couric/Palin disaster or Gibson with his eyeglasses on his nose as if were a professor of Romance Languages grilling Sarah the Idaho co-ed, but other than that could care less.
I’d take an old paleo-liberal like Eric Sevareid, John Chancellor, or David Brinkley any day over the most conservative on NBC or CNN. The old guys had style, even class; today’s crowd spends more on teeth-whiteners than on books.
Obama is perfect for the age. Like Bush, he had the Ivy-League degrees; unlike Bush he had the pretension that they meant something, even though in his mind the Berlin Airlift, the German language, Auschwitz, World War II, Cordoba, the geography of the U.S., almost anything dealing with history, geography, literature, or well, knowledge in general—well all that is stuff that others less relevant than he learned in college.
Commercial-free TV?
I like C-Span and have always admired Brian Lamb. I used to be a big fan of PBS and PR, but no more. The laudable shows are far outweighed by the race/class/gender agendas, usually someone in a soft drone, talking scarcely above a whisper, about some new heretofore unnoticed pathology of the US military, corporation, or government (pre-Obama) that a particularly angry but heroic professor or investigative reporter is going to enlighten us about.
Well, There’s Always Sports
Next confession: I have not watched a single NFL game–including the Super bowl–for more than 10 minutes during the last decade. In the 1980s I was a big fan. I could not be pried loose from the 49ers and Bill Walsh or Jim Plunkett’s numerous Raider come-backs. Out here Deacon Jones, Dick Bass, and John Brodie were sorta football greats. Not now such heroes. Somewhere around 1990-5 everything went wrong with the big money, big hype, and big egos.
Maybe it is the airs of the sportscasters, and the pseudo-intellectual exegesis of the “analysts.” (I’ll take a Russ Hodges or Dizzy Dean any day, or, god help me, a young Howard Cosell before his decline in the Clay/Ali days). The constant criminality of the players and the egocentric outbursts didn’t help. Then there’s the pretensions of the buccaneer owners, and the extravaganza of the spectacle of the Roman arena, all that turned me off it—despite the courage and drama involved in football, and the science and tension of baseball. But one can find that watching high school or college sports.
Ditto the NBA. I have not watched a complete game in 15 years. Here too I could not name 5 current NBA players. I quit with the old Lakers/Celtics rivalries of the late 1970s and 1980s. (But then I have never played a video game either, and the two now seem to the distant ignorant bystander as about the same thing).
I watched 2 baseball games on television the last 3 years. Again, the melodrama of the sportscasters and writers (a slick Bob Costas as would-be Aristotle in his analyses and Sophocles in the supposed serious tragedy of his modulating voice) assumes the players are Olympians when of course they more or less resemble ego-centric multimillionaires.
Just a dozen selfless players, who keep quiet when they score, give credit to others when they pitch a shut-out, or pass rather than shoot could help things. I don’t mind the constant therapy of the coverage—the personal interest story of the athlete who lost his mother during training, who conquered polio as a child, or who saved a little boy from a surging stream—but it does not make up for the absence of manners and sportsmanship.
Like most of America I do not read the New York Times–maybe once at an airport this year, but not more. (The only Times headlines I see are in history books, and pre-1970 they were quite good). It’s not that just I get most of my news on the Internet, but rather there is no there at the Times. A void. The front-page stories are thinly disguised op-eds and poorly written and sourced, and the op-eds are not disguised first-person rants by Dowd, Krugman, Herbert, Rich, etc. largely embarrassing confessions from a group of well-off, well-connected, status-obsessed elites lecturing the nation outside New York and Los Angeles on its various sorts of illiberality. Life is too short for ground-hog day reads, the same angst over and over.
International Awards
Nobel Prizes I stopped noticing a while back. Literature and Peace Prizes are awarded mostly on either race/class/gender considerations or utopian pacifism; that a Toni Morison won and a John Updike or Philip Roth (neither of whom I was all that fond of) never did, says all you need to know.
Petraeus is a true peace-maker and saved thousands of lives; Carter was not, and his timidity gave the green light to the Soviets who killed over a million in Afghanistan. If Al Gore had found a way to allow the world’s poor to survive malaria epidemics through DDT spraying, or invented a miracle strain of rice, or a new long-life battery, then one could justify the peace prize for world ecological achievement, but not for screaming about global warming climate change while making $100 million in medieval offset penances as the climate cools down the last decade.
So what’s left of the life of American culture? I try to read novels, the older the better—Knut Hamsun, Conrad, James Jones. Historians like a Gibbon, Prescott, or Churchill, they could write. I read everything John Keegan writes. Martin Gilbert is excellent. Andrew Roberts is as well. I’ve reread Weinberg’s A World at Arms twice this year. The memoirists like E.B. Sledge are riveting. I review a lot of books on classics—the best are not written by academic classists. One does what one can.
The Thin Veneer
A final, odd observation. As I have dropped out of contemporary American culture and retreated inside some sort of 1950s time-warp, in a strange fashion of compensation for non-participation , I have tried to remain more engaged than ever in the country’s political and military crises, which are acute and growing. One’s distancing from the popular culture of movies, TV, newspapers, and establishment culture makes one perhaps wish to overcompensate in other directions, from the trivial to the important.
Lately more than ever I try to obey the speed limit, overpay my taxes, pay more estimates and withholding than I need, pay all the property taxes at once, pick up trash I see on the sidewalk, try to be overly polite to strangers in line, always stop on the freeway when I see an elderly person or single woman with a flat, leave 20% tips, let cars cut me off in the parking lot (not in my youth, not for a second), and patronize as many of Selma’s small businesses as I can (from the hardware store to insurance to cars). I don’t necessarily do that out of any sense of personal ethics, but rather because in these increasingly crass and lawless times, we all have to try something, even symbolically, to restore some common thread to the frayed veneer of American civilization, to balance the rips from a Letterman attack on Palin’s 14-year-old daughter or a Serena Williams’s threat to a line judge, or the President’s communication director’s praise of Mao, civilization’s most lethal mass murderer, or all of what I described above.
I don’t fathom the attraction of a Kanye West (I know that name after his outburst), a David Letterman, Van Jones, Michael Moore (all parasitic on the very culture they mock), or the New York Review of Books or People Magazine (they seem about the same in their world view). So goodbye to all that.
Horace called this reactionary nostalgia the delusion of a laudator temporis acti, the grouchy praiser of times past for the sake of being past. Perhaps. But I see the trend of many ignoring the old touchstones of popular entertainment and life as a rejection of establishment culture—a disbelief in, or utter unconcern with, what elites now offer as valuable on criteria that have nothing to do with merit or value. I was supposed to listen to Dan Rather because Murrow once worked for CBS? I am to go to the Cinema 16 because Hollywood once made Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront?
I don’t particularly like the idea that I want little to do with contemporary culture. But I feel it nonetheless—and sense many of you do as well.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/confessions-of-a-cultural-drop-out/
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
American Jews and Obama’s Abandonment of Israel
Many American Jews place their commitment to leftist politics before the survival of the Jewish state.
by Abraham H. Miller
When the Israel Bonds appeal was made in many synagogues this year, congregants heard something that would have been unnecessary a generation ago: a strong reminder of the ties that bind American Jews to Israel. Given a choice between ties to Israel and commitments to leftist politics, American Jews will choose their politics. Nowhere is this more evident than in the support among Jewish Democrats (92%) for the policies of Barack Obama and their contrasting rejection by Israelis (4% support Obama’s policies). The explanation for the divergence is typical of the hubris of leftist Jews. They see themselves and President Obama as the embodiment of Democratic and Jewish ideals, while Israeli Jews, especially the Orthodox and Russian immigrants, have moved decidedly to the right and spurned both Jewish and Democratic values. In the boardrooms of Jewish organizations, discussion of “divergence,” as it is being called, takes place with the consummate acceptance of this explanation. I will not dispute the numbers, but as any undergraduate with an exposure to the logic of inference will note, there is no concatenation between the data and the explanation. What exists is a bunch of brain-atrophied liberals sitting around a table indulging smug notions of their political self-esteem. The strange thing about leftist Jews, who are generally secular, talking about Jewish values is those values are always aligned with Democratic policy positions. Perhaps in their version of Exodus, Franklin Roosevelt led the Israelites out of Egypt, climbed atop Mt. Sinai, and returned with two tablets, on which were etched the New Deal. The policy implications for divergence is that the Israelis had better return to the same Jewish values as leftist American Jews, or there will be no affinity between the two communities and no support for Israel. The hubris of this is seen in just what Jewish values the Obama administration represents. I never thought that the intrusion of government into every private sphere was somehow a Jewish value. Tzdaka (charity) isn’t socialism. If it were, the Orthodox Jews, who appear to know something about Jewish values, wouldn’t have voted disproportionately Republican. Centralization has never been a democratic value. If it were, Stalin, not Jefferson, would be the paragon of democracy. An administration that in nine months created more czars than the Romanovs were able to create in three hundred years does not seem to embrace democratic values. What liberal American Jews don’t want to confront is they have helped put into power an administration that is more vexed over a Jew building a home in Jerusalem than a Muslim building a nuclear bomb outside of Tehran. Liberal Jews don’t want to admit that in Cairo and again at the United Nations, President Obama not only recited the Arab narrative of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute; he embraced the Palestinian position a priori before forthcoming negotiations. As Poland and the Czech Republic were taking the knives out of their backs after Obama’s abrogation of American commitments on missile defense, Israelis were finding they were next on the list of Obama’s betrayal. But liberal American Jews lusting after Obama as some political messiah who will bring peace to the Middle East can’t deal with the dissonance of what they are witnessing. Like all true believers who end up facing what sociologists call the “crisis of non-appearance,” liberal Jews simply have increased their zealotry and sought a convenient scapegoat, Israel. It is not that liberal American Jews helped elect one of the most intrusive and authoritarian administrations to ever come to Washington or one of the most anti-Israel. It is that those stiff-necked Israelis, especially those Russian immigrants, just haven’t been properly socialized into Democratic values the way America socializes its immigrants. Have you been to the parking lot of a Home Depot lately? Take a look and then tell me about the glories of America’s immigration and socialization policies. I’m sure all that exploited day labor is just bursting over with concerns for democracy, especially if ACORN signs them up to vote. I wonder, do you press “8” in Tel Aviv for Russian? What explains divergence is that on the one hand you have a group of Jews living in the security and luxury of American suburbia, whose primary existential threat is whether the crabgrass will take over their backyard. On the other hand, you have Israeli Jews living in a state of perpetual war, who worry about where the next missile or suicide bomber will come from. The Jews living in such upscale suburbs as Evanston, Illinois, pontificate about moral equivalence and what the body count in Sderot should be in order to justify a military incursion into Gaza. All the time, they worry about what they need to say to stay in the good graces of their interfaith neighbors and colleagues. Leftist American Jews should realize that there is no rationale that will make the Obama administration anything other than the political fiasco it is. It is an administration honed in the machine politics of Chicago, where perpetuating power is the paramount goal. It is an administration that buys every leftist shibboleth about the causes of and solutions to the Middle East conflict. It is the most treacherous and anti-Israel administration ever to come to power. American Jews need to stop blaming Israel for their own political failures. If American Jews are the embodiment of Democratic and Jewish values, where is the Jewish value in scapegoating one’s brethren? The Jewish community has made a terrible political mistake. Among the delegations that had no shame, no decency, and no commitment to truth and listened to Ahmadinejad spew his venom at the UN was an American delegation that accepts his narrative of Middle East history. It is time for American Jews to face the reality of what they have created.
Monday, October 12, 2009
No Laughing Matter
By MARK STEYN
10/09/2009
The most popular headline at the Real Clear Politics website the other day was: “Is Obama Becoming A Joke?” With brilliant comedic timing, the very next morning the Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Up next: His stunning victory in this year’s Miss World contest. December 12th, Johannesburg. You read it here first.
For what, exactly, did he win the Nobel? As the president himself put it: “When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I have done so far. And that is nothing. Almost one year and nothing to show for it. You don’t believe me? You think I’m making it up? Take a look at this checklist.”
And up popped his record of accomplishment, reassuringly blank.
Oh, no, wait. That wasn’t the real President Obama. That was a comedian playing President Obama on “Saturday Night Live.” And, for impressionable types who find it hard to tell the difference, CNN — in a broadcast first that should surely have its own category at the Emmys — performed an in-depth “reality check” of the SNL sketch.
That’s right: They fact-checked the jokes. Seriously. “How much truth is behind all the laughs? Stand by for our reality check,” promised Wolf Blitzer, introducing his in-depth report with all the plonking earnestness so cherished by those hapless Americans stuck at Gate 73 for four hours with nothing to watch but the CNN airport channel.
Given the network’s ever more exhaustive absence of viewers among the non-flight-delayed demographic, perhaps Wolf could make it a regular series: Who was that lady I saw you with last night? That was no lady, that was my wife.
“In fact, our sources confirm, his wife is, biologically speaking, a lady. Joining us now is our Medical Correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, we all like a joke, but how much truth is behind the laughs?”
Fortunately, the Nobel Committee understands that President Obama’s accomplishments are no laughing matter. So they gave him the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
I assumed this was a reference to his rip-roaring success in winning the Olympic Games for Rio, but as it turns out the deadline for Nobel nominations was way back on February 1st.
Obama took office on January 20th. Gosh, it’s so long ago now. What “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” did he make in those first 12 days? Bowing to the Saudi King? Giving the British Prime Minister the Wal-Mart discount box of “Twenty Classic Movies You’ve Seen A Thousand Times?”
“Er, Barack, I’ve already seen these.” “That’s okay. They won’t work in your DVD player anyway.”
For these and other “extraordinary efforts” in “cooperation between peoples,” President Obama is now the fastest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history. Alas, the extraordinary efforts of those first 12 days are already ancient history.
Reflecting the new harmony of US-world relations since the administration hit the “reset” button, The Times of London declared the award “preposterous” and Svenska Freds (the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society) called it “shameful.”
There’s something almost quaintly vieux chapeau about the Nobel decision, as if the hopeychangey bumper stickers were shipped surface mail to Oslo and only arrived last week. Everywhere else, they’re peeling off: The venerable lefties at Britain’s New Statesman currently have a cover story on “Barack W Bush”.
Happily, there are still a few Americans willing to stand by Mister Saturday Night. “I am shocked at the mean-spirited comments,” wrote Judi Romaine to The Times in protest at all the naysaying.
“I’m afraid I’ve registered into a very conversative (sic), fear-based world here, but I’d like to suggest the incredible notion we all create our worlds in our conversations. What are you building by maligning rather than creating discourses for workability? Bravo to Obama and others working for people, however it appears to cynics.”
If that’s the language you have to speak when you’re “working for people,” I’d rather work for a cranky mongoose. Yet to persons who can use phrases like “creating discourses for workability” with a straight face, Obama remains an heroic figure.
Like Judi Romaine, he works hard to “create our worlds in our conversations”. Why, only the other day, very conversationally, the administration floated the trial balloon that it could live with the Taliban returning to government in Afghanistan. A lot of Afghans won’t be living with it, but that’s their lookout.
This is — how to put this delicately? — something of a recalibration of Obama’s previous position. From about a year after the fall of Baghdad, Democrats adopted the line that Bush’s war in Iraq was an unnecessary distraction from the real war, the good war, the one in Afghanistan that everyone — Dems, Europeans, all the nice people — were right behind, one hundred per cent.
No one butched up for the Khyber Pass more enthusiastically than Barack Obama: “As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority.” (July 15, 2008)
But that was then and this is now. As the historian Robert Dallek told Obama recently, “War kills off great reform movements.” As the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne reminded the president, his supporters voted for him not to win a war but to win a victory on health care and other domestic issues.
Obama’s priorities lie not in the Hindu Kush but in America: Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?
Gosh, given their many assertions that Afghanistan is “a war we have to win” (Obama to the VFW, August 2008), you might almost think, pace Judi Romaine, that it’s the president and water-bearers like Gunga Dionne who are the “cynics.”
In a recent speech to the Manhattan Institute, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that, in diminishing American power abroad to advance statism at home, Obama and the American people will be choosing decline.
There are legitimate questions about our war aims in Afghanistan, and about the strategy necessary to achieve them. But eight years after being toppled, the Taliban will see their return to power as a great victory over the Great Satan, and so will the angry young men from Toronto to Yorkshire to Chechnya to Indonesia who graduated from Afghanistan’s Camp Jihad during the 1990s.
And so will the rest of the world: They will understand that the modern era’s ordnungsmacht (the “order maker”) has chosen decline.
Barack Obama will have history’s most crowded trophy room, but his presidency is shaping up as a tragedy — for America and the world.
© Mark Steyn, 2009
10/09/2009
The most popular headline at the Real Clear Politics website the other day was: “Is Obama Becoming A Joke?” With brilliant comedic timing, the very next morning the Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Up next: His stunning victory in this year’s Miss World contest. December 12th, Johannesburg. You read it here first.
For what, exactly, did he win the Nobel? As the president himself put it: “When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I have done so far. And that is nothing. Almost one year and nothing to show for it. You don’t believe me? You think I’m making it up? Take a look at this checklist.”
And up popped his record of accomplishment, reassuringly blank.
Oh, no, wait. That wasn’t the real President Obama. That was a comedian playing President Obama on “Saturday Night Live.” And, for impressionable types who find it hard to tell the difference, CNN — in a broadcast first that should surely have its own category at the Emmys — performed an in-depth “reality check” of the SNL sketch.
That’s right: They fact-checked the jokes. Seriously. “How much truth is behind all the laughs? Stand by for our reality check,” promised Wolf Blitzer, introducing his in-depth report with all the plonking earnestness so cherished by those hapless Americans stuck at Gate 73 for four hours with nothing to watch but the CNN airport channel.
Given the network’s ever more exhaustive absence of viewers among the non-flight-delayed demographic, perhaps Wolf could make it a regular series: Who was that lady I saw you with last night? That was no lady, that was my wife.
“In fact, our sources confirm, his wife is, biologically speaking, a lady. Joining us now is our Medical Correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, we all like a joke, but how much truth is behind the laughs?”
Fortunately, the Nobel Committee understands that President Obama’s accomplishments are no laughing matter. So they gave him the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
I assumed this was a reference to his rip-roaring success in winning the Olympic Games for Rio, but as it turns out the deadline for Nobel nominations was way back on February 1st.
Obama took office on January 20th. Gosh, it’s so long ago now. What “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” did he make in those first 12 days? Bowing to the Saudi King? Giving the British Prime Minister the Wal-Mart discount box of “Twenty Classic Movies You’ve Seen A Thousand Times?”
“Er, Barack, I’ve already seen these.” “That’s okay. They won’t work in your DVD player anyway.”
For these and other “extraordinary efforts” in “cooperation between peoples,” President Obama is now the fastest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history. Alas, the extraordinary efforts of those first 12 days are already ancient history.
Reflecting the new harmony of US-world relations since the administration hit the “reset” button, The Times of London declared the award “preposterous” and Svenska Freds (the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society) called it “shameful.”
There’s something almost quaintly vieux chapeau about the Nobel decision, as if the hopeychangey bumper stickers were shipped surface mail to Oslo and only arrived last week. Everywhere else, they’re peeling off: The venerable lefties at Britain’s New Statesman currently have a cover story on “Barack W Bush”.
Happily, there are still a few Americans willing to stand by Mister Saturday Night. “I am shocked at the mean-spirited comments,” wrote Judi Romaine to The Times in protest at all the naysaying.
“I’m afraid I’ve registered into a very conversative (sic), fear-based world here, but I’d like to suggest the incredible notion we all create our worlds in our conversations. What are you building by maligning rather than creating discourses for workability? Bravo to Obama and others working for people, however it appears to cynics.”
If that’s the language you have to speak when you’re “working for people,” I’d rather work for a cranky mongoose. Yet to persons who can use phrases like “creating discourses for workability” with a straight face, Obama remains an heroic figure.
Like Judi Romaine, he works hard to “create our worlds in our conversations”. Why, only the other day, very conversationally, the administration floated the trial balloon that it could live with the Taliban returning to government in Afghanistan. A lot of Afghans won’t be living with it, but that’s their lookout.
This is — how to put this delicately? — something of a recalibration of Obama’s previous position. From about a year after the fall of Baghdad, Democrats adopted the line that Bush’s war in Iraq was an unnecessary distraction from the real war, the good war, the one in Afghanistan that everyone — Dems, Europeans, all the nice people — were right behind, one hundred per cent.
No one butched up for the Khyber Pass more enthusiastically than Barack Obama: “As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority.” (July 15, 2008)
But that was then and this is now. As the historian Robert Dallek told Obama recently, “War kills off great reform movements.” As the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne reminded the president, his supporters voted for him not to win a war but to win a victory on health care and other domestic issues.
Obama’s priorities lie not in the Hindu Kush but in America: Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?
Gosh, given their many assertions that Afghanistan is “a war we have to win” (Obama to the VFW, August 2008), you might almost think, pace Judi Romaine, that it’s the president and water-bearers like Gunga Dionne who are the “cynics.”
In a recent speech to the Manhattan Institute, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that, in diminishing American power abroad to advance statism at home, Obama and the American people will be choosing decline.
There are legitimate questions about our war aims in Afghanistan, and about the strategy necessary to achieve them. But eight years after being toppled, the Taliban will see their return to power as a great victory over the Great Satan, and so will the angry young men from Toronto to Yorkshire to Chechnya to Indonesia who graduated from Afghanistan’s Camp Jihad during the 1990s.
And so will the rest of the world: They will understand that the modern era’s ordnungsmacht (the “order maker”) has chosen decline.
Barack Obama will have history’s most crowded trophy room, but his presidency is shaping up as a tragedy — for America and the world.
© Mark Steyn, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
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Atlas Shrugs
The Brussels Journal
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CNSnews.com
Counterterrorism Blog
Daniel Pipes
Davids Medienkritik
Defend the Defenders
euobserver.com
EURSOC
Expatica
Frontpagemag.com
EuropeNews
Galliawatch
Gates of Vienna
The Gertrude Bell Project
IMRA
International Free Press Society
Islam in Europe
The Jawa Report
Jihad Watch
Klein Verzet.com
Media Watch Watch
MEMRI
Michelle Malkin
Melanie Phillips
Netherlands Info Services
Newsbusters
Pat Crowley's Penheads
Powerline
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
Outpost
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Refugee Resettlement Watch
Shariah Finance Watch
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Victor Davis Hanson
View from the Right
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ZOA
Irving Kristol - What the master taught his apprentices
My Irving Kristol and Ours
What the master taught his apprentices.
by Mary Eberstadt
10/05/2009, Volume 015, Issue 03
A young woman came by to visit the Policy Review offices a few weeks ago. Fresh out of a prestigious graduate school, enamored of both philosophy and creative writing, she'd been sent by a mutual friend and was looking for work. How, she wondered, might someone who loved reading and writing, but had no background in publishing or anything else of professional relevance, break into what used to be called "the higher journalism"--and make a living at it?
Though not exactly the stuff of Proust's madeleine, her question did send me wandering back in time. Twenty-five years ago, in 1984, I'd been a girl much like her--straight out of college with similar interests and questions, as eager to make a mark as a writer as I was unqualified for any such thing. Unlike her, however, I'd gotten lucky--about as lucky under the circumstances as it was possible to be. Back when I was in her shoes, I'd had the fantastic good fortune of putting that same question--and as it later turned out, many more as well--to an already legendary writer and editor named Irving Kristol, who died last week at the age of 89.
"More than anyone alive, perhaps, Irving Kristol can take the credit for reversing the direction of American political culture." These words taken from the Nation a few years back signal the Irving Kristol the world knows best: the godfather of neoconservatism. As that other titan of neoconservative thought, Norman Podhoretz, has suggested, "grandfather" may be the better label, given the generations of writers influenced by that family of ideas. For years now, at least since Peter Steinfels's 1979 book The Neoconservatives, articles and books and documentaries--including several essays by Irving himself--have wrestled with the question of his singular and manifold influence, in the process turning Kristol-gazing into a minor industry of its own.* Cold Warrior, ex-Trotskyist, coeditor with Stephen Spender of Encounter, coeditor with Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell of the Public Interest, founder with Owen Harries of the National Interest, public intellectual for nearly seven decades, contributor during those same years to the most influential journals and magazines of the day, from Commentary and the New Leader half a century ago to the New York Times Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, member of countless boards and all-around intellectual impresario: These are just some of the faces of Irving with which critics and fans alike must reckon.
Yet if history has given us two, three, many Irving Kristols, it has also stinted on the Irving whom I and many other people were privileged to know best. That is the amusing, avuncular, sometimes delphic boss we saw day in and day out thanks to the unique system of apprenticeship that he devised for the Public Interest. For almost two years between 1983 and 1985, I was one of the interns privileged to toil for great profit (if little salary) in the tiny, smoky, one-room magazine office in New York--that "halfway house," as David Skinner accurately dubbed it in these pages a few years ago, "for dozens and dozens of young assistants, who typically arrived fresh out of college and stayed a year or at most two before leaving for grad school, or government, or other jobs in journalism."
Only slightly larger than a college dormitory room, that Public Interest office was as stuffed with manuscripts and books and magazines as it was with people maneuvering around all the obstacles, including two or three interns, a managing editor, Irving's longtime (and universally adored) secretary Rita Lazzaro, and of course Irving himself, issuing a steady stream of wisecracks, phone calls, and dictated correspondence into the chaos. There were also the phones ringing on everyone else's desks, the banging Selectric II typewriters, the coffee cups, ashtrays, and cigarettes; some of the interns (like Irving too, back then) puffed away incessantly. Everyone including the boss ate lunch at their desks most days, adding further to the clutter and assault on the senses; and any authors or other hapless types visiting the magazine were further shoehorned into our hazy, bustling little office cubby. In truth, an environment more inimical to concentration and privacy can scarcely be imagined. On the other hand, as many were to find out, neither could a more fascinating or rewarding place to pass the days.
I arrived on the fabled doorstep in 1983. At that moment Irving was 63, the magazine, which later moved to Washington, was still in New York and it was roughly halfway through a tenure as remarkable for its longevity (40 years) as for the enduring high quality of its pages. Like most such hopefuls who made their way to Irving, I'd been sent by someone else who knew the shop--in this case Jeremy Rabkin, a professor at Cornell--and also shared the same simple if grandiose ambition of the other interns: We all wanted to be writers when we grew up.
Unlike most of the other helpers hired for the place, though--and herewith my perversely unique credential for offering an essay about Irving--I was unqualified for any such thing: no published work whatsoever to my credit, no background in economics or public policy, no understanding of urban planning, welfare initiatives, or other subjects for which the magazine's pages were renowned. Similarly did I lack any editorial or fact-checking experience, unless one counts a job in college spent poring over the footnotes in that undiscovered masterpiece of opinion journalism, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. And when asked by then-managing editor Mark Lilla to produce a piece of writing for Irving to read, I proudly brandished one document that has probably never been used as an entrée to journalism either before or since: a 40-page college paper on "Immanuel Kant's Theory of Aesthetic Judgment." Book Three.
As Irving cheerfully pointed out during the job interview, such was not exactly the stuff of which Horatio Alger stories in journalism are made, and he further observed that he could see no good reason to hire me. But he just as cheerfully did it anyway, thus fortuitously throwing me into the company of a number of other apprentices who by contrast had begun making marks of their own. This cast in 1984 included Tod Lindberg, who had cofounded a magazine at the University of Chicago and was already a paid contributor to numerous magazines (and subsequently an author, columnist, newspaper editor, Hoover Institution research fellow, and now editor of Policy Review). Managing editor Mark Lilla would go on to become a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago (and, as it turned out, an itinerant professional critic of his former boss). Thomas J. Main, another assistant editor, had already transformed thinking in public policy circles about a critical social issue, with a seminal essay in the Public Interest on "The Homeless of New York."
Those both ahead of and behind us in the intern line showed similar seriousness of purpose. Foreign policy strategist Robert Kagan had passed through the place earlier, as had at various times Steven Lagerfeld (editor of the Wilson Quarterly), author and publisher Robert Asahina, defense expert Seth Cropsey, journalist and Reader's Digest editor Rachel Flick Wildavsky, the late magazine editor and author Michael Scully, and a slew of others launched into a life of journalism or politics or both by their time at the PI. The masthead in the years to follow would witness a similar procession: Richard Starr (now deputy editor of this magazine), columnist and author Diana West, speechwriter and political consultant Daniel Casse, and David Skinner, editor of the National Endowment for the Humanities' magazine Humanities, among others. All these and more had Irving Kristol to thank, whether they ever did so or not, for their first and formative experience of what it meant to read and edit and write their way into the world.
This track record is all the more striking because Irving's intern "program" was less an actual curriculum than a glorified system of learning in a far more effective way--mainly, by grappling with the work of the distinguished authors the magazine published, and by eavesdropping on Irving's dictation and phone calls in that teeny-tiny office. Such eavesdropping, consisting as it did of listening to Irving talk with some of the most interesting and influential people around, turned out to be essential to our crash course in journalism.
So was the Public Interest's salary, which was so low that it was practically guaranteed to jump-start our literary ambitions. To be fair, the workload of a quarterly journal was light enough for Irving to grant us the boon of a four-day work week. But those Fridays off were meant to be used productively, reading and writing. Interns were expected to publish--if not in the PI then elsewhere, and if not for literary glory then because it was the only way of paying the rent. Getting a piece into the hallowed precincts of Norman Podhoretz's Commentary (where Norman's deputy Neal Kozodoy policed the pages with a legendary editorial ferocity) was a particular coup for those who managed it; so too was any appearance in Bob Tyrrell's American Spectator or Bob Bartley's Wall Street Journal. Writing and publishing as Irving expected his interns to do also meant making more connections in the wider world, of course. It was this fact, and not the sinister imaginings of subsequent critics of some neoconservative "cabal," that helped Irving's apprentices end up where they did.
Fortunately for us, Irving could no more help teaching young people than we could help taking his extraordinary interest in us for granted. Be brief: This was something we learned (or tried to) from Irving's dictations; long before email and instant messaging, his many letters covering all kinds of ground were typically just one or two sentences long. About editing: Always just cut the text if you have to, he advised, never add to what's there. How well he understood that most writers over-think and over-write, typically burying the lamp of their thought under bushels of dead words. About responding to critics en masse in a published venue: When answering letters written in response to something you've written, don't use the authors' names. Just lay out their common themes. That way you won't get caught up personally and can just stick to the ideas.
He taught a thing or two about religion and philosophy, too, to the long line of twentysomethings, some of whom outside the office lived a creed of personal nihilism whose origins he understood better than we did. A student of Gnostic movements throughout history, he recognized far better than we their reappearance on the world stage in modern and postmodern guises. "Think right, live left," we used to joke--though not around Irving; it was, we sensed, probably the one joke he wouldn't have shared.
In fact, though, he seemed to find just about everything else amusing--including some things that we interns did not think amusing at all, such as our all-too-serious ambitious young selves. This brings us to another fact about Irving's intern program: It worked because of his profound understanding of what young people are made of. He knew--and often wrote about--just how deeply modern and postmodern mores had penetrated into young souls. Decades before anyone but George Gilder and Midge Decter were saying so, he knew also that the sexual revolution had been a nearly unmitigated disaster for many people and their families, especially though not only the poor, and especially though not only young women. He knew, in other words, just how consequential the social changes from the 1960s on had been for one particularly vulnerable subset: the young.
That was how he could speak with such authority about "their turbulent sexuality, their drug addiction, their desperate efforts to invent new 'lifestyles,' and their popular music, at once Dionysiac and mournful." I remember those words leaping from the page upon reading them years later. In New York in the 1980s, new wave and punk rock were still reigning but on the way out, hip-hop and techno on the way in, and like everyone else I'd spent plenty of time slumming in clubs and other waystations of the popular culture, imbibing nihilism. Yet here was Irving, a 65-year-old bookworm who probably couldn't have found CBGB's if he were dropped off in front of it on a Friday night (and certainly wouldn't have gone in if he had), managing a decade later in just a few words to speak more truth about the scene than any of its itinerant habitués.
Irving understood what few in our post-authority age understand, which is that a great deal of contemporary youthful anomie is a cry of frustration against the disappearance of orthodoxy itself--and a substitute search for something higher than the low down, dirty, stifling counterculture. "Young people," he observed to a group of divinity professors and students back in 1979, "do not want to hear that the church is becoming modern. Go tell the young people that the message of the church is to wear sackcloth and ashes and to walk on nails to Rome, and they would do it." Furthermore, "young people, especially, are looking for religion so desperately that they are inventing new ones. They should not have to invent new ones; the old religions are pretty good." These knowing words, incidentally, were written on the cusp of the evangelical explosion, and well before the unforeseen turn to neo-orthodoxy by small but significant numbers of young Catholics and Jews.
Working for Irving at the Public Interest was an education in other unexpected ways. In particular, it left most of us permanently immune to at least two prominent stereotypes about neoconservatism that have been making the fevered rounds of commentary ever since. One of these was the charge that those on the right were somehow in it for the money--that nefarious corporate largesse rather than actual conviction accounted for the swelling ranks of young neoconservatives and conservatives. Two-thirds of my Public Interest salary, I remember smartingly to this day, went to rent a fifth-floor walk-up in a neighborhood that kids today would call "sketchy" if they were given to understatement. During those years the assistant editors lived off the free lunch Irving provided at Hamburger Heaven (often eating like trenchermen to make the food last into the night) and, many nights, on the free meatballs at happy hour at O'Lunney's bar on Second Avenue. Sometimes for entertainment in the most thriving city on earth, we'd get together and play the board game Jeopardy late into the night--because at least that was something we could do for free. (When one of the players, John Podhoretz, became an actual Jeopardy champion years later, it was clear that something good had come from our penury.) So much for the neoconservative gravy train!
Irving and his wife Bea, for their part, lived in an inviting and book-stuffed apartment near the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South--in which cozy quarters they made a habit of generously entertaining the interns alongside established writers and other prominent guests. For that reason among others, Irving's interns felt as warmly toward Bea Kristol as they were simultaneously in awe of her public persona, Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian. Irving himself encouraged such intimidation via his omnipresent adulation of her; he made sure we interns were aware of her many distinguished works, and remarked more than once in the office that in a hundred years' time, Bea would be the intellectual whose oeuvre would be left standing. Like Midge Decter, whose offices at the Committee for the Free World were at that time another hangout for young conservatives in New York, Bea took both a personal and an intellectual interest in Irving's apprentices, reading our fledgling writing and unfailingly extending to all the pleasure of her conversation and company.
A couple of times a year the mail would bring individual invitations, set out in Bea's perfect and perfectly tiny handwriting, for a soirée at the Kristols' apartment. There the office team got to meet the regulars on their social and intellectual list--Walter and Irene Berns, Martin and Sydnee Lipset, Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Robert Nisbet, H. J. Kaplan, Roger Starr, George Will, Bob Bartley, and many other writers and editors who would be influencing ideas and politics for years to come. And these are just names from an aperture of two years in the mid 1980s; one can only imagine the parade in full across the decades. Also in the Kristols' apartment, of course, the PI interns met the rest of the family. Their children Bill and Liz knew most everyone on the masthead, and many interns over the years became personal friends. Such are among the true and apparently terrifying origins of the "neoconservative media machine" that has since given so many swooning critics a case of the vapors.
The second stereotype that anyone who actually worked around Irving finds very funny in retrospect is the conflation of neoconservatism with Zionism. Going through piles of mail in the hobbity Public Interest office, one would occasionally come across a crazy letter--the kind that, back before email made all communications look alike, was identifiable by caked glue and cutout letters, say, or elaborate scrawling script running over both sides of the envelope (always a bad sign). Often such missives turned out to be passionately executed exercises in anti-Semitism, undertaken by correspondents who knew all too well that somewhere between the Trilateral Commission and the Public Interest offices lurked a conspiracy of Jews trying to rule the world. In fairness to them, of course, these correspondents may just have been ahead of their time; after all, any number of authors complaining about neocons in recent years have managed to make related, feverish cases, and in some of the best publications--rather than, say, in red magic marker on a dirty envelope.
Sometimes whichever intern was lowest on the totem pole would read aloud these ravings about how the Public Interest magazine was the red-hot center of one or another Jewish conspiracy--a ritual that we junior editors found all the more entertaining since most of us during those particular years were cradle Catholics. If the offices of neoconservative magazines really were what so many hysterical critics before and since have insisted, i.e., treacherous tools doing Israel's bidding, it was clear from the kind of people working in them that these Jews must be a lot dumber than their enemies otherwise seemed to think.
A one- or two-year berth at the Public Interest also enabled the apprentices to study Irving Kristol in one other way that demands to be mentioned, because it is the most significant of all: as a writer and man of letters par excellence, a virtuoso of his chosen literary form.
None of which is to say that Irving comported himself thus. As Nathan Glazer notes in his essay in The Neoconservative Imagination, Irving himself never kept track of his own publications, and "responded with disdain that he keeps no bibliography of his writing, that he leaves that to the scholars, who do indeed keep coming up with pieces he has forgotten" (it is one of many virtues of that book that compiler Mark Gerson has appended his own best stab at a thorough bibliography at the end). Nor did Irving write books proper, which might have made following his chain of thought somewhat easier (though he once told Tod Lindberg and me of having written, and then burned, a youthful novel). Rather, his chosen vessel throughout the decades was the essay--that deceptively limited-seeming form that is nevertheless, as Aldous Huxley once put it, "a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything."
And so Irving did, in one venue after another, as the piles of magazines around the office went to show--in Commentary, the Reporter, the New Leader, Encounter, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and other venues where one could then measure out one's thoughts in thousands rather than mere hundreds of words. These essays are almost invariably pithy, but they stood on the shoulders of prodigious reading and learning. Irving read incessantly--not only magazines but books, and not only books but good and deep ones--as well as murder mysteries and English novels, Straussian arcana and business lore, everyone else's manuscripts, and a great deal else. That depth is part of why his essays reveal not one writerly virtue or two, but the whole tool kit: epigrams, irony, sustained logical argument, humor, dramatic closings, a knack for translating arcane points of argument into lively prose.
So many of Irving's one-liners have passed into the vernacular that even some of his admirers may not recognize their origins: "The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism." "An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence." "The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them." "The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism." "Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions--it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
Yet the flair on display in this body of work goes beyond such bons mots. His regular Wall Street Journal essays, for example, are easily among the best the newspaper has ever published, as are those he did for the New York Times Magazine. Many of his longer essays in the "higher journalism" genre, the ones that show up in the collected volumes, are truly great, far outlasting their immediate moments and capable of being read and re-read with profit long after whatever ostensibly occasioned them had passed from the scene. This is true whether the occasion was the American bicentennial ("Adam Smith and the Spirit of Capitalism," 1976), say, or a chance gathering of professors and students of divinity ("Christianity, Judaism, and Socialism," 1979), or even--witness numerous articles on socialism and Freudianism--an entire intellectual movement.
In "God and the Psychoanalysts," for example--written in 1949, a moment when Freudian thought was preeminent, and decades before it would finally be forced into intellectual exile by the accumulated weight of criticism from all sides--Irving not only anticipates the coming psychoanalytic crackup, but also foresees why it is coming: because the understanding of human nature on which the Freudian edifice depends is itself fundamentally cracked. Man's "flight from God," he observed in this essay written six decades ago, "has also been a flight from his true self, which had been made in His image. So it was that Freud could build a theory of human nature on the basis of his experience with hysterics and neurotics." This fact, Irving could see clearly, was "a unique and strange achievement which testifies to our modern psychic equilibrium."
It is this gift for penetrating through any number of epiphenomena to the real fault lines beneath that transforms so much of Irving's writings from opinion pieces into lasting essays and at times profound meditations. Consider as one more example a Commentary essay written almost fifty years later, in 1994, humorously (if also bitingly) titled "Why Religion Is Good for the Jews." Ostensibly occasioned by a now-forgotten news blip--a prominent fundamentalist's remark that only Christians would get into heaven when the time came--it makes points far less transient than the event. First comes a gentle if rather obvious religious lesson ("As it happens, Jewish theological teachings do not recognize the doctrine of a second coming of Jesus (or a first), so it is hard to see why Jews should take such offense at these statements"). And second comes the inevitable wisecrack: "It is almost as if Jewish organizations, having fought (quite successfully) against Jewish exclusion from country clubs, now feel it necessary to take on the specter of discrimination in that Great Country Club in the Sky." Both moves are vintage Irving.
Reading through them again now suggests that two features of these essays have gone chronically under-appreciated by critics. One is the importance of religion to even his earliest thought. "I was born 'theo-tropic,'" Irving observes in his autobiographical memoir written in 1995, "and not even my dismal experience of a decadent orthodoxy could affect this basic predisposition." At another, earlier point in his writing he describes religion as always his favorite subject. It is from religion that Irving reasons time and again to the conservative conclusion that politics is not everything--one of several convictions unifying his thought across the years.
This fact also gives the lie to the frequently thrown contemporary jab about neoconservatism being somehow "messianic," an idiocy that no one actually reading the written record could pen with a straight face. Irving himself specified several times over the decades that neoconservatism was not a movement but a "persuasion" or "impulse" ("more descriptive than prescriptive," as he put it once). Moreover, his most explicit writing on the subject--his introduction to the 1983 collection Reflections of a Neoconservative--discusses several points he deems integral to neoconservatism, not one of which concerns foreign policy, which is where the bugaboo about "messianism" is typically lodged.
"The real trouble," he wrote in surveying American society for another jewel of an essay, a 1972 piece called "About Equality,"
is not sociological or economic at all. It is that the "middling" nature of a bourgeois society falls short of corresponding adequately to the full range of man's spiritual nature, which makes more than middling demands upon the universe, and demands more than middling answers. . . . [The critics of bourgeois society] may speak about "equality"; they may even be obsessed with statistics about equality; but it is a religious vacuum--a lack of meaning in their own lives, and the absence of a sense of larger purpose in their society--that terrifies them and provokes them to "alienation" and unappeasable indignation. It is not too much to say that it is the death of God, not the emergence of any new social or economic trends, that haunts bourgeois society. And this problem is far beyond the competence of politics to deal with.
If these are the words of a messianic thinker, then he is writing himself out of a job.
Similarly, not nearly enough has been made of Irving's sense of humor (perhaps not surprisingly, given the dour critics who have made themselves neoconservatism's Monday morning quarterbacks). Many essays sparkle with good-natured wit--as did Irving in person--and never more than when he is self-deprecating. "I really cannot believe that Americans are a historically unique and chosen people," he observes drolly in one example. "I am myself a Jew and an American, and with all due respect to the Deity, I think the odds are prohibitive that He would have gone out of His way to choose me twice over."
This comedic flair is evident early in Irving's writings. Two of his first Commentary essays are overt treatments of humor, one of them the magnificently wistful "Is Jewish Humor Dead?" (1951). Then there are the covert treatments. Another early essay in Commentary notes of some forgotten American humorists that "they may not be entirely out of mind, but they are quite out of print--deservedly so." Similarly, in an essay written in 1979 (itself slyly titled "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed--Perhaps the Only--'Neoconservative' "), he issues his opinion of Peter Steinfels's The Neoconservatives thus: "I do not wish to suggest that the book is without merit. There is, for example, an excellent couple of sentences on page 4."
To write about Irving Kristol without understanding either his ineradicable respect for religion or his liberal sense of humor is like trying to describe food without tasting or smelling it. Facts not always being stubborn things, many self-appointed critics of neoconservatism have nonetheless done just that in absurdly offering up the portrait of a godless neoconservative ideologue. Even so, one suspects another, deeper reason for why certain detractors have failed to give Irving his literary due: their resentment of his longstanding and resolutely unapologetic attack on the counterculture and its legacy.
This is the Irving whom critics have truly wanted to hate: Irving the social conservative. As he put it in one 1993 essay that made waves called "My Cold War," what saddened him above all were "the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society--a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. . . . It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. It cannot win, but it can make us all losers." Today, of course, many on the right as well as the left would drive social conservatives from the fold if they could. How quickly they have forgotten just which opinion writers consistently delivered the sharpest and most knowing critiques of modern morals during the past several decades--Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and other prominent neoconservatives. Social conservatism itself has been a bigger tent than is typically appreciated.
All of which brings us back to that little smoky office a quarter century ago. One day shortly before leaving the Public Interest for good, I was treated by Irving to one other rite of passage in the program, a lunch away from our desks at the New York Athletic Club. He mentioned something that seemed surprising--that, in the long run, he thought the internship program would prove more influential even than the magazine itself. I thought at the time he was referring to the careers that many of his former apprentices would go on to, and maybe he was. A quarter century later, though, I like to think that there may have been another, deeper way in which we interns had given something back to Irving.
After all, for years and years that one-room office amounted to a two-way eavesdropping street. In some sense that we didn't understand, we interns were all babbling Londoners to his pacing Dickens, the background voices to many a passing or written thought. Maybe listening to us was part of how Irving came to know what many people, including many people fighting over neoconservatism today, did not. The figurative kids of the world after the social revolutions of the sixties weren't quite all right after all--but they were worth trying to reach anyway, in whole or in part, one essay, one argument, at a time.
One afternoon in 1985 we were all sitting around the office when a call came in from one of the television networks. Someone was putting together a panel show on censorship, and they were interested in hearing Irving discuss one more essay that had turned into a lightning rod, "Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship." Would Irving care to make an appearance on the show? they asked. No, he told them, Irving would not. Why not? Because, Irving deadpanned to us, he never did television. He had done it just once before and regretted it--because "when I saw myself on film, I couldn't believe it. I did not in fact look anything like what I know I look like, which is Cary Grant."
In a way that seems impossible to convey, he was just such an outsized, witty, urbane, and perpetually amusing gentleman to his apprentices--and by extension to the many other people he advised over the years, from his business students at NYU to the parade of writers and editors and politicians and more who sought his counsel. Such is even true of the readers who never knew him, but who found in his literary company a most agreeable and persuasive companion.
The critics who have charged neoconservatism with "selling out" its intellectual pedigree have gotten one thing right: Any writer following in Irving's footsteps would likely look inferior by comparison. But that does not make his intellectual heirs and beneficiaries wrong. When all is said and done about the contested particulars--the neocons, the magazines, the Jews, the Irvings both real and imaginary about whom his biographers may quarrel till the time comes when we find out who really does get into that Great Country Club in the sky--we are left with the same Irving who's been there all along. That's the writer whose lightning pen willed a whole new political world to life and made a great many people proud to consider themselves his fellow conservatives. Neither his personal nor his literary example will likely be matched in the higher journalism, or what's left of it, ever again.
Mary Tedeschi Eberstadt is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution, consulting editor to Policy Review, contributing writer to First Things, and author most recently of The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death and Atheism, forthcoming in spring 2010 from Ignatius Press.
What the master taught his apprentices.
by Mary Eberstadt
10/05/2009, Volume 015, Issue 03
A young woman came by to visit the Policy Review offices a few weeks ago. Fresh out of a prestigious graduate school, enamored of both philosophy and creative writing, she'd been sent by a mutual friend and was looking for work. How, she wondered, might someone who loved reading and writing, but had no background in publishing or anything else of professional relevance, break into what used to be called "the higher journalism"--and make a living at it?
Though not exactly the stuff of Proust's madeleine, her question did send me wandering back in time. Twenty-five years ago, in 1984, I'd been a girl much like her--straight out of college with similar interests and questions, as eager to make a mark as a writer as I was unqualified for any such thing. Unlike her, however, I'd gotten lucky--about as lucky under the circumstances as it was possible to be. Back when I was in her shoes, I'd had the fantastic good fortune of putting that same question--and as it later turned out, many more as well--to an already legendary writer and editor named Irving Kristol, who died last week at the age of 89.
"More than anyone alive, perhaps, Irving Kristol can take the credit for reversing the direction of American political culture." These words taken from the Nation a few years back signal the Irving Kristol the world knows best: the godfather of neoconservatism. As that other titan of neoconservative thought, Norman Podhoretz, has suggested, "grandfather" may be the better label, given the generations of writers influenced by that family of ideas. For years now, at least since Peter Steinfels's 1979 book The Neoconservatives, articles and books and documentaries--including several essays by Irving himself--have wrestled with the question of his singular and manifold influence, in the process turning Kristol-gazing into a minor industry of its own.* Cold Warrior, ex-Trotskyist, coeditor with Stephen Spender of Encounter, coeditor with Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell of the Public Interest, founder with Owen Harries of the National Interest, public intellectual for nearly seven decades, contributor during those same years to the most influential journals and magazines of the day, from Commentary and the New Leader half a century ago to the New York Times Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, member of countless boards and all-around intellectual impresario: These are just some of the faces of Irving with which critics and fans alike must reckon.
Yet if history has given us two, three, many Irving Kristols, it has also stinted on the Irving whom I and many other people were privileged to know best. That is the amusing, avuncular, sometimes delphic boss we saw day in and day out thanks to the unique system of apprenticeship that he devised for the Public Interest. For almost two years between 1983 and 1985, I was one of the interns privileged to toil for great profit (if little salary) in the tiny, smoky, one-room magazine office in New York--that "halfway house," as David Skinner accurately dubbed it in these pages a few years ago, "for dozens and dozens of young assistants, who typically arrived fresh out of college and stayed a year or at most two before leaving for grad school, or government, or other jobs in journalism."
Only slightly larger than a college dormitory room, that Public Interest office was as stuffed with manuscripts and books and magazines as it was with people maneuvering around all the obstacles, including two or three interns, a managing editor, Irving's longtime (and universally adored) secretary Rita Lazzaro, and of course Irving himself, issuing a steady stream of wisecracks, phone calls, and dictated correspondence into the chaos. There were also the phones ringing on everyone else's desks, the banging Selectric II typewriters, the coffee cups, ashtrays, and cigarettes; some of the interns (like Irving too, back then) puffed away incessantly. Everyone including the boss ate lunch at their desks most days, adding further to the clutter and assault on the senses; and any authors or other hapless types visiting the magazine were further shoehorned into our hazy, bustling little office cubby. In truth, an environment more inimical to concentration and privacy can scarcely be imagined. On the other hand, as many were to find out, neither could a more fascinating or rewarding place to pass the days.
I arrived on the fabled doorstep in 1983. At that moment Irving was 63, the magazine, which later moved to Washington, was still in New York and it was roughly halfway through a tenure as remarkable for its longevity (40 years) as for the enduring high quality of its pages. Like most such hopefuls who made their way to Irving, I'd been sent by someone else who knew the shop--in this case Jeremy Rabkin, a professor at Cornell--and also shared the same simple if grandiose ambition of the other interns: We all wanted to be writers when we grew up.
Unlike most of the other helpers hired for the place, though--and herewith my perversely unique credential for offering an essay about Irving--I was unqualified for any such thing: no published work whatsoever to my credit, no background in economics or public policy, no understanding of urban planning, welfare initiatives, or other subjects for which the magazine's pages were renowned. Similarly did I lack any editorial or fact-checking experience, unless one counts a job in college spent poring over the footnotes in that undiscovered masterpiece of opinion journalism, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. And when asked by then-managing editor Mark Lilla to produce a piece of writing for Irving to read, I proudly brandished one document that has probably never been used as an entrée to journalism either before or since: a 40-page college paper on "Immanuel Kant's Theory of Aesthetic Judgment." Book Three.
As Irving cheerfully pointed out during the job interview, such was not exactly the stuff of which Horatio Alger stories in journalism are made, and he further observed that he could see no good reason to hire me. But he just as cheerfully did it anyway, thus fortuitously throwing me into the company of a number of other apprentices who by contrast had begun making marks of their own. This cast in 1984 included Tod Lindberg, who had cofounded a magazine at the University of Chicago and was already a paid contributor to numerous magazines (and subsequently an author, columnist, newspaper editor, Hoover Institution research fellow, and now editor of Policy Review). Managing editor Mark Lilla would go on to become a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago (and, as it turned out, an itinerant professional critic of his former boss). Thomas J. Main, another assistant editor, had already transformed thinking in public policy circles about a critical social issue, with a seminal essay in the Public Interest on "The Homeless of New York."
Those both ahead of and behind us in the intern line showed similar seriousness of purpose. Foreign policy strategist Robert Kagan had passed through the place earlier, as had at various times Steven Lagerfeld (editor of the Wilson Quarterly), author and publisher Robert Asahina, defense expert Seth Cropsey, journalist and Reader's Digest editor Rachel Flick Wildavsky, the late magazine editor and author Michael Scully, and a slew of others launched into a life of journalism or politics or both by their time at the PI. The masthead in the years to follow would witness a similar procession: Richard Starr (now deputy editor of this magazine), columnist and author Diana West, speechwriter and political consultant Daniel Casse, and David Skinner, editor of the National Endowment for the Humanities' magazine Humanities, among others. All these and more had Irving Kristol to thank, whether they ever did so or not, for their first and formative experience of what it meant to read and edit and write their way into the world.
This track record is all the more striking because Irving's intern "program" was less an actual curriculum than a glorified system of learning in a far more effective way--mainly, by grappling with the work of the distinguished authors the magazine published, and by eavesdropping on Irving's dictation and phone calls in that teeny-tiny office. Such eavesdropping, consisting as it did of listening to Irving talk with some of the most interesting and influential people around, turned out to be essential to our crash course in journalism.
So was the Public Interest's salary, which was so low that it was practically guaranteed to jump-start our literary ambitions. To be fair, the workload of a quarterly journal was light enough for Irving to grant us the boon of a four-day work week. But those Fridays off were meant to be used productively, reading and writing. Interns were expected to publish--if not in the PI then elsewhere, and if not for literary glory then because it was the only way of paying the rent. Getting a piece into the hallowed precincts of Norman Podhoretz's Commentary (where Norman's deputy Neal Kozodoy policed the pages with a legendary editorial ferocity) was a particular coup for those who managed it; so too was any appearance in Bob Tyrrell's American Spectator or Bob Bartley's Wall Street Journal. Writing and publishing as Irving expected his interns to do also meant making more connections in the wider world, of course. It was this fact, and not the sinister imaginings of subsequent critics of some neoconservative "cabal," that helped Irving's apprentices end up where they did.
Fortunately for us, Irving could no more help teaching young people than we could help taking his extraordinary interest in us for granted. Be brief: This was something we learned (or tried to) from Irving's dictations; long before email and instant messaging, his many letters covering all kinds of ground were typically just one or two sentences long. About editing: Always just cut the text if you have to, he advised, never add to what's there. How well he understood that most writers over-think and over-write, typically burying the lamp of their thought under bushels of dead words. About responding to critics en masse in a published venue: When answering letters written in response to something you've written, don't use the authors' names. Just lay out their common themes. That way you won't get caught up personally and can just stick to the ideas.
He taught a thing or two about religion and philosophy, too, to the long line of twentysomethings, some of whom outside the office lived a creed of personal nihilism whose origins he understood better than we did. A student of Gnostic movements throughout history, he recognized far better than we their reappearance on the world stage in modern and postmodern guises. "Think right, live left," we used to joke--though not around Irving; it was, we sensed, probably the one joke he wouldn't have shared.
In fact, though, he seemed to find just about everything else amusing--including some things that we interns did not think amusing at all, such as our all-too-serious ambitious young selves. This brings us to another fact about Irving's intern program: It worked because of his profound understanding of what young people are made of. He knew--and often wrote about--just how deeply modern and postmodern mores had penetrated into young souls. Decades before anyone but George Gilder and Midge Decter were saying so, he knew also that the sexual revolution had been a nearly unmitigated disaster for many people and their families, especially though not only the poor, and especially though not only young women. He knew, in other words, just how consequential the social changes from the 1960s on had been for one particularly vulnerable subset: the young.
That was how he could speak with such authority about "their turbulent sexuality, their drug addiction, their desperate efforts to invent new 'lifestyles,' and their popular music, at once Dionysiac and mournful." I remember those words leaping from the page upon reading them years later. In New York in the 1980s, new wave and punk rock were still reigning but on the way out, hip-hop and techno on the way in, and like everyone else I'd spent plenty of time slumming in clubs and other waystations of the popular culture, imbibing nihilism. Yet here was Irving, a 65-year-old bookworm who probably couldn't have found CBGB's if he were dropped off in front of it on a Friday night (and certainly wouldn't have gone in if he had), managing a decade later in just a few words to speak more truth about the scene than any of its itinerant habitués.
Irving understood what few in our post-authority age understand, which is that a great deal of contemporary youthful anomie is a cry of frustration against the disappearance of orthodoxy itself--and a substitute search for something higher than the low down, dirty, stifling counterculture. "Young people," he observed to a group of divinity professors and students back in 1979, "do not want to hear that the church is becoming modern. Go tell the young people that the message of the church is to wear sackcloth and ashes and to walk on nails to Rome, and they would do it." Furthermore, "young people, especially, are looking for religion so desperately that they are inventing new ones. They should not have to invent new ones; the old religions are pretty good." These knowing words, incidentally, were written on the cusp of the evangelical explosion, and well before the unforeseen turn to neo-orthodoxy by small but significant numbers of young Catholics and Jews.
Working for Irving at the Public Interest was an education in other unexpected ways. In particular, it left most of us permanently immune to at least two prominent stereotypes about neoconservatism that have been making the fevered rounds of commentary ever since. One of these was the charge that those on the right were somehow in it for the money--that nefarious corporate largesse rather than actual conviction accounted for the swelling ranks of young neoconservatives and conservatives. Two-thirds of my Public Interest salary, I remember smartingly to this day, went to rent a fifth-floor walk-up in a neighborhood that kids today would call "sketchy" if they were given to understatement. During those years the assistant editors lived off the free lunch Irving provided at Hamburger Heaven (often eating like trenchermen to make the food last into the night) and, many nights, on the free meatballs at happy hour at O'Lunney's bar on Second Avenue. Sometimes for entertainment in the most thriving city on earth, we'd get together and play the board game Jeopardy late into the night--because at least that was something we could do for free. (When one of the players, John Podhoretz, became an actual Jeopardy champion years later, it was clear that something good had come from our penury.) So much for the neoconservative gravy train!
Irving and his wife Bea, for their part, lived in an inviting and book-stuffed apartment near the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South--in which cozy quarters they made a habit of generously entertaining the interns alongside established writers and other prominent guests. For that reason among others, Irving's interns felt as warmly toward Bea Kristol as they were simultaneously in awe of her public persona, Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian. Irving himself encouraged such intimidation via his omnipresent adulation of her; he made sure we interns were aware of her many distinguished works, and remarked more than once in the office that in a hundred years' time, Bea would be the intellectual whose oeuvre would be left standing. Like Midge Decter, whose offices at the Committee for the Free World were at that time another hangout for young conservatives in New York, Bea took both a personal and an intellectual interest in Irving's apprentices, reading our fledgling writing and unfailingly extending to all the pleasure of her conversation and company.
A couple of times a year the mail would bring individual invitations, set out in Bea's perfect and perfectly tiny handwriting, for a soirée at the Kristols' apartment. There the office team got to meet the regulars on their social and intellectual list--Walter and Irene Berns, Martin and Sydnee Lipset, Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Robert Nisbet, H. J. Kaplan, Roger Starr, George Will, Bob Bartley, and many other writers and editors who would be influencing ideas and politics for years to come. And these are just names from an aperture of two years in the mid 1980s; one can only imagine the parade in full across the decades. Also in the Kristols' apartment, of course, the PI interns met the rest of the family. Their children Bill and Liz knew most everyone on the masthead, and many interns over the years became personal friends. Such are among the true and apparently terrifying origins of the "neoconservative media machine" that has since given so many swooning critics a case of the vapors.
The second stereotype that anyone who actually worked around Irving finds very funny in retrospect is the conflation of neoconservatism with Zionism. Going through piles of mail in the hobbity Public Interest office, one would occasionally come across a crazy letter--the kind that, back before email made all communications look alike, was identifiable by caked glue and cutout letters, say, or elaborate scrawling script running over both sides of the envelope (always a bad sign). Often such missives turned out to be passionately executed exercises in anti-Semitism, undertaken by correspondents who knew all too well that somewhere between the Trilateral Commission and the Public Interest offices lurked a conspiracy of Jews trying to rule the world. In fairness to them, of course, these correspondents may just have been ahead of their time; after all, any number of authors complaining about neocons in recent years have managed to make related, feverish cases, and in some of the best publications--rather than, say, in red magic marker on a dirty envelope.
Sometimes whichever intern was lowest on the totem pole would read aloud these ravings about how the Public Interest magazine was the red-hot center of one or another Jewish conspiracy--a ritual that we junior editors found all the more entertaining since most of us during those particular years were cradle Catholics. If the offices of neoconservative magazines really were what so many hysterical critics before and since have insisted, i.e., treacherous tools doing Israel's bidding, it was clear from the kind of people working in them that these Jews must be a lot dumber than their enemies otherwise seemed to think.
A one- or two-year berth at the Public Interest also enabled the apprentices to study Irving Kristol in one other way that demands to be mentioned, because it is the most significant of all: as a writer and man of letters par excellence, a virtuoso of his chosen literary form.
None of which is to say that Irving comported himself thus. As Nathan Glazer notes in his essay in The Neoconservative Imagination, Irving himself never kept track of his own publications, and "responded with disdain that he keeps no bibliography of his writing, that he leaves that to the scholars, who do indeed keep coming up with pieces he has forgotten" (it is one of many virtues of that book that compiler Mark Gerson has appended his own best stab at a thorough bibliography at the end). Nor did Irving write books proper, which might have made following his chain of thought somewhat easier (though he once told Tod Lindberg and me of having written, and then burned, a youthful novel). Rather, his chosen vessel throughout the decades was the essay--that deceptively limited-seeming form that is nevertheless, as Aldous Huxley once put it, "a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything."
And so Irving did, in one venue after another, as the piles of magazines around the office went to show--in Commentary, the Reporter, the New Leader, Encounter, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and other venues where one could then measure out one's thoughts in thousands rather than mere hundreds of words. These essays are almost invariably pithy, but they stood on the shoulders of prodigious reading and learning. Irving read incessantly--not only magazines but books, and not only books but good and deep ones--as well as murder mysteries and English novels, Straussian arcana and business lore, everyone else's manuscripts, and a great deal else. That depth is part of why his essays reveal not one writerly virtue or two, but the whole tool kit: epigrams, irony, sustained logical argument, humor, dramatic closings, a knack for translating arcane points of argument into lively prose.
So many of Irving's one-liners have passed into the vernacular that even some of his admirers may not recognize their origins: "The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism." "An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence." "The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them." "The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism." "Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions--it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
Yet the flair on display in this body of work goes beyond such bons mots. His regular Wall Street Journal essays, for example, are easily among the best the newspaper has ever published, as are those he did for the New York Times Magazine. Many of his longer essays in the "higher journalism" genre, the ones that show up in the collected volumes, are truly great, far outlasting their immediate moments and capable of being read and re-read with profit long after whatever ostensibly occasioned them had passed from the scene. This is true whether the occasion was the American bicentennial ("Adam Smith and the Spirit of Capitalism," 1976), say, or a chance gathering of professors and students of divinity ("Christianity, Judaism, and Socialism," 1979), or even--witness numerous articles on socialism and Freudianism--an entire intellectual movement.
In "God and the Psychoanalysts," for example--written in 1949, a moment when Freudian thought was preeminent, and decades before it would finally be forced into intellectual exile by the accumulated weight of criticism from all sides--Irving not only anticipates the coming psychoanalytic crackup, but also foresees why it is coming: because the understanding of human nature on which the Freudian edifice depends is itself fundamentally cracked. Man's "flight from God," he observed in this essay written six decades ago, "has also been a flight from his true self, which had been made in His image. So it was that Freud could build a theory of human nature on the basis of his experience with hysterics and neurotics." This fact, Irving could see clearly, was "a unique and strange achievement which testifies to our modern psychic equilibrium."
It is this gift for penetrating through any number of epiphenomena to the real fault lines beneath that transforms so much of Irving's writings from opinion pieces into lasting essays and at times profound meditations. Consider as one more example a Commentary essay written almost fifty years later, in 1994, humorously (if also bitingly) titled "Why Religion Is Good for the Jews." Ostensibly occasioned by a now-forgotten news blip--a prominent fundamentalist's remark that only Christians would get into heaven when the time came--it makes points far less transient than the event. First comes a gentle if rather obvious religious lesson ("As it happens, Jewish theological teachings do not recognize the doctrine of a second coming of Jesus (or a first), so it is hard to see why Jews should take such offense at these statements"). And second comes the inevitable wisecrack: "It is almost as if Jewish organizations, having fought (quite successfully) against Jewish exclusion from country clubs, now feel it necessary to take on the specter of discrimination in that Great Country Club in the Sky." Both moves are vintage Irving.
Reading through them again now suggests that two features of these essays have gone chronically under-appreciated by critics. One is the importance of religion to even his earliest thought. "I was born 'theo-tropic,'" Irving observes in his autobiographical memoir written in 1995, "and not even my dismal experience of a decadent orthodoxy could affect this basic predisposition." At another, earlier point in his writing he describes religion as always his favorite subject. It is from religion that Irving reasons time and again to the conservative conclusion that politics is not everything--one of several convictions unifying his thought across the years.
This fact also gives the lie to the frequently thrown contemporary jab about neoconservatism being somehow "messianic," an idiocy that no one actually reading the written record could pen with a straight face. Irving himself specified several times over the decades that neoconservatism was not a movement but a "persuasion" or "impulse" ("more descriptive than prescriptive," as he put it once). Moreover, his most explicit writing on the subject--his introduction to the 1983 collection Reflections of a Neoconservative--discusses several points he deems integral to neoconservatism, not one of which concerns foreign policy, which is where the bugaboo about "messianism" is typically lodged.
"The real trouble," he wrote in surveying American society for another jewel of an essay, a 1972 piece called "About Equality,"
is not sociological or economic at all. It is that the "middling" nature of a bourgeois society falls short of corresponding adequately to the full range of man's spiritual nature, which makes more than middling demands upon the universe, and demands more than middling answers. . . . [The critics of bourgeois society] may speak about "equality"; they may even be obsessed with statistics about equality; but it is a religious vacuum--a lack of meaning in their own lives, and the absence of a sense of larger purpose in their society--that terrifies them and provokes them to "alienation" and unappeasable indignation. It is not too much to say that it is the death of God, not the emergence of any new social or economic trends, that haunts bourgeois society. And this problem is far beyond the competence of politics to deal with.
If these are the words of a messianic thinker, then he is writing himself out of a job.
Similarly, not nearly enough has been made of Irving's sense of humor (perhaps not surprisingly, given the dour critics who have made themselves neoconservatism's Monday morning quarterbacks). Many essays sparkle with good-natured wit--as did Irving in person--and never more than when he is self-deprecating. "I really cannot believe that Americans are a historically unique and chosen people," he observes drolly in one example. "I am myself a Jew and an American, and with all due respect to the Deity, I think the odds are prohibitive that He would have gone out of His way to choose me twice over."
This comedic flair is evident early in Irving's writings. Two of his first Commentary essays are overt treatments of humor, one of them the magnificently wistful "Is Jewish Humor Dead?" (1951). Then there are the covert treatments. Another early essay in Commentary notes of some forgotten American humorists that "they may not be entirely out of mind, but they are quite out of print--deservedly so." Similarly, in an essay written in 1979 (itself slyly titled "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed--Perhaps the Only--'Neoconservative' "), he issues his opinion of Peter Steinfels's The Neoconservatives thus: "I do not wish to suggest that the book is without merit. There is, for example, an excellent couple of sentences on page 4."
To write about Irving Kristol without understanding either his ineradicable respect for religion or his liberal sense of humor is like trying to describe food without tasting or smelling it. Facts not always being stubborn things, many self-appointed critics of neoconservatism have nonetheless done just that in absurdly offering up the portrait of a godless neoconservative ideologue. Even so, one suspects another, deeper reason for why certain detractors have failed to give Irving his literary due: their resentment of his longstanding and resolutely unapologetic attack on the counterculture and its legacy.
This is the Irving whom critics have truly wanted to hate: Irving the social conservative. As he put it in one 1993 essay that made waves called "My Cold War," what saddened him above all were "the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society--a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. . . . It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. It cannot win, but it can make us all losers." Today, of course, many on the right as well as the left would drive social conservatives from the fold if they could. How quickly they have forgotten just which opinion writers consistently delivered the sharpest and most knowing critiques of modern morals during the past several decades--Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and other prominent neoconservatives. Social conservatism itself has been a bigger tent than is typically appreciated.
All of which brings us back to that little smoky office a quarter century ago. One day shortly before leaving the Public Interest for good, I was treated by Irving to one other rite of passage in the program, a lunch away from our desks at the New York Athletic Club. He mentioned something that seemed surprising--that, in the long run, he thought the internship program would prove more influential even than the magazine itself. I thought at the time he was referring to the careers that many of his former apprentices would go on to, and maybe he was. A quarter century later, though, I like to think that there may have been another, deeper way in which we interns had given something back to Irving.
After all, for years and years that one-room office amounted to a two-way eavesdropping street. In some sense that we didn't understand, we interns were all babbling Londoners to his pacing Dickens, the background voices to many a passing or written thought. Maybe listening to us was part of how Irving came to know what many people, including many people fighting over neoconservatism today, did not. The figurative kids of the world after the social revolutions of the sixties weren't quite all right after all--but they were worth trying to reach anyway, in whole or in part, one essay, one argument, at a time.
One afternoon in 1985 we were all sitting around the office when a call came in from one of the television networks. Someone was putting together a panel show on censorship, and they were interested in hearing Irving discuss one more essay that had turned into a lightning rod, "Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship." Would Irving care to make an appearance on the show? they asked. No, he told them, Irving would not. Why not? Because, Irving deadpanned to us, he never did television. He had done it just once before and regretted it--because "when I saw myself on film, I couldn't believe it. I did not in fact look anything like what I know I look like, which is Cary Grant."
In a way that seems impossible to convey, he was just such an outsized, witty, urbane, and perpetually amusing gentleman to his apprentices--and by extension to the many other people he advised over the years, from his business students at NYU to the parade of writers and editors and politicians and more who sought his counsel. Such is even true of the readers who never knew him, but who found in his literary company a most agreeable and persuasive companion.
The critics who have charged neoconservatism with "selling out" its intellectual pedigree have gotten one thing right: Any writer following in Irving's footsteps would likely look inferior by comparison. But that does not make his intellectual heirs and beneficiaries wrong. When all is said and done about the contested particulars--the neocons, the magazines, the Jews, the Irvings both real and imaginary about whom his biographers may quarrel till the time comes when we find out who really does get into that Great Country Club in the sky--we are left with the same Irving who's been there all along. That's the writer whose lightning pen willed a whole new political world to life and made a great many people proud to consider themselves his fellow conservatives. Neither his personal nor his literary example will likely be matched in the higher journalism, or what's left of it, ever again.
Mary Tedeschi Eberstadt is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution, consulting editor to Policy Review, contributing writer to First Things, and author most recently of The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death and Atheism, forthcoming in spring 2010 from Ignatius Press.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Polanski
Andy Levy of Fox News’ Red Eye show tweets, “Shocking: Woody Allen signs petition demanding Polanski’s release.”
...and these gliterati also proudly signed in support of Polanski:
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/09/29/well-glad-we-cleared-that-up/
...and these gliterati also proudly signed in support of Polanski:
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/09/29/well-glad-we-cleared-that-up/
Monday, September 14, 2009
FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE
1. "Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for thosewho do not." ~Thomas Jefferson
2. Those who trade liberty for security have neither. ~John Adams
3. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
4. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
5. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
6. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
7. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
8. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
9. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
10. Assault is a behavior, not a device.
11. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
12. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.
13. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.
14. What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you NOT understand?
15. Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians.
16. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
17. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.
2. Those who trade liberty for security have neither. ~John Adams
3. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
4. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
5. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
6. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
7. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
8. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
9. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
10. Assault is a behavior, not a device.
11. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
12. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.
13. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.
14. What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you NOT understand?
15. Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians.
16. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
17. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
can there be hope for one of the nets?
Only ABC Highlights the Scope of How Fast Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling
Of the three morning shows, only ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday highlighted just how quickly and severely Barack Obama's approval ratings have fallen. In a report on the subject, correspondent Jake Tapper bluntly explained, "Since taking office, President Obama's approval ratings have fallen more steeply than any other newly-elected president in modern history."
Of the three morning shows, only ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday highlighted just how quickly and severely Barack Obama's approval ratings have fallen. In a report on the subject, correspondent Jake Tapper bluntly explained, "Since taking office, President Obama's approval ratings have fallen more steeply than any other newly-elected president in modern history."
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Best Quotes From Mark Steyn's 2008 Columns
Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" -- in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity." But I don't recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a five-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.
Certainly, not all Muslims want to fly planes into the Pentagon. But those that do do it in the name of their faith. And anyone minded to engage in an "anti-Islamic activity" will find quite a lot of support from leading Islamic scholars
But, by insisting on re-labeling terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of Islam as "anti-Islamic activity," Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you.
In contrast to Giuliani's take-charge attitude, the incompetent boob presiding over New Orleans, Ray Nagin, raged as wildly as Katrina: "To those who would criticize, where the hell were you?" roared Mayor Culpa, pointing the finger in all directions. "Where the hell were you?" In a town you're not the mayor of, happily.
To be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
Forty-nine years ago, (William F. Buckley) wrote, "We must bring down the thing called liberalism, which is powerful but decadent, and salvage a thing called conservatism, which is weak but viable." It is an unending struggle because, while the facts of life are conservative (as his friend Margaret Thatcher put it), liberalism is eternally seductive.
Geraldine Ferraro acknowledged a simple truth about Barack -- that a white guy with this thin a resume would be hooted off the stage -- and she's the one who got hooted off the stage. This week, Randi Rhodes, the excitable anchorette of the flailing liberal radio network Air America, dismissed Mrs. Ferraro as "David Duke in drag," and for good measure called Hillary "a big f***ing whore." Senator Clinton was the establishment candidate running in a party addicted to novelty (in candidates, that is; its policies remain mired in the Sixties). Hill calculated that, given the Dems' deference to identity politics, her gender would give her enough novelty to sail through. But Obama trumped that...
Sixteen months ago, a school official in Texas accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment after the boy was observed pressing his face into the breasts of a teacher's aide when he hugged her before boarding the school bus. Fortunately, the school took decisive action and suspended the sick freak. By the way, is that the first recorded use in the history of the English language of the phrase "accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment"? Well, it won't be the last: In the state of Maryland last year, 16 kindergartners were suspended for sexual harassment, as were three pre-schoolers.
This week Michelle Obama called for Americans to pony up even more dough for their public school system. The United States already spends more per student than any other developed nation except Switzerland, and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. By any reasonable measure, at least a third of the cash dumped into American schools is entirely wasted.
In my book America Alone, I note a global survey on optimism: 61 per cent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 per cent of the French, 15 per cent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness.
If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe -- especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot. Obama and far too many Democrats have bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book What's The Matter With Kansas?, whose argument is that heartland voters are too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.
Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" -- i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc -- and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation, and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you'll forgive the expression) that America's loser gun-nuts don't share the same sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.
A while back, I was struck by the words of Oscar van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay humanist (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool). Reflecting on the Continent's accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Europe he loved, but what could he do? "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." Sorry, it doesn't work like that. If you don't understand that there are times when you'll have to fight for it, you won't enjoy it for long.
For the last ten years, we have, in fact, been not warming but slightly cooling, which is why the eco-warriors have adopted the all-purpose bogeyman of "climate change."
The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.
By most measures, the Jewish state is a great success story. The modern Middle East is the misbegotten progeny of the British and French colonial map-makers of 1922. All the nation states in that neck of the woods date back a mere 60 or 70 years -- Iraq to the Thirties, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel to the Forties. The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it.
On a tiny strip of land narrower at its narrowest point than many American townships, Israel has built a modern economy with a GDP per capita just shy of $30,000 -- and within striking distance of the European Union average. If you object that that's because it's uniquely blessed by Uncle Sam, well, for the past 30 years the second largest recipient of U.S. aid has been Egypt: Their GDP per capita is $5,000, and America has nothing to show for its investment other than one-time pilot Mohammed Atta coming at you through the office window.
Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing -- chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking.
President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said: "There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemnly responsibility to take these words seriously."
Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So too are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.
(Barrack Obama is a) pretty boy with a resume you could print on the back of his driver's license, a Rolodex apparently limited to neo-segregationist racebaiters, campus Marxist terrorists and indicted fraudsters, and a rhetorical surefootedness that makes Dan Quayle look like Socrates.
In China, the state-enforced "one child" policy has brought about the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun -- "bare branches." If you can only have one kid, parents choose to abort girls and wait for a boy, to the point where in the first generation to grow to adulthood under this policy there are 119 boys for every 100 girls. In practice, a "woman's right to choose" turns out to mean the right to choose not to have any women.
By midcentury, when today's millions of surplus boys will be entering middle age, India and China are expected to account for a combined 50 percent of global GDP. On present trends, they will be the most male-heavy societies that have ever existed. As I wrote in my book America Alone, unless China's planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, what's going to happen to all those excess men? As a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can't get any action are not a recipe for societal stability.
"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for over six months, see your doctor.
(Sarah Palin) hasn't voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she's been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She's a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.
The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can't the government sort out my health care? Why can't they pick up my mortgage?
More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America's America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?
In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people -- the Barack Obamas of the day -- were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived and the wall would still be standing.
For many of his supporters, Barack Obama is an idea. He offers "hope, not fear". "Hope" of what? "Hope" of "change." Okay, but "change" to what? Ah, well, there you go again, getting all hung up on three-dimensional reality, when we've moved way beyond that.
In his Wednesday-night infomercial, Obama declared that his "fundamental belief" was that "I am my brother's keeper." Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother's keeper, why couldn't he send him a ten-dollar bill and near double the guy's income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother's keeper, and his aunt's keeper
It's hard for Republicans to hammer Obama as a socialist when their own party's nationalizing the banks and its presidential nominee is denouncing the private sector for putting profits before patriotism.
If you went back to the end of the 19th century and suggested to, say, William McKinley that one day Americans would find themselves choosing between a candidate promising to guarantee your mortgage and a candidate promising to give "tax cuts" to millions of people who pay no taxes he would scoff at you for concocting some patently absurd H G Wells dystopian fantasy.
In political terms, the message of the gazillion-dollar bipartisan bailout was a simple one: "Individual responsibility" and "self-reliance" are for chumps.
I don't need Barack Obama's help to "spread the wealth around." I spread my wealth around every time I hire somebody, expand my business, or just go to the general store and buy a quart of milk and loaf of bread.
We are told that the "vast majority" of the 1.6-1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate) are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDs activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith.
I wrote in my book, America Alone, that "reforming" Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Koran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there'll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there'll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Bombay in the name of Allah, and that's just business as usual.
Whether wars start depends on the intended target's ability to deter.
Certainly, not all Muslims want to fly planes into the Pentagon. But those that do do it in the name of their faith. And anyone minded to engage in an "anti-Islamic activity" will find quite a lot of support from leading Islamic scholars
But, by insisting on re-labeling terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of Islam as "anti-Islamic activity," Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you.
In contrast to Giuliani's take-charge attitude, the incompetent boob presiding over New Orleans, Ray Nagin, raged as wildly as Katrina: "To those who would criticize, where the hell were you?" roared Mayor Culpa, pointing the finger in all directions. "Where the hell were you?" In a town you're not the mayor of, happily.
To be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
Forty-nine years ago, (William F. Buckley) wrote, "We must bring down the thing called liberalism, which is powerful but decadent, and salvage a thing called conservatism, which is weak but viable." It is an unending struggle because, while the facts of life are conservative (as his friend Margaret Thatcher put it), liberalism is eternally seductive.
Geraldine Ferraro acknowledged a simple truth about Barack -- that a white guy with this thin a resume would be hooted off the stage -- and she's the one who got hooted off the stage. This week, Randi Rhodes, the excitable anchorette of the flailing liberal radio network Air America, dismissed Mrs. Ferraro as "David Duke in drag," and for good measure called Hillary "a big f***ing whore." Senator Clinton was the establishment candidate running in a party addicted to novelty (in candidates, that is; its policies remain mired in the Sixties). Hill calculated that, given the Dems' deference to identity politics, her gender would give her enough novelty to sail through. But Obama trumped that...
Sixteen months ago, a school official in Texas accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment after the boy was observed pressing his face into the breasts of a teacher's aide when he hugged her before boarding the school bus. Fortunately, the school took decisive action and suspended the sick freak. By the way, is that the first recorded use in the history of the English language of the phrase "accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment"? Well, it won't be the last: In the state of Maryland last year, 16 kindergartners were suspended for sexual harassment, as were three pre-schoolers.
This week Michelle Obama called for Americans to pony up even more dough for their public school system. The United States already spends more per student than any other developed nation except Switzerland, and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. By any reasonable measure, at least a third of the cash dumped into American schools is entirely wasted.
In my book America Alone, I note a global survey on optimism: 61 per cent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 per cent of the French, 15 per cent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness.
If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe -- especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot. Obama and far too many Democrats have bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book What's The Matter With Kansas?, whose argument is that heartland voters are too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.
Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" -- i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc -- and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation, and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you'll forgive the expression) that America's loser gun-nuts don't share the same sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.
A while back, I was struck by the words of Oscar van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay humanist (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool). Reflecting on the Continent's accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Europe he loved, but what could he do? "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." Sorry, it doesn't work like that. If you don't understand that there are times when you'll have to fight for it, you won't enjoy it for long.
For the last ten years, we have, in fact, been not warming but slightly cooling, which is why the eco-warriors have adopted the all-purpose bogeyman of "climate change."
The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.
By most measures, the Jewish state is a great success story. The modern Middle East is the misbegotten progeny of the British and French colonial map-makers of 1922. All the nation states in that neck of the woods date back a mere 60 or 70 years -- Iraq to the Thirties, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel to the Forties. The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it.
On a tiny strip of land narrower at its narrowest point than many American townships, Israel has built a modern economy with a GDP per capita just shy of $30,000 -- and within striking distance of the European Union average. If you object that that's because it's uniquely blessed by Uncle Sam, well, for the past 30 years the second largest recipient of U.S. aid has been Egypt: Their GDP per capita is $5,000, and America has nothing to show for its investment other than one-time pilot Mohammed Atta coming at you through the office window.
Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing -- chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking.
President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said: "There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemnly responsibility to take these words seriously."
Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So too are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.
(Barrack Obama is a) pretty boy with a resume you could print on the back of his driver's license, a Rolodex apparently limited to neo-segregationist racebaiters, campus Marxist terrorists and indicted fraudsters, and a rhetorical surefootedness that makes Dan Quayle look like Socrates.
In China, the state-enforced "one child" policy has brought about the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun -- "bare branches." If you can only have one kid, parents choose to abort girls and wait for a boy, to the point where in the first generation to grow to adulthood under this policy there are 119 boys for every 100 girls. In practice, a "woman's right to choose" turns out to mean the right to choose not to have any women.
By midcentury, when today's millions of surplus boys will be entering middle age, India and China are expected to account for a combined 50 percent of global GDP. On present trends, they will be the most male-heavy societies that have ever existed. As I wrote in my book America Alone, unless China's planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, what's going to happen to all those excess men? As a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can't get any action are not a recipe for societal stability.
"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for over six months, see your doctor.
(Sarah Palin) hasn't voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she's been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She's a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.
The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can't the government sort out my health care? Why can't they pick up my mortgage?
More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America's America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?
In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people -- the Barack Obamas of the day -- were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived and the wall would still be standing.
For many of his supporters, Barack Obama is an idea. He offers "hope, not fear". "Hope" of what? "Hope" of "change." Okay, but "change" to what? Ah, well, there you go again, getting all hung up on three-dimensional reality, when we've moved way beyond that.
In his Wednesday-night infomercial, Obama declared that his "fundamental belief" was that "I am my brother's keeper." Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother's keeper, why couldn't he send him a ten-dollar bill and near double the guy's income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother's keeper, and his aunt's keeper
It's hard for Republicans to hammer Obama as a socialist when their own party's nationalizing the banks and its presidential nominee is denouncing the private sector for putting profits before patriotism.
If you went back to the end of the 19th century and suggested to, say, William McKinley that one day Americans would find themselves choosing between a candidate promising to guarantee your mortgage and a candidate promising to give "tax cuts" to millions of people who pay no taxes he would scoff at you for concocting some patently absurd H G Wells dystopian fantasy.
In political terms, the message of the gazillion-dollar bipartisan bailout was a simple one: "Individual responsibility" and "self-reliance" are for chumps.
I don't need Barack Obama's help to "spread the wealth around." I spread my wealth around every time I hire somebody, expand my business, or just go to the general store and buy a quart of milk and loaf of bread.
We are told that the "vast majority" of the 1.6-1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate) are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDs activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith.
I wrote in my book, America Alone, that "reforming" Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Koran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there'll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there'll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Bombay in the name of Allah, and that's just business as usual.
Whether wars start depends on the intended target's ability to deter.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Michele must just be irreplacable...
At the top right hand corner of Page 17 of the New York Post of January 24th, 2009 , was a short column entitled "Replacing Michelle" in the National Review's "The Week" column. Here it is, word for word, as it appeared:
Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting."
In 2005, the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317, 000, nearly twice what her husband made as a U. S. Senator..
Oh, did we mention that her husband had just become a US senator? He sure had. And that immediately after he was elected he requested a $1 million earmark for the UC Medical Center.. You betcha, by golly. He surely did. Way to go Michelle..
But now that Mrs. Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that possibly be? Especially if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?
Oh, by the way, let me add that Michelle's position was a part time, 20-hour-a-week job at $317,000..00 per year. And to think they were critical of Blagoyovich's wife for taking $100,000 in fuzzy real estate commission.
The real question is: How did this bit of quid pro quo corruption escape the sharp reporters that dug through Sarah Palin's garbage and kindergarten files?
Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting."
In 2005, the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317, 000, nearly twice what her husband made as a U. S. Senator..
Oh, did we mention that her husband had just become a US senator? He sure had. And that immediately after he was elected he requested a $1 million earmark for the UC Medical Center.. You betcha, by golly. He surely did. Way to go Michelle..
But now that Mrs. Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that possibly be? Especially if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?
Oh, by the way, let me add that Michelle's position was a part time, 20-hour-a-week job at $317,000..00 per year. And to think they were critical of Blagoyovich's wife for taking $100,000 in fuzzy real estate commission.
The real question is: How did this bit of quid pro quo corruption escape the sharp reporters that dug through Sarah Palin's garbage and kindergarten files?
Monday, May 18, 2009
Love the Brits!!!
An incident occurred in a supermarket recently, when the following was witnessed:
A Muslim woman dressed in a Burkha (A black gown and face mask) was standing with her shopping in a queue at the checkout. When it was her turn to be served, and as she reached the cashier, she made a loud remark about the English Flag lapel pin, which the female cashier was wearing on her blouse.
The cashier reached up and touched the pin and said, 'Yes, I always wear it proudly. My son serves abroad with the forces and I wear it for him'.
The Muslim woman then asked the cashier when she was going to stop bombing and killing her countrymen, explaining that she was Iraqi.
At that point, a Gentleman standing in the queue stepped forward, and interrupted with a calm and gentle voice, and said to the Iraqi woman: 'Excuse me, but hundreds of thousands of men and women, just like this lady's son have fought and sacrificed their lives so that people just like YOU can stand here, in England, which is MY country and allow you to blatantly accuse an innocent check-out cashier of bombing YOUR countrymen'.
'It is my belief that if you were allowed to be as outspoken as that in Iraq, which you claim to be YOUR country, then we wouldn't need to be fighting there today'. 'However - now that you have learned how to speak out and criticise the English people who have afforded you the protection of MY country, I will gladly pay the cost of a ticket to help you pay your way back to Iraq '.
'When you get there, and if you manage to survive for being as outspoken as you are here in England, then you should be able to help straighten out the mess which YOUR Iraqi countrymen have got you into in the first place, which appears to be the reason that you have come to MY country to avoid...'
Apparently the queue cheered and applauded.
Support Our Troops.
A Muslim woman dressed in a Burkha (A black gown and face mask) was standing with her shopping in a queue at the checkout. When it was her turn to be served, and as she reached the cashier, she made a loud remark about the English Flag lapel pin, which the female cashier was wearing on her blouse.
The cashier reached up and touched the pin and said, 'Yes, I always wear it proudly. My son serves abroad with the forces and I wear it for him'.
The Muslim woman then asked the cashier when she was going to stop bombing and killing her countrymen, explaining that she was Iraqi.
At that point, a Gentleman standing in the queue stepped forward, and interrupted with a calm and gentle voice, and said to the Iraqi woman: 'Excuse me, but hundreds of thousands of men and women, just like this lady's son have fought and sacrificed their lives so that people just like YOU can stand here, in England, which is MY country and allow you to blatantly accuse an innocent check-out cashier of bombing YOUR countrymen'.
'It is my belief that if you were allowed to be as outspoken as that in Iraq, which you claim to be YOUR country, then we wouldn't need to be fighting there today'. 'However - now that you have learned how to speak out and criticise the English people who have afforded you the protection of MY country, I will gladly pay the cost of a ticket to help you pay your way back to Iraq '.
'When you get there, and if you manage to survive for being as outspoken as you are here in England, then you should be able to help straighten out the mess which YOUR Iraqi countrymen have got you into in the first place, which appears to be the reason that you have come to MY country to avoid...'
Apparently the queue cheered and applauded.
Support Our Troops.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thanks for nothing, Barack
The Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger asked a former Eastern European dissident imprisoned by Communists: "If you were sitting in a cell in Cuba, Iran or Syria and saw this photo of a smiling American president shaking hands with a smiling Hugo Chavez, what would you think?"
The former dissident responded: "I would think that I was losing ground."
http://tinyurl.com/czfarp
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The former dissident responded: "I would think that I was losing ground."
http://tinyurl.com/czfarp
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Saturday, April 18, 2009
Spector guilty
I watched the Ramones docu, and they all said Spector was a raving lunatic, threatening with guns, etc.
Spector, perhaps the most famous producer in the history of rock 'n' roll, was on Monday found guilty of second degree murder for the 2003 death of actress Lana Clarkson. It was the second trial for Spector after the first, held in 2007, ended in a deadlocked jury, and as verdicts go, it was something of a doozy: the 69-year-old producer may face life in prison when sentencing takes place on May 29th. Spector's been a part of some of the biggest recordings in the history of pop music, and controversy for him has been nothing new.
Spector, perhaps the most famous producer in the history of rock 'n' roll, was on Monday found guilty of second degree murder for the 2003 death of actress Lana Clarkson. It was the second trial for Spector after the first, held in 2007, ended in a deadlocked jury, and as verdicts go, it was something of a doozy: the 69-year-old producer may face life in prison when sentencing takes place on May 29th. Spector's been a part of some of the biggest recordings in the history of pop music, and controversy for him has been nothing new.
Friday, April 17, 2009
There's a large country to the south where you can fly your Mexican flag at the top of the pole.
You are here because Mexico is a failed state. See below:
You are here because Mexico is a failed state. See below:
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
President George W. Bush has saved more than a million lives
You decide if the NYTimes and CBS news, et al, are incompetent, or just steeped in bias.
from FoxNews
Life Saver
It is a story you probably won't hear about in too many other places. A program launched by former President George W. Bush has saved more than a million lives.
A study by two Stanford University doctors states that Mr. Bush's AIDS-fighting campaign reduced deaths by 10 percent in targeted African nations, saving roughly 1.2 million people.
The study tracked AIDS deaths and HIV infections in 12 African nations getting aid under the president's emergency plans for AIDS relief. The $15 billion, five-year effort was launched in 2003.
Last year Congress extended it for another five years. Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino who just returned from volunteering in Africa says: "Good news stories are not always reported because there is always bad news that drives coverage. But Americans should be proud and President Bush deserves a lot of credit."
from FoxNews
Life Saver
It is a story you probably won't hear about in too many other places. A program launched by former President George W. Bush has saved more than a million lives.
A study by two Stanford University doctors states that Mr. Bush's AIDS-fighting campaign reduced deaths by 10 percent in targeted African nations, saving roughly 1.2 million people.
The study tracked AIDS deaths and HIV infections in 12 African nations getting aid under the president's emergency plans for AIDS relief. The $15 billion, five-year effort was launched in 2003.
Last year Congress extended it for another five years. Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino who just returned from volunteering in Africa says: "Good news stories are not always reported because there is always bad news that drives coverage. But Americans should be proud and President Bush deserves a lot of credit."
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
LONDON TIMES REPORT - U.S. Wins!
Winning Isn't News!!
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.
London's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.' A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has in over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul .The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare.
We can thank President Bush's surge Strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering. We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare.
And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.
Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there. Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S.
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.
Sunday Times (London) reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.
Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved 'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the
18 political benchmarks 'a big change for the better from a year ago.' Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates , which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq .
But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper
360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.' The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because President Bush stuck to his guns.
Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.
Copyright 2008 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
Addendum: The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country. They are controlled by Liberal Democrats who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful Republican initiated response to 9/11. Media probably were holding 'til after coronation of BHO in order to give BHO the credit. God bless our troops, God bless President Bush and God bless the U.S.A.
How many will you forward it to? We need to get it known around the country ASAP. Over 10 million people will have read this by March 30, 2009. With all your help we can reach well over 30 million world wide. Thanks,let the truth be known thru-out the world!!!
=============
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.
London's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.' A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has in over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul .The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare.
We can thank President Bush's surge Strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering. We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare.
And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.
Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there. Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S.
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.
Sunday Times (London) reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.
Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved 'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the
18 political benchmarks 'a big change for the better from a year ago.' Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates , which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq .
But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper
360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.' The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because President Bush stuck to his guns.
Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.
Copyright 2008 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
Addendum: The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country. They are controlled by Liberal Democrats who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful Republican initiated response to 9/11. Media probably were holding 'til after coronation of BHO in order to give BHO the credit. God bless our troops, God bless President Bush and God bless the U.S.A.
How many will you forward it to? We need to get it known around the country ASAP. Over 10 million people will have read this by March 30, 2009. With all your help we can reach well over 30 million world wide. Thanks,let the truth be known thru-out the world!!!
=============
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Israel is a Lamb Among Wolves
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, February 13, 2009
When I was very young, people were accustomed to saying that the only two certainties were death and taxes. Over the years, there’s a third item that could be added to the list: Every American president will try and fail to bring peace to the Middle East. Obama is merely the latest to put it at the top of his to-do list. My guess is that four or eight years down the road, long after he has managed to cure the leper and raise the dead, it will still be at the top of his list.
I hate to be a pessimist, but I see no reason not to be. While the folks in Gaza didn’t have two great choices during their last election, much like the electorate here in the U.S., they opted for the greater of two evils, much like the electorate here in the U.S.. They voted for Hamas, a terrorist group sworn to wipe Israel off the map -- the actual map, that is, not merely the fantasy maps they use in their schoolbooks.
It confounds me when people in America and non-Muslims in Europe attempt to find a moral equivalency between Israel and her enemies. For one thing, they invariably find Israel culpable. Israel may not always be right, but that’s far better than always being wrong. I mean, how does anyone living in a civilized nation dare argue on behalf of people who treat their women as chattel and who treat Christians and Jews even worse?
The same bigots who condemn Israel for killing Arab children when they respond to countless missile attacks never seem to condemn the Arabs for either firing those missiles or for using women and children as shields when Israel finally retaliates.
Israel has had nuclear weapons for a good number of years, but has never once used them. Is there anyone anywhere who honestly believes that if Israel’s enemies had nuclear capability, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would be anything but moonscapes by this time?
Those who claim to find a moral equivalency between the two sides in the Middle East are those who, themselves, have no sense of morality. Decades ago, Abba Eban observed that Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He was of course referring to their failure to seek a peaceful resolution. But it isn’t peace the Palestinians want. Neither is it statehood. Even Clinton, who had Yasser Arafat sleeping in Lincoln’s bedroom far more often than Lincoln ever had, got the Israelis to offer up 97% of what Arafat was demanding. The way Arafat stormed off, you would have thought the Israelis had asked to have sex on a first date.
People who believe that Israel was wrested from the Arabs by the U.N. in 1948 are simply ignorant of the facts. Zionists had been buying up desert property at wildly inflated prices for several decades by then. All that happened in 1948 was that the U.N. recognized Israel as a sovereign state. Although the Arabs were invited to remain where they were, they were told by Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq, to leave so that the invading forces wouldn’t have to worry about collateral damage when they eradicated the Jews. The departing Arabs were assured that they’d soon be free to return and share in the spoils. At the time of the invasion, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, left no room for doubt when he declared: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” That was 61 years ago and the grandkids and great-grandkids of those who fled and wound up in Gaza are still waiting for that Great Come and Get It Day.
Recently, Pat Buchanan, sounding, as usual, an awful lot like Jimmy Carter, wrote a piece advising Israel to surrender still more land for peace. Well, why not? It’s always worked so well in the past. Whenever I read Buchanan on the Middle East conflict, I find myself wondering if his solution to the problem of illegal immigration in America would be to hand Texas, Arizona and California, over to Mexico.
Perhaps next time, just as a change of pace, Mr. Buchanan might consider giving the Arabs the benefit of his wisdom. Perhaps something along the lines of “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s 2009, not 1009. Stop behaving like bloody savages!”
Friday, February 13, 2009
When I was very young, people were accustomed to saying that the only two certainties were death and taxes. Over the years, there’s a third item that could be added to the list: Every American president will try and fail to bring peace to the Middle East. Obama is merely the latest to put it at the top of his to-do list. My guess is that four or eight years down the road, long after he has managed to cure the leper and raise the dead, it will still be at the top of his list.
I hate to be a pessimist, but I see no reason not to be. While the folks in Gaza didn’t have two great choices during their last election, much like the electorate here in the U.S., they opted for the greater of two evils, much like the electorate here in the U.S.. They voted for Hamas, a terrorist group sworn to wipe Israel off the map -- the actual map, that is, not merely the fantasy maps they use in their schoolbooks.
It confounds me when people in America and non-Muslims in Europe attempt to find a moral equivalency between Israel and her enemies. For one thing, they invariably find Israel culpable. Israel may not always be right, but that’s far better than always being wrong. I mean, how does anyone living in a civilized nation dare argue on behalf of people who treat their women as chattel and who treat Christians and Jews even worse?
The same bigots who condemn Israel for killing Arab children when they respond to countless missile attacks never seem to condemn the Arabs for either firing those missiles or for using women and children as shields when Israel finally retaliates.
Israel has had nuclear weapons for a good number of years, but has never once used them. Is there anyone anywhere who honestly believes that if Israel’s enemies had nuclear capability, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would be anything but moonscapes by this time?
Those who claim to find a moral equivalency between the two sides in the Middle East are those who, themselves, have no sense of morality. Decades ago, Abba Eban observed that Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He was of course referring to their failure to seek a peaceful resolution. But it isn’t peace the Palestinians want. Neither is it statehood. Even Clinton, who had Yasser Arafat sleeping in Lincoln’s bedroom far more often than Lincoln ever had, got the Israelis to offer up 97% of what Arafat was demanding. The way Arafat stormed off, you would have thought the Israelis had asked to have sex on a first date.
People who believe that Israel was wrested from the Arabs by the U.N. in 1948 are simply ignorant of the facts. Zionists had been buying up desert property at wildly inflated prices for several decades by then. All that happened in 1948 was that the U.N. recognized Israel as a sovereign state. Although the Arabs were invited to remain where they were, they were told by Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq, to leave so that the invading forces wouldn’t have to worry about collateral damage when they eradicated the Jews. The departing Arabs were assured that they’d soon be free to return and share in the spoils. At the time of the invasion, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, left no room for doubt when he declared: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” That was 61 years ago and the grandkids and great-grandkids of those who fled and wound up in Gaza are still waiting for that Great Come and Get It Day.
Recently, Pat Buchanan, sounding, as usual, an awful lot like Jimmy Carter, wrote a piece advising Israel to surrender still more land for peace. Well, why not? It’s always worked so well in the past. Whenever I read Buchanan on the Middle East conflict, I find myself wondering if his solution to the problem of illegal immigration in America would be to hand Texas, Arizona and California, over to Mexico.
Perhaps next time, just as a change of pace, Mr. Buchanan might consider giving the Arabs the benefit of his wisdom. Perhaps something along the lines of “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s 2009, not 1009. Stop behaving like bloody savages!”
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Who is REALLY like Lincoln?
History Will See Lincoln-Like Greatness In... George W. Bush
Abe Lincoln fought for victory. Barack Obama chose defeat.
Obama hesitates to make decisions. He stands firm in his positions until he doesn't. Unlike Lincoln, Barack Obama suffers poor judgement in choosing mentors and friends. Unlike Lincoln, Obama turns his back on those who are suffering and would rather appease evil than confront evil.
Already, it is obvious that Barack Obama lacks the same integrity of Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln was a friend to the downtrodden and weak. Barack Obama is a friend of thugs and despots.
Certainly, George W. Bush is more like Abraham Lincoln.
The left-leaning CQ Politics noted the similarities:
His administration rid the world and a nation of Sadaam Hussein, a despot whose sordid, tortuous crimes against humanity are well documented.
He paved the way for democracy in Iraq and other countries. It is still too early to tell if democracy will stick in any of those places, but people who have never voted are voting and, among others, women have new found rights to education and liberation.
If we begin to expect that any chief executive of anything — be it a country or a Fortune 500 company — cannot make a mistake or two among the hundreds, perhaps, thousands of decisions they make, then our standards have reached the point of ridiculousness.
Looking at Lincoln and Churchill and how they were viewed both in and out of office indicates how difficult it is to pre-judge history’s final assessment of a leader.
Both men were criticized for making quick and sometimes impulsive decisions against the advice of advisers. At times both were pilloried for decisions regarding war.
Lincoln bore the brunt of criticism for war casualties. More soldiers died at the Civil War battle at Antietam in one day — more than 7,000 — than the number American soldiers who have been killed in the war in Iraq. That number is about 4,500, which is not to imply those deaths are inconsequential or without great heartaches to their families.
Lincoln was criticized, as Bush has been, for running afoul of the Constitution and civil liberties. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, which allows imprisoned persons to challenge the legality of their arrests and there were over 10,000 “arbitrary arrests” while Lincoln was in office.
Bush lacks the eloquence of both men.
Churchill was not only a galvanizing and witty speaker, he also wrote a book that won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, “The History of the Second World War.” Lincoln earned immortality with his address at Gettysburg.
We know for virtual certainty that Bush’s speeches will not go down in history. He will not be known for a public display of intellectual depth. What we do not know, however, is how he will be ultimately judged. We know there has not been a foreign attack on our land since 9/11. Is it because of Bush’s policies?
If it is proven he kept our nation safe, we will begin to see him differently as leader.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
ROURKE: 'BUSH WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME'
Actor MICKEY ROURKE sympathises with U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH - insisting he doesn't know how any politician could have successfully navigated America after the 9/11 attacks on New York.
The Hollywood tough-guy spoke out about his political views in a candid interview with Britain's GQ magazine, and admits he doesn't understand why so many people blame Bush for a string of world issues - including Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the West.
And the actor, who claims he didn't follow last year's (08) historic U.S. election battle between Barack Obama and John McCain, urges the public to consider the tremendous pressure the controversial president was under following the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.
He tells the publication, "President Bush was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don't know how anyone could have handled this situation.
"I don't give a f**k who's in office, Bush or whoever, there is no simple solution to this problem... I'm not one of those who blames Bush for everything. This s**t between Christians and Muslims goes back to the Crusades, doesn't it.
"It's too easy to blame everything on one guy. These are unpredictable, dangerous times, and I don't think that anyone really knows quite what to do."
Rourke also confesses he was so angry after 9/11, he wanted to fight the war on terror himself.
He adds, "I'm not politically educated. But I do know that after 9/11 I wanted to go over there, you know what I'm saying?"
And the star is baffled by the U.K.'s approach to fundamentalists - insisting he was taken aback by the freedom of speech allowed in the U.K.
He explains, "I was in London recently and I couldn't believe all these hate-talking fanatics you have over here who are allowed to carry on doing their thing even when a bus full of women and children gets blown to pieces.
"I know you've deported one or two of them, but it seems crazy. I think there is worse to come, something terrible will happen to either America or the U.K., or France even. I don't think these fundamentalists should be allowed to talk all this crap, and brainwashing these young kids."
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Hollywood Conservatives Encouraged to Come Out of the Closet
A once-timid group of social outcasts is emerging from the shadows in Hollywood. If the past year is any indication, Tinseltown may have to get accustomed to the loud presence of a growing minority.
After years of silence, conservatives are coming out of the closet.
Andrew Breitbart, the conservative founder of Breitbart.com and author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon," is launching a Web site he hopes will help challenge the status quo in what he believes has been a one-party, left-tilting town. Set to debut on Jan. 6, "Big Hollywood" will be a place where center, right and libertarian-leaning celebrities and industry-insiders can weigh in on Hollywood politics, offer film, television and movie reviews, and have an open forum for political discussion.
"Our goal," says Breitbart, who lives in Los Angeles, "is to create an atmosphere of tolerance — something that does not exist in this town."
Breitbart has invited a number of conservative politicians, commentators and journalists to write regularly about the cult of celebrity, liberalism in popular culture, and politics. Among the names who will be contributing, he says, are Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va), political commentator Tucker Carlson, and former Tennessee Senator and Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson.
The site will also feature the punditry of some well-known Hollywood actors, directors, producers, and writers, Breitbart says.
As celebrities like Jon Voight, Gary Sinise, Charlton Heston, Patricia Heaton, Stephen Baldwin and Kelsey Grammer came out publicly with their political ideas over the past few years, the news that there were, in fact, conservatives in Hollywood, had many wondering who would be next.
Recently, there have been rumors that Robert Downey Jr. is a closet Republican, though his publicist will neither confirm nor deny it, saying only, "We unfortunately have no comment, as RDJ does not comment on political matters."
But Breitbart says the goal of Big Hollywood is not to "out" conservative celebrities, and he will not pressure celebrities like Downey to jump into the fray. He says conservative celebs who aren't comfortable with full transparency will be allowed to write under an alias.
"I want them to come on their own volition," he says. "'Big Hollywood is going to have to be a compelling daily read that speaks to Hollywood conservatives' unique burden before some will stick their necks out and choose to speak up for what they believe."
Sticking their necks out has not always been good for business. Mark Vafiades, president of the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, says, "I'm hoping that one day politics won't make a difference in Hollywood. But because there is still subtle intolerance here, conservatives remain somewhat shy.
"If you come to an audition wearing a Bush or McCain button, the casting director will most likely pick another actor. Just being on a set you hear people bashing Bush and the right, because they assume everyone agrees."
Some have suggested the purported anti-conservative tilt in Hollywood is overstated — if it exists at all. Perez Hilton, the self-proclaimed "Queen of All Media" and author of his eponymous gossip site, said, "I think Hollywood is very tolerant. They may mock you for your political beliefs, but at least they'll do it to your face!
"It won't ever interfere with people getting a job. Kelsey Grammer still works!"
But some conservatives in the entertainment industry say there may not be a literal blacklist in Hollywood, but there is pressure to keep silent.
"Conservatives don't necessarily have to be covert about their politics, but in many cases they are because the liberals aren't fair and balanced towards those with differing points of view," says Jerry Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of big Hollywood hits like "Schindler's List," "Jurassic Park" and "Rain Man."
"In too many cases, conservatives are immediately labeled racist, homophobic, bigoted, hateful, demonic, or even un-American without the benefit of debate, and are locked out of the hiring process, with a few exceptions."
But the doors may be slowly opening "An American Carol," a conservative parody that lampooned liberal Hollywood this year, galvanized conservative celebrities like Robert Davi, Dennis Hopper, Kevin Farley, Voight and Grammer, all of whom had roles in the film.
And conservative film festivals, including the American Film Renaissance and the Liberty Film Festival, have also helped bring to market conservative projects that a few years ago might have had a difficult time getting made.
Some industry insiders credit John McCain with helping to embolden Hollywood conservatives during this year's presidential election. Andrew Klavan, a conservative author and screenwriter of psychological thrillers including True Crime and Don't Say A Word, said, "For people who had a lot to lose, McCain gave them some cover. He wasn't a true Republican like Bush was. He was someone even the left liked, whereas Bush was demonized. Hollywood conservatives could support McCain without necessarily supporting the GOP."
Klavan suggested that a spate of recent political movies like "Rendition" and "Redaction" also strengthened the conservative cause.
"These movies are genuinely anti-American. Never before have we had anti-war movies made while our troops were at war. Many people like me were ashamed of the industry, and there's been a bit of a backlash."
Vafiades says increasing numbers of conservatives have joined his organization in the past year, and more organizations like his are sprouting up.
But hush-hush groups like "Friends of Abe," a secretive society of Hollywood conservatives, still operate well under the radar. And the increased spotlight on conservative celebrities has not changed the political climate as much as Breitbart, Vafiades, Molen and Klavan would like.
They say liberal celebrities still have an easier time "being political" than conservatives do.
"Sean Penn is out dancing with dictators, and no one gives him flak. Instead they give him Oscar nominations," says Klavan. "Jon Voight may have some semblance of job security, but he still has to be careful about what he says."
After years of silence, conservatives are coming out of the closet.
Andrew Breitbart, the conservative founder of Breitbart.com and author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon," is launching a Web site he hopes will help challenge the status quo in what he believes has been a one-party, left-tilting town. Set to debut on Jan. 6, "Big Hollywood" will be a place where center, right and libertarian-leaning celebrities and industry-insiders can weigh in on Hollywood politics, offer film, television and movie reviews, and have an open forum for political discussion.
"Our goal," says Breitbart, who lives in Los Angeles, "is to create an atmosphere of tolerance — something that does not exist in this town."
Breitbart has invited a number of conservative politicians, commentators and journalists to write regularly about the cult of celebrity, liberalism in popular culture, and politics. Among the names who will be contributing, he says, are Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va), political commentator Tucker Carlson, and former Tennessee Senator and Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson.
The site will also feature the punditry of some well-known Hollywood actors, directors, producers, and writers, Breitbart says.
As celebrities like Jon Voight, Gary Sinise, Charlton Heston, Patricia Heaton, Stephen Baldwin and Kelsey Grammer came out publicly with their political ideas over the past few years, the news that there were, in fact, conservatives in Hollywood, had many wondering who would be next.
Recently, there have been rumors that Robert Downey Jr. is a closet Republican, though his publicist will neither confirm nor deny it, saying only, "We unfortunately have no comment, as RDJ does not comment on political matters."
But Breitbart says the goal of Big Hollywood is not to "out" conservative celebrities, and he will not pressure celebrities like Downey to jump into the fray. He says conservative celebs who aren't comfortable with full transparency will be allowed to write under an alias.
"I want them to come on their own volition," he says. "'Big Hollywood is going to have to be a compelling daily read that speaks to Hollywood conservatives' unique burden before some will stick their necks out and choose to speak up for what they believe."
Sticking their necks out has not always been good for business. Mark Vafiades, president of the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, says, "I'm hoping that one day politics won't make a difference in Hollywood. But because there is still subtle intolerance here, conservatives remain somewhat shy.
"If you come to an audition wearing a Bush or McCain button, the casting director will most likely pick another actor. Just being on a set you hear people bashing Bush and the right, because they assume everyone agrees."
Some have suggested the purported anti-conservative tilt in Hollywood is overstated — if it exists at all. Perez Hilton, the self-proclaimed "Queen of All Media" and author of his eponymous gossip site, said, "I think Hollywood is very tolerant. They may mock you for your political beliefs, but at least they'll do it to your face!
"It won't ever interfere with people getting a job. Kelsey Grammer still works!"
But some conservatives in the entertainment industry say there may not be a literal blacklist in Hollywood, but there is pressure to keep silent.
"Conservatives don't necessarily have to be covert about their politics, but in many cases they are because the liberals aren't fair and balanced towards those with differing points of view," says Jerry Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of big Hollywood hits like "Schindler's List," "Jurassic Park" and "Rain Man."
"In too many cases, conservatives are immediately labeled racist, homophobic, bigoted, hateful, demonic, or even un-American without the benefit of debate, and are locked out of the hiring process, with a few exceptions."
But the doors may be slowly opening "An American Carol," a conservative parody that lampooned liberal Hollywood this year, galvanized conservative celebrities like Robert Davi, Dennis Hopper, Kevin Farley, Voight and Grammer, all of whom had roles in the film.
And conservative film festivals, including the American Film Renaissance and the Liberty Film Festival, have also helped bring to market conservative projects that a few years ago might have had a difficult time getting made.
Some industry insiders credit John McCain with helping to embolden Hollywood conservatives during this year's presidential election. Andrew Klavan, a conservative author and screenwriter of psychological thrillers including True Crime and Don't Say A Word, said, "For people who had a lot to lose, McCain gave them some cover. He wasn't a true Republican like Bush was. He was someone even the left liked, whereas Bush was demonized. Hollywood conservatives could support McCain without necessarily supporting the GOP."
Klavan suggested that a spate of recent political movies like "Rendition" and "Redaction" also strengthened the conservative cause.
"These movies are genuinely anti-American. Never before have we had anti-war movies made while our troops were at war. Many people like me were ashamed of the industry, and there's been a bit of a backlash."
Vafiades says increasing numbers of conservatives have joined his organization in the past year, and more organizations like his are sprouting up.
But hush-hush groups like "Friends of Abe," a secretive society of Hollywood conservatives, still operate well under the radar. And the increased spotlight on conservative celebrities has not changed the political climate as much as Breitbart, Vafiades, Molen and Klavan would like.
They say liberal celebrities still have an easier time "being political" than conservatives do.
"Sean Penn is out dancing with dictators, and no one gives him flak. Instead they give him Oscar nominations," says Klavan. "Jon Voight may have some semblance of job security, but he still has to be careful about what he says."
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Why Does Hollywood Hate the Suburbs?
America's long artistic tradition of claiming spiritual death by station wagon
By LEE SIEGEL
"Revolutionary Road," based on Richard Yates's 1961 novel of the same name, is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death.
The movie's opening scene could serve as a precis of over 50 years of antisuburban sentiment in American culture. Frank and April Wheeler (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet with misdirected intensity like two Titanics passing in the night) pull their car over to the side of the road. They've been fighting, and now they both jump out into the dark of the night. When April's needling escalates to downright cruelty, Frank pulls back his arm as if to hit his wife and then slams his fist into the car. She's been tormenting him, he cries, "ever since we came out here to the suburbs." In the naturalistic novels of Emile Zola, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser, economic forces inexorably destroyed the protagonists. In "Revolutionary Road," the two principal characters are brought down by lawn sprinklers and station wagons.
But Sam Mendes, the film's director, is just getting started. Flashbacks emphasize the chilling role the tortured couple's environment has played in the disintegration of their lives: Against a background of sunlit, leafy yards, we see Kate Winslet taking out the garbage; Kate Winslet doing the laundry; Kate Winslet making small talk with a neighbor. The tree-lined streets are empty and eerily quiet. The beautiful house is tastefully furnished and eerily quiet. You are meant to think of the Wheelers' suburb as "a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime," to borrow Van Gogh's description of an equally alienating milieu (except that Van Gogh was talking about an urban café).
Still, the film's hostility toward the suburbs pales when compared with its source. Yates's novel, cherished by literary intellectuals and Paris Review interns to this day, expresses American suburban-phobia with crude explicitness. Describing the Wheelers' new neighborhood, Yates writes: "The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy.... [The neighborhood] was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves.... A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place."
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' No literary critic that I know of has ever challenged Yates's puerile social perceptions. The reflexive reverence for "Revolutionary Road" is a testament to the degree to which antisuburban sentiment is one of the most unexamined attitudes in American culture. For what might a neighborhood that had been designed to accommodate a tragedy possibly look like? For a man running down the street in desperate grief to fit right into the landscape, he would have to be hurtling through a place where vampiric towers blocked out the sun and corpses hung from the lampposts.
Yates's rage against the suburbs had all the subtlety of adolescent rage against authority (this indiscriminate anger might account for the novel's fatal deficiency: Frank and April's total lack of talent or substance makes their ultimately thwarted attempt to leave the suburbs for Paris less the stuff of tragedy than irritating farce). Yet "Revolutionary Road" -- the name fatuously meant to imply that America's revolutionary promise withers and dies in the suburbs -- caught the reflexive attitudes of many readers. Postwar writers and intellectuals overlooked the book's flagrant shortcomings, lit up from within by their shared opposition to a single place. X might be a Stalinist, and Y a fellow traveler and Z a closet Republican, but they could all agree on one thing -- they'd rather perish in a nuclear holocaust than move to Westchester!
video Scene from 'Revolutionary Road'
American antisuburban sentiment is often comically absurd. In his 1955 poem "Howl," Allen Ginsberg elevated suburb-phobia to the level of myth. He excoriates the "invisible suburbs" -- i.e. they are so spiritually dead that they are hidden from a living eye -- as one of the pernicious manifestations of Moloch, the destructive god of soulless materialism. Sylvia Plath added some spine-tingling details. In her 1963 autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar," Plath's heroine steps off a train and has this infernal experience: "The motherly breath of the suburbs enfolded me. It smelt of lawn sprinklers and station wagons and dogs and babies. A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death." The pleasures of a station wagon's aroma are open to question, but summer calm, the smell of wet grass, the scent of dogs (if they're clean) and babies (clean or dirty) -- are, it could be argued, some of the least horrifying experiences in life.
For Yates, Plath, Ginsberg and less gifted suburb-phobes like the novelists Sloan Wilson and John Keats, as well as hugely influential liberal sociologists and writers like David Riesman, William Whyte, Paul Goodman and Betty Friedan, it went without saying that the suburbs could transform the people who had committed the error of moving to them into the walking -- make that driving -- dead.
Yet the Wheelers live in a safe and protected middle-class town with intact, well-to-do families; efficient services; and happy children gamboling in sprinklers and running among the trees. How did such an environment come to acquire qualities previously associated with Dante's "Inferno," Dickens's Victorian workhouses and Solzhenitsyn's gulags?
In the '50s and early '60s, the postwar exodus from the cities to the suburbs was just beginning. Veterans of the Second World War and then the Korean War sought inexpensive homes of their own, far from the urban scrimmage that must have been, for some, a cramped extension of real combat. Enterprising builders eagerly obliged, throwing up houses in a matter of months, modest Cape Cods and ranches that returning veterans were able to safely buy with little or no down payment, thanks to the GI bill.
It's easy to see why artists and intellectuals felt that they had to alert the general public to the emergency of these sudden new places' peaceful, leafy streets. For one thing, the suburbs seemed not to offer the primary experiences of either country or city. The backyard is but the reminder of a meadow; the tree-lined intersection is but the faint echo of a busy urban intersection. The suburbs were the embodiment of that period's fashionable existential fear: "inauthenticity."
More important, suburban houses were often designed along unsightly cookie-cutter lines. The archetypal suburb, Levittown on New York's Long Island, was constructed between 1947 and 1951 using assembly-line methods; at one point, 30 houses were springing up a day. In 1950, when builder William Levitt, who created Levittown, appeared on the cover of Time magazine, the conversation in the cafés of Greenwich Village must have sizzled with frightening visions of totalitarian sameness. And no doubt the depiction of the suburbs as brainless utopias on the television sitcoms of the time -- shows like "Leave it to Beaver," "Bewitched," "Father Knows Best," "The Dick van Dyke Show" -- also incited intellectual revulsion, as much against the sinister new mass medium of TV as against the suburbs themselves.
There were two overarching reasons for condemning the suburbs, during the '50s and early '60s, as the most rotten locale in civilized life: class and money. Most of the people leaving the cities for the suburbs in the 1950s were tradespeople, modest businessmen, teachers and the like. They were, in other words, members of the middle-class, the impassioned rejection of which has been the chief rite de passage of the modern American artist and intellectual. With the growth of suburban towns, the liberal American intellectual now had a concrete geography to house his acute sense of outrage.
Yet if the suburbs were becoming the headquarters of the American middle-class, they were also becoming associated with the enviable characteristics of upward mobility: a decent salary, home ownership, access to superior public education and services. "We're going to have to move back to the city," the callous but suddenly redeemed advertising man grimly says to his wife after quitting his job in disgust in the popular 1959 film "The Last Angry Man" -- moving from suburban Connecticut to hardscrabble Manhattan being proof of his redemption. (What a socioeconomic difference 50 years makes!)
Art and intellect are solitary vocations, and their practitioners often require a common enemy to sustain the lonely effort. The suburbs continued to serve that purpose, but the type of antipathy toward them changed in the late '60s and '70s.
Just as during the '30s the Depression had polarized every issue along moral lines, in the Vietnam-era artists and intellectuals grew impatient with mere esthetic considerations. Now the suburbs were stigmatized not only by materialism, lack of imagination, and conformity. From that moment -- and up to our own -- the suburbs were portrayed in every type of art as non-communities that signified ugly moral choices.
The cultural chasm between liberals and conservatives that first appeared in the '60s was largely one between the city and the suburbs. The liberal "idealism" that had created the catastrophe in Vietnam now got blamed, unfairly or not, for failing economic and social policies. For marginalized conservatives, the suburbs were living refutation of the crumbling ethos that had guided the crime-ridden, decaying urban centers. For embattled liberals, people leaving the cities for safer and cleaner outlying towns were racists and cowards who had no respect for shared public space.
One of the most glaring ironies of American life is that, a quarter-century later, the cities have metamorphosed into the suburbs -- sans trees and grass. The cities' fabled diversity has devolved into global chain stores and the electrolyte-enhanced water bottle and the branded baseball cap have become the accessories of a universal comfort and conformity. In a social and cultural sea change, the cities' rented apartments, once the guarantor of diversity and fluid, exciting movement, have been converted into exclusive co-ops and condominiums. Yet as the cities have become a new type of suburb, suburb-phobia has become an ever more acceptable cultural attitude. The suburban person is considered too meek, too asphalt-challenged to inherit the earth. In the urban centers, on the other hand, desperate ambition makes bad manners respectable, and the chic of perverse taste covers up Philistine cluelessness. The decent, suburban person is regarded as contemptible because he has not learned to reach beyond his talents and pick life's pockets.
In the last couple of decades, the antisuburban film has become as much a staple of Hollywood as the Serious Crime Drama With an Incomprehensible Plot. A few prominent examples: Todd Haynes's "Safe" (which has suburban people inexplicably bleeding from every pore of their bodies); the 2004 remake of "The Stepford Wives" (where Viking range + Sub-Zero refrigerator = robotic wife, death of feminism and extinction of human rights); "The Ice Storm" (just in case you ignored the urgent alarm sounded by the antisuburban novel by Rick Moody on which the film is based and moved to Larchmont); the British Sam Mendes's very own "American Beauty" (of which "Revolutionary Road" is simply a reiteration -- take a sprinkler, add a dollop of anomie, and presto! you're an authentic American filmmaker). Television, once home to the idealistic vision of the suburbs, has gotten in on the act, too, with the antisuburban satires "Desperate Housewives" and "Weeds," not to mention the "Real Housewives" franchise, which opens a fake-appalled window onto a world of midday margaritas and $18,000 sleepover parties.
It could be that suburb-phobia has been a necessary attitude for ex-suburbanites living in urban centers. It may well help them to feel that the increasingly anodyne and homogenous cities are still adventurous and challenging places to live. In any case, suburb-phobia has even made its way into the visual arts' most rarefied sanctums: in the paintings of Eric Fischl and the photographs of Jeff Wall (one of his most famous works: rifle-holding men stalking an invisible prey in an anonymous suburb).
Of course there is a small but stubborn counter-tradition to suburb-phobia, most famously in the stories and novels of John Updike and John Cheever. For these two writers, the suburbs are not just a determining environment, but an unpredictable one of unfolding circumstances -- like every other place on earth. As Johnny Hake, the hero of Cheever's story "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," puts it: "Shady Hill is, as I say, a banlieue and open to criticism by city planners, adventurers and lyric poets, but if you work in the city and have children to raise, I can't think of a better place."
Hake becomes a thief, has something like a nervous breakdown, and finally gets an inkling of his surprising destiny. Which only means that life's complexity and surprise follow you everywhere, even over the city-line, across the river and into the suburban trees. You wonder why the creators of the film "Revolutionary Road" are blind to such an obvious fact of human existence. But, then, Hollywood is the most illusion-soaked, soul-hardened and materialistic suburb in the world.
Lee Siegel's most recent book is "Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob."
By LEE SIEGEL
"Revolutionary Road," based on Richard Yates's 1961 novel of the same name, is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death.
The movie's opening scene could serve as a precis of over 50 years of antisuburban sentiment in American culture. Frank and April Wheeler (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet with misdirected intensity like two Titanics passing in the night) pull their car over to the side of the road. They've been fighting, and now they both jump out into the dark of the night. When April's needling escalates to downright cruelty, Frank pulls back his arm as if to hit his wife and then slams his fist into the car. She's been tormenting him, he cries, "ever since we came out here to the suburbs." In the naturalistic novels of Emile Zola, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser, economic forces inexorably destroyed the protagonists. In "Revolutionary Road," the two principal characters are brought down by lawn sprinklers and station wagons.
But Sam Mendes, the film's director, is just getting started. Flashbacks emphasize the chilling role the tortured couple's environment has played in the disintegration of their lives: Against a background of sunlit, leafy yards, we see Kate Winslet taking out the garbage; Kate Winslet doing the laundry; Kate Winslet making small talk with a neighbor. The tree-lined streets are empty and eerily quiet. The beautiful house is tastefully furnished and eerily quiet. You are meant to think of the Wheelers' suburb as "a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime," to borrow Van Gogh's description of an equally alienating milieu (except that Van Gogh was talking about an urban café).
Still, the film's hostility toward the suburbs pales when compared with its source. Yates's novel, cherished by literary intellectuals and Paris Review interns to this day, expresses American suburban-phobia with crude explicitness. Describing the Wheelers' new neighborhood, Yates writes: "The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy.... [The neighborhood] was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves.... A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place."
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' No literary critic that I know of has ever challenged Yates's puerile social perceptions. The reflexive reverence for "Revolutionary Road" is a testament to the degree to which antisuburban sentiment is one of the most unexamined attitudes in American culture. For what might a neighborhood that had been designed to accommodate a tragedy possibly look like? For a man running down the street in desperate grief to fit right into the landscape, he would have to be hurtling through a place where vampiric towers blocked out the sun and corpses hung from the lampposts.
Yates's rage against the suburbs had all the subtlety of adolescent rage against authority (this indiscriminate anger might account for the novel's fatal deficiency: Frank and April's total lack of talent or substance makes their ultimately thwarted attempt to leave the suburbs for Paris less the stuff of tragedy than irritating farce). Yet "Revolutionary Road" -- the name fatuously meant to imply that America's revolutionary promise withers and dies in the suburbs -- caught the reflexive attitudes of many readers. Postwar writers and intellectuals overlooked the book's flagrant shortcomings, lit up from within by their shared opposition to a single place. X might be a Stalinist, and Y a fellow traveler and Z a closet Republican, but they could all agree on one thing -- they'd rather perish in a nuclear holocaust than move to Westchester!
video Scene from 'Revolutionary Road'
American antisuburban sentiment is often comically absurd. In his 1955 poem "Howl," Allen Ginsberg elevated suburb-phobia to the level of myth. He excoriates the "invisible suburbs" -- i.e. they are so spiritually dead that they are hidden from a living eye -- as one of the pernicious manifestations of Moloch, the destructive god of soulless materialism. Sylvia Plath added some spine-tingling details. In her 1963 autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar," Plath's heroine steps off a train and has this infernal experience: "The motherly breath of the suburbs enfolded me. It smelt of lawn sprinklers and station wagons and dogs and babies. A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death." The pleasures of a station wagon's aroma are open to question, but summer calm, the smell of wet grass, the scent of dogs (if they're clean) and babies (clean or dirty) -- are, it could be argued, some of the least horrifying experiences in life.
For Yates, Plath, Ginsberg and less gifted suburb-phobes like the novelists Sloan Wilson and John Keats, as well as hugely influential liberal sociologists and writers like David Riesman, William Whyte, Paul Goodman and Betty Friedan, it went without saying that the suburbs could transform the people who had committed the error of moving to them into the walking -- make that driving -- dead.
Yet the Wheelers live in a safe and protected middle-class town with intact, well-to-do families; efficient services; and happy children gamboling in sprinklers and running among the trees. How did such an environment come to acquire qualities previously associated with Dante's "Inferno," Dickens's Victorian workhouses and Solzhenitsyn's gulags?
In the '50s and early '60s, the postwar exodus from the cities to the suburbs was just beginning. Veterans of the Second World War and then the Korean War sought inexpensive homes of their own, far from the urban scrimmage that must have been, for some, a cramped extension of real combat. Enterprising builders eagerly obliged, throwing up houses in a matter of months, modest Cape Cods and ranches that returning veterans were able to safely buy with little or no down payment, thanks to the GI bill.
It's easy to see why artists and intellectuals felt that they had to alert the general public to the emergency of these sudden new places' peaceful, leafy streets. For one thing, the suburbs seemed not to offer the primary experiences of either country or city. The backyard is but the reminder of a meadow; the tree-lined intersection is but the faint echo of a busy urban intersection. The suburbs were the embodiment of that period's fashionable existential fear: "inauthenticity."
More important, suburban houses were often designed along unsightly cookie-cutter lines. The archetypal suburb, Levittown on New York's Long Island, was constructed between 1947 and 1951 using assembly-line methods; at one point, 30 houses were springing up a day. In 1950, when builder William Levitt, who created Levittown, appeared on the cover of Time magazine, the conversation in the cafés of Greenwich Village must have sizzled with frightening visions of totalitarian sameness. And no doubt the depiction of the suburbs as brainless utopias on the television sitcoms of the time -- shows like "Leave it to Beaver," "Bewitched," "Father Knows Best," "The Dick van Dyke Show" -- also incited intellectual revulsion, as much against the sinister new mass medium of TV as against the suburbs themselves.
There were two overarching reasons for condemning the suburbs, during the '50s and early '60s, as the most rotten locale in civilized life: class and money. Most of the people leaving the cities for the suburbs in the 1950s were tradespeople, modest businessmen, teachers and the like. They were, in other words, members of the middle-class, the impassioned rejection of which has been the chief rite de passage of the modern American artist and intellectual. With the growth of suburban towns, the liberal American intellectual now had a concrete geography to house his acute sense of outrage.
Yet if the suburbs were becoming the headquarters of the American middle-class, they were also becoming associated with the enviable characteristics of upward mobility: a decent salary, home ownership, access to superior public education and services. "We're going to have to move back to the city," the callous but suddenly redeemed advertising man grimly says to his wife after quitting his job in disgust in the popular 1959 film "The Last Angry Man" -- moving from suburban Connecticut to hardscrabble Manhattan being proof of his redemption. (What a socioeconomic difference 50 years makes!)
Art and intellect are solitary vocations, and their practitioners often require a common enemy to sustain the lonely effort. The suburbs continued to serve that purpose, but the type of antipathy toward them changed in the late '60s and '70s.
Just as during the '30s the Depression had polarized every issue along moral lines, in the Vietnam-era artists and intellectuals grew impatient with mere esthetic considerations. Now the suburbs were stigmatized not only by materialism, lack of imagination, and conformity. From that moment -- and up to our own -- the suburbs were portrayed in every type of art as non-communities that signified ugly moral choices.
The cultural chasm between liberals and conservatives that first appeared in the '60s was largely one between the city and the suburbs. The liberal "idealism" that had created the catastrophe in Vietnam now got blamed, unfairly or not, for failing economic and social policies. For marginalized conservatives, the suburbs were living refutation of the crumbling ethos that had guided the crime-ridden, decaying urban centers. For embattled liberals, people leaving the cities for safer and cleaner outlying towns were racists and cowards who had no respect for shared public space.
One of the most glaring ironies of American life is that, a quarter-century later, the cities have metamorphosed into the suburbs -- sans trees and grass. The cities' fabled diversity has devolved into global chain stores and the electrolyte-enhanced water bottle and the branded baseball cap have become the accessories of a universal comfort and conformity. In a social and cultural sea change, the cities' rented apartments, once the guarantor of diversity and fluid, exciting movement, have been converted into exclusive co-ops and condominiums. Yet as the cities have become a new type of suburb, suburb-phobia has become an ever more acceptable cultural attitude. The suburban person is considered too meek, too asphalt-challenged to inherit the earth. In the urban centers, on the other hand, desperate ambition makes bad manners respectable, and the chic of perverse taste covers up Philistine cluelessness. The decent, suburban person is regarded as contemptible because he has not learned to reach beyond his talents and pick life's pockets.
In the last couple of decades, the antisuburban film has become as much a staple of Hollywood as the Serious Crime Drama With an Incomprehensible Plot. A few prominent examples: Todd Haynes's "Safe" (which has suburban people inexplicably bleeding from every pore of their bodies); the 2004 remake of "The Stepford Wives" (where Viking range + Sub-Zero refrigerator = robotic wife, death of feminism and extinction of human rights); "The Ice Storm" (just in case you ignored the urgent alarm sounded by the antisuburban novel by Rick Moody on which the film is based and moved to Larchmont); the British Sam Mendes's very own "American Beauty" (of which "Revolutionary Road" is simply a reiteration -- take a sprinkler, add a dollop of anomie, and presto! you're an authentic American filmmaker). Television, once home to the idealistic vision of the suburbs, has gotten in on the act, too, with the antisuburban satires "Desperate Housewives" and "Weeds," not to mention the "Real Housewives" franchise, which opens a fake-appalled window onto a world of midday margaritas and $18,000 sleepover parties.
It could be that suburb-phobia has been a necessary attitude for ex-suburbanites living in urban centers. It may well help them to feel that the increasingly anodyne and homogenous cities are still adventurous and challenging places to live. In any case, suburb-phobia has even made its way into the visual arts' most rarefied sanctums: in the paintings of Eric Fischl and the photographs of Jeff Wall (one of his most famous works: rifle-holding men stalking an invisible prey in an anonymous suburb).
Of course there is a small but stubborn counter-tradition to suburb-phobia, most famously in the stories and novels of John Updike and John Cheever. For these two writers, the suburbs are not just a determining environment, but an unpredictable one of unfolding circumstances -- like every other place on earth. As Johnny Hake, the hero of Cheever's story "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," puts it: "Shady Hill is, as I say, a banlieue and open to criticism by city planners, adventurers and lyric poets, but if you work in the city and have children to raise, I can't think of a better place."
Hake becomes a thief, has something like a nervous breakdown, and finally gets an inkling of his surprising destiny. Which only means that life's complexity and surprise follow you everywhere, even over the city-line, across the river and into the suburban trees. You wonder why the creators of the film "Revolutionary Road" are blind to such an obvious fact of human existence. But, then, Hollywood is the most illusion-soaked, soul-hardened and materialistic suburb in the world.
Lee Siegel's most recent book is "Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob."
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Enough of Radical Islam
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Enough with the pseudonyms. Western civilization isnt at war with terrorism any more than it is at war with grenades. Western civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim communities all over the world. Militant Islam isnt a tiny minority of otherwise goodhearted Muslims. Its a dominant strain of evil that runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.
Enough with the psychoanalysis. They dont hate us because of Israel. They dont hate us because of Kashmir. They dont hate us because we have troops in Saudi Arabia or because we deposed Saddam Hussein. They dont hate us because of Britney Spears. They hate us because we are infidels, and because we dont plan on surrendering or providing them material aid in their war of aggressive expansion.
Enough with the niceties. We dont lose our souls when we treat our enemies as enemies. We dont undermine our principles when we post more police officers in vulnerable areas, or when we send Marines to kill bad guys, or when we torture terrorists for information. And we dont redeem ourselves when we close Guantanamo Bay or try terrorists in civilian courts or censor anti-Islam comics. When it comes to war, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Enough with the words. Talking with Iran without wielding the threat of force, either economic or military, wont help. Appealing to the United Nations, run by thugs and dictators ranging from Putin to Chavez to Ahmadinejad, is an exercise in pathetic futility. Evil countries dont suddenly decide to abandon their evil goals -- they are forced to do so by pressure and circumstance.
Enough with the faux allies. We dont gain anything by pretending that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are true allies. They arent. At best, they are playing both sides of the table. We ought to be drilling now in order to break OPEC. Building windmills isnt going to cut it. We should also be backing India to the hilt in its current conflict with Pakistan -- unless Pakistan can destroy its terrorist element, India should be given full leeway to do what it needs to do. Russia and China, meanwhile, are facilitating anti-Western terrorism. Treating them as friends in this global war is simply begging for a backstabbing.
Enough with the myths. Not everyone on earth is crying out for freedom. There are plenty of people who are happy in their misery, believing that their suffering is part and parcel of a correct religious system. Those people direct their anger outward, targeting unbelievers. We cannot simply knock off dictators and expect indoctrinated populations to rise to the liberal democratic challenge. The election of Hamas in the Gaza Strip is more a rule than an exception in the Islamic world.
Enough with the lies. Stop telling us that Islam is a religion of peace. If it is, prove it through action. Stop telling us that President-elect Barack Obama will fix our broken relationship with the Muslim world. They hate Obama just as much as they hated President George W. Bush, although they think Obama is more of a patsy than Bush was. Stop telling us that we shouldnt worry about the Islamic infiltration of our economy. If the Saudis own a large chunk of our banking institutions and control the oil market, they can certainly leverage their influence in dangerous ways.
Enough. After the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the plane downed in Pennsylvania, the endless suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks in Israel, the Bali bombings, the synagogue bombing in Tunisia, the LAX shootings, the Kenyan hotel bombing, the Casablanca attacks, the Turkey synagogue attacks, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, and the repeated attacks in India culminating in the Mumbai massacres -- among literally thousands of others -- its about time that the West got the point: were in a war. Our enemies are determined. They will not quit just because we offer them Big Macs, Christina Aguilera CDs, or even the freedom to vote. They will not quit just because we ensure that they have Korans in their Guantanamo cells, or because we offer to ban The Satanic Verses (as India did). They will only quit when they are dead. It is our job to make them so, and to eliminate every obstacle to their destruction.
So enough. No more empty talk. No more idle promises. No more happy ignorance, half measures, or appeasement-minded platitudes. The time for hard-nosed, uncompromising action hasnt merely come -- its been overdue by seven years. The voice of our brothers blood cries out from the ground.
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Blacks spurn gay marriage fans
re: Propostion 8, the gay marriage ban in Calif.
According to exit polls, whites opposed the amendment 53-47. But blacks supported it 70-30, and Latinos supported it 51-49. The polls have blacks at 10 percent of the electorate for this issue, with Latinos at 19 percent and whites at 63 percent. (Asians, at six percent, opposed the proposition 53-47.)
And of course the gays went and picketed the Mormon church in SoCal to show how pissed off they were. Notice they weren't pissed off enough to picket churches in black neighborhoods.
According to exit polls, whites opposed the amendment 53-47. But blacks supported it 70-30, and Latinos supported it 51-49. The polls have blacks at 10 percent of the electorate for this issue, with Latinos at 19 percent and whites at 63 percent. (Asians, at six percent, opposed the proposition 53-47.)
And of course the gays went and picketed the Mormon church in SoCal to show how pissed off they were. Notice they weren't pissed off enough to picket churches in black neighborhoods.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Who Will Run America?
John Stossel
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Some of you think you went to the polls yesterday to pick someone to run America.
"Who do you want to have run this country?" Chris Matthews asked repeatedly on MSNBC.
"One of these guys is going to be running the country," said Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News.
Really? Run the country?
"That has to be a joke -- or a misunderstanding," said George Mason University economist Walter Williams on my recent TV special, "John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics".
Williams pointed out that the White House doesn't govern what happens in your house. And a president certainly cannot control the economy. We, all of us, run the country.
"Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good," Williams says.
The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.
"Most of life is outside the government sector," says David Boaz of the Cato Institute. "Most change in America doesn't come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn't come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up."
It's easy to find examples of government screwing up what it should have left alone.
Take farming. Every year politicians promise to save the family farm, and this year, Congress passed another $300-billion farm bill. More subsidies after generations of subsidies. John McCain opposed the bill, saying that it will "do more harm than good." But Barack Obama and most of Congress supported it.
"Small farms are important," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, told me.
"I don't think we want anybody in this country to starve," Rep. Randy Kuhl, a Republican from New York, added.
People would starve?
"They go out of business, and then they'd be forced to move elsewhere and find different jobs," Kuhl replied.
That's not starving. That's finding a different job.
"But if they don't have a job, then they're going to starve."
Please.
He and others in Congress also claim that subsidies "insure a food supply for this nation."
That's more nonsense.
It's the free market that "insures" the food supply. You may not know that most farmers get no subsidies. Growers of apples, bananas, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, cauliflower, grapes, lemons, limes, lettuce, onions, oranges, peaches, pears, pineapples, potatoes, spinach, squash, tangerines, tomatoes and dozens of other crops are on their own. There's no cabbage crisis or pineapple panic.
The farm bill doesn't even keep its other promise: saving family farms.
It's why although Nebraska corn farmer Mike Korth received about half a million dollars in subsidies, he's still against the farm bill. "We sold this on the fact that this is helping the family farmer and the small beginning farmer. It's not. It's hurting them."
That's because most subsidies go to those that are best at manipulating government: the agribusiness giants. Small farms can't compete.
A Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City study found that the more farm aid a county gets, the more likely it is to lose population.
So not only do farm subsidies cost every taxpayer $550 per year, they also raise food prices by paying farmers not to grow certain crops. Other crops are subsidized and exported, destroying the livelihoods of poor farmers in the Third World.
"This is just a crazy system," said the Cato Institute's David Boaz (www.cato.org). "It's left over from the 1930s, left over from the Depression. And it's a great example of how nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program."
Of course, without subsidies, some farms would go out of business. That's OK, says Walter Williams. It's the creative destruction that makes America strong.
"The guy who delivered ice to my house, he doesn't have a job because we have refrigerators. We're better off. We would have been held back if we had tried to save his job."
I said to Congresswoman Jackson Lee, "If this works so well, why don't we just subsidize everything?"
Her answer? "You don't want to push us."
How frightening is that?Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Singing the Blues in a Blue State
by Burt Prelutsky
I have no idea who decided that liberal states would be called blue and conservative states would be red, but I suspect it was a left-winger because it makes absolutely no sense. Red, after all, has always been the color associated with the far left. Thanks to the flag of the late, unlamented, Soviet Union being the hammer and sickle on a field of red, Communists have always been referred to as reds, except of course when they were referred to, even more appropriately, as morons and imbeciles.
Be that as it may, I live in California, a state that is bluer than the blue Pacific. My state is not only on the left side of the map, it’s to the left of Barack Obama. This is a state that is represented in the U.S. Senate by Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, for crying out loud! Allegedly, we have a Republican governor, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is only slightly more conservative than his wife, Maria Shriver.
But things are in such a sorry state in my sorry state that the two guys in the wings, eager to replace Schwarzenegger are the pretty boy mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Antonio Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsome. Frankly, I don’t know on what basis the voters will decide between the two of them. Both of these scofflaws, after all, have made their cities sanctuaries for illegal aliens. Both have come out in favor of same sex marriages and, for good measure, both men have had adulterous affairs in the past couple of years -- Villaraigosa with a TV news reporter half his age, and Newsome with the wife of his chief aide, who was also allegedly his best friend.
Quite honestly, I haven’t the foggiest notion what makes liberals tick. For instance, why do they so vehemently object to making English our official language? It’s not as if people who speak it badly -- people such as Robert Byrd and the aforementioned Ms. Boxer -- would have to relinquish their Senate seats. I neither know nor care if other countries print their ballots in more than one language, but it seems obvious to me that if you’re unable to read English, you have no business voting in our elections. I feel the same way about people who don’t pay income taxes. If you’re still getting an allowance from mom and dad, I really object to your vote canceling out mine.
On a related subject, what’s the deal with dual citizenship? How can you simultaneously swear allegiance to two different countries? It sounds to me like a form of bigamy.
Liberals are forever denying that the mainstream media is predominantly left-wing. That’s because the MSM mirrors their own prejudices so closely that everything they read in the New York Times or see on CBS or CNN strikes them as factual and impartial, whereas the rest of us view it as leftist propaganda. But there are times when the truth is so blatant that you’d think that even the most besotted lefty would have to acknowledge that widespread journalistic bias is more than an idle rumor.
For instance, didn’t it seem a little odd that even though the National Enquirer broke the news about John Edwards and his tootsie late in 2007, it wasn’t until about a week after the Enquirer ran a second story about the scuzzy affair eight or nine months later that the MSM deigned to mention it? Does any liberal seriously believe that if it had been, say, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee who’d been shacking up with Rielle Hunter that the media would have buried the story for even a single day?
Perhaps it’s time that the New York Times surrender its boastful motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” to the far more responsible National Enquirer. Heck, if the Enquirer got the scoop on John Edwards tomcatting around with Ms. Hunter, just maybe they’ve been right all along, and we actually have been invaded by space aliens and perhaps there really are herds of three-headed cattle roaming the range.
Mainly because I have friends and relatives who are liberals, I dislike making blanket statements about them and their apparent lack of patriotism, intellectual honesty and intestinal fortitude. But, really, don’t you sometimes get the idea that there’s a huge scientific experiment taking place, with half of us, the left-wingers, being tested with meds whose side effects included galloping gullibility and a loss of nerve and commonsense, while the rest of us are in a control group taking placebos.
I have no idea who decided that liberal states would be called blue and conservative states would be red, but I suspect it was a left-winger because it makes absolutely no sense. Red, after all, has always been the color associated with the far left. Thanks to the flag of the late, unlamented, Soviet Union being the hammer and sickle on a field of red, Communists have always been referred to as reds, except of course when they were referred to, even more appropriately, as morons and imbeciles.
Be that as it may, I live in California, a state that is bluer than the blue Pacific. My state is not only on the left side of the map, it’s to the left of Barack Obama. This is a state that is represented in the U.S. Senate by Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, for crying out loud! Allegedly, we have a Republican governor, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is only slightly more conservative than his wife, Maria Shriver.
But things are in such a sorry state in my sorry state that the two guys in the wings, eager to replace Schwarzenegger are the pretty boy mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Antonio Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsome. Frankly, I don’t know on what basis the voters will decide between the two of them. Both of these scofflaws, after all, have made their cities sanctuaries for illegal aliens. Both have come out in favor of same sex marriages and, for good measure, both men have had adulterous affairs in the past couple of years -- Villaraigosa with a TV news reporter half his age, and Newsome with the wife of his chief aide, who was also allegedly his best friend.
Quite honestly, I haven’t the foggiest notion what makes liberals tick. For instance, why do they so vehemently object to making English our official language? It’s not as if people who speak it badly -- people such as Robert Byrd and the aforementioned Ms. Boxer -- would have to relinquish their Senate seats. I neither know nor care if other countries print their ballots in more than one language, but it seems obvious to me that if you’re unable to read English, you have no business voting in our elections. I feel the same way about people who don’t pay income taxes. If you’re still getting an allowance from mom and dad, I really object to your vote canceling out mine.
On a related subject, what’s the deal with dual citizenship? How can you simultaneously swear allegiance to two different countries? It sounds to me like a form of bigamy.
Liberals are forever denying that the mainstream media is predominantly left-wing. That’s because the MSM mirrors their own prejudices so closely that everything they read in the New York Times or see on CBS or CNN strikes them as factual and impartial, whereas the rest of us view it as leftist propaganda. But there are times when the truth is so blatant that you’d think that even the most besotted lefty would have to acknowledge that widespread journalistic bias is more than an idle rumor.
For instance, didn’t it seem a little odd that even though the National Enquirer broke the news about John Edwards and his tootsie late in 2007, it wasn’t until about a week after the Enquirer ran a second story about the scuzzy affair eight or nine months later that the MSM deigned to mention it? Does any liberal seriously believe that if it had been, say, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee who’d been shacking up with Rielle Hunter that the media would have buried the story for even a single day?
Perhaps it’s time that the New York Times surrender its boastful motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” to the far more responsible National Enquirer. Heck, if the Enquirer got the scoop on John Edwards tomcatting around with Ms. Hunter, just maybe they’ve been right all along, and we actually have been invaded by space aliens and perhaps there really are herds of three-headed cattle roaming the range.
Mainly because I have friends and relatives who are liberals, I dislike making blanket statements about them and their apparent lack of patriotism, intellectual honesty and intestinal fortitude. But, really, don’t you sometimes get the idea that there’s a huge scientific experiment taking place, with half of us, the left-wingers, being tested with meds whose side effects included galloping gullibility and a loss of nerve and commonsense, while the rest of us are in a control group taking placebos.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
The Myth of Moral Equivalency
Those on the left regard themselves as the moral, as well as intellectual, superiors of those on the right because they claim to see shades of gray whereas conservatives see only black and white. The problem is that most things are black and white, and the inability to realize that doesn’t suggest clearer vision, but only lack of courage and conviction. So, while those on the right are convinced that capitalism, for instance, is better than communism and socialism, and have no problem saying as much, liberals go around parroting sound bites. They would have you believe that Guantanamo is the same as Buchenwald, Bush is the same as Hitler, and that the members of the U.S. military are either the same as storm troopers, in the words of Sen. Dick Durbin, or merely uneducated suckers, according to Sen. John Kerry.
http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2008/08/08/the_myth_of_moral_equivalency
http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2008/08/08/the_myth_of_moral_equivalency
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Islam Conspiracy
Interesting stats on Islam:
Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.
Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.
Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called "religious rights."
When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to "the reasonable" Muslim demands for their "religious rights," they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).
As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:
United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%
At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:
Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%
From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).
France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world. When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris -- car-burnings). Any non- Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam -- Mohammed cartoons).
Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%
After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%
At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:
Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%
From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:
Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%
After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:
Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%
100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" -- the Islamic House of Peace - there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:
Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%
Of course, that's not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons. "Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel. -- Leon Uris, "The Haj"
It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France , the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity. Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.
Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat..
www.frontline.org.za/books_videos/sti.htm
Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.
Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.
Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called "religious rights."
When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to "the reasonable" Muslim demands for their "religious rights," they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).
As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:
United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%
At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:
Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%
From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).
France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world. When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris -- car-burnings). Any non- Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam -- Mohammed cartoons).
Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%
After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%
At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:
Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%
From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:
Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%
After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:
Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%
100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" -- the Islamic House of Peace - there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:
Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%
Of course, that's not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons. "Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel. -- Leon Uris, "The Haj"
It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France , the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity. Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.
Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat..
www.frontline.org.za/books_videos/sti.htm
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Was Lincoln Jewish?
On the twelfth of February, 1809, nearly 200 years ago - a young, poor illiterate woman from Virginia, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, gave birth to a son in a log cabin built along the banks of the south fork of Nolin Creek, near what is now Hodgenville, Kentucky. That baby, whom she named Abraham, grew to become one of our greatest, and most tragic, national leaders.
Lincoln was a man of great spiritual conviction. Yet, and I find this fact fascinatingly instructive, Abraham Lincoln was the only American president not to have declared himself a member of any particular religious faith. That fact has given rise to a great deal of interesting speculation. In fact, there are those who believe that Honest Abe was Jewish.
After all, his name was Abraham. His great-grandfather was named Mordechai. Lincoln was the only President not to have a formal religious affiliation. He was neither raised in a church nor did he ever belong to a church.
And there's more... the town of Lincoln, in eastern England, whence his ancestors came, has an interesting Jewish history. A Jewish community was established there in 1159. During Crusader riots, the Sheriff of Lincoln saved the Jews by giving them official protection. St. Hugh, the great Bishop of Lincoln, taught love of Jews to his parishioners. His death was marked by an official period of mourning among Lincoln's Jews.
Rabbi Joseph of Lincoln was a scholar mentioned in the Talmud; Aaron of Lincoln was a financier whose operations extended all over the country. In 1255, Lincoln's Jews were accused of ritual murder. Ninety-one Lincoln Jews
were sent to London for trial and 18 were executed. Notwithstanding, the Lincoln Jewish community flourished until 1290, when they were forcibly expelled by edict.
Most Jewish historians assume that all the Jews of Lincoln left in 1290. But could it be possible that some remained, practicing their Judaism in secret... passing the family secret from generation to generation? The more we learn of the secret life of Spanish Jewry following the Expulsion of 1492, the more we must at least consider the possibility of the same thing occurring elsewhere.
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, whole Jewish communities sat shivah. Rabbis all over the country eulogized the fallen President. Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the man who created Reform Judaism in this country, began his eulogy with the words... "Brethren, the lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence."
Lincoln was often questioned about his religious beliefs. Time and again, he told of a special passage from Scripture that summed up his theology. It was the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus he recommended that every
American study, learn and follow. In English it is usually referred to as the Ten Commandments.
Rabbi Jeff Kahn
Temple Har Shalom, Warren, N.J.:
Lincoln was a man of great spiritual conviction. Yet, and I find this fact fascinatingly instructive, Abraham Lincoln was the only American president not to have declared himself a member of any particular religious faith. That fact has given rise to a great deal of interesting speculation. In fact, there are those who believe that Honest Abe was Jewish.
After all, his name was Abraham. His great-grandfather was named Mordechai. Lincoln was the only President not to have a formal religious affiliation. He was neither raised in a church nor did he ever belong to a church.
And there's more... the town of Lincoln, in eastern England, whence his ancestors came, has an interesting Jewish history. A Jewish community was established there in 1159. During Crusader riots, the Sheriff of Lincoln saved the Jews by giving them official protection. St. Hugh, the great Bishop of Lincoln, taught love of Jews to his parishioners. His death was marked by an official period of mourning among Lincoln's Jews.
Rabbi Joseph of Lincoln was a scholar mentioned in the Talmud; Aaron of Lincoln was a financier whose operations extended all over the country. In 1255, Lincoln's Jews were accused of ritual murder. Ninety-one Lincoln Jews
were sent to London for trial and 18 were executed. Notwithstanding, the Lincoln Jewish community flourished until 1290, when they were forcibly expelled by edict.
Most Jewish historians assume that all the Jews of Lincoln left in 1290. But could it be possible that some remained, practicing their Judaism in secret... passing the family secret from generation to generation? The more we learn of the secret life of Spanish Jewry following the Expulsion of 1492, the more we must at least consider the possibility of the same thing occurring elsewhere.
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, whole Jewish communities sat shivah. Rabbis all over the country eulogized the fallen President. Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the man who created Reform Judaism in this country, began his eulogy with the words... "Brethren, the lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence."
Lincoln was often questioned about his religious beliefs. Time and again, he told of a special passage from Scripture that summed up his theology. It was the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus he recommended that every
American study, learn and follow. In English it is usually referred to as the Ten Commandments.
Rabbi Jeff Kahn
Temple Har Shalom, Warren, N.J.:
Friday, March 28, 2008
10 More of the Greatest Pieces of Conservative Wisdom
By John Hawkins
Friday, March 28, 2008
"A measure of hypocrisy is necessary to a functioning society. It's quite possible, on the one hand, to be opposed to the legalization of prostitution yet, on the other, to pull your hat down over your brow every other Tuesday and sneak off to the cat house on the other side of town. Your inability to live up to your own standards does not, in and of itself, nullify them. The left gives the impression that a Republican senator caught in a whorehouse ought immediately to say, "You're right. I should have supported earmarks for hookers in the 2005 appropriations bill." That's the reason why sex scandals take down Republicans but not Democrats: Sex-wise, the left's standards are that whatever's your bag is cool – which is the equivalent of no standards. Thus, Monica Lewinsky was a "grown woman" free to make her own decisions on the carpet of the Oval Office. Without agreed "moral standards," all you have is the law. When it's no longer clear something is wrong, all you can do is make it illegal." -- Mark Steyn
The flesh is weak and we human beings often do foolish things that conflict with our own moral values. Not to excuse the hypocrisy of that, but who's the better person -- the fellow who advocates high moral standards and falls short occasionally or the person who never falls short because he advocates living an immoral life? Clearly, the former is the better husband, the better father, the better Christian, and just plain old better for our society. Hypocrisy is a notable failing, but there are still far worse things than hypocrisy.
"The virtue of a federalist, republican form of government is that the more you push these decisions down to the level where people actually have to live with their consequences, the more likely it is they will be a) involved and interested in the decision-making process, and b) happy with the result. Federalism is also morally superior because it requires the consent of the governed at the most basic level. Sure, your side can lose an argument, but it's easier to change things locally than nationally. And, at the end of the day, if you don't get your way, there's always the highway. It's easier to move to the next state than it is to move to Canada." -- Jonah Goldberg
The likelihood of a decision being wise is often inversely proportional to how far removed the decision maker is from the person directly affected by the decision. This is why it's so disturbing to see the federal government trying to regulate everything from what kind of TV we can own to the sort of light bulbs we have in our homes.
Even the most dull-witted bunglers in the mountains of Appalachia or the outskirts of Berkeley probably have a much better handle on their own individual circumstances, how to make themselves happy, and how to spend their own money than a Ph.D from Harvard with a genius level IQ who's sitting in Washington, D.C.
"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families." -- Benjamin Rush
It is patriotism that helps transform a mere stranger to a countryman that, under the right circumstances, a man will help and defend, sometimes at the cost of his own life. For love of country, people will donate money, toil for countless hours in the most thankless of jobs, and even take up arms if necessary. Such a noble urge should be encouraged, taught to our children at every opportunity, and honored for the good it does for our society.
"The accumulation of wealth is a process which is of itself morally neutral. True, as Christianity teaches, riches bring temptations. But then so does poverty." -- Margaret Thatcher
Too many people in our society have been persuaded that most rich people have, at worst, done something immoral to become so wealthy or at best, that they're merely lucky. Although there are some people who fit that description, most affluent people got that way by serving their fellow man in some form or fashion. Moreover, these successful people often tend to pay enormous sums in taxes and employ large numbers of people directly or through their purchases. That is something to be admired and encouraged, not frowned upon, lest we learn the tragic lesson of Aesop's farmer, who killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
"It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the Arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat." -- Teddy Roosevelt
We live in a "microwave" society where we expect everything right now, exactly the way we want it, with zero mistakes. That's not the real world. Human beings are not robots, and, yes, we make mistakes, fall short, and disappoint.
It's not a bad thing to have high standards, but there's very little to be said for destroying men's entire careers for a single thoughtless statement, demanding that politicians address our every problem to make us happy, or expecting soldiers to never make an honest mistake in the middle of a war zone.
Put another way, excellence is achievable, but perfection is not.
"Tolerant, but not stupid! Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn't mean you have to approve of it! ..."Tolerate" means you're just putting up with it! You tolerate a crying child sitting next to you on the airplane or you tolerate a bad cold." -- South Park
For all of us to live in an open, free society with a wide variety of different views, we have to be able to tolerate a variety of widely diverging opinions. However, this is not enough for some people, who insist that we treat every opinion and lifestyle choice as equally valid and healthy for society. But, what they are failing to understand is that there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. Just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should.
"Diversity worship and multiculturalism are currency and cause for celebration at just about any college. If one is black, brown, yellow or white, the prevailing thought is that he should take pride and celebrate that fact even though, just as in the case of my eye color, he had nothing to do with it. The multiculturist and diversity crowd see race as an achievement. In my book, race might be an achievement, worthy of considerable celebration, only if a person was born white and through his effort and diligence became black." -- Walter Williams
Race-based groups like the NAACP, the KKK, La Raza, and the American Nazi Party do very little good and much harm to our country. In fact, the very idea that something as arbitrary as skin color should determine people's actions, beliefs, and political party is odious and un-American. Moreover, it has long been apparent that the sort of ethnic tribalism inevitably displayed by people in these race-based groups is actually more of a source of strife in our country than the racism they are supposedly combating.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -- Winston Churchill
There are many reasons why people should prefer capitalism over socialism. One of the most compelling is that it is better to be poor while still having the opportunity to become wealthy through your own efforts than to be poor and have little opportunity to advance, but to share your fate with almost everyone else.
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell
Because we humans are such short-lived creatures, we tend to have a myopic view of the world. We think that because we're civilized, everyone else is just as civilized. However, the truth is that nations like America are the exception and the rule, historically, has been little more than the law of the jungle.
The world is full of evil men with bad intentions who will take more than a mile if you give them an inch. When we forget that and think we can just talk out every difference with our foreign enemies who have sworn to kill us -- or begin to treat home grown criminals in our jails like they're victims of society instead of victimizers who got where they are by preying on their fellow citizens -- there is always a heavy price to be paid.
"When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken." -- P.J. O'Rourke
It's always amusing to hear a politician rail against "special interests" because when they begin naming names, you'll notice that they always seem to be the groups that are influential with THE OTHER political party. So, what inevitably happens when a different political party takes power? The old special interests are shoved to the side, people cheer, and then shortly thereafter the new special interests are catered to and the cycle starts anew. The key to stopping this behavior isn't to change parties or put some new rule in place; it's to get the government out of the business of handing out favors in the first place.
John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.
Friday, March 28, 2008
"A measure of hypocrisy is necessary to a functioning society. It's quite possible, on the one hand, to be opposed to the legalization of prostitution yet, on the other, to pull your hat down over your brow every other Tuesday and sneak off to the cat house on the other side of town. Your inability to live up to your own standards does not, in and of itself, nullify them. The left gives the impression that a Republican senator caught in a whorehouse ought immediately to say, "You're right. I should have supported earmarks for hookers in the 2005 appropriations bill." That's the reason why sex scandals take down Republicans but not Democrats: Sex-wise, the left's standards are that whatever's your bag is cool – which is the equivalent of no standards. Thus, Monica Lewinsky was a "grown woman" free to make her own decisions on the carpet of the Oval Office. Without agreed "moral standards," all you have is the law. When it's no longer clear something is wrong, all you can do is make it illegal." -- Mark Steyn
The flesh is weak and we human beings often do foolish things that conflict with our own moral values. Not to excuse the hypocrisy of that, but who's the better person -- the fellow who advocates high moral standards and falls short occasionally or the person who never falls short because he advocates living an immoral life? Clearly, the former is the better husband, the better father, the better Christian, and just plain old better for our society. Hypocrisy is a notable failing, but there are still far worse things than hypocrisy.
"The virtue of a federalist, republican form of government is that the more you push these decisions down to the level where people actually have to live with their consequences, the more likely it is they will be a) involved and interested in the decision-making process, and b) happy with the result. Federalism is also morally superior because it requires the consent of the governed at the most basic level. Sure, your side can lose an argument, but it's easier to change things locally than nationally. And, at the end of the day, if you don't get your way, there's always the highway. It's easier to move to the next state than it is to move to Canada." -- Jonah Goldberg
The likelihood of a decision being wise is often inversely proportional to how far removed the decision maker is from the person directly affected by the decision. This is why it's so disturbing to see the federal government trying to regulate everything from what kind of TV we can own to the sort of light bulbs we have in our homes.
Even the most dull-witted bunglers in the mountains of Appalachia or the outskirts of Berkeley probably have a much better handle on their own individual circumstances, how to make themselves happy, and how to spend their own money than a Ph.D from Harvard with a genius level IQ who's sitting in Washington, D.C.
"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families." -- Benjamin Rush
It is patriotism that helps transform a mere stranger to a countryman that, under the right circumstances, a man will help and defend, sometimes at the cost of his own life. For love of country, people will donate money, toil for countless hours in the most thankless of jobs, and even take up arms if necessary. Such a noble urge should be encouraged, taught to our children at every opportunity, and honored for the good it does for our society.
"The accumulation of wealth is a process which is of itself morally neutral. True, as Christianity teaches, riches bring temptations. But then so does poverty." -- Margaret Thatcher
Too many people in our society have been persuaded that most rich people have, at worst, done something immoral to become so wealthy or at best, that they're merely lucky. Although there are some people who fit that description, most affluent people got that way by serving their fellow man in some form or fashion. Moreover, these successful people often tend to pay enormous sums in taxes and employ large numbers of people directly or through their purchases. That is something to be admired and encouraged, not frowned upon, lest we learn the tragic lesson of Aesop's farmer, who killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
"It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the Arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat." -- Teddy Roosevelt
We live in a "microwave" society where we expect everything right now, exactly the way we want it, with zero mistakes. That's not the real world. Human beings are not robots, and, yes, we make mistakes, fall short, and disappoint.
It's not a bad thing to have high standards, but there's very little to be said for destroying men's entire careers for a single thoughtless statement, demanding that politicians address our every problem to make us happy, or expecting soldiers to never make an honest mistake in the middle of a war zone.
Put another way, excellence is achievable, but perfection is not.
"Tolerant, but not stupid! Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn't mean you have to approve of it! ..."Tolerate" means you're just putting up with it! You tolerate a crying child sitting next to you on the airplane or you tolerate a bad cold." -- South Park
For all of us to live in an open, free society with a wide variety of different views, we have to be able to tolerate a variety of widely diverging opinions. However, this is not enough for some people, who insist that we treat every opinion and lifestyle choice as equally valid and healthy for society. But, what they are failing to understand is that there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. Just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should.
"Diversity worship and multiculturalism are currency and cause for celebration at just about any college. If one is black, brown, yellow or white, the prevailing thought is that he should take pride and celebrate that fact even though, just as in the case of my eye color, he had nothing to do with it. The multiculturist and diversity crowd see race as an achievement. In my book, race might be an achievement, worthy of considerable celebration, only if a person was born white and through his effort and diligence became black." -- Walter Williams
Race-based groups like the NAACP, the KKK, La Raza, and the American Nazi Party do very little good and much harm to our country. In fact, the very idea that something as arbitrary as skin color should determine people's actions, beliefs, and political party is odious and un-American. Moreover, it has long been apparent that the sort of ethnic tribalism inevitably displayed by people in these race-based groups is actually more of a source of strife in our country than the racism they are supposedly combating.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -- Winston Churchill
There are many reasons why people should prefer capitalism over socialism. One of the most compelling is that it is better to be poor while still having the opportunity to become wealthy through your own efforts than to be poor and have little opportunity to advance, but to share your fate with almost everyone else.
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell
Because we humans are such short-lived creatures, we tend to have a myopic view of the world. We think that because we're civilized, everyone else is just as civilized. However, the truth is that nations like America are the exception and the rule, historically, has been little more than the law of the jungle.
The world is full of evil men with bad intentions who will take more than a mile if you give them an inch. When we forget that and think we can just talk out every difference with our foreign enemies who have sworn to kill us -- or begin to treat home grown criminals in our jails like they're victims of society instead of victimizers who got where they are by preying on their fellow citizens -- there is always a heavy price to be paid.
"When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken." -- P.J. O'Rourke
It's always amusing to hear a politician rail against "special interests" because when they begin naming names, you'll notice that they always seem to be the groups that are influential with THE OTHER political party. So, what inevitably happens when a different political party takes power? The old special interests are shoved to the side, people cheer, and then shortly thereafter the new special interests are catered to and the cycle starts anew. The key to stopping this behavior isn't to change parties or put some new rule in place; it's to get the government out of the business of handing out favors in the first place.
John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness
By Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD
Monday, December 4, 2006
Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com.
Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.
What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”
The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.
It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism’s irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism’s distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.
As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind’s relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia—to live what Jacques Barzun has called “the unconditioned life” in which “everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways”—the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world’s economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal’s attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda’s principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.
Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD is the author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago and served for two years as a psychiatrist in the United States Army. He is currently in private practice in the Chicago area.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com.
Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.
What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”
The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.
It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism’s irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism’s distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.
As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind’s relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia—to live what Jacques Barzun has called “the unconditioned life” in which “everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways”—the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world’s economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal’s attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda’s principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.
Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD is the author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago and served for two years as a psychiatrist in the United States Army. He is currently in private practice in the Chicago area.
The Secret to the Suicidal Liberal Mind
Jack Wheeler
Freedom Research Foundation
Monday, Jan. 21, 2002
What do Harvard president Larry Summers, Taliban John Walker, Delta Airlines officials and the editors of the New York Times have in common with Yanomamo tribeswomen in the Amazon jungle?
To answer this question is to understand the root cause of liberal "white guilt." Lakes of ink have been splashed on newspaper, magazine and journal pages ruminating and anguishing over the bottomless guilt that pervades the liberal soul.
Paul Craig Roberts, economist and columnist, writes eloquently about the anti-white racism endemic in American universities that demonizes white males as the font of all evil. Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute explained in the Wall Street Journal recently how white guilt empowers racist frauds such as Cornel West.
The self-loathing of the white American liberal is as well-established and documented as Einstein's Special Relativity theorems. A typical example is writer Susan Sontag's denouncement of the white race as "the cancer of human history."
A racist hatred of one's own race – auto-racism – has become a defining characteristic of the liberal mind. Yet the source of such suicidal guilt remains a mystery.
Clearly understanding what disables liberals from wanting to defend their culture is today a mortal necessity – an absolute requirement if America is to be preserved and protected from Moslem terrorists and other folk desirous of her demise.
Exploitation and Black Magic
For such understanding, we need to travel to the Amazon. Among the Yanomamo and other tribes deep in the Amazon rain forests still adhering to the ancient hunting-gathering lifestyle practiced by our Paleolithic ancestors, it is an accepted practice that when a woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.
In a loud, mortified lament that the entire tribe can hear, she asks why the gods have cursed her with such a pathetically repulsive infant. She does this in order to ward off the envious black magic of the Evil Eye, the Mal Ojo, that would be directed at her by her fellow tribespeople if they knew how happy she was with her beautiful baby.
Anthropologists observe that for most primitive and traditional cultures, "every individual lives in constant fear of the magical aggression of others ... there is only one explanation for unforeseen events: the envious black magic of another villager."
Reflect for a moment on the extent to which tribespeople in a tribal, "primitive" culture suffuse their lives with superstition, witchcraft, sorcery, voodoo, "black magic," the "evil eye." The world for them is teeming with demons, spirits, ghosts and gods, all of whom are malicious and dangerous -- in a word, envious.
A great many, if not the majority, of tribal or traditional cultures, whether in the Amazon, Africa or the Pacific, have no concept of natural death. Death is always murder.
For the Shuara Jivaro of the eastern Amazon, the first tribe I ever stayed with, there are three ways to die: actual murder (such as a spear through your stomach); demon-murder (accidental death, such as being killed by a falling tree in a storm or by snakebite, which the Jivaros see as perpetrated by a demon); or witchcraft murder (death by illness or unexplained causes, perpetrated by an envious sorcerer).
The Jivaro, just like the Tiv in Nigeria, the Aritama in Colombia, the Dobua in Micronesia, the Navaho in the Southwest U.S. and the tribal mind in general, attribute any illness or misfortune to the envious black magic of a personal enemy.
Envy is the source of tribal and traditional cultures' belief in Black Magic, the fear of the envious Evil Eye.
The fundamental reason why certain cultures remain static and never evolve (e.g., present-day villages in Egypt and India that have stayed pretty much the same for millennia) is the overwhelming extent to which the lives of the people within them are dominated by envy and envy avoidance: as anthropologists call it, the envy barrier.
For the Mambwe in Zambia, for example, "successful men are regarded as sinister, supernatural and dangerous." In Mexican villages, "fear of other people's envy determines every detail of life, every proposed action."
Members of a Hispanic "ghetto" in a community in Colorado "equate success with betrayal of the group; whoever works his way up socially and economically is regarded as a 'man who has sold himself to the Anglos,' someone 'who climbs on the backs of his own people.' "
It is an ultimate irony of modern times that left-wing Marxist-type intellectuals consider themselves to be in the progressive vanguard of sophisticated contemporary thought -- when in reality their thinking is nothing but an atavism, a regression to a primitive tribal mentality. What the Left calls "exploitation" is what anthropologists call "black magic."
As sociologist Helmut Schoeck summarizes in his seminal work, "Envy: A Theory of Human Behavior" (and who collected the above anthropologists' observations):
A self-pitying inclination to contemplate another's superiority or advantages, combined with a vague belief in his being the cause of one's own deprivation, is also to be found among educated members of our modern societies who really ought to know better. The primitive people's belief in black magic differs little from modern ideas. Whereas the socialist believes himself robbed by the employer, just as the politician in a developing country believes himself robbed by the industrial countries, so primitive man believes himself robbed by his neighbor, the latter having succeeded by black magic in spiriting away to his own fields part of the former's harvest.
The primitive atavism of left-wing bromides like "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is best illustrated by arguing that one can be healthy only at the expense of others. That in order to be in superior health, bursting with energy and vitality, one has to make someone else sick or in poor health -- just as in order to be rich you have to make others poor.
The healthy are healthy because they unjustly exploited and ripped off the sick, spiriting away the sick's fair share of health with black magic. In fact, the sick are sick because the healthy are healthy. If this is absurd, then claiming the poor are poor because they have been exploited by the rich is equally absurd.
Fear of Being Envied
Pandering to the envious, and intimidating those who are afraid of them, has been the path to power of all modern demagogues, from Lenin and Hitler to Yassir Arafat and Osama bin Laden.
The three great political pathologies of the 20th century are all religions of envy: Nazism, preaching race envy toward "rich, exploitative Jews"; Communism, preaching class envy toward the "rich, exploitative bourgeoisie"; and Moslem terrorism, preaching culture envy toward the "rich, exploitative West."
Envy-mongering has always been and continues to be the underlying strategy of all variants of the political Left, such as the Democratic Party. What a Yanomamo woman calls "black magic" and a Marxist professor at Harvard calls "exploitation," Tom Daschle calls "tax break for the rich."
So here we discover the secret fear at the source of the suicidal liberal mind. It is envy that makes a Nazi, a Communist or a terrorist. It is the fear of being envied that makes a liberal and is the source of "liberal guilt."
This is most easily seen in the children of wealthy parents. Successful businessmen, for example, who have made it on their own normally have a respect for the effort and the economic system that makes success possible.
Their children, who have not had to work for it, are easier targets for guilt-mongering by the envious. So they assume a posture of liberal compassion as an envy-deflection device: "Please don't envy me for my father's money -- look at all the liberal causes and government social programs I advocate!"
Teddy Kennedy is the archetype of this phenomenon.
This is also why Hollywood is so liberal. The vast amounts of money movie stars make is so grossly disproportionate to the effort it took them to make it that they feel it is unearned. So they apologize for it. The liberal's strategy is to apologize for his success in order to appease the envious.
Liberalism is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied.
Then there are those who are terrified of envy even though they have earned success themselves. Many Jews are liberals because such lethal envy has been directed at Jews for so many centuries that it is little wonder they consider avoiding envy to be a necessity of life.
One definitive characteristic of both envy and the fear of it is masochism. Envy is not simply hatred of someone for having something you don't -- it is the willingness to masochistically give up any chance of ever having that something yourself as long as the person you are envious of doesn't get to have it either.
Similarly, the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement.
The Masochism of Liberals
It is possible to perceive the passions of the Left as frenzies of masochism. What could be more idiotic and masochistic than to oppose missile defense? This opposition cannot be understood unless one dispenses with its rhetoric and rationales and realizes that these folks at their emotional core do not want their country defended.
The lunacy of the "global warming" hoax cannot be comprehended other than that its masochistic advocates do not want their civilization to prosper. The culture-destroying immigration policies that Pat Buchanan warns are causing "The Death of the West" were put in place by those who do not want their culture to survive.
The lethality of liberal envy appeasement is that personally felt guilt is projected onto the various social or tribal collectives to which the liberal belongs and are a part of his self-identity. Self-loathing is transformed into a loathing of one's society or race.
White male liberals become auto-racist and auto-sexist: racist toward their own race, sexist toward their own sex. Dime-store demagogues like eco-fascist environmentalists, feminazis, animal and homosexual rights types, race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all get their strength from the liberals' fear of their Evil Eyes.
As the Amazon tribeswoman who says her baby is ugly, so the white male liberal says his gender, his race, his country, his civilization and even his entire species is ugly.
I began to realize how liberal envy appeasement is the root of the problem when I was speaking at colleges back in the 1980s about anti-Soviet resistance movements in Soviet colonies such as Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan.
Students would invariably turn a discussion of Soviet imperialism into an assertion of moral equivalence between the USA and the USSR: "How can you criticize the Soviets when we're just as bad? What about what we did to the Indians?" I would be asked.
"I haven't done anything to the Indians," I replied. "What have you done to them?"
"But we stole their land!"
"OK -- let's give it back. And let's start with your property. To what tribe do you want your family's home to go? What tribe gets your stereo?"
Once I couldn't stand being heckled by a particularly loud and petulant student leftist any longer. I lost my temper and said to him: "Look, man, if you're into masochism, find some chick with long black hair who's into whips and chains and have her beat the hell out of you. Just don't take it out on your country."
Rejecting Envy
The future of our economy, our culture and our civilization depends on an antidote to the corrosive social poisons of envy and envy appeasement. That antidote was first provided by Aristotle in the 4th century bc.
The antidote to envy is emulation.
In the "Rhetoric" (ca. 350 bc), Aristotle distinguishes the two: "Zelos, emulation, is a good thing and characteristic of good people, while phthonos, envy, is bad and characteristic of the bad; for the former, through emulation, are making an effort to attain good things for themselves, while the latter, through envy, try to prevent their neighbors from having them." ("Rhetoric," 2.10.1)
Aristotle invokes the ancient wisdom of his 8th century (bc) predecessor Hesiod:
There is not one kind of Eris (Strife), but all over the earth there are two. One fosters evil war and battle, being cruel. The other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil. For a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order. Thus neighbor vies with neighbor to hurry after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. ("Works and Days," 11-24)
Aristotle concludes that "Whereas phthonos, envy, is censured because it seeks to harm another, zelos, emulation, is praised because it encourages a person to attain excellence on his own merits." ("Rhetoric," 2.11.1)
Fear of envy is very deep-seated in the human psyche. It can prevent a culture from progressing for thousands of years. Only a youthful culture full of vigor and confidence can shrug it off, enabling that culture to flourish. The road to cultural ruin lies in the fear of envy reasserting itself from the primordial depths.
America once had that youth, vigor and confidence, culminating in history's single greatest achievement, putting a man on the moon.
After the triply debilitating debacles of Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan resurrected America's self-confidence, with America's resultant victory in the Cold War.
Yet America lost her way once more, indulging in a cultural debauch epitomized by the Clintons. America's response to the atrocity of Sept. 11 provided overwhelming evidence that her reserves of vitality and self-assurance remain abundant.
Those reserves are nonetheless depleted. America's most elite universities have degenerated into fascist cesspools of envy appeasement. They survive only on the inertia of their prestige. Delta and other airlines compromise passenger security by harassing people at random rather than racially profiling Arab and other Moslem men.
Indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness -- perhaps best exemplified by the New York Times editorial page -- is nothing but a massive exercise in envy appeasement.
One of the most positive results of Sept. 11 is that it has made the American people mad enough to reject envy. They now could care less if Moslems or the French or whomever are envious of them. That rejection must now be applied to the envy panderers and envy appeasers within America herself.
Rejecting envy is the key to preventing "The Death of the West," the key for America to continue to prosper. I suggest that this rejection begin with you.
Fear of the Evil Eye is the only thing that gives the Evil Eye any power. Without fear of it, the Evil Eye is impotent. So, the next time Evil Eyes are directed at you and demand you apologize for your existence, you might suggest that they indulge in S&M by themselves and leave you out of it.
Copyright 2002 Dr. Jack Wheeler and the Freedom Research Foundation
Freedom Research Foundation
Monday, Jan. 21, 2002
What do Harvard president Larry Summers, Taliban John Walker, Delta Airlines officials and the editors of the New York Times have in common with Yanomamo tribeswomen in the Amazon jungle?
To answer this question is to understand the root cause of liberal "white guilt." Lakes of ink have been splashed on newspaper, magazine and journal pages ruminating and anguishing over the bottomless guilt that pervades the liberal soul.
Paul Craig Roberts, economist and columnist, writes eloquently about the anti-white racism endemic in American universities that demonizes white males as the font of all evil. Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute explained in the Wall Street Journal recently how white guilt empowers racist frauds such as Cornel West.
The self-loathing of the white American liberal is as well-established and documented as Einstein's Special Relativity theorems. A typical example is writer Susan Sontag's denouncement of the white race as "the cancer of human history."
A racist hatred of one's own race – auto-racism – has become a defining characteristic of the liberal mind. Yet the source of such suicidal guilt remains a mystery.
Clearly understanding what disables liberals from wanting to defend their culture is today a mortal necessity – an absolute requirement if America is to be preserved and protected from Moslem terrorists and other folk desirous of her demise.
Exploitation and Black Magic
For such understanding, we need to travel to the Amazon. Among the Yanomamo and other tribes deep in the Amazon rain forests still adhering to the ancient hunting-gathering lifestyle practiced by our Paleolithic ancestors, it is an accepted practice that when a woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.
In a loud, mortified lament that the entire tribe can hear, she asks why the gods have cursed her with such a pathetically repulsive infant. She does this in order to ward off the envious black magic of the Evil Eye, the Mal Ojo, that would be directed at her by her fellow tribespeople if they knew how happy she was with her beautiful baby.
Anthropologists observe that for most primitive and traditional cultures, "every individual lives in constant fear of the magical aggression of others ... there is only one explanation for unforeseen events: the envious black magic of another villager."
Reflect for a moment on the extent to which tribespeople in a tribal, "primitive" culture suffuse their lives with superstition, witchcraft, sorcery, voodoo, "black magic," the "evil eye." The world for them is teeming with demons, spirits, ghosts and gods, all of whom are malicious and dangerous -- in a word, envious.
A great many, if not the majority, of tribal or traditional cultures, whether in the Amazon, Africa or the Pacific, have no concept of natural death. Death is always murder.
For the Shuara Jivaro of the eastern Amazon, the first tribe I ever stayed with, there are three ways to die: actual murder (such as a spear through your stomach); demon-murder (accidental death, such as being killed by a falling tree in a storm or by snakebite, which the Jivaros see as perpetrated by a demon); or witchcraft murder (death by illness or unexplained causes, perpetrated by an envious sorcerer).
The Jivaro, just like the Tiv in Nigeria, the Aritama in Colombia, the Dobua in Micronesia, the Navaho in the Southwest U.S. and the tribal mind in general, attribute any illness or misfortune to the envious black magic of a personal enemy.
Envy is the source of tribal and traditional cultures' belief in Black Magic, the fear of the envious Evil Eye.
The fundamental reason why certain cultures remain static and never evolve (e.g., present-day villages in Egypt and India that have stayed pretty much the same for millennia) is the overwhelming extent to which the lives of the people within them are dominated by envy and envy avoidance: as anthropologists call it, the envy barrier.
For the Mambwe in Zambia, for example, "successful men are regarded as sinister, supernatural and dangerous." In Mexican villages, "fear of other people's envy determines every detail of life, every proposed action."
Members of a Hispanic "ghetto" in a community in Colorado "equate success with betrayal of the group; whoever works his way up socially and economically is regarded as a 'man who has sold himself to the Anglos,' someone 'who climbs on the backs of his own people.' "
It is an ultimate irony of modern times that left-wing Marxist-type intellectuals consider themselves to be in the progressive vanguard of sophisticated contemporary thought -- when in reality their thinking is nothing but an atavism, a regression to a primitive tribal mentality. What the Left calls "exploitation" is what anthropologists call "black magic."
As sociologist Helmut Schoeck summarizes in his seminal work, "Envy: A Theory of Human Behavior" (and who collected the above anthropologists' observations):
A self-pitying inclination to contemplate another's superiority or advantages, combined with a vague belief in his being the cause of one's own deprivation, is also to be found among educated members of our modern societies who really ought to know better. The primitive people's belief in black magic differs little from modern ideas. Whereas the socialist believes himself robbed by the employer, just as the politician in a developing country believes himself robbed by the industrial countries, so primitive man believes himself robbed by his neighbor, the latter having succeeded by black magic in spiriting away to his own fields part of the former's harvest.
The primitive atavism of left-wing bromides like "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is best illustrated by arguing that one can be healthy only at the expense of others. That in order to be in superior health, bursting with energy and vitality, one has to make someone else sick or in poor health -- just as in order to be rich you have to make others poor.
The healthy are healthy because they unjustly exploited and ripped off the sick, spiriting away the sick's fair share of health with black magic. In fact, the sick are sick because the healthy are healthy. If this is absurd, then claiming the poor are poor because they have been exploited by the rich is equally absurd.
Fear of Being Envied
Pandering to the envious, and intimidating those who are afraid of them, has been the path to power of all modern demagogues, from Lenin and Hitler to Yassir Arafat and Osama bin Laden.
The three great political pathologies of the 20th century are all religions of envy: Nazism, preaching race envy toward "rich, exploitative Jews"; Communism, preaching class envy toward the "rich, exploitative bourgeoisie"; and Moslem terrorism, preaching culture envy toward the "rich, exploitative West."
Envy-mongering has always been and continues to be the underlying strategy of all variants of the political Left, such as the Democratic Party. What a Yanomamo woman calls "black magic" and a Marxist professor at Harvard calls "exploitation," Tom Daschle calls "tax break for the rich."
So here we discover the secret fear at the source of the suicidal liberal mind. It is envy that makes a Nazi, a Communist or a terrorist. It is the fear of being envied that makes a liberal and is the source of "liberal guilt."
This is most easily seen in the children of wealthy parents. Successful businessmen, for example, who have made it on their own normally have a respect for the effort and the economic system that makes success possible.
Their children, who have not had to work for it, are easier targets for guilt-mongering by the envious. So they assume a posture of liberal compassion as an envy-deflection device: "Please don't envy me for my father's money -- look at all the liberal causes and government social programs I advocate!"
Teddy Kennedy is the archetype of this phenomenon.
This is also why Hollywood is so liberal. The vast amounts of money movie stars make is so grossly disproportionate to the effort it took them to make it that they feel it is unearned. So they apologize for it. The liberal's strategy is to apologize for his success in order to appease the envious.
Liberalism is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied.
Then there are those who are terrified of envy even though they have earned success themselves. Many Jews are liberals because such lethal envy has been directed at Jews for so many centuries that it is little wonder they consider avoiding envy to be a necessity of life.
One definitive characteristic of both envy and the fear of it is masochism. Envy is not simply hatred of someone for having something you don't -- it is the willingness to masochistically give up any chance of ever having that something yourself as long as the person you are envious of doesn't get to have it either.
Similarly, the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement.
The Masochism of Liberals
It is possible to perceive the passions of the Left as frenzies of masochism. What could be more idiotic and masochistic than to oppose missile defense? This opposition cannot be understood unless one dispenses with its rhetoric and rationales and realizes that these folks at their emotional core do not want their country defended.
The lunacy of the "global warming" hoax cannot be comprehended other than that its masochistic advocates do not want their civilization to prosper. The culture-destroying immigration policies that Pat Buchanan warns are causing "The Death of the West" were put in place by those who do not want their culture to survive.
The lethality of liberal envy appeasement is that personally felt guilt is projected onto the various social or tribal collectives to which the liberal belongs and are a part of his self-identity. Self-loathing is transformed into a loathing of one's society or race.
White male liberals become auto-racist and auto-sexist: racist toward their own race, sexist toward their own sex. Dime-store demagogues like eco-fascist environmentalists, feminazis, animal and homosexual rights types, race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all get their strength from the liberals' fear of their Evil Eyes.
As the Amazon tribeswoman who says her baby is ugly, so the white male liberal says his gender, his race, his country, his civilization and even his entire species is ugly.
I began to realize how liberal envy appeasement is the root of the problem when I was speaking at colleges back in the 1980s about anti-Soviet resistance movements in Soviet colonies such as Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan.
Students would invariably turn a discussion of Soviet imperialism into an assertion of moral equivalence between the USA and the USSR: "How can you criticize the Soviets when we're just as bad? What about what we did to the Indians?" I would be asked.
"I haven't done anything to the Indians," I replied. "What have you done to them?"
"But we stole their land!"
"OK -- let's give it back. And let's start with your property. To what tribe do you want your family's home to go? What tribe gets your stereo?"
Once I couldn't stand being heckled by a particularly loud and petulant student leftist any longer. I lost my temper and said to him: "Look, man, if you're into masochism, find some chick with long black hair who's into whips and chains and have her beat the hell out of you. Just don't take it out on your country."
Rejecting Envy
The future of our economy, our culture and our civilization depends on an antidote to the corrosive social poisons of envy and envy appeasement. That antidote was first provided by Aristotle in the 4th century bc.
The antidote to envy is emulation.
In the "Rhetoric" (ca. 350 bc), Aristotle distinguishes the two: "Zelos, emulation, is a good thing and characteristic of good people, while phthonos, envy, is bad and characteristic of the bad; for the former, through emulation, are making an effort to attain good things for themselves, while the latter, through envy, try to prevent their neighbors from having them." ("Rhetoric," 2.10.1)
Aristotle invokes the ancient wisdom of his 8th century (bc) predecessor Hesiod:
There is not one kind of Eris (Strife), but all over the earth there are two. One fosters evil war and battle, being cruel. The other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil. For a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order. Thus neighbor vies with neighbor to hurry after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. ("Works and Days," 11-24)
Aristotle concludes that "Whereas phthonos, envy, is censured because it seeks to harm another, zelos, emulation, is praised because it encourages a person to attain excellence on his own merits." ("Rhetoric," 2.11.1)
Fear of envy is very deep-seated in the human psyche. It can prevent a culture from progressing for thousands of years. Only a youthful culture full of vigor and confidence can shrug it off, enabling that culture to flourish. The road to cultural ruin lies in the fear of envy reasserting itself from the primordial depths.
America once had that youth, vigor and confidence, culminating in history's single greatest achievement, putting a man on the moon.
After the triply debilitating debacles of Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan resurrected America's self-confidence, with America's resultant victory in the Cold War.
Yet America lost her way once more, indulging in a cultural debauch epitomized by the Clintons. America's response to the atrocity of Sept. 11 provided overwhelming evidence that her reserves of vitality and self-assurance remain abundant.
Those reserves are nonetheless depleted. America's most elite universities have degenerated into fascist cesspools of envy appeasement. They survive only on the inertia of their prestige. Delta and other airlines compromise passenger security by harassing people at random rather than racially profiling Arab and other Moslem men.
Indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness -- perhaps best exemplified by the New York Times editorial page -- is nothing but a massive exercise in envy appeasement.
One of the most positive results of Sept. 11 is that it has made the American people mad enough to reject envy. They now could care less if Moslems or the French or whomever are envious of them. That rejection must now be applied to the envy panderers and envy appeasers within America herself.
Rejecting envy is the key to preventing "The Death of the West," the key for America to continue to prosper. I suggest that this rejection begin with you.
Fear of the Evil Eye is the only thing that gives the Evil Eye any power. Without fear of it, the Evil Eye is impotent. So, the next time Evil Eyes are directed at you and demand you apologize for your existence, you might suggest that they indulge in S&M by themselves and leave you out of it.
Copyright 2002 Dr. Jack Wheeler and the Freedom Research Foundation
Friday, March 14, 2008
another liberal sees the light - Mamet!
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
An election-season essay
by David Mamet
March 11th, 2008
John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice.
Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot.
Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage.
When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is.
Every playwright's dream.
I once won one of Mary Ann Madden's "Competitions" in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a "10" of anything, and mine was the World's Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: "I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. When you read this I'll be dead." That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.
My prize, in a stunning example of irony, was a year's subscription to New York, which rag (apart from Mary Ann's "Competition") I considered an open running sore on the body of world literacy—this due to the presence in its pages of John Simon, whose stunning amalgam of superciliousness and savagery, over the years, was appreciated by that readership searching for an endorsement of proactive mediocrity.
But I digress.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.
But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.
The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.
These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.
Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.
I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.
Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.
And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.
And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.
But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.
The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.
Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.
See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with.
Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.
And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).
And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.
At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt, venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.
White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it unreservedly.
White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.) White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that they're always working at one or the other, and that government should most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "
The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.
An election-season essay
by David Mamet
March 11th, 2008
John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice.
Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot.
Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage.
When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is.
Every playwright's dream.
I once won one of Mary Ann Madden's "Competitions" in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a "10" of anything, and mine was the World's Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: "I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. When you read this I'll be dead." That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.
My prize, in a stunning example of irony, was a year's subscription to New York, which rag (apart from Mary Ann's "Competition") I considered an open running sore on the body of world literacy—this due to the presence in its pages of John Simon, whose stunning amalgam of superciliousness and savagery, over the years, was appreciated by that readership searching for an endorsement of proactive mediocrity.
But I digress.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.
But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.
The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.
These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.
Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.
I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.
Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.
And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.
And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.
But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.
The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.
Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.
See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with.
Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.
And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).
And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.
At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt, venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.
White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it unreservedly.
White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.) White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that they're always working at one or the other, and that government should most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "
The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Okay, Burt will spell it out for you...
A 12 Step Program for Recovering Liberals
By Burt Prelutsky
Friday, March 7, 2008
Most 12-step programs start out by requiring that people have to understand that they’re powerless over their addiction and that only by turning their lives over to a Power greater than themselves can they be restored to sanity. Far be it from me to suggest that I am that Power, but clearly someone has to step in and try to rescue these poor liberal souls. Even the most harebrained among them deserves that much.
First, though, they have to acknowledge that Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid and Charles Schumer, are not moderates, but, rather, leftists with a Socialist agenda. Furthermore, they must recognize that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, the three major networks, the news magazines and the New Yorker, are not objective in their reporting of political events, and neither are Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher, in their commentary. If these entities and individuals are not on the payroll of the DNC, they certainly should be. They certainly put in longer hours than Howard Dean.
Step #1: It is high time that every American be guaranteed the right to speak freely. It is not reserved solely for left-wing college students who wish to take advantage of the first amendment to shout down conservatives. At the same time, they must not construe the conservative’s right to dismiss them as arrogant idiots as censorship.
Step #2: Affirmative action argues that African Americans and Latinos are intellectually inferior and are unable to compete academically unless other students are handicapped because of their race. Interestingly enough, when blacks and Hispanic students are given these unfair advantages, it’s rarely at any cost to white students, whose rate of college admissions remains constant; instead, it’s nearly always another minority group, Asians, who pay the price. This is what left-wingers refer to as leveling the playing field.
Step #3: Liberals always claim to be in favor of higher taxes, agreeing with Bill Clinton that the government invariably spends money more wisely than those who actually earn it. However, such prominent proponents of higher taxes as George Soros, Ted Kennedy and Mr. and Mrs. John Kerry, protect their own otherwise taxable income through trusts and offshore accounts. Obviously, any American who believes higher taxes are a good thing can do the honorable thing by spurning all deductions and paying Uncle Sam everything up to 100% of his income.
Step #4: Even the most secular of liberals seems to believe that Jimmy Carter is a saint. The evidence for this seems to be that he has on occasion posed with a hammer in his hand at Habitant for Humanity building sites and is constantly walking around with a expression on his face that suggests he has just forgiven Pontius Pilate for betraying him. This is the same fellow, let us never forget, who called Yasser Arafat his good friend and who has accepted untold millions of dollars from Arab cut-throats, who ask nothing in return except that he go on insisting that there would be peace in the Middle East if only those darn Israelis would disappear from the face of the earth.
Step #5: Stop insisting that all wars are bad. It only makes you sound daft. Carrying signs that equate a U.S. president, any U.S. president, with Adolph Hitler is not only rude, but suggests you’re certifiably nuts. Every president has left office right on schedule. Aside from FDR, who just happened to get elected four times, not one of them has remained in office beyond eight years. On the other hand, Hitler ran Germany for 12 years and only death and the allied forces brought that to an end; Stalin ran the Soviet show for 31 years; while that hero of the left, Fidel Castro, held the reins, not to mention the whip, for about 50 years.
Step #6: Repeat after me, “Separation of church and state” exists nowhere in the Constitution. The first amendment does not require the removal of Christmas trees from the village green, the 10 Commandments from court house walls or “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. All it does is forbid Congress from establishing a state religion, such as the Church of England, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar and, most likely, a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
Step #7: Stop using the word “big” as a pejorative. There is nothing intrinsically bad about big oil, big agriculture or big pharmaceuticals. Overall, they do a very good job of keeping our cars on the road, food on our tables and most of us over 50 alive and functioning. On the other hand, big government, which so many liberals simply adore, represents a usurpation of the allegedly inalienable rights of individuals. A quick perusal of the Constitution should convince you that beyond declaring war, forging treaties, overseeing patents, printing money, running the post office, collecting taxes and protecting our borders -- and a few other things that Washington doesn’t do at all well these days -- the federal government has very limited responsibilities.
Step #8: Acknowledge that the United Nations is, in the main, an aggregation of venal diplomats who live high off the hog in New York City while representing the most corrupt and vicious regimes in the history of the world. Only a fool or a diplomat would continue to suggest that this gang of well-dressed thugs possesses anything resembling moral authority.
Step #9: Do not keep insisting that at a time when nearly all the large scale evil in the world is being perpetrated by Muslims that racial profiling is anything but a sensible approach to airport security. During WWII, Swedish Americans were not suspected of performing espionage for the Axis powers and for a very good reason; namely, because they weren’t performing espionage for the Axis powers. These days, their Swedish American children and grandchildren are not suspected of trying to blow up airlines, but the smarmy bureaucrats insist on pretending that they’re every bit as likely to be up to mischief as a bunch of 25-year-old Osama bin Laden look-alikes from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Step #10: Stop trying to pretend that illegal aliens are the same as legal immigrants just so you can claim the moral high ground and accuse those of us who are opposed to open borders of being racists.
Step #11: Once and for all, stop forgiving murderers. Whether or not you’re in favor of capital punishment, only the victim of a crime has the right to grant forgiveness. And inasmuch as the killer has deprived his victim of that ability, don’t take it upon yourself. It doesn’t prove how compassionate you are, only that you’re as sanctimonious and as self-aggrandizing as, say, Jimmy Carter.
Step #12: Stop bashing the U.S. military and the Boy Scouts. The only reason you have the ability to shoot your mouth off is because men and women braver and better than you sacrificed life and limb for your right to do so. As for the Boy Scouts, they are absolutely right to keep homosexuals from taking youngsters on camping trips. While it’s true that many gays are perfectly fine people and that very few homosexuals are pedophiles, there’s no reason on earth to take unnecessary risks just so we can all prove how broadminded we are. For what it’s worth, as decent as most Catholic priests are, I wouldn’t let them take youngsters into the woods, either. It’s fine to be compassionate and understanding, but let the gays among us be understanding for a change and acknowledge that, every so often, commonsense should trump political correctness.
And, finally, making this a baker’s dozen, Step #13: Let us all agree that while being a woman, a black, a Jew, a Catholic, a Mormon or even a gay, for that matter, should in no way preclude anyone from being elected president of the United States, none of those things constitutes a very good reason to vote for someone.
W. Burt Prelutsky is an accomplished, well-rounded writer and author of "The Secret of Their Success: Interviews with Legends and Luminaries."
Be the first to read Burt Prelutsky's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.
Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
By Burt Prelutsky
Friday, March 7, 2008
Most 12-step programs start out by requiring that people have to understand that they’re powerless over their addiction and that only by turning their lives over to a Power greater than themselves can they be restored to sanity. Far be it from me to suggest that I am that Power, but clearly someone has to step in and try to rescue these poor liberal souls. Even the most harebrained among them deserves that much.
First, though, they have to acknowledge that Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid and Charles Schumer, are not moderates, but, rather, leftists with a Socialist agenda. Furthermore, they must recognize that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, the three major networks, the news magazines and the New Yorker, are not objective in their reporting of political events, and neither are Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher, in their commentary. If these entities and individuals are not on the payroll of the DNC, they certainly should be. They certainly put in longer hours than Howard Dean.
Step #1: It is high time that every American be guaranteed the right to speak freely. It is not reserved solely for left-wing college students who wish to take advantage of the first amendment to shout down conservatives. At the same time, they must not construe the conservative’s right to dismiss them as arrogant idiots as censorship.
Step #2: Affirmative action argues that African Americans and Latinos are intellectually inferior and are unable to compete academically unless other students are handicapped because of their race. Interestingly enough, when blacks and Hispanic students are given these unfair advantages, it’s rarely at any cost to white students, whose rate of college admissions remains constant; instead, it’s nearly always another minority group, Asians, who pay the price. This is what left-wingers refer to as leveling the playing field.
Step #3: Liberals always claim to be in favor of higher taxes, agreeing with Bill Clinton that the government invariably spends money more wisely than those who actually earn it. However, such prominent proponents of higher taxes as George Soros, Ted Kennedy and Mr. and Mrs. John Kerry, protect their own otherwise taxable income through trusts and offshore accounts. Obviously, any American who believes higher taxes are a good thing can do the honorable thing by spurning all deductions and paying Uncle Sam everything up to 100% of his income.
Step #4: Even the most secular of liberals seems to believe that Jimmy Carter is a saint. The evidence for this seems to be that he has on occasion posed with a hammer in his hand at Habitant for Humanity building sites and is constantly walking around with a expression on his face that suggests he has just forgiven Pontius Pilate for betraying him. This is the same fellow, let us never forget, who called Yasser Arafat his good friend and who has accepted untold millions of dollars from Arab cut-throats, who ask nothing in return except that he go on insisting that there would be peace in the Middle East if only those darn Israelis would disappear from the face of the earth.
Step #5: Stop insisting that all wars are bad. It only makes you sound daft. Carrying signs that equate a U.S. president, any U.S. president, with Adolph Hitler is not only rude, but suggests you’re certifiably nuts. Every president has left office right on schedule. Aside from FDR, who just happened to get elected four times, not one of them has remained in office beyond eight years. On the other hand, Hitler ran Germany for 12 years and only death and the allied forces brought that to an end; Stalin ran the Soviet show for 31 years; while that hero of the left, Fidel Castro, held the reins, not to mention the whip, for about 50 years.
Step #6: Repeat after me, “Separation of church and state” exists nowhere in the Constitution. The first amendment does not require the removal of Christmas trees from the village green, the 10 Commandments from court house walls or “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. All it does is forbid Congress from establishing a state religion, such as the Church of England, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar and, most likely, a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
Step #7: Stop using the word “big” as a pejorative. There is nothing intrinsically bad about big oil, big agriculture or big pharmaceuticals. Overall, they do a very good job of keeping our cars on the road, food on our tables and most of us over 50 alive and functioning. On the other hand, big government, which so many liberals simply adore, represents a usurpation of the allegedly inalienable rights of individuals. A quick perusal of the Constitution should convince you that beyond declaring war, forging treaties, overseeing patents, printing money, running the post office, collecting taxes and protecting our borders -- and a few other things that Washington doesn’t do at all well these days -- the federal government has very limited responsibilities.
Step #8: Acknowledge that the United Nations is, in the main, an aggregation of venal diplomats who live high off the hog in New York City while representing the most corrupt and vicious regimes in the history of the world. Only a fool or a diplomat would continue to suggest that this gang of well-dressed thugs possesses anything resembling moral authority.
Step #9: Do not keep insisting that at a time when nearly all the large scale evil in the world is being perpetrated by Muslims that racial profiling is anything but a sensible approach to airport security. During WWII, Swedish Americans were not suspected of performing espionage for the Axis powers and for a very good reason; namely, because they weren’t performing espionage for the Axis powers. These days, their Swedish American children and grandchildren are not suspected of trying to blow up airlines, but the smarmy bureaucrats insist on pretending that they’re every bit as likely to be up to mischief as a bunch of 25-year-old Osama bin Laden look-alikes from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Step #10: Stop trying to pretend that illegal aliens are the same as legal immigrants just so you can claim the moral high ground and accuse those of us who are opposed to open borders of being racists.
Step #11: Once and for all, stop forgiving murderers. Whether or not you’re in favor of capital punishment, only the victim of a crime has the right to grant forgiveness. And inasmuch as the killer has deprived his victim of that ability, don’t take it upon yourself. It doesn’t prove how compassionate you are, only that you’re as sanctimonious and as self-aggrandizing as, say, Jimmy Carter.
Step #12: Stop bashing the U.S. military and the Boy Scouts. The only reason you have the ability to shoot your mouth off is because men and women braver and better than you sacrificed life and limb for your right to do so. As for the Boy Scouts, they are absolutely right to keep homosexuals from taking youngsters on camping trips. While it’s true that many gays are perfectly fine people and that very few homosexuals are pedophiles, there’s no reason on earth to take unnecessary risks just so we can all prove how broadminded we are. For what it’s worth, as decent as most Catholic priests are, I wouldn’t let them take youngsters into the woods, either. It’s fine to be compassionate and understanding, but let the gays among us be understanding for a change and acknowledge that, every so often, commonsense should trump political correctness.
And, finally, making this a baker’s dozen, Step #13: Let us all agree that while being a woman, a black, a Jew, a Catholic, a Mormon or even a gay, for that matter, should in no way preclude anyone from being elected president of the United States, none of those things constitutes a very good reason to vote for someone.
W. Burt Prelutsky is an accomplished, well-rounded writer and author of "The Secret of Their Success: Interviews with Legends and Luminaries."
Be the first to read Burt Prelutsky's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.
Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Groups call for handgun-ban reversal in D.C.
Gays and women among filers to Supreme Court
By Michael Doyle, McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Article Created: 02/13/2008 02:47:28 AM PST
WASHINGTON — Gay gun-owners, who call themselves the Pink Pistols, say they'll be safer if the Supreme Court strikes down Washington, D.C.'s strict handgun ban.
They aren't alone. Jewish gun-owners, women and disabled veterans, among others, also contend that they're vulnerable and need the protection that only firearms can provide.
More than 65 groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the gun case, surpassing the attention paid even to such hot-button issues as affirmative action and abortion.
The case, scheduled for oral arguments on March 18, challenges a District of Columbia handgun ban that was imposed in 1976. Only retired district police officers can legally possess handguns. District residents must keep rifles unloaded and either disassembled or secured with trigger locks.
"Even in their homes, (gay) individuals are at risk of murder, aggravated assault and other forms of hate violence because of their sexual orientation," the Pink Pistols declared in its amicus brief. "Thus, for certain (gay) individuals, the possession of firearms in the home is essential for a sense of personal security."
Some of the groups have been assembled to crank up the volume for this case. Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for instance, has rallied Vice President Dick Cheney and 304 other members of Congress in opposition to Washington's gun law.
University of North Carolina at Pembroke sociologist Fran Fuller has joined Idaho state
legislator Maxine Bell, California Assemblywoman Jean Fuller and 123 other women to stress the necessity of gun ownership.
"The district's current prohibition against handguns ... effectively eliminates a woman's ability to defend her very life and those of her children against violent attack," the women said.
Some longstanding groups also have weighed in, including Wisconsin-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and, supporting the ban, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Bar Association.
In the case, the first of its kind to reach the Supreme Court since 1939, a handful of Washington residents claim that the district's gun law violates the Second Amendment, which says:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Gun rights advocates argue that the Constitution guarantees an individual's right to own firearms. If the Supreme Court agrees, some but not all gun-control laws could be struck down.
Supporters of gun control say the Second Amendment's language protects only a collective right to own firearms, as with a state militia.
"Until (recently) prosecutors have been able to enforce criminal firearms laws with a settled understanding, reinforced by a long line of cases, of their constitutionality," Jeffrey Tuttle, the district attorney for California's rural Calaveras County, wrote in a legal brief signed by 18 prosecutors.
Some briefs make a bigger splash than others do. The Bush administration, in particular, raised hackles on the right with a split-the-difference brief that supports an individual right to own firearms but also a government's authority to regulate them.
Other briefs promote more esoteric analyses, as with three linguistics professors who've grammatically parsed the Second Amendment for its real meaning.
"The amendment's first and third commas signal a pause for breath and can be omitted without affecting the meaning," they say.
———
(c) 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_8248537?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Michael Doyle, McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Article Created: 02/13/2008 02:47:28 AM PST
WASHINGTON — Gay gun-owners, who call themselves the Pink Pistols, say they'll be safer if the Supreme Court strikes down Washington, D.C.'s strict handgun ban.
They aren't alone. Jewish gun-owners, women and disabled veterans, among others, also contend that they're vulnerable and need the protection that only firearms can provide.
More than 65 groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the gun case, surpassing the attention paid even to such hot-button issues as affirmative action and abortion.
The case, scheduled for oral arguments on March 18, challenges a District of Columbia handgun ban that was imposed in 1976. Only retired district police officers can legally possess handguns. District residents must keep rifles unloaded and either disassembled or secured with trigger locks.
"Even in their homes, (gay) individuals are at risk of murder, aggravated assault and other forms of hate violence because of their sexual orientation," the Pink Pistols declared in its amicus brief. "Thus, for certain (gay) individuals, the possession of firearms in the home is essential for a sense of personal security."
Some of the groups have been assembled to crank up the volume for this case. Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for instance, has rallied Vice President Dick Cheney and 304 other members of Congress in opposition to Washington's gun law.
University of North Carolina at Pembroke sociologist Fran Fuller has joined Idaho state
legislator Maxine Bell, California Assemblywoman Jean Fuller and 123 other women to stress the necessity of gun ownership.
"The district's current prohibition against handguns ... effectively eliminates a woman's ability to defend her very life and those of her children against violent attack," the women said.
Some longstanding groups also have weighed in, including Wisconsin-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and, supporting the ban, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Bar Association.
In the case, the first of its kind to reach the Supreme Court since 1939, a handful of Washington residents claim that the district's gun law violates the Second Amendment, which says:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Gun rights advocates argue that the Constitution guarantees an individual's right to own firearms. If the Supreme Court agrees, some but not all gun-control laws could be struck down.
Supporters of gun control say the Second Amendment's language protects only a collective right to own firearms, as with a state militia.
"Until (recently) prosecutors have been able to enforce criminal firearms laws with a settled understanding, reinforced by a long line of cases, of their constitutionality," Jeffrey Tuttle, the district attorney for California's rural Calaveras County, wrote in a legal brief signed by 18 prosecutors.
Some briefs make a bigger splash than others do. The Bush administration, in particular, raised hackles on the right with a split-the-difference brief that supports an individual right to own firearms but also a government's authority to regulate them.
Other briefs promote more esoteric analyses, as with three linguistics professors who've grammatically parsed the Second Amendment for its real meaning.
"The amendment's first and third commas signal a pause for breath and can be omitted without affecting the meaning," they say.
———
(c) 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_8248537?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Mainstream Media Bias, Again.
The Associated Press prides itself on its lack of bias. Ha!
This is what the Associated Press wrote today about John Edwards' decision to drop out of the presidential race.
The AP said Edwards was — "ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies."
It added that — "Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of his wife's recurring cancer diagnosis."
And here's what the AP said about Rudy Giuliani — "Once the Republican presidential front-runner, Giuliani suffered a debilitating defeat in Tuesday's Florida primary." "Tuesday's result was a remarkable collapse for Giuliani... Florida proved to be less than hospitable."
This is what the Associated Press wrote today about John Edwards' decision to drop out of the presidential race.
The AP said Edwards was — "ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies."
It added that — "Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of his wife's recurring cancer diagnosis."
And here's what the AP said about Rudy Giuliani — "Once the Republican presidential front-runner, Giuliani suffered a debilitating defeat in Tuesday's Florida primary." "Tuesday's result was a remarkable collapse for Giuliani... Florida proved to be less than hospitable."
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Take that, you foreigners
When in England at the World Economic Forum, Colin Powell was
asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just
an example of 'empire building' by George Bush.
He answered by saying, "Over the years, the United States has
sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight
for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever
asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."
It became very quiet in the room.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/powell.asp
**************
Then there was a conference in France where a number of
international engineers were taking part, including French and
American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into
the room saying "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done?
He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami
victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?"
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: "Our carriers
have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people;
they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to
shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to
feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several
thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they
carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and
injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships;
how many does France have?"
Once again, dead silence.
*****************
A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that
included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and
French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing
with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of
those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped
their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, 'whereas
Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.' He
then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these
conferences rather than speaking French?'
Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied 'Maybe its
because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so
you wouldn't have to speak German.'
You could have heard a pin drop!
asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just
an example of 'empire building' by George Bush.
He answered by saying, "Over the years, the United States has
sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight
for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever
asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."
It became very quiet in the room.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/powell.asp
**************
Then there was a conference in France where a number of
international engineers were taking part, including French and
American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into
the room saying "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done?
He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami
victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?"
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: "Our carriers
have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people;
they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to
shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to
feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several
thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they
carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and
injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships;
how many does France have?"
Once again, dead silence.
*****************
A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that
included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and
French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing
with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of
those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped
their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, 'whereas
Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.' He
then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these
conferences rather than speaking French?'
Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied 'Maybe its
because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so
you wouldn't have to speak German.'
You could have heard a pin drop!
Monday, January 21, 2008
Bush's mistake
'You ain't gonna like losing.'
Author unknown.
President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq .
Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not.
Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.
Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or wh ether the war was going badly or not.
And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war.
Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in.
Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort.
Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.
Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet ther e was very little complaining.
You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President.
Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted.
And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!
Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies.
A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to inter rogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.
There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crackheads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.
No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve.
It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz. We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices.
We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam.
It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause...Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.
So...we either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.
America is not at war. The military is at war. America is at the mall.
Author unknown.
President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq .
Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not.
Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.
Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or wh ether the war was going badly or not.
And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war.
Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in.
Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort.
Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.
Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet ther e was very little complaining.
You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President.
Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted.
And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!
Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies.
A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to inter rogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.
There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crackheads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.
No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve.
It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz. We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices.
We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam.
It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause...Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.
So...we either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.
America is not at war. The military is at war. America is at the mall.
Friday, January 18, 2008
One less Jew-hating bastard on earth.
Bobby Fischer is dead. You should say something good about the dead.
Okay.
He's dead.
Good.
quotes from Wiki by this self-hating Jew:
* "This just shows, what goes around comes around, even for the US."— About the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
* "I say death to President Bush, I say death to the United States. Fuck the United States, fuck the Jews, the Jews are a criminal people, they mutilate their children, they are murderous, criminal, thieving, lying, bastards. They made up the Holocaust, there's not a word of truth to it. They are the worst liars and bastards. And now, what goes around, comes around, they're getting it back, finally. Praise God... Hallelujah, this is a wonderful day. Fuck the United States. Cry, you crybabies! Whine, you bastards! Now your time is coming! The US is getting what is coming to it. This is just the beginning."
— Speaking on Bombo Radyo, September 11, 2001
* "There is no United States as people think of it. It's just a puppet in the Jew's hands. It's a plaything for the Jews."
— Speaking on Bombo Radyo, Philippines
Okay.
He's dead.
Good.
quotes from Wiki by this self-hating Jew:
* "This just shows, what goes around comes around, even for the US."— About the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
* "I say death to President Bush, I say death to the United States. Fuck the United States, fuck the Jews, the Jews are a criminal people, they mutilate their children, they are murderous, criminal, thieving, lying, bastards. They made up the Holocaust, there's not a word of truth to it. They are the worst liars and bastards. And now, what goes around, comes around, they're getting it back, finally. Praise God... Hallelujah, this is a wonderful day. Fuck the United States. Cry, you crybabies! Whine, you bastards! Now your time is coming! The US is getting what is coming to it. This is just the beginning."
— Speaking on Bombo Radyo, September 11, 2001
* "There is no United States as people think of it. It's just a puppet in the Jew's hands. It's a plaything for the Jews."
— Speaking on Bombo Radyo, Philippines
Thursday, January 17, 2008
This is from the NYPost:
January 17, 2008 -- Memo to New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt: Your urgent attention is needed on the slanderous 7,000-word front-page article published last Sunday about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.
We say "allegedly," because the article lumped those merely accused of a homicide with those who've already been convicted. But that was the least of the piece's problems.
As our colleague Ralph Peters so adroitly demonstrated on these pages Tuesday, the article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés - the US combat vet as psychotic killer.
But on what evidence?
None at all.
Indeed, it's impossible to take issue with the statistics cited by reporters Deborah Sontag and Lisette Alvarez - because their article doesn't have any.
For most editors, that would be a red flag. Not at the Times, not in a piece that appealed to the editors' dearest prejudices.
The article, said to be the first of several, reports that there have been 121 homicides involving active-duty or recently discharged Iraq/Afghan combat veterans.
(Need we mention here what the Times thinks of that war - as has long been clear in both its news and opinion pages? Didn't think so.)
"Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories," wrote Sontag and Alvarez of this "quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak."
Lock your doors, America: Here come the killer vets!
And if that didn't drive the point home, consider this: "This reporting," the Times warns ominously, "most likely uncovered the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big cities and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail."
Really?
As any police reporter knows, homicide statistics are among the most difficult for the authorities to fudge: There are all those pesky bodies to be accounted for. (Maybe Sontag and Alvarez should have asked a police reporter?)
But while 121 are a lot of homicides in absolute terms, what about context?
Is the number of killings by combat vets dramatically higher than the rate involving people of the same age who've never served in the military?
It's a good question - in fact, it's the key question. But the Times never asked it. Or, if it did, it never reported the answer.
Perhaps for good reason - because the statistics tell a far different tale than that appearing in the Times.
As Peters noted, "to match the homicide rate of their [nonmilitary] peers, our troops would've had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007" - six times the number the Times cited.
That estimate is borne out by University of Pennsylvania political scientist John DiIulio, who notes on the Weekly Standard's Web site that 749,932 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan had been discharged by the end of 2007. Apply that to the 121 killings cited by the Times, and the homicide rate works out to 16.1 per 100,000 - over the entire six-year period.
By way of imperfect comparison, the US Bureau of Justice Statistics' most recent numbers demonstrate that the same rate among males ages 18-24 was 26.5 - 65 percent higher - for a single year, 2005.
It's not necessary to extrapolate that stat to understand that the Times has slandered some fine young Americans.
For none of those numbers appeared among the 7,000 words the paper published. Which means that the numbingly long piece, while loaded with affecting details, contained nothing that would place these cases in any sort of meaningful context.
Clearly, the Times was out to suggest that the experience of war creates post-traumatic stress disorder, which - if untreated - creates a horde of psychotic killers in combat fatigues.
Who's editing the paper these days - Oliver Stone?
The Times suggests that it has only the best interests of our men and women in uniform at heart. But ignoring the numbers that disprove its case out of hand is a disservice to the vets - and certainly to America.
The Times has committed a gross slander. And that's simply unforgivable.
For shame.
January 17, 2008 -- Memo to New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt: Your urgent attention is needed on the slanderous 7,000-word front-page article published last Sunday about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.
We say "allegedly," because the article lumped those merely accused of a homicide with those who've already been convicted. But that was the least of the piece's problems.
As our colleague Ralph Peters so adroitly demonstrated on these pages Tuesday, the article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés - the US combat vet as psychotic killer.
But on what evidence?
None at all.
Indeed, it's impossible to take issue with the statistics cited by reporters Deborah Sontag and Lisette Alvarez - because their article doesn't have any.
For most editors, that would be a red flag. Not at the Times, not in a piece that appealed to the editors' dearest prejudices.
The article, said to be the first of several, reports that there have been 121 homicides involving active-duty or recently discharged Iraq/Afghan combat veterans.
(Need we mention here what the Times thinks of that war - as has long been clear in both its news and opinion pages? Didn't think so.)
"Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories," wrote Sontag and Alvarez of this "quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak."
Lock your doors, America: Here come the killer vets!
And if that didn't drive the point home, consider this: "This reporting," the Times warns ominously, "most likely uncovered the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big cities and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail."
Really?
As any police reporter knows, homicide statistics are among the most difficult for the authorities to fudge: There are all those pesky bodies to be accounted for. (Maybe Sontag and Alvarez should have asked a police reporter?)
But while 121 are a lot of homicides in absolute terms, what about context?
Is the number of killings by combat vets dramatically higher than the rate involving people of the same age who've never served in the military?
It's a good question - in fact, it's the key question. But the Times never asked it. Or, if it did, it never reported the answer.
Perhaps for good reason - because the statistics tell a far different tale than that appearing in the Times.
As Peters noted, "to match the homicide rate of their [nonmilitary] peers, our troops would've had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007" - six times the number the Times cited.
That estimate is borne out by University of Pennsylvania political scientist John DiIulio, who notes on the Weekly Standard's Web site that 749,932 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan had been discharged by the end of 2007. Apply that to the 121 killings cited by the Times, and the homicide rate works out to 16.1 per 100,000 - over the entire six-year period.
By way of imperfect comparison, the US Bureau of Justice Statistics' most recent numbers demonstrate that the same rate among males ages 18-24 was 26.5 - 65 percent higher - for a single year, 2005.
It's not necessary to extrapolate that stat to understand that the Times has slandered some fine young Americans.
For none of those numbers appeared among the 7,000 words the paper published. Which means that the numbingly long piece, while loaded with affecting details, contained nothing that would place these cases in any sort of meaningful context.
Clearly, the Times was out to suggest that the experience of war creates post-traumatic stress disorder, which - if untreated - creates a horde of psychotic killers in combat fatigues.
Who's editing the paper these days - Oliver Stone?
The Times suggests that it has only the best interests of our men and women in uniform at heart. But ignoring the numbers that disprove its case out of hand is a disservice to the vets - and certainly to America.
The Times has committed a gross slander. And that's simply unforgivable.
For shame.
Friday, January 11, 2008
More goofballs in their ivory towers...
Columbia Profs to Visit Iran to Apologize to Ahmadinejad, Reports Say (CNSNews.com) - Iranian media are reporting that a delegation of Columbia University faculty members is planning a trip to Tehran to apologize to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the reception he received during his controversial visit to the school last September.
Columbia senior public affairs officer Tanya Domi said in response to inquiries early Wednesday that the university had "no knowledge or information about the claims currently being made in the Iranian media."
The Mehr News Agency quoted an unnamed member of the prospective delegation as saying the apology was the main aim of the trip, which would also include visits to Iranian universities and seminaries.
Columbia University was criticized -- by leading 2008 presidential candidates among others -- for inviting the Iranian leader to speak on campus while he was in New York City for the fall U.N. General Assembly session.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger delivered introductory remarks in which he challenged Ahmadinejad over his "absurd" denial of the Holocaust, his views on Israel's destruction, Iran's human rights record, and its support for terror groups - including those fighting U.S. troops in Iraq.
Ahmadinejad, he said, exhibited the traits of a "petty and cruel dictator."
In his reply, Iran's president denied that free speech was outlawed in his country, and invited Bollinger to visit and see for himself.
Scores of Columbia professors and others later signed a statementtaking Bollinger to task. They said his remarks during Ahmadinejad's visit "allied the university with the Bush administration's war in Iraq, a position anathema to many in the university community."
Dozens more faculty members then signed a second statement, dissenting from the first group's stance.
The Mehr report, which was carried by the affiliated Tehran Times and various other Iranian media, did not identify any members of the delegation who are said to be planning to come to Iran.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that Bollinger had declined an Iranian government invitation for him to visit Tehran, citing "security and other concerns." He also banned faculty members from accepting invitations to visit Iran on behalf of Columbia.
The Columbia Spectator subsequently quoted a history professor, who signed the letter critical of Bollinger, as saying the president had "asked no faculty to go to Iran claiming they are representing Columbia University."
"However, if tomorrow I decided I want to go to Iran with my research funds for an intellectual purpose or wanting to visit colleagues, I would go freely," she said.
Patrick Goodenough
Columbia senior public affairs officer Tanya Domi said in response to inquiries early Wednesday that the university had "no knowledge or information about the claims currently being made in the Iranian media."
The Mehr News Agency quoted an unnamed member of the prospective delegation as saying the apology was the main aim of the trip, which would also include visits to Iranian universities and seminaries.
Columbia University was criticized -- by leading 2008 presidential candidates among others -- for inviting the Iranian leader to speak on campus while he was in New York City for the fall U.N. General Assembly session.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger delivered introductory remarks in which he challenged Ahmadinejad over his "absurd" denial of the Holocaust, his views on Israel's destruction, Iran's human rights record, and its support for terror groups - including those fighting U.S. troops in Iraq.
Ahmadinejad, he said, exhibited the traits of a "petty and cruel dictator."
In his reply, Iran's president denied that free speech was outlawed in his country, and invited Bollinger to visit and see for himself.
Scores of Columbia professors and others later signed a statementtaking Bollinger to task. They said his remarks during Ahmadinejad's visit "allied the university with the Bush administration's war in Iraq, a position anathema to many in the university community."
Dozens more faculty members then signed a second statement, dissenting from the first group's stance.
The Mehr report, which was carried by the affiliated Tehran Times and various other Iranian media, did not identify any members of the delegation who are said to be planning to come to Iran.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that Bollinger had declined an Iranian government invitation for him to visit Tehran, citing "security and other concerns." He also banned faculty members from accepting invitations to visit Iran on behalf of Columbia.
The Columbia Spectator subsequently quoted a history professor, who signed the letter critical of Bollinger, as saying the president had "asked no faculty to go to Iran claiming they are representing Columbia University."
"However, if tomorrow I decided I want to go to Iran with my research funds for an intellectual purpose or wanting to visit colleagues, I would go freely," she said.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Here's more proof that 'disarmed' and 'victim' are synonymous
When violence looms and every second counts, recall that the police are only minutes away.
M.D. Harmon
December 14, 2007 Has anyone ever wondered why people with guns who have kissed sanity good-bye never take out their uncontrollable rage on the nearest police station? Nor do they drive off to the nearest Army base, shooting range or hunting club to vent their murderous frustration. It should only take a moment's thought to understand why: Those places have people who have relatively easy access to weapons themselves. It's one thing to be homicidal and suicidal, but it's quite another to consider that one's murderous intent could be brought to an untimely halt through the immediate application of superior firepower. However, there are places that draw these people like magnets, and they, too, are easy to locate: They are the places where the possession of firearms is forbidden, and that fact is widely advertised. Some of these places even go so far as to publicly display their vulnerability to mass murder through the posting of signs that say "No Guns Permitted" or "Gun-Free Zone." Virginia Tech was proud of its "gun-free" status, and boasted about how safe a place it was once it posted signs forbidding firearms on campus. Thirty-two people died there last April as the cost of that exercise in hubris and futility. Other places where firearms are typically banned are stores, including shopping malls, government buildings, including schools, and places of worship. We saw in the Columbine shootings how effective gun bans are for schools. And in Omaha last week, eight people died in a shopping mall before the shooter, cornered by police, killed himself. In Ogden, Utah, last February, a man killed five people in a mall before an armed off-duty police officer pinned him down until help could arrive. And just this past weekend, a disturbed youth who had posted violent diatribes against Christians on an Internet site killed two students at a Colorado missionary center. He later showed up at a church that had an association with the missionary group carrying multiple weapons and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. But because of the earlier shootings, the church had activated its voluntary security force, composed of members who had licenses to carry concealed weapons and the training to use them. The gunman killed two teenage girls in the church parking lot and wounded their father before he entered the church. But once he got inside, he was confronted by one of the church's volunteer guards, Jeanne Assam, a former police officer armed with a pistol. As witnesses described it, she advanced on the shooter yelling "Surrender," and when he raised his weapon, fired several shots, bringing him to the ground. Police reported that the badly wounded gunman then shot himself to death. Assam, dubbed "Dirty Harriet" by one writer, was credited by the church's pastor with having saved 50 to 100 lives. It's almost enough to make a fair-minded, thoughtful person conclude that armed, law-abiding citizens might have saved countless more lives at places like those listed above. But not in the view of the confiscation crowd. They point at the weapons the gunmen used and say that banning them would halt such shootings. Problem is, there's precious little evidence to support that view, and much to disprove it. Different parts of this country display disparities in rates of serious crimes. But that crime rate has been falling steadily for almost 20 years. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to that trend, including tougher sentencing laws, the ability of people to defend themselves also counts. The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a 22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession of firearms by honest citizens is greatly restricted. As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who blogs as "Instapundit") noted after the VT murders last spring, "People don't stop killers. People with guns do." He wrote, "Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene." Police, he notes, can't be everywhere, and when they do arrive, it's usually too late for at least some victims. However, "one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. (But) if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all." As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders whether the Second Amendment protects our right of self-defense with firearms, the actual case is being proved by people like Jeanne Assam. M.D. Harmon is an editorial writer. He can be contacted at:
M.D. Harmon
December 14, 2007 Has anyone ever wondered why people with guns who have kissed sanity good-bye never take out their uncontrollable rage on the nearest police station? Nor do they drive off to the nearest Army base, shooting range or hunting club to vent their murderous frustration. It should only take a moment's thought to understand why: Those places have people who have relatively easy access to weapons themselves. It's one thing to be homicidal and suicidal, but it's quite another to consider that one's murderous intent could be brought to an untimely halt through the immediate application of superior firepower. However, there are places that draw these people like magnets, and they, too, are easy to locate: They are the places where the possession of firearms is forbidden, and that fact is widely advertised. Some of these places even go so far as to publicly display their vulnerability to mass murder through the posting of signs that say "No Guns Permitted" or "Gun-Free Zone." Virginia Tech was proud of its "gun-free" status, and boasted about how safe a place it was once it posted signs forbidding firearms on campus. Thirty-two people died there last April as the cost of that exercise in hubris and futility. Other places where firearms are typically banned are stores, including shopping malls, government buildings, including schools, and places of worship. We saw in the Columbine shootings how effective gun bans are for schools. And in Omaha last week, eight people died in a shopping mall before the shooter, cornered by police, killed himself. In Ogden, Utah, last February, a man killed five people in a mall before an armed off-duty police officer pinned him down until help could arrive. And just this past weekend, a disturbed youth who had posted violent diatribes against Christians on an Internet site killed two students at a Colorado missionary center. He later showed up at a church that had an association with the missionary group carrying multiple weapons and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. But because of the earlier shootings, the church had activated its voluntary security force, composed of members who had licenses to carry concealed weapons and the training to use them. The gunman killed two teenage girls in the church parking lot and wounded their father before he entered the church. But once he got inside, he was confronted by one of the church's volunteer guards, Jeanne Assam, a former police officer armed with a pistol. As witnesses described it, she advanced on the shooter yelling "Surrender," and when he raised his weapon, fired several shots, bringing him to the ground. Police reported that the badly wounded gunman then shot himself to death. Assam, dubbed "Dirty Harriet" by one writer, was credited by the church's pastor with having saved 50 to 100 lives. It's almost enough to make a fair-minded, thoughtful person conclude that armed, law-abiding citizens might have saved countless more lives at places like those listed above. But not in the view of the confiscation crowd. They point at the weapons the gunmen used and say that banning them would halt such shootings. Problem is, there's precious little evidence to support that view, and much to disprove it. Different parts of this country display disparities in rates of serious crimes. But that crime rate has been falling steadily for almost 20 years. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to that trend, including tougher sentencing laws, the ability of people to defend themselves also counts. The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a 22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession of firearms by honest citizens is greatly restricted. As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who blogs as "Instapundit") noted after the VT murders last spring, "People don't stop killers. People with guns do." He wrote, "Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene." Police, he notes, can't be everywhere, and when they do arrive, it's usually too late for at least some victims. However, "one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. (But) if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all." As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders whether the Second Amendment protects our right of self-defense with firearms, the actual case is being proved by people like Jeanne Assam. M.D. Harmon is an editorial writer. He can be contacted at:
Friday, December 28, 2007
Islam VS free speech
Under assault by Muslims and multiculturalists, free speech and freedom of the press are dead in Britain. The same sorts of people who killed them in Britain are killing them in Canada. They and their allies are using the British and Canadian courts and tribunals to bury our First Amendment rights in America.
Muslims -- individually and in pressure groups -- are using British libel laws and Canadian “human rights” laws to limit what is said about Islam, terrorists and the people in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are funding groups such as al-Queda. The cases of Rachel Ehrenfeld and Mark Steyn prove the point.
Dr. Ehrenfeld is a scholar and author of the book, “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, and How to Stop it.” In that book, Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz -- a Saudi who is former head of the Saudi National Commercial Bank -- and some of his family are described as having funded terrorism directly and indirectly.
Ehrenfeld is American, her book was written and published in America and she has no business or other ties to Britain. Under American law, the Brit courts would have no jurisdiction over her. But about two-dozen copies of her book were sold there through the internet. Bin Mahfouz sued her for libel in the Brit courts where the burden of proof is the opposite of what it is in US courts: the author has to prove that what is written is true, rather than the supposedly defamed person proving it is false.
Think about that for a moment. Under the US Constitution political writings -- free speech -- is almost unlimited. To gain a libel judgment a politician -- or someone suspected of terrorist ties -- would have to prove that the story or book was false. If that person were a public figure such as Mahfouz, in order to get a libel judgment he’d not only have to prove that what was written was false, he’d also have to prove it was published maliciously.
Those American laws and standards of proof protect political speech. The First Amendment is intended to protect political speech that people find objectionable. In the landmark 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court overturned an Ohio statute which would have outlawed hate speech by the Ku Klux Klan. That’s why Mahfouz sued in Britain, not here.
Ehrenfeld refused to fight the case, saying the Brit courts have no jurisdiction over her. Mahfouz got a default judgment against her for ₤10,000 (for himself, and in equal amounts for his sons). The judgment also requires that there be no further “defamatory” statements published in England and Wales.
In a letter published in the Spectator on November 21, bin Mahfouz’s lawyers gloated over their victory against Ehrenfeld: “Rather than check her facts, defend her statements in open court, or acknowledge her mistakes, Ehrenfeld hides behind a claim to free speech. Thank goodness, the legal lights remain on in Britain to expose such harmful journalism.”
“Harmful journalism” is what tyrants and despots call free speech, especially political speech that condemns their affronts to freedom. The “legal lights” Mahfouz’s lawyers see is the bonfire they made of the Magna Carta. Thanks to Mahfouz and his ilk, the light of free speech is extinguished in Britain. Consider the fate of the book, “Alms for Jihad.”
In 2006 Cambridge University press published “Alms for Jihad.” It’s a highly detailed and apparently well-researched book that documents Saudi funding of terrorist groups (as well as other funding and the network of Islamic “charities” that contribute to terrorism). “Alms for Jihad” -- like Ehrenfeld’s book -- documents bin Mahfouz’s funding ties to terrorism, including to Usama bin Laden. But “Alms”-- in settlement of a libel suit by bin Mahfouz in the Brit courts -- was withdrawn from stores and libraries and unsold copies destroyed. The Saudi book burners won.
Mahfouz’s case against Ehrenfeld has already done enormous harm in the US. Ehrenfeld told me she’s unable to get book publishers to contract for another book. She said all of the major US publishing houses have turned down a book on the Muslim Brotherhood -- thought to have substantial terrorist ties -- and the Saudis’ involvement in funding it.
If what Ehrenfeld writes about the Brotherhood offends Mahfouz or someone else whose ties to terrorism ought to be exposed, sales could be banned not only in Britain but in the entire European Union and the publisher -- and the author -- made liable for damages. Mahfouz -- using British courts that have no jurisdiction over American authors -- has apparently precluded Ehrenfeld from writing another book. Steyn’s case is another instance of Muslims trying to silence “harmful journalism.”
Mark Steyn’s superb book, “America Alone”, makes two important points: first, that the Muslim baby boom around the world will likely result in Christian nations becoming Muslim by weight of demographics; and second that Islam is a political system, not just a religion:
So it’s not merely that there’s a global jihad lurking within this religion, but that the religion itself is a political project and, in fact, an imperial project in a way that modern Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are not. Furthermore, this particular religion is historically a somewhat bloodthirsty faith in which whatever’s your bag violence-wise can almost certainly be justified.
Steyn’s stance -- written by him and paralleled by other writers in the Canadian magazine, “Macleans” -- is the subject of a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission brought by three Muslim law students in Canada, with the apparent support of the Canadian Islamic Conference. That group is similar to the CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission is a multiculti kangaroo court. The complaint against Macleans will be adjudicated next year, and findings entered against the magazine. (Steyn told me that the CHRC has granted 100% of the petitions brought to it so far.) What then?
Fines and other sanctions will be entered against Macleans along with probable injunctions against further “harmful journalism” that offends Muslims. A case may be brought against Steyn himself later. Which means that he could be subjected to fines or other penalties in Canada for exercising his First Amendment rights in the US. And -- because American publishers look to Canada for about 10% of their sales -- Steyn may, like Ehrenfeld, find publishers unwilling to publish his work.
What has happened to Ehrenfeld and may happen to Steyn is in contravention of their First Amendment rights. No American court would or could do that. No foreign court or commission should be able to. US courts, and each of us who believes in free speech, must stand with both authors. US courts should make it clear that foreign libel judgments or “human rights” decisions that conflict with our First Amendment cannot be enforced.
Each and every presidential candidate should speak -- loudly and clearly -- against this encroachment of foreign law on the First Amendment. Anyone who doesn’t stand forthrightly against these foreign infringements on Americans’ Constitutional rights should receive neither our confidence nor our votes.
What Muslims such as Mahfouz and those complaining against Steyn are doing to destroy free speech overseas has been commenced here by groups such as CAIR. A few weeks ago, CAIR announced its media guide, which is purportedly corrects “misperceptions” about Islam and “…educate(s) the media and disabuse(s) journalists of misinformation.” But the other aspect -- which I and others suspect -- is that it’s not so much a guide as a set of rules against “harmful journalism.” And those who write about terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Islam will be accused of intolerance and racism should they violate them.
We don’t yet know what the CAIR guide says. I requested a copy of it from CAIR by e-mail, as they specified. I have neither received a copy nor received any response. I suspect CAIR wants to hide it from people who would scrutinize it. Having to operate under our Constitution, they will take a more indirect path than Mahfouz and the Canadian law students to preclude what they believe is “harmful journalism.”
Muslims -- individually and in pressure groups -- are using British libel laws and Canadian “human rights” laws to limit what is said about Islam, terrorists and the people in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are funding groups such as al-Queda. The cases of Rachel Ehrenfeld and Mark Steyn prove the point.
Dr. Ehrenfeld is a scholar and author of the book, “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, and How to Stop it.” In that book, Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz -- a Saudi who is former head of the Saudi National Commercial Bank -- and some of his family are described as having funded terrorism directly and indirectly.
Ehrenfeld is American, her book was written and published in America and she has no business or other ties to Britain. Under American law, the Brit courts would have no jurisdiction over her. But about two-dozen copies of her book were sold there through the internet. Bin Mahfouz sued her for libel in the Brit courts where the burden of proof is the opposite of what it is in US courts: the author has to prove that what is written is true, rather than the supposedly defamed person proving it is false.
Think about that for a moment. Under the US Constitution political writings -- free speech -- is almost unlimited. To gain a libel judgment a politician -- or someone suspected of terrorist ties -- would have to prove that the story or book was false. If that person were a public figure such as Mahfouz, in order to get a libel judgment he’d not only have to prove that what was written was false, he’d also have to prove it was published maliciously.
Those American laws and standards of proof protect political speech. The First Amendment is intended to protect political speech that people find objectionable. In the landmark 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court overturned an Ohio statute which would have outlawed hate speech by the Ku Klux Klan. That’s why Mahfouz sued in Britain, not here.
Ehrenfeld refused to fight the case, saying the Brit courts have no jurisdiction over her. Mahfouz got a default judgment against her for ₤10,000 (for himself, and in equal amounts for his sons). The judgment also requires that there be no further “defamatory” statements published in England and Wales.
In a letter published in the Spectator on November 21, bin Mahfouz’s lawyers gloated over their victory against Ehrenfeld: “Rather than check her facts, defend her statements in open court, or acknowledge her mistakes, Ehrenfeld hides behind a claim to free speech. Thank goodness, the legal lights remain on in Britain to expose such harmful journalism.”
“Harmful journalism” is what tyrants and despots call free speech, especially political speech that condemns their affronts to freedom. The “legal lights” Mahfouz’s lawyers see is the bonfire they made of the Magna Carta. Thanks to Mahfouz and his ilk, the light of free speech is extinguished in Britain. Consider the fate of the book, “Alms for Jihad.”
In 2006 Cambridge University press published “Alms for Jihad.” It’s a highly detailed and apparently well-researched book that documents Saudi funding of terrorist groups (as well as other funding and the network of Islamic “charities” that contribute to terrorism). “Alms for Jihad” -- like Ehrenfeld’s book -- documents bin Mahfouz’s funding ties to terrorism, including to Usama bin Laden. But “Alms”-- in settlement of a libel suit by bin Mahfouz in the Brit courts -- was withdrawn from stores and libraries and unsold copies destroyed. The Saudi book burners won.
Mahfouz’s case against Ehrenfeld has already done enormous harm in the US. Ehrenfeld told me she’s unable to get book publishers to contract for another book. She said all of the major US publishing houses have turned down a book on the Muslim Brotherhood -- thought to have substantial terrorist ties -- and the Saudis’ involvement in funding it.
If what Ehrenfeld writes about the Brotherhood offends Mahfouz or someone else whose ties to terrorism ought to be exposed, sales could be banned not only in Britain but in the entire European Union and the publisher -- and the author -- made liable for damages. Mahfouz -- using British courts that have no jurisdiction over American authors -- has apparently precluded Ehrenfeld from writing another book. Steyn’s case is another instance of Muslims trying to silence “harmful journalism.”
Mark Steyn’s superb book, “America Alone”, makes two important points: first, that the Muslim baby boom around the world will likely result in Christian nations becoming Muslim by weight of demographics; and second that Islam is a political system, not just a religion:
So it’s not merely that there’s a global jihad lurking within this religion, but that the religion itself is a political project and, in fact, an imperial project in a way that modern Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are not. Furthermore, this particular religion is historically a somewhat bloodthirsty faith in which whatever’s your bag violence-wise can almost certainly be justified.
Steyn’s stance -- written by him and paralleled by other writers in the Canadian magazine, “Macleans” -- is the subject of a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission brought by three Muslim law students in Canada, with the apparent support of the Canadian Islamic Conference. That group is similar to the CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission is a multiculti kangaroo court. The complaint against Macleans will be adjudicated next year, and findings entered against the magazine. (Steyn told me that the CHRC has granted 100% of the petitions brought to it so far.) What then?
Fines and other sanctions will be entered against Macleans along with probable injunctions against further “harmful journalism” that offends Muslims. A case may be brought against Steyn himself later. Which means that he could be subjected to fines or other penalties in Canada for exercising his First Amendment rights in the US. And -- because American publishers look to Canada for about 10% of their sales -- Steyn may, like Ehrenfeld, find publishers unwilling to publish his work.
What has happened to Ehrenfeld and may happen to Steyn is in contravention of their First Amendment rights. No American court would or could do that. No foreign court or commission should be able to. US courts, and each of us who believes in free speech, must stand with both authors. US courts should make it clear that foreign libel judgments or “human rights” decisions that conflict with our First Amendment cannot be enforced.
Each and every presidential candidate should speak -- loudly and clearly -- against this encroachment of foreign law on the First Amendment. Anyone who doesn’t stand forthrightly against these foreign infringements on Americans’ Constitutional rights should receive neither our confidence nor our votes.
What Muslims such as Mahfouz and those complaining against Steyn are doing to destroy free speech overseas has been commenced here by groups such as CAIR. A few weeks ago, CAIR announced its media guide, which is purportedly corrects “misperceptions” about Islam and “…educate(s) the media and disabuse(s) journalists of misinformation.” But the other aspect -- which I and others suspect -- is that it’s not so much a guide as a set of rules against “harmful journalism.” And those who write about terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Islam will be accused of intolerance and racism should they violate them.
We don’t yet know what the CAIR guide says. I requested a copy of it from CAIR by e-mail, as they specified. I have neither received a copy nor received any response. I suspect CAIR wants to hide it from people who would scrutinize it. Having to operate under our Constitution, they will take a more indirect path than Mahfouz and the Canadian law students to preclude what they believe is “harmful journalism.”
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Diversity is wonderful--ask the Danes
Salute the Danish Flag - it's a Symbol of Western Freedom
By Susan MacAllen
In 1978-9 I was living and studying in Denmark. But in 1978 - even in Copenhagen, one didn't see Muslim immigrants. The Danish population embraced visitors, celebrated the exotic, went out of its way to protect each of its citizens. It was proud of its new brand of socialist liberalism - one in development since the conservatives had lost power in 1929 - a system where no worker had to struggle to survive, where one ultimately could count upon the state as in, perhaps, no other western nation at the time.
The rest of Europe saw the Scandinavians as free-thinking, progressive and infinitely generous in their welfare policies. Denmark boasted low crime rates, devotion to the environment, a superior educational system and a history of humanitarianism.
Denmark was also most generous in its immigration policies - it offered the best welcome in Europe to the new immigrant: generous welfare payments from first arrival plus additional perks in transportation, housing and education. It was determined to set a world example for inclusiveness and multiculturalism. How could it have predicted that one day in 2005 a series of political cartoons in a newspaper would spark violence that would leave dozens dead in the streets - all because its commitment to multiculturalism would come back to bite?
By the 1990's the growing urban Muslim population was obvious - and itsunwillingness to integrate into Danish society was obvious. Years ofimmigrants had settled into Muslim-exclusive enclaves. As the Muslimleadership became more vocal about what they considered the decadence ofDenmark's liberal way of life, the Danes - once so welcoming - began tofeel slighted. Many Danes had begun to see Islam as incompatible withtheir long-standing values: belief in personal liberty and free speech, inequality for women, in tolerance for other ethnic groups, and a deep pridein Danish heritage and history.
The New York Post in 2002 ran an article by Daniel Pipes and LarsHedegaard, in which they forecasted accurately that the growing immigrantproblem in Denmark would explode. In the article they reported:
"Muslim immigrants.constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending." "Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims arenon-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes."
"Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish lessto mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds thatonly 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry aDane." "Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a malecousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him,sometimes on pain of death - are one problem"
"Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic lawonce Denmark's Muslim population grows large enough - anot-that-remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologistestimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will beMuslim."
It is easy to understand why a growing number of Danes would feel thatMuslim immigrants show little respect for Danish values and laws. Anexample is the phenomenon common to other European countries and the U.S.:some Muslims in Denmark who opted to leave the Muslim faith have beenmurdered in the name of Islam, while others hide in fear for their lives.Jews are also threatened and harassed openly by Muslim leaders in Denmark,a country where once Christian citizens worked to smuggle out nearly allof their 7,000 Jews by night to Sweden - before the Nazis could invade. Ithink of my Danish friend Elsa - who as a teenager had dreaded crossingthe street to the bakery every morning under the eyes of occupying Nazisoldiers - and I wonder what she would say today.
In 2001, Denmark elected the most conservative government in some 70 years - one that had some decidedly non-generous ideas about liberal unfettered immigration. Today Denmark has the strictest immigration policies in Europe. ( Its effort to protect itself has been met with accusations of "racism" by liberal media across Europe - even as other governments struggle to right the social problems wrought by years of too-lax immigration.)
If you wish to become Danish, you must attend three years of language classes. You must pass a test on Denmark's history, culture, and a Danish language test. You must live in Denmark for 7 years before applying for citizenship. You must demonstrate an intent to work, and have a job waiting. If you wish to bring a spouse into Denmark, you must both be over 24 years of age, and you won't find it so easy anymore to move your friends and family to Denmark with you.
You will not be allowed to build a mosque in Copenhagen. Although your children have a choice of some 30 Arabic culture and language schools in Denmark, they will be strongly encouraged to assimilate to Danish society in ways that past immigrants weren't.
In 2006, the Danish minister for employment, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, spoke publicly of the burden of Muslim immigrants on the Danish welfare system, and it was horrifying: the government's welfare committee had calculated that if immigration from Third World countries were blocked, 75 percent of the cuts needed to sustain the huge welfare system in coming decades would be unnecessary. In other words, the welfare system as it existed was being exploited by immigrants to the point of eventually bankrupting the government. "We are simply forced to adopt a new policy on immigration. The calculations of the welfare committee are terrifying and show how unsuccessful the integration of immigrants has been up to now," he said.
A large thorn in the side of Denmark's imams is the Minister of Immigration and Integration, Rikke Hvilshoj. She makes no bones about the new policy toward immigration, "The number of foreigners coming to the country makes a difference," Hvilshøj says, "There is an inverse correlation between how many come here and how well we can receive the foreigners that come." And on Muslim immigrants needing to demonstrate a willingness to blend in, "In my view, Denmark should be a country with room for different cultures and religions. Some values, however, are more important than others. We refuse to question democracy, equal rights, and freedom of speech."
Hvilshoj has paid a price for her show of backbone. Perhaps to test her resolve, the leading radical imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, demanded that the government pay blood money to the family of a Muslim who was murdered in a suburb of Copenhagen, stating that the family's thirst for revenge could be thwarted for money. When Hvilshoj dismissed his demand, he argued that in Muslim culture the payment of retribution money was common, to which Hvilshoj replied that what is done in a Muslim country is not necessarily what is done in Denmark. The Muslim reply came soon after: her house was torched while she, her husband and children slept. All managed to escape unharmed, but she and her family were moved to a secret location and she and other ministers were assigned bodyguards for the first time - in a country where such murderous violence was once so scarce.
Her government has slid to the right, and her borders have tightened. Many believe that what happens in the next decade will determine whether Denmark survives as a bastion of good living, humane thinking and social responsibility, or whether it becomes a nation at civil war with supporters of Sharia law.
And meanwhile, Canadians clamor for stricter immigration policies, and demand an end to state welfare programs that allow many immigrants to live on the public dole. As we in Canada and the US look at the enclaves of Muslims amongst us, and see those who enter our shores too easily, dare live on our taxes, yet refuse to embrace our culture, respect our traditions, participate in our legal system, obey our laws, speak our language, appreciate our history . . we would do well to look to Denmark, and say a prayer for her future and for our own.
By Susan MacAllen
In 1978-9 I was living and studying in Denmark. But in 1978 - even in Copenhagen, one didn't see Muslim immigrants. The Danish population embraced visitors, celebrated the exotic, went out of its way to protect each of its citizens. It was proud of its new brand of socialist liberalism - one in development since the conservatives had lost power in 1929 - a system where no worker had to struggle to survive, where one ultimately could count upon the state as in, perhaps, no other western nation at the time.
The rest of Europe saw the Scandinavians as free-thinking, progressive and infinitely generous in their welfare policies. Denmark boasted low crime rates, devotion to the environment, a superior educational system and a history of humanitarianism.
Denmark was also most generous in its immigration policies - it offered the best welcome in Europe to the new immigrant: generous welfare payments from first arrival plus additional perks in transportation, housing and education. It was determined to set a world example for inclusiveness and multiculturalism. How could it have predicted that one day in 2005 a series of political cartoons in a newspaper would spark violence that would leave dozens dead in the streets - all because its commitment to multiculturalism would come back to bite?
By the 1990's the growing urban Muslim population was obvious - and itsunwillingness to integrate into Danish society was obvious. Years ofimmigrants had settled into Muslim-exclusive enclaves. As the Muslimleadership became more vocal about what they considered the decadence ofDenmark's liberal way of life, the Danes - once so welcoming - began tofeel slighted. Many Danes had begun to see Islam as incompatible withtheir long-standing values: belief in personal liberty and free speech, inequality for women, in tolerance for other ethnic groups, and a deep pridein Danish heritage and history.
The New York Post in 2002 ran an article by Daniel Pipes and LarsHedegaard, in which they forecasted accurately that the growing immigrantproblem in Denmark would explode. In the article they reported:
"Muslim immigrants.constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending." "Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims arenon-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes."
"Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish lessto mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds thatonly 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry aDane." "Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a malecousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him,sometimes on pain of death - are one problem"
"Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic lawonce Denmark's Muslim population grows large enough - anot-that-remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologistestimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will beMuslim."
It is easy to understand why a growing number of Danes would feel thatMuslim immigrants show little respect for Danish values and laws. Anexample is the phenomenon common to other European countries and the U.S.:some Muslims in Denmark who opted to leave the Muslim faith have beenmurdered in the name of Islam, while others hide in fear for their lives.Jews are also threatened and harassed openly by Muslim leaders in Denmark,a country where once Christian citizens worked to smuggle out nearly allof their 7,000 Jews by night to Sweden - before the Nazis could invade. Ithink of my Danish friend Elsa - who as a teenager had dreaded crossingthe street to the bakery every morning under the eyes of occupying Nazisoldiers - and I wonder what she would say today.
In 2001, Denmark elected the most conservative government in some 70 years - one that had some decidedly non-generous ideas about liberal unfettered immigration. Today Denmark has the strictest immigration policies in Europe. ( Its effort to protect itself has been met with accusations of "racism" by liberal media across Europe - even as other governments struggle to right the social problems wrought by years of too-lax immigration.)
If you wish to become Danish, you must attend three years of language classes. You must pass a test on Denmark's history, culture, and a Danish language test. You must live in Denmark for 7 years before applying for citizenship. You must demonstrate an intent to work, and have a job waiting. If you wish to bring a spouse into Denmark, you must both be over 24 years of age, and you won't find it so easy anymore to move your friends and family to Denmark with you.
You will not be allowed to build a mosque in Copenhagen. Although your children have a choice of some 30 Arabic culture and language schools in Denmark, they will be strongly encouraged to assimilate to Danish society in ways that past immigrants weren't.
In 2006, the Danish minister for employment, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, spoke publicly of the burden of Muslim immigrants on the Danish welfare system, and it was horrifying: the government's welfare committee had calculated that if immigration from Third World countries were blocked, 75 percent of the cuts needed to sustain the huge welfare system in coming decades would be unnecessary. In other words, the welfare system as it existed was being exploited by immigrants to the point of eventually bankrupting the government. "We are simply forced to adopt a new policy on immigration. The calculations of the welfare committee are terrifying and show how unsuccessful the integration of immigrants has been up to now," he said.
A large thorn in the side of Denmark's imams is the Minister of Immigration and Integration, Rikke Hvilshoj. She makes no bones about the new policy toward immigration, "The number of foreigners coming to the country makes a difference," Hvilshøj says, "There is an inverse correlation between how many come here and how well we can receive the foreigners that come." And on Muslim immigrants needing to demonstrate a willingness to blend in, "In my view, Denmark should be a country with room for different cultures and religions. Some values, however, are more important than others. We refuse to question democracy, equal rights, and freedom of speech."
Hvilshoj has paid a price for her show of backbone. Perhaps to test her resolve, the leading radical imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, demanded that the government pay blood money to the family of a Muslim who was murdered in a suburb of Copenhagen, stating that the family's thirst for revenge could be thwarted for money. When Hvilshoj dismissed his demand, he argued that in Muslim culture the payment of retribution money was common, to which Hvilshoj replied that what is done in a Muslim country is not necessarily what is done in Denmark. The Muslim reply came soon after: her house was torched while she, her husband and children slept. All managed to escape unharmed, but she and her family were moved to a secret location and she and other ministers were assigned bodyguards for the first time - in a country where such murderous violence was once so scarce.
Her government has slid to the right, and her borders have tightened. Many believe that what happens in the next decade will determine whether Denmark survives as a bastion of good living, humane thinking and social responsibility, or whether it becomes a nation at civil war with supporters of Sharia law.
And meanwhile, Canadians clamor for stricter immigration policies, and demand an end to state welfare programs that allow many immigrants to live on the public dole. As we in Canada and the US look at the enclaves of Muslims amongst us, and see those who enter our shores too easily, dare live on our taxes, yet refuse to embrace our culture, respect our traditions, participate in our legal system, obey our laws, speak our language, appreciate our history . . we would do well to look to Denmark, and say a prayer for her future and for our own.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
WHAT IF 20 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS VACATED AMERICA?
Tina Griego, journalist for Denver's Rocky Mountain News wrote a column titled, "Mexican visitor's lament" -- 10/25/07.
She interviewed Mexican journalist Evangelina Hernandez while visiting Denver last week. Hernandez said,
"They (illegal aliens) pay rent, buy groceries, buy clothes...what happens to your country's economy if 20 million people go away?"
That's a good question - it deserves an answer. Over 80 percent of Americans demand secured borders and illegal migration stopped. But what would happen if all 20 million or more vacated America? The answers may surprise you!
In California, if 3.5 million illegal aliens moved back to Mexico, it would leave an extra $10.2 billion to spend on overloaded school systems, bankrupted hospitals and overrun prisons. It would leave highways cleaner, safer and less congested. Everyone could understand one another as English became the dominate language again. In Colorado, 500,000 illegal migrants, plus their 300,000 kids and grand-kids - would move back "home," mostly to Mexico. That would save Coloradans an estimated $2 billion (other experts say $7 BIL) annually in taxes that pay for schooling, medical, social-services and incarceration costs. It means 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver alone. Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs, and the terror that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens. Denver Officer Don Young and hundreds of Colorado victims would not have suffered death, accidents, rapes and other crimes by illegals. Denver Public Schools would not suffer a 67 percent drop out/flunk out rate via thousands of illegal alien students speaking 41 different languages. At least 200,000 vehicles would vanish from our gridlocked cities in Colorado. Denver's four percent unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage. In Florida, 1.5 million illegals would return the Sunshine State back to America, the rule of law and English. In Chicago, Illinois, 2.1 million illegals would free up hospitals, schools, prisons and highways for a safer, cleaner and more crime-free experience. If 20 million illegal aliens returned "home" --
If 20 million illegal aliens returned "home," the U.S. economy would return to the rule of law. Employers would hire legal American citizens at a living wage. Everyone would pay their fair share of taxes because they wouldn't be working off the books. That would result in an additional $401 billion in IRS income taxes collected annually, and an equal amount for local state and city coffers.
No more push '1' for Spanish or '2' for English. No more confusion in American schools that now must content with over 100 languages that degrade the educational system for American kids. Our overcrowded schools would lose more than two million illegal alien kids at a cost of billions in ESL and free breakfasts and lunches.
We would lose 500,000 illegal criminal alien inmates at a cost of more than $1.6 billion annually. That includes 15,000 MS-13 gang members who distribute $130 billion in drugs annually would vacate our country. In cities like L.A., 20,000 members of the "18th Street Gang" would vanish from our nation. No more Mexican forgery gangs for ID theft from Americans! No more foreign rapists and child molesters!
Losing more than 20 million people would clear up our crowded highways and gridlock. Cleaner air and less drinking and driving American deaths by illegal aliens!
Drain on America's economy; taxpayers harmed, employers get rich
Over $80 billion annually wouldn't return to their home countries by cash transfers. Illegal migrants earned half that money untaxed, which further drains America's economy - which currently suffers an $8.7 trillion debt.
At least 400,000 anchor babies would not be born in our country, costing us $109 billion per year per cycle. At least 86 hospitals in California, Georgia and Florida would still be operating instead of being bankrupted out of existence because illegals pay nothing via the EMTOLA Act. Americans wouldn't suffer thousands of TB and hepatitis cases rampant in our country-brought in by illegals unscreened at our borders.
Our cities would see 20 million less people driving without insurance, polluting and grid locking our cities. It would also put the "progressives" on the horns of a dilemma; illegal aliens and their families cause 11 percent of our greenhouse gases.
Over one million of Mexico's poorest citizens now live inside and along our border from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California in what the New York Times called, "colonias" or new neighborhoods. Trouble is, those living areas resemble Bombay and Calcutta where grinding poverty, filth, diseases, drugs, crimes, no sanitation and worse. They live without sewage, clean water, streets, electricity, roads or any kind of sanitation. The New York Times reported them to be America's new "Third World" inside our own country. Within 20 years, at their current growth rate, they expect 20 million residents of those colonias. (I've seen them personally in Texas and Arizona; it's sickening beyond anything you can imagine.) By enforcing our laws, we could repatriate them back to Mexico.
High integrity, ethical invitation
We invite 20 million aliens to go home, fix their own countries and/or make a better life in Mexico. We invite a million people into our country legally more than all other countries combined annually. We cannot and must not allow anarchy at our borders, more anarchy within our borders and growing lawlessness at every level in our nation.
It's time to stand up for our country, our culture, our civilization and our way of life.
© 2007 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
She interviewed Mexican journalist Evangelina Hernandez while visiting Denver last week. Hernandez said,
"They (illegal aliens) pay rent, buy groceries, buy clothes...what happens to your country's economy if 20 million people go away?"
That's a good question - it deserves an answer. Over 80 percent of Americans demand secured borders and illegal migration stopped. But what would happen if all 20 million or more vacated America? The answers may surprise you!
In California, if 3.5 million illegal aliens moved back to Mexico, it would leave an extra $10.2 billion to spend on overloaded school systems, bankrupted hospitals and overrun prisons. It would leave highways cleaner, safer and less congested. Everyone could understand one another as English became the dominate language again. In Colorado, 500,000 illegal migrants, plus their 300,000 kids and grand-kids - would move back "home," mostly to Mexico. That would save Coloradans an estimated $2 billion (other experts say $7 BIL) annually in taxes that pay for schooling, medical, social-services and incarceration costs. It means 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver alone. Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs, and the terror that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens. Denver Officer Don Young and hundreds of Colorado victims would not have suffered death, accidents, rapes and other crimes by illegals. Denver Public Schools would not suffer a 67 percent drop out/flunk out rate via thousands of illegal alien students speaking 41 different languages. At least 200,000 vehicles would vanish from our gridlocked cities in Colorado. Denver's four percent unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage. In Florida, 1.5 million illegals would return the Sunshine State back to America, the rule of law and English. In Chicago, Illinois, 2.1 million illegals would free up hospitals, schools, prisons and highways for a safer, cleaner and more crime-free experience. If 20 million illegal aliens returned "home" --
If 20 million illegal aliens returned "home," the U.S. economy would return to the rule of law. Employers would hire legal American citizens at a living wage. Everyone would pay their fair share of taxes because they wouldn't be working off the books. That would result in an additional $401 billion in IRS income taxes collected annually, and an equal amount for local state and city coffers.
No more push '1' for Spanish or '2' for English. No more confusion in American schools that now must content with over 100 languages that degrade the educational system for American kids. Our overcrowded schools would lose more than two million illegal alien kids at a cost of billions in ESL and free breakfasts and lunches.
We would lose 500,000 illegal criminal alien inmates at a cost of more than $1.6 billion annually. That includes 15,000 MS-13 gang members who distribute $130 billion in drugs annually would vacate our country. In cities like L.A., 20,000 members of the "18th Street Gang" would vanish from our nation. No more Mexican forgery gangs for ID theft from Americans! No more foreign rapists and child molesters!
Losing more than 20 million people would clear up our crowded highways and gridlock. Cleaner air and less drinking and driving American deaths by illegal aliens!
Drain on America's economy; taxpayers harmed, employers get rich
Over $80 billion annually wouldn't return to their home countries by cash transfers. Illegal migrants earned half that money untaxed, which further drains America's economy - which currently suffers an $8.7 trillion debt.
At least 400,000 anchor babies would not be born in our country, costing us $109 billion per year per cycle. At least 86 hospitals in California, Georgia and Florida would still be operating instead of being bankrupted out of existence because illegals pay nothing via the EMTOLA Act. Americans wouldn't suffer thousands of TB and hepatitis cases rampant in our country-brought in by illegals unscreened at our borders.
Our cities would see 20 million less people driving without insurance, polluting and grid locking our cities. It would also put the "progressives" on the horns of a dilemma; illegal aliens and their families cause 11 percent of our greenhouse gases.
Over one million of Mexico's poorest citizens now live inside and along our border from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California in what the New York Times called, "colonias" or new neighborhoods. Trouble is, those living areas resemble Bombay and Calcutta where grinding poverty, filth, diseases, drugs, crimes, no sanitation and worse. They live without sewage, clean water, streets, electricity, roads or any kind of sanitation. The New York Times reported them to be America's new "Third World" inside our own country. Within 20 years, at their current growth rate, they expect 20 million residents of those colonias. (I've seen them personally in Texas and Arizona; it's sickening beyond anything you can imagine.) By enforcing our laws, we could repatriate them back to Mexico.
High integrity, ethical invitation
We invite 20 million aliens to go home, fix their own countries and/or make a better life in Mexico. We invite a million people into our country legally more than all other countries combined annually. We cannot and must not allow anarchy at our borders, more anarchy within our borders and growing lawlessness at every level in our nation.
It's time to stand up for our country, our culture, our civilization and our way of life.
© 2007 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
Enforcement actually works
The best-kept secret: Enforcement actually works
By ERNEST ISTOOK
The Heritage Foundation
Once again, the states are rebelling against Washington.
Fed up with dithering in D.C., states are proving that enforcement works. Enforcement can not only prevent illegal immigration but actually reverse it.
Illegal immigrants by the tens of thousands are leaving states that have adopted tough new laws -- Colorado, Georgia, Arizona and now Oklahoma. Local efforts are being launched too quickly to count, involving more than 100 communities so far.
When denied jobs or public benefits, many illegals return to Mexico. Others move within the U.S. to areas with local amnesty policies.
Left-leaning groups are on the move, too, flocking to the courts in efforts to block state and local enforcement. Only Congress is standing still -- except for backsliding efforts to push more back-door amnesty.
The details of the state and local laws vary, but the impact is consistent. Typically, they deny public benefits to illegal immigrants and try to make sure that employers don't hire them.
Oklahoma's law kicked in Thursday. Hispanic leaders claim that 25,000 illegal persons departed the Sooner State before the measure went into effect. Businesses that catered to them say their sales are down 20 percent. They're backing a lawsuit challenging the new crackdown.
But the crackdown is a gain for taxpayers. Estimates show that illegal immigrants cost Oklahoma taxpayers $200 million a year, mostly for education and healthcare.
Arizona's new employer sanctions don't start until Jan. 1. A half million undocumented people supposedly are awaiting the outcome of court challenges, but The Arizona Republic still reports the outmigration already tops 100 per day.
Because of Georgia's new law, businesses with an illegal-alien customer base have seen sales drop as much as 40 percent. And money wired from Georgia to Mexico and Central America declined. Similar sales drops are reported elsewhere.
Colorado supplemented its new laws with a special detachment of state troopers. An Aug. 31 report to the governor said the first month's results "exceed anyone's expectations," catching 150 illegal immigrants plus those who smuggle them.
State legislators this year introduced some 1,400 immigrant-related bills, and 182 became law. Local ordinances were proposed or adopted in 104 cities and counties.
Bucking the trend is Illinois, which passed a law prohibiting employers from using a federal database to screen out illegal immigrants. That's where the litigation trend cuts both ways: The Department of Homeland Security is suing Illinois to force it to comply, saying the state can't pick and choose which federal laws to obey.
Current federal enforcement remains limited, focused on illegals who have committed violent crimes but not on illegal immigration generally.
So-called sanctuary/amnesty cities are clearly violating federal law, as New York City learned from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2000. It's time for the feds to use that precedent and take other cities and state scofflaws to court.
The battleground is swiftly shifting into court, where activist judges are eager to side with border violators. One judge blocked federal officials from notifying millions of employers that their workers may be using false Social Security numbers. Hazleton, Pa., had its local ordinance struck down. More lawsuits are pending. Enforcement works, but liberals want to stifle it before people realize that.
The big claim is that immigration is solely a federal issue. If activist judges block state and local enforcement, the public reaction could rival the anger over decisions about abortion and forced busing.
But there's a difference this time: Those controversial rulings claimed that the Constitution barred action by any level of government.
By demonstrating that enforcement works, state and local governments are clarifying the issues, and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are self-deporting. The public outcry that defeated the amnesty bill this spring has found a new outlet, keeping the heat on Washington all the way into the 2008 elections.
Ernest Istook is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He served 14 years as a Republican congressman from Oklahoma.
By ERNEST ISTOOK
The Heritage Foundation
Once again, the states are rebelling against Washington.
Fed up with dithering in D.C., states are proving that enforcement works. Enforcement can not only prevent illegal immigration but actually reverse it.
Illegal immigrants by the tens of thousands are leaving states that have adopted tough new laws -- Colorado, Georgia, Arizona and now Oklahoma. Local efforts are being launched too quickly to count, involving more than 100 communities so far.
When denied jobs or public benefits, many illegals return to Mexico. Others move within the U.S. to areas with local amnesty policies.
Left-leaning groups are on the move, too, flocking to the courts in efforts to block state and local enforcement. Only Congress is standing still -- except for backsliding efforts to push more back-door amnesty.
The details of the state and local laws vary, but the impact is consistent. Typically, they deny public benefits to illegal immigrants and try to make sure that employers don't hire them.
Oklahoma's law kicked in Thursday. Hispanic leaders claim that 25,000 illegal persons departed the Sooner State before the measure went into effect. Businesses that catered to them say their sales are down 20 percent. They're backing a lawsuit challenging the new crackdown.
But the crackdown is a gain for taxpayers. Estimates show that illegal immigrants cost Oklahoma taxpayers $200 million a year, mostly for education and healthcare.
Arizona's new employer sanctions don't start until Jan. 1. A half million undocumented people supposedly are awaiting the outcome of court challenges, but The Arizona Republic still reports the outmigration already tops 100 per day.
Because of Georgia's new law, businesses with an illegal-alien customer base have seen sales drop as much as 40 percent. And money wired from Georgia to Mexico and Central America declined. Similar sales drops are reported elsewhere.
Colorado supplemented its new laws with a special detachment of state troopers. An Aug. 31 report to the governor said the first month's results "exceed anyone's expectations," catching 150 illegal immigrants plus those who smuggle them.
State legislators this year introduced some 1,400 immigrant-related bills, and 182 became law. Local ordinances were proposed or adopted in 104 cities and counties.
Bucking the trend is Illinois, which passed a law prohibiting employers from using a federal database to screen out illegal immigrants. That's where the litigation trend cuts both ways: The Department of Homeland Security is suing Illinois to force it to comply, saying the state can't pick and choose which federal laws to obey.
Current federal enforcement remains limited, focused on illegals who have committed violent crimes but not on illegal immigration generally.
So-called sanctuary/amnesty cities are clearly violating federal law, as New York City learned from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2000. It's time for the feds to use that precedent and take other cities and state scofflaws to court.
The battleground is swiftly shifting into court, where activist judges are eager to side with border violators. One judge blocked federal officials from notifying millions of employers that their workers may be using false Social Security numbers. Hazleton, Pa., had its local ordinance struck down. More lawsuits are pending. Enforcement works, but liberals want to stifle it before people realize that.
The big claim is that immigration is solely a federal issue. If activist judges block state and local enforcement, the public reaction could rival the anger over decisions about abortion and forced busing.
But there's a difference this time: Those controversial rulings claimed that the Constitution barred action by any level of government.
By demonstrating that enforcement works, state and local governments are clarifying the issues, and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are self-deporting. The public outcry that defeated the amnesty bill this spring has found a new outlet, keeping the heat on Washington all the way into the 2008 elections.
Ernest Istook is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He served 14 years as a Republican congressman from Oklahoma.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Iraqi police: 18 killed in clashes with al-Qaeda
remember: good news for the U.S. is bad news for Democrats.
clashes between al-Qaeda fighters and former insurgents
BAGHDAD (AP) — At least 18 people were killed in clashes between al-Qaeda fighters and former insurgents who turned against the terror network, Iraqi police and a former insurgent leader said Saturday.
Most members of the Islamic Army, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group that includes former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, joined U.S. forces battling al-Qaeda in Iraq earlier this year, though some of the group's leaders deny any contact with American troops.
A top Islamic Army leader, known as Abu Ibrahim, told The Associated Press that his fighters ambushed al-Qaeda members near Samarra on Friday, killing 18 people and seizing 16 prisoners.
An Iraqi police officer in the area corroborated Abu Ibrahim's account, and said the hostages would not be transferred to Iraqi police. Instead, he said he believed the Islamic Army would offer a prisoner swap for some of its members held by al-Qaeda. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of the situation's sensitivity.
"We found out that al-Qaeda intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday," Abu Ibrahim said. "We have killed 18 people, including some Arab foreigners, and we have detained 16 others. We also seized weapons and eight vehicles," he said.
Abu Ibrahim would not say how many, if any, Islamic Army members were killed.
The clashes raged for nearly four hours Friday about 9 miles southeast of Samarra, the insurgent commander said. Police said they knew about the battle, but were unable to reach the site because it was too violent. It is an area known to have a heavy al-Qaeda in Iraq presence.
Abu Ibrahim contacted Iraqi police in Samarra and told them his plans to attack al-Qaeda, according to the officer and Abu Ibrahim himself.
He asked that Iraqi authorities inform the American military about his plans, and requested that no U.S. troops interfere, they said. He worried that U.S. helicopters might mistakenly fire on his fighters, rather than on the al-Qaeda members, since they had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from the militants, they said.
The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, roadside bombs killed at least seven Iraqis early Saturday, police said, and the American military issued a statement saying a U.S. soldier was killed in Diyala province.
The soldier, assigned to Multi-National Division-North, died from injuries suffered in an explosion on Friday, the statement said. Three more soldiers were wounded in the blast, and evacuated to a U.S. combat hospital, it said.
At least 3,861 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count. The figure includes eight civilians working for the military.
Saturday's Iraqi death toll included four civilians who died on minibuses hit by roadside bombs on their way to work, police said.
The first explosion killed two people and wounded nine around 6:15 a.m. in Baghdad's Baladiyat area, which is predominantly Shiite.
The bomb was likely aimed at a passing police patrol, but missed its target — hitting the minibus behind it instead, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Most of the victims were in the minibus, but some others had been riding in a pickup nearby, he added.
One of them was Qais Hassoun, who spoke to Associated Press Television News at a hospital in the Sadr City area, where the victims were taken.
"We are just construction workers, trying to get to our jobs. We were riding in the minibus when the explosion went off," Hassoun said, visibly shaken.
Footage of the blast site showed a blue minibus with its windows shattered and tires shredded. Blood was splashed across the vehicle's upholstered bench seats.
Other victims lay on gurneys in a crowded, grimy hospital corridor. One man laid on his back while medical workers wrapped white gauze up the length of his broken leg.
About three hours later, another roadside bomb exploded near a minibus in western Mosul, killing two passengers and wounding 15 other people in the area, police said. Mosul lies 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Meanwhile in Diyala province, bombs killed an Iraqi soldier and two policemen in separate attacks, authorities said.
The soldier died when the weight of his humvee triggered explosives buried under a road in northern Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of the Iraqi capital, the Iraqi Army said.
The policemen were killed in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, when another bomb exploded on their patrol car, said the city's police chief, Brig. Faris al-Amairi. Five people were wounded in the attack, he said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
clashes between al-Qaeda fighters and former insurgents
BAGHDAD (AP) — At least 18 people were killed in clashes between al-Qaeda fighters and former insurgents who turned against the terror network, Iraqi police and a former insurgent leader said Saturday.
Most members of the Islamic Army, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group that includes former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, joined U.S. forces battling al-Qaeda in Iraq earlier this year, though some of the group's leaders deny any contact with American troops.
A top Islamic Army leader, known as Abu Ibrahim, told The Associated Press that his fighters ambushed al-Qaeda members near Samarra on Friday, killing 18 people and seizing 16 prisoners.
An Iraqi police officer in the area corroborated Abu Ibrahim's account, and said the hostages would not be transferred to Iraqi police. Instead, he said he believed the Islamic Army would offer a prisoner swap for some of its members held by al-Qaeda. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of the situation's sensitivity.
"We found out that al-Qaeda intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday," Abu Ibrahim said. "We have killed 18 people, including some Arab foreigners, and we have detained 16 others. We also seized weapons and eight vehicles," he said.
Abu Ibrahim would not say how many, if any, Islamic Army members were killed.
The clashes raged for nearly four hours Friday about 9 miles southeast of Samarra, the insurgent commander said. Police said they knew about the battle, but were unable to reach the site because it was too violent. It is an area known to have a heavy al-Qaeda in Iraq presence.
Abu Ibrahim contacted Iraqi police in Samarra and told them his plans to attack al-Qaeda, according to the officer and Abu Ibrahim himself.
He asked that Iraqi authorities inform the American military about his plans, and requested that no U.S. troops interfere, they said. He worried that U.S. helicopters might mistakenly fire on his fighters, rather than on the al-Qaeda members, since they had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from the militants, they said.
The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, roadside bombs killed at least seven Iraqis early Saturday, police said, and the American military issued a statement saying a U.S. soldier was killed in Diyala province.
The soldier, assigned to Multi-National Division-North, died from injuries suffered in an explosion on Friday, the statement said. Three more soldiers were wounded in the blast, and evacuated to a U.S. combat hospital, it said.
At least 3,861 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count. The figure includes eight civilians working for the military.
Saturday's Iraqi death toll included four civilians who died on minibuses hit by roadside bombs on their way to work, police said.
The first explosion killed two people and wounded nine around 6:15 a.m. in Baghdad's Baladiyat area, which is predominantly Shiite.
The bomb was likely aimed at a passing police patrol, but missed its target — hitting the minibus behind it instead, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Most of the victims were in the minibus, but some others had been riding in a pickup nearby, he added.
One of them was Qais Hassoun, who spoke to Associated Press Television News at a hospital in the Sadr City area, where the victims were taken.
"We are just construction workers, trying to get to our jobs. We were riding in the minibus when the explosion went off," Hassoun said, visibly shaken.
Footage of the blast site showed a blue minibus with its windows shattered and tires shredded. Blood was splashed across the vehicle's upholstered bench seats.
Other victims lay on gurneys in a crowded, grimy hospital corridor. One man laid on his back while medical workers wrapped white gauze up the length of his broken leg.
About three hours later, another roadside bomb exploded near a minibus in western Mosul, killing two passengers and wounding 15 other people in the area, police said. Mosul lies 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Meanwhile in Diyala province, bombs killed an Iraqi soldier and two policemen in separate attacks, authorities said.
The soldier died when the weight of his humvee triggered explosives buried under a road in northern Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of the Iraqi capital, the Iraqi Army said.
The policemen were killed in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, when another bomb exploded on their patrol car, said the city's police chief, Brig. Faris al-Amairi. Five people were wounded in the attack, he said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Friday, November 9, 2007
the Hard-Left is a relentless parasite
Fire and Rain
By Gary Aldrich
Friday, November 2, 2007
When the FBI transferred me to Los Angeles in 1970, I saw every nook and cranny of LA County, including some neighborhoods recently ravaged by fire. On a muddy hillside there was a scorched foundation, and a hand painted sign lamenting, “We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain.” For as long as there has been recorded history, the hills surrounding LA burn annually, and this year is no exception.
California also has mudslides, sandstorms, and worst of all, earthquakes. Four days into my new assignment I was bounced out of bed by a 7.1 shake on the Richter scale. The dishes and glasses in our rented efficiency marched out of the cabinets and onto the floor.
Having grown up in South Florida, I was beginning to long for the good old days of 150 mile per hour hurricanes.
Today, fires, drought, and hurricanes are useful political fodder. Mudslides and earthquakes have not been politicized yet, but it won’t be long before they are.
In the Sixties, the Hard-Left used Civil Rights and the Anti-War Movement to further their march to totalitarianism. Now they use the environment. Everyone who studies history knows the Hard-Left cannot move their agenda forward without riding on somebody else’s movement. Or, they do it at the end of a rifle. Their endgame is harsh collectivism, with members of the Hard-Left firmly in control of people’s lives.
We need to understand that the Hard-Left is a relentless parasite and should be treated as a parasite. Instead, we politely tolerate this deadly ideology as if we have an obligation to do so. Have we become so brainwashed as to be unable to fight back?
We have suffered so much from the Hard-Left. Count the many ways they have forced us to alter our lives, not for the better. For example, while the French are safely enjoying nearly 80% of their energy from nuclear power plants, the Hard-Left in this country has shut down our development of nuclear power, forcing dependency on foreign oil. Today they are using the courts to halt new construction of coal fired power plants, because of the alleged “carbon footprint” of proposed new facilities. They won’t let us drill for oil nor will they let us build new refineries. Why do we put up with this oppression when in our hearts we know that they are wrong?
Costing good citizens more money at the pump and causing our government to kowtow to foreign powers and ideologies as an established foreign policy is a terrible price to pay for our tepidness, our collective political correctness. We need to be strong and demand a higher standard beyond mere anxiousness caused by questionable scientific theory as the single basis for the establishment of laws, rules, and regulations related to the environment. We need to take a hard line, or prepare to forfeit our rights and liberty.
Too often feel-good regulations and laws have disastrous, unintended consequences. Consider the elimination of DDT in 1972. Before 1972 DDT was a cheap and effective means of eradicating mosquitoes and other harmful bugs that carry deadly and debilitating diseases, infecting animals and humans.
But, in 1972 we were happily riding on a tide of emotional junk science. About that time, environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote a book entitled Silent Spring which became overnight “fact.” Carson’s book made two unscientific, untrue claims. First, DDT was accused of being a carcinogen that caused cancer in humans. Second, DDT was accused of weakening bird’s eggs, especially song-birds eggs, so that when the mother bird sat on the eggs to hatch them, the eggs cracked and the baby birds died. Later scientific testing would prove that these two claims were patently false.
But the environmentalist wackos aided by the Hard-Left used Carson’s book and other hysterical ramblings to further their political goals. And, by using simple repetition of flagrant lies posing as science they cemented into out national conscience the lie that DDT was very bad and should be banned. School children today are still taught the evils of DDT as well as the “victory” experienced by environmentalists when they successfully achieved its ban. All they really accomplished was the needless death of millions of children.
Remarkably, there is a recently built middle school in Virginia named after Rachel Carson. There she is celebrated as the Mother of Environmentalism. She is a hero to school children everywhere. Rachel Carson was dead wrong and her out of control emotions and errors have cost many lives. Millions more live in agony because she thought she knew better than anybody else. Carson is a classic example of what we are dealing with today when it comes to Global Warming hysteria: Know it all-ism.
Ironically the individual most responsible for DDT’s eventual ban was a Republican agency chief by the name of William Ruckelshaus, who served the Nixon Administration. He was a member of the Audubon Society and apparently believed the DDT threat to birds, but his order to ban DDT had to be an emotional or political response, since no serious science existed at that time to justify his decision.
The second irony is that upwards of 40% of the bird population in some areas have been killed by mosquitoes carrying the deadly West Nile Virus. That’s just in this country.
We used DDT for many years before 1972, nearly wiping out mosquitoes in the U.S. But since the DDT ban, millions of children and adults around the world have been needlessly killed or injured due to mosquitoes borne illnesses, including Malaria. Those deadly diseases – and the bugs that carry them - are now headed our way.
According to USA Today, when you travel to Puerto Rico the tourist bureau strongly recommends tourists not venture outdoors “from dusk to dawn” because of the spread of Dengue Fever, a disease for which there is no known vaccine. Dengue Fever, like Malaria is deadly and is spread by mosquitoes. Puerto Rico is a favorite stop-over for cruise lines that sail the Caribbean. Puerto Rican citizens routinely travel to and from the United States. USA Today also reports that Dengue Fever is cutting down populations worldwide, rivaling Malaria which also continues to infect millions.
Millions around the world can be saved, but only if we lift the ban on DDT. Sadly, the hysteria about DDT, spread by hyperventilating lefties and ignorant do-gooders, lives on.
Before we allow ourselves to be bullied by the likes of Al Gore and other members of the Hard-Left into more sweeping changes that can also negatively impact on the lives of millions, we should demand and receive the cold hard facts, citing the ban on DDT as some of our best evidence.
And, we don’t need a lawyer’s closing argument, we need facts. But the Hard-left behaves as if the trial is already over. Their case is weak and they know it, so they are now bullying us into accepting science-lite, the primary “proof,” being repetition. But words written and spoken by aggressive, loud mouthed manipulators are never fact. Nevertheless the Global Warmists are moving their agenda forward, day by day.
Weak people on both sides of the political aisle are beginning to cave-in to the power of simple repetition. Instead they should take the time to examine the facts. We must help our weary leaders fight back with all their might, because history tells us once conventional wisdom is established and becomes law, it is nearly impossible to alter it, let alone reverse it. If they won’t fight for our liberty we must get new leaders.
The next time somebody proclaims, “It’s for the children” or for the Polar Bears, you’d better listen carefully because you are about to be conned. It’s not about the children. It is about the Hard-Left’s relentless power grab, and they will continue to tug at heart strings to achieve a Communitarian Utopia, run by mouthy know-it-alls and obnoxious pushy types who think they know better than you about how you should live your lives.
Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
By Gary Aldrich
Friday, November 2, 2007
When the FBI transferred me to Los Angeles in 1970, I saw every nook and cranny of LA County, including some neighborhoods recently ravaged by fire. On a muddy hillside there was a scorched foundation, and a hand painted sign lamenting, “We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain.” For as long as there has been recorded history, the hills surrounding LA burn annually, and this year is no exception.
California also has mudslides, sandstorms, and worst of all, earthquakes. Four days into my new assignment I was bounced out of bed by a 7.1 shake on the Richter scale. The dishes and glasses in our rented efficiency marched out of the cabinets and onto the floor.
Having grown up in South Florida, I was beginning to long for the good old days of 150 mile per hour hurricanes.
Today, fires, drought, and hurricanes are useful political fodder. Mudslides and earthquakes have not been politicized yet, but it won’t be long before they are.
In the Sixties, the Hard-Left used Civil Rights and the Anti-War Movement to further their march to totalitarianism. Now they use the environment. Everyone who studies history knows the Hard-Left cannot move their agenda forward without riding on somebody else’s movement. Or, they do it at the end of a rifle. Their endgame is harsh collectivism, with members of the Hard-Left firmly in control of people’s lives.
We need to understand that the Hard-Left is a relentless parasite and should be treated as a parasite. Instead, we politely tolerate this deadly ideology as if we have an obligation to do so. Have we become so brainwashed as to be unable to fight back?
We have suffered so much from the Hard-Left. Count the many ways they have forced us to alter our lives, not for the better. For example, while the French are safely enjoying nearly 80% of their energy from nuclear power plants, the Hard-Left in this country has shut down our development of nuclear power, forcing dependency on foreign oil. Today they are using the courts to halt new construction of coal fired power plants, because of the alleged “carbon footprint” of proposed new facilities. They won’t let us drill for oil nor will they let us build new refineries. Why do we put up with this oppression when in our hearts we know that they are wrong?
Costing good citizens more money at the pump and causing our government to kowtow to foreign powers and ideologies as an established foreign policy is a terrible price to pay for our tepidness, our collective political correctness. We need to be strong and demand a higher standard beyond mere anxiousness caused by questionable scientific theory as the single basis for the establishment of laws, rules, and regulations related to the environment. We need to take a hard line, or prepare to forfeit our rights and liberty.
Too often feel-good regulations and laws have disastrous, unintended consequences. Consider the elimination of DDT in 1972. Before 1972 DDT was a cheap and effective means of eradicating mosquitoes and other harmful bugs that carry deadly and debilitating diseases, infecting animals and humans.
But, in 1972 we were happily riding on a tide of emotional junk science. About that time, environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote a book entitled Silent Spring which became overnight “fact.” Carson’s book made two unscientific, untrue claims. First, DDT was accused of being a carcinogen that caused cancer in humans. Second, DDT was accused of weakening bird’s eggs, especially song-birds eggs, so that when the mother bird sat on the eggs to hatch them, the eggs cracked and the baby birds died. Later scientific testing would prove that these two claims were patently false.
But the environmentalist wackos aided by the Hard-Left used Carson’s book and other hysterical ramblings to further their political goals. And, by using simple repetition of flagrant lies posing as science they cemented into out national conscience the lie that DDT was very bad and should be banned. School children today are still taught the evils of DDT as well as the “victory” experienced by environmentalists when they successfully achieved its ban. All they really accomplished was the needless death of millions of children.
Remarkably, there is a recently built middle school in Virginia named after Rachel Carson. There she is celebrated as the Mother of Environmentalism. She is a hero to school children everywhere. Rachel Carson was dead wrong and her out of control emotions and errors have cost many lives. Millions more live in agony because she thought she knew better than anybody else. Carson is a classic example of what we are dealing with today when it comes to Global Warming hysteria: Know it all-ism.
Ironically the individual most responsible for DDT’s eventual ban was a Republican agency chief by the name of William Ruckelshaus, who served the Nixon Administration. He was a member of the Audubon Society and apparently believed the DDT threat to birds, but his order to ban DDT had to be an emotional or political response, since no serious science existed at that time to justify his decision.
The second irony is that upwards of 40% of the bird population in some areas have been killed by mosquitoes carrying the deadly West Nile Virus. That’s just in this country.
We used DDT for many years before 1972, nearly wiping out mosquitoes in the U.S. But since the DDT ban, millions of children and adults around the world have been needlessly killed or injured due to mosquitoes borne illnesses, including Malaria. Those deadly diseases – and the bugs that carry them - are now headed our way.
According to USA Today, when you travel to Puerto Rico the tourist bureau strongly recommends tourists not venture outdoors “from dusk to dawn” because of the spread of Dengue Fever, a disease for which there is no known vaccine. Dengue Fever, like Malaria is deadly and is spread by mosquitoes. Puerto Rico is a favorite stop-over for cruise lines that sail the Caribbean. Puerto Rican citizens routinely travel to and from the United States. USA Today also reports that Dengue Fever is cutting down populations worldwide, rivaling Malaria which also continues to infect millions.
Millions around the world can be saved, but only if we lift the ban on DDT. Sadly, the hysteria about DDT, spread by hyperventilating lefties and ignorant do-gooders, lives on.
Before we allow ourselves to be bullied by the likes of Al Gore and other members of the Hard-Left into more sweeping changes that can also negatively impact on the lives of millions, we should demand and receive the cold hard facts, citing the ban on DDT as some of our best evidence.
And, we don’t need a lawyer’s closing argument, we need facts. But the Hard-left behaves as if the trial is already over. Their case is weak and they know it, so they are now bullying us into accepting science-lite, the primary “proof,” being repetition. But words written and spoken by aggressive, loud mouthed manipulators are never fact. Nevertheless the Global Warmists are moving their agenda forward, day by day.
Weak people on both sides of the political aisle are beginning to cave-in to the power of simple repetition. Instead they should take the time to examine the facts. We must help our weary leaders fight back with all their might, because history tells us once conventional wisdom is established and becomes law, it is nearly impossible to alter it, let alone reverse it. If they won’t fight for our liberty we must get new leaders.
The next time somebody proclaims, “It’s for the children” or for the Polar Bears, you’d better listen carefully because you are about to be conned. It’s not about the children. It is about the Hard-Left’s relentless power grab, and they will continue to tug at heart strings to achieve a Communitarian Utopia, run by mouthy know-it-alls and obnoxious pushy types who think they know better than you about how you should live your lives.
Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
They only pretend to defend Jews
by Ann Coulter
The Anti-Defamation League is to Jews what the National Organization for Women is to women and the ACLU is to civil libertarians. They represent not Jews or women or civil libertarians, but the left wing of the Democratic Party.In the paramount threat of our time, the Democratic Party is AWOL. And those are the patriotic Democrats. The rest are actively aiding the enemy.
The blood of millions of Israelis is at stake, and the ADL is flacking for a party that yearns to surrender to the terrorists.To hide the dirty little secret of the left's burgeoning anti-Semitism, liberals act as if they live in abject terror of right-wingers. When it comes to conservatives, the Anti-Defamation League is the Pro-Defamation League.For decades, most Jews supported the left, and the left supported Jewish causes. But the left moved on long ago.
For liberals, Jews are just so "last Holocaust."The ADL gently chided Columbia University for making the "mistake" of inviting a genocidal, Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. It tepidly criticized Ahmadinejad's speech for being "a charade of half-answers and obfuscation." That sounds like a fair description of Hillary's current stump speech.The ADL and its ilk reserve their real venom for a beast like Dennis Prager -- a leading Jewish intellectual, author and radio talk show host. Last year, Prager made the manifestly obvious point that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, should take his oath of office not on a Quran, but on a Bible, in recognition of "the value system (that) underlies American civilization."According to the ADL, Prager's column was not a trifling "mistake" on the order of allowing an American audience at one of America's premier universities to give a standing ovation to a murderous, racist lunatic. Prager was "intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American." I think I'd take "obfuscation."The relevant organs of pious liberal society were promptly rounded up to censure Prager, including the American Jewish Committee and two members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Rep. Henry Waxman and former New York Mayor Ed Koch -- who called Prager a "bigot." Do they have Ellison on the record acknowledging whether the Holocaust happened?
The executive committee of the Holocaust Museum called Prager's column antithetical to "tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity."But you'll see that famed liberal "tolerance" dry up pretty fast if you render a simple statement of the beliefs of Christians.The usual liberal coterie acts shocked and offended by Christians who actually believe Christianity is true -- unlike Democratic politicians -- to conceal the fact that the left is increasingly dominated by people conniving in the destruction of Israel.
How about having Tim Russert ask Hillary if she believes the New Testament is the perfection of the Old Testament? She claims to be a Christian. Let's get it on the table: Is she or isn't she? It doesn't get any more bare-bones than that.Let the cat out of the bag that a 2,000-year-old religion practiced by a majority of Americans teaches that Jesus came in "fulfillment of the scriptures," and you might be better off if you had adopted the preferred approach of liberals' new friends the Muslims and simply slit the Jew's throat.At least the ADL wouldn't object.They're too busy conspiring with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to denounce Dennis Prager. And promoting gun control. And gay marriage. And illegal immigration. You know, all the issues that have historically kept the Jews safe.The ADL denounces the teaching of intelligent design, the placement of the Ten Commandments on public property and Bibles in public schools. Any entity that disagrees with them on these issues will be labeled an "extremist organization."Gosh, it's a good thing there isn't a worldwide terrorist movement dedicated to killing Jews.
The ADL might have to tear themselves away from promoting faddish liberal causes.The ADL is more concerned with what it calls the "neo-Nazis" and "anti-Semites" in the Minutemen organization than with people who behead Jews whenever they get half a chance. It's only a matter of time before the ADL gets around to global warming.Earlier this year, the ADL issued an alarmist report, declaring that the Ku Klux Klan has experienced "a surprising and troubling resurgence" in the U.S., which I take it to mean that nationwide KKK membership is now approaching double digits.
Liberal Jews seem to be blithely unaware that the singular threat to Jews at the moment is the complete annihilation of Israel. Why won't they focus on the genuine threat of Islamo-fascism and leave poor old Robert Byrd alone?The ADL goes around collecting statements from Democrats proclaiming their general support for Israel, but it refuses to criticize Democrats who attack Joe Lieberman for supporting the war and who tolerate the likes of former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.Sure, Hillary will show up at an ADL dinner and announce that she supports Israel. And then she gets testy with Bush for talking about sanctions against Iran in too rough a tone of voice.What does it mean for the ADL to collect those statements?The survival of Israel is inextricably linked to the survival of the Republican Party and its evangelical base. And yet the ADL viciously attacks conservatives, implying that there is some genetic anti-Semitism among right-wingers in order to hide the fact that anti-Semites are the ADL's best friends -- the defeatists in Congress, the people who tried to drive Joe Lieberman from office, the hoodlums on college campuses who riot at any criticism of Muslim terrorists and identify Israel as an imperialist aggressor, and liberal college faculties calling for "anti-apartheid" boycotts of Israel.
The Democratic Party sleeps with anti-Semites every night, but groups like the ADL love to play-act their bravery at battling ghosts, as if it's the 1920s and they are still fighting quotas at Harvard.Earlier this year, Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., said "in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."The ADL attacked him, saying, "Bigots have always hid behind the immigration issue."Like the noose hysteria currently sweeping New York City, liberals are always fighting the last battle because the current battle is too frightening.Liberal Jews are on a collision course with themselves. They can't reconcile the survival of Israel with their conception of themselves as liberals. The liberal coalition has turned against them. Jews are out; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in. The new king knows not Joseph.
The Anti-Defamation League is to Jews what the National Organization for Women is to women and the ACLU is to civil libertarians. They represent not Jews or women or civil libertarians, but the left wing of the Democratic Party.In the paramount threat of our time, the Democratic Party is AWOL. And those are the patriotic Democrats. The rest are actively aiding the enemy.
The blood of millions of Israelis is at stake, and the ADL is flacking for a party that yearns to surrender to the terrorists.To hide the dirty little secret of the left's burgeoning anti-Semitism, liberals act as if they live in abject terror of right-wingers. When it comes to conservatives, the Anti-Defamation League is the Pro-Defamation League.For decades, most Jews supported the left, and the left supported Jewish causes. But the left moved on long ago.
For liberals, Jews are just so "last Holocaust."The ADL gently chided Columbia University for making the "mistake" of inviting a genocidal, Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. It tepidly criticized Ahmadinejad's speech for being "a charade of half-answers and obfuscation." That sounds like a fair description of Hillary's current stump speech.The ADL and its ilk reserve their real venom for a beast like Dennis Prager -- a leading Jewish intellectual, author and radio talk show host. Last year, Prager made the manifestly obvious point that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, should take his oath of office not on a Quran, but on a Bible, in recognition of "the value system (that) underlies American civilization."According to the ADL, Prager's column was not a trifling "mistake" on the order of allowing an American audience at one of America's premier universities to give a standing ovation to a murderous, racist lunatic. Prager was "intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American." I think I'd take "obfuscation."The relevant organs of pious liberal society were promptly rounded up to censure Prager, including the American Jewish Committee and two members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Rep. Henry Waxman and former New York Mayor Ed Koch -- who called Prager a "bigot." Do they have Ellison on the record acknowledging whether the Holocaust happened?
The executive committee of the Holocaust Museum called Prager's column antithetical to "tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity."But you'll see that famed liberal "tolerance" dry up pretty fast if you render a simple statement of the beliefs of Christians.The usual liberal coterie acts shocked and offended by Christians who actually believe Christianity is true -- unlike Democratic politicians -- to conceal the fact that the left is increasingly dominated by people conniving in the destruction of Israel.
How about having Tim Russert ask Hillary if she believes the New Testament is the perfection of the Old Testament? She claims to be a Christian. Let's get it on the table: Is she or isn't she? It doesn't get any more bare-bones than that.Let the cat out of the bag that a 2,000-year-old religion practiced by a majority of Americans teaches that Jesus came in "fulfillment of the scriptures," and you might be better off if you had adopted the preferred approach of liberals' new friends the Muslims and simply slit the Jew's throat.At least the ADL wouldn't object.They're too busy conspiring with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to denounce Dennis Prager. And promoting gun control. And gay marriage. And illegal immigration. You know, all the issues that have historically kept the Jews safe.The ADL denounces the teaching of intelligent design, the placement of the Ten Commandments on public property and Bibles in public schools. Any entity that disagrees with them on these issues will be labeled an "extremist organization."Gosh, it's a good thing there isn't a worldwide terrorist movement dedicated to killing Jews.
The ADL might have to tear themselves away from promoting faddish liberal causes.The ADL is more concerned with what it calls the "neo-Nazis" and "anti-Semites" in the Minutemen organization than with people who behead Jews whenever they get half a chance. It's only a matter of time before the ADL gets around to global warming.Earlier this year, the ADL issued an alarmist report, declaring that the Ku Klux Klan has experienced "a surprising and troubling resurgence" in the U.S., which I take it to mean that nationwide KKK membership is now approaching double digits.
Liberal Jews seem to be blithely unaware that the singular threat to Jews at the moment is the complete annihilation of Israel. Why won't they focus on the genuine threat of Islamo-fascism and leave poor old Robert Byrd alone?The ADL goes around collecting statements from Democrats proclaiming their general support for Israel, but it refuses to criticize Democrats who attack Joe Lieberman for supporting the war and who tolerate the likes of former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.Sure, Hillary will show up at an ADL dinner and announce that she supports Israel. And then she gets testy with Bush for talking about sanctions against Iran in too rough a tone of voice.What does it mean for the ADL to collect those statements?The survival of Israel is inextricably linked to the survival of the Republican Party and its evangelical base. And yet the ADL viciously attacks conservatives, implying that there is some genetic anti-Semitism among right-wingers in order to hide the fact that anti-Semites are the ADL's best friends -- the defeatists in Congress, the people who tried to drive Joe Lieberman from office, the hoodlums on college campuses who riot at any criticism of Muslim terrorists and identify Israel as an imperialist aggressor, and liberal college faculties calling for "anti-apartheid" boycotts of Israel.
The Democratic Party sleeps with anti-Semites every night, but groups like the ADL love to play-act their bravery at battling ghosts, as if it's the 1920s and they are still fighting quotas at Harvard.Earlier this year, Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., said "in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."The ADL attacked him, saying, "Bigots have always hid behind the immigration issue."Like the noose hysteria currently sweeping New York City, liberals are always fighting the last battle because the current battle is too frightening.Liberal Jews are on a collision course with themselves. They can't reconcile the survival of Israel with their conception of themselves as liberals. The liberal coalition has turned against them. Jews are out; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in. The new king knows not Joseph.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Walter Russell Mead
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Walter Russell Mead On George W. Bush: "I think he puts the protection of the United States above his own personal political interest or that of his party."
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 12:22 PM
Previous posts on Walter Russell Mead's new book God and Gold are here and here.The complete transcript of yesterday's interview with CFR's Walter Russell Mead is now posted here. One central exchange:
HH: I guess what I’m saying is when I read Bernard Lewis, or I’ve heard him lecture a couple of times, sort of like our Cato the Elder…
WRM: Right.
HH: He ends every speech by saying either we will free them or they will kill us.WRM: Yup.
HH: And I don’t hear that [from you]. You’re not alarmed.
WRM: Well, no, I’m concerned, okay? But again, I keep looking at we have been winning for three hundred years.
HH: And we’ve never had a death cult with weapons of mass destruction.
WRM: We’ve had some pretty rotten things. And you know, I mean, we’ve…Stalin had the nuclear bomb.
HH: Not a death cult.
WRM: And while it was not a death cult, but a pretty scary thing, and there were definitely moments when the Chinese leadership, say, at the time of the Red Guard and so on was not far from craziness. So you know, I don’t think this is as out…this is a new kind of danger, it is a serious danger. It is clearly the number one issue that people dealing with American security and foreign policy need to deal with.
HH: And it might explain the invasion of Iraq.
WRM: It conceivably does. But again, what I say is it was still…we still did it the worst way. I noted…look at how hard Lincoln worked to get the South to fire the first shot. There were ways, I think, we could have done…
HH: Look at how many generals Lincoln went through, and the fact that it had 600,000 dead, and not the terrible and awful toll of 4,000…
WRM: Look, and I…and I…no, no.
HH: But still, 4,000.
WRM: Listen, I completely agree, and I take a lot of heat by the way for not going out there and saying the republic is dead, Bush has destroyed the American republic. He hasn’t. And furthermore, as I keep pointing out to people, we have yet to have one-tenth the military deaths in Vietnam, I mean in Iraq that we did in Vietnam. And furthermore, I think we lost more troops in the Philippine insurrection than we have in Iraq.
HH: What do you judge of the character of George W. Bush?
WRM: Well, I’ve never met the man, and so you know, I’m actually…
HH: You never met Lincoln, but we have a good judgment of his character as well.
WRM: Yeah, but you know, let me wait until some of the people who…what is that Zhou Enlai said about the French revolution? “It’s too soon to tell.” I think George Bush is a deeply honest, sincere, religious man. I think he puts the protection of the United States above his own personal political interest or that of his party. I think he may have been…he is deeply loyal to those around him, possibly was loyal to a fault.
HH: Is he the Republican Truman?
WRM: He could…it could be that people will look at him that way.
HH: That’s what I think we’re going to find out. Mead is a scholar, and a brilliant, fundamentally decent man who cannot indulge the left's furies about President Bush. He deserves quite a lot of applause from the center-right for this stance, and we should hope his attitude would spread and renew and reform the left's rhetoric on the war.
Walter Russell Mead On George W. Bush: "I think he puts the protection of the United States above his own personal political interest or that of his party."
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 12:22 PM
Previous posts on Walter Russell Mead's new book God and Gold are here and here.The complete transcript of yesterday's interview with CFR's Walter Russell Mead is now posted here. One central exchange:
HH: I guess what I’m saying is when I read Bernard Lewis, or I’ve heard him lecture a couple of times, sort of like our Cato the Elder…
WRM: Right.
HH: He ends every speech by saying either we will free them or they will kill us.WRM: Yup.
HH: And I don’t hear that [from you]. You’re not alarmed.
WRM: Well, no, I’m concerned, okay? But again, I keep looking at we have been winning for three hundred years.
HH: And we’ve never had a death cult with weapons of mass destruction.
WRM: We’ve had some pretty rotten things. And you know, I mean, we’ve…Stalin had the nuclear bomb.
HH: Not a death cult.
WRM: And while it was not a death cult, but a pretty scary thing, and there were definitely moments when the Chinese leadership, say, at the time of the Red Guard and so on was not far from craziness. So you know, I don’t think this is as out…this is a new kind of danger, it is a serious danger. It is clearly the number one issue that people dealing with American security and foreign policy need to deal with.
HH: And it might explain the invasion of Iraq.
WRM: It conceivably does. But again, what I say is it was still…we still did it the worst way. I noted…look at how hard Lincoln worked to get the South to fire the first shot. There were ways, I think, we could have done…
HH: Look at how many generals Lincoln went through, and the fact that it had 600,000 dead, and not the terrible and awful toll of 4,000…
WRM: Look, and I…and I…no, no.
HH: But still, 4,000.
WRM: Listen, I completely agree, and I take a lot of heat by the way for not going out there and saying the republic is dead, Bush has destroyed the American republic. He hasn’t. And furthermore, as I keep pointing out to people, we have yet to have one-tenth the military deaths in Vietnam, I mean in Iraq that we did in Vietnam. And furthermore, I think we lost more troops in the Philippine insurrection than we have in Iraq.
HH: What do you judge of the character of George W. Bush?
WRM: Well, I’ve never met the man, and so you know, I’m actually…
HH: You never met Lincoln, but we have a good judgment of his character as well.
WRM: Yeah, but you know, let me wait until some of the people who…what is that Zhou Enlai said about the French revolution? “It’s too soon to tell.” I think George Bush is a deeply honest, sincere, religious man. I think he puts the protection of the United States above his own personal political interest or that of his party. I think he may have been…he is deeply loyal to those around him, possibly was loyal to a fault.
HH: Is he the Republican Truman?
WRM: He could…it could be that people will look at him that way.
HH: That’s what I think we’re going to find out. Mead is a scholar, and a brilliant, fundamentally decent man who cannot indulge the left's furies about President Bush. He deserves quite a lot of applause from the center-right for this stance, and we should hope his attitude would spread and renew and reform the left's rhetoric on the war.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage
By Chris Demorro
Staff Writer
The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.
Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.
The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?
You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.
However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.
Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.
The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.
“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.
All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?
Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.
When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.
Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.
So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.
One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.
Staff Writer
The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.
Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.
The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?
You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.
However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.
Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.
The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.
“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.
All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?
Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.
When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.
Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.
So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.
One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Corporate power blesses, not oppresses, the American people
By Michael Medved
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Why should so many Americans resent and distrust the very institutions that make possible our productivity, pleasure and opportunities? Given the fact that major corporations provide virtually every one of the commodities and comforts we consume, it makes no sense to feel hostile and contemptuous of the corporate organization of the contemporary economy.
As I write these words – and as you read them –we all rely on the products of major companies with increasingly far flung and international operations. Leave aside for a moment the obvious example of the complex combination of brilliantly designed computer hardware and software that allows me to transfer my thoughts to a word processor and broadcast them to the world. I’m also relying on a light fixture above my desk and the bulb to illuminate it and the electricity to drive it, on the books stacked on the filing cabinet behind me, printed and distributed and transported across the country, on the paper and the pens that allowed the scribbled notes and, very significantly, on the ceramic mug filled with steaming coffee based on beans brought from far corners of the globe, then roasted and packaged and finally brewed in the wonderfully efficient coffee maker beneath our kitchen sink. Though “corporation” has become a dirty word to many Americans, successful corporations made possible each of these wonders and blessings and amplifications of our personal power. Without those engines of economic energy, we’d retreat to darkness and frustration and the dead ends of poverty.
The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman used to hold up a common pencil and to ask his students at the University of Chicago to consider the labor and resources that made it possible. At one point, timber workers cut the trees sawmill workers shaped into usable milled wood, while miners drew the graphite from the earth, and others smelted and shaped it into the thin but durable pencil, then encased in the octagonal rod of wood, in turn painted and varnished and stamped, with a milled metal tip (also mined and processed and stamped) connecting it to a pink and functional eraser relying on gum from remote jungles. This miracle of technology and cooperation, in other words, relies on literally hundreds (if not thousands) of workers in different corners of the earth, but then, ultimately, makes its way into your hand at the shockingly, insanely, irrationally low price of --- about ten cents. Consider the amazing efficiency that brings you this versatile and remarkably efficient common writing implement that you take for granted every day. This deceptively simple pencil costs the typical American less than 20 seconds of his time at work. For higher income toilers, you can earn yourself a pencil for a mere second of your effort.
And yet we commonly curse the very rise of corporate power and productivity that puts such wonders into our hands. “Enlightened” commentators, politicians, academics, activists and malcontents of both left and right never tire of deriding for-profit companies as some parasitic alien life form that devours honest toil, crushes creativity, pollutes the environment, and steals power from ordinary Americans.
A few undeniable truths about corporate power in the United States can liberate every day citizens and the society at large from such sour and ungrateful folly.
1) FROM THE DAYS OF EARLIEST SETTLEMENT, AMERICA EMERGED FROM RISK-TAKING AND PROFIT-MAKING CORPORATIONS. The famous colonies at Jamestown, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay (not to mention Walter Raleigh’s similarly celebrated and tragically unsuccessful settlement of Roanoke) depended on British investors who put up the considerable capital to fund the expensive business of sending “venturers” across the Ocean. Of course, some of these sponsors shared religious ideals with some of the settlers, but they all fervently cherished the (often frustrated) hope of earning a handsome return on their risky investments. Meanwhile, other corporations like the Hudson Bay Company and the British East India Company also played an outside (and sometimes heroic) role in exploring a wilderness continent and establishing a British presence in the New World.
2) THE REVOLUTION RESISTED GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE WITH FREE MARKETS, NOT THE POWER OF BIG BUSINESS. The Stamp Act Protests, the Boston Tea Party and other Colonial challenges to British authority aimed their wrath (and occasional property destruction) not at the traders or merchants who brought their products to New England, but against the government officials who insisted on telling the colonists what they could buy and how much they must pay. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson specifically condemned the king for “imposing taxes on us without our consent” and for sending his tax collectors to interfere with commerce: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.” Any contemporary American who’s faced an IRS audit can relate directly to Jefferson’s complaint. The Declaration also attacked King George for his protectionist export-import policy and “for cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.” The Founding Fathers never embraced anti-business attitudes because most of them were themselves ambitious and successful entrepreneurs. George Washington and John Hancock may have been the two richest men in the colonies – with Washington one of the largest land-holders (who loved speculating on frontier real estate) and Hancock the owner of America’s most formidable fleet of merchant ships. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the Founders laid out the powers of the new Congress and Government in Article 1, section 8, all of the first 8 provisions concern setting up an economic system (“power to lay and collect taxes,” “to establish…uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies,” “to coin money,” and so forth) before the document finally gets around to such relatively trivial matters as setting up courts and raising an army.
3) THE FAMOUS DEPRADATIONS OF THE SO-CALLED “ROBBER BARONS” INVOLVED GOVERNMENTAL, NOT BUSINESS, ABUSES. In his indispensable 1986 book “The Myth of the Robber Barons,” Burton W. Folsom of the University of Pittsburgh makes the important distinction between “political entrepreneurs” and “market entrepreneurs” who played very different roles in the development of the new nation and its economy. The political entrepreneurs WHO manipulated their insider influence relied upon sweetheart deals and special concessions and monopoly power granted by government, rather than their own efficiency and competitive advantages. At the same time, market entrepreneurs (like James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad) refused to entangle themselves with the political process and built their much more successful and durable corporations without favoritism from bureaucrats or officeholders. As Folsom writes of the emerging and crucial steamship industry: “Political entrepreneurship often led to price-fixing, technological stagnation, and the bribing of competitors and politicians. The market entrepreneurs were the innovators and rate-cutters. They had to be to survive against subsidized opponents.” Significantly, all of the most significant economic reform movements from the Jeffersonians at the turn of the nineteenth century up through the Progressives at the turn of twentieth, sought to disentangle government from its involvement in the free market, not to impose to new bureaucratic controls. As the great historian Forrest McDonald of the University of Alabama wrote: “The Jacksonian Democrats engaged in a great deal of anti-business rhetoric, but the results of their policies were to remove or reduce governmental interference into private economic activity, and thus to free market entrepreneurs to go about their creative work. The entire nation grew wealthy as a consequence.”
4) THE ERAS OF GREATEST CORPORATE INFLUENCE WEREN’T NIGHTMARISH PERIODS OF OPPRESSION AND RETREAT, BUT RATHER GOLDEN EPOCHS OF PROSPERITY, PROGRESS AND GROWING AMERICAN POWER. While historians and other intellectuals invariably deride the “Gilded Age” following the War Between the States, no generation in world history achieved comparable progress in rapidly raising standards of living, absorbing and assimilating unprecedented waves of immigration, settling the remotest frontier and building a dozen new states and scores of glittering new cities, while establishing the United States for the first time as a world power of the first rank. As the editors of American Heritage Magazine wrote in the introduction to their book, “The Confident Years,” about US life from 1865 to 1914: “It was a period of exuberant growth, in population, industry and world prestige. As the twentieth century opened, American political pundits were convinced that the nation was on an ascending spiral of progress that could end only in something approaching perfection. Even those who saw the inequity between the bright world of privilege and the gray fact of poverty were quite sure that a time was very near when no one would go cold or hungry of ill clothed. These were indeed the Confident Years.” An era of rampant capitalist power, in other words, that saw the emergence of giant corporations that touched the lives of every American, corresponded with the most dynamic and dazzling achievements in our history. Other eras associated with big business also brought unparalleled blessings of peace and prosperity to the nation at large and virtually all of its citizens – such as the 1920’s, where President Coolidge produced snickers from cognoscenti by saying “the business of America is business,” or the 1950’s, when Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson declared (not unreasonably) that “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.”
5) THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS NEVER IMPOVERISHED AND ALWAYS ENHANCED THE LIVING STANDARDS OF ORDINARY WORKING AMERICANS. In their 1998 book, “The History of the American Economy” Gary Walton and Hugh Rockoff summarize the progress of the working class. From 1820 to 1860, wages grew at a 1.6% annual rate, while the purchasing power of an average worker’s paycheck went up between 60 [SPACE] and 90 percent (depending on the region of the country). Between 1860 and 1890 (that genuinely gilded age) real wages (adjusted for inflation) increased by a staggering 50% in America. The average work week shortened at the same time, so that the real earnings of the Average American worker increased more like 60 percent in just thirty years. As Thomas J. DiLorenzo points out in his illuminating book “How Capitalism Saved America,”: “Capitalism improves the quality of life for the working class not just because it leads to improved wages but also because it produces new, better and cheaper goods…When Henry Ford first started selling automobiles only the relatively wealthy could afford them, but soon enough working-class families were buying his cars.” The efficiency and productivity made possible by corporate organization gave typical Americans a range of choices and an economic power unimaginable for prior generations. As Federal Reserve Board economists Michael Cox and Richard Allen made clear: “A nineteenth century millionaire couldn’t grab a cold drink from the refrigerator. He couldn’t hop into a smooth-riding automobile for a 70-mile-an-hour trip down an interstate highway to the mountains or seashore. He couldn’t call up news, movies, music and sporting events by simply touching the remote control’s buttons. He couldn’t jet north to Toronto, south to Cancun, east to Boston or west to San Francisco in just a few hours. He couldn’t transmit documents to Europe, Asia, or anyplace else in seconds.
He couldn’t run over to the mall to buy auto-focus cameras, computer games, mountain bikes, or movies on videotape. He couldn’t escape the summer heat in air conditioned comfort. He couldn’t check into a hospital for a coronary bypass to cure a failing heart, get a shot of penicillin to ward off infection, or even take aspirin to relieve a headache.” In this context, jeremiads about the “horrifying” gap between rich and poor miss the point that poor people in America’s 21st century enjoy options and privileges that the wealthy couldn’t claim a hundred years ago. Far from oppressing the working class, the corporate system brought about a vast improvement in purchasing power for all Americans. The 1999 book “Myths of Rich and Poor” by Michael Cox and Richard Alm indicates that a worker in 1900 worked two hours and forty minutes to earn the cost of a three point chicken; in 1999, a mere 24 minutes of toil could buy him the bird. If anything, the growth in rewards for working only accelerated in the last fifty years. In 1950, typical workers put in more than two hours to afford 100 kilowatts of electricity; by 1999, the cost had dropped to fourteen minutes. A three minute coast-to-coast phone call cost 104 minutes of labor in 1950, but by 1999 that was down to two minutes (and it’s no doubt even less today).
6) THE INDUSTRIALIZATION THAT DRIVES PROSPERITY RESCUES RATHER THAN ENSLAVES THE WORKERS IT EMPLOYS. Adam Smith, who defined capitalism more than 200 years ago in “The Wealth of Nations,” described the essence of the system as a series of mutually beneficial agreements: “Give me that which you want, and you shall have this which you want.” This captures the essential fairness and decency of the free-market system, which relies on voluntary associations that enrich both parties. Concerning the process of industrialization, which saw millions of workers engaged in powering the mighty, productive engines of major corporations, the great economic Ludwig van Mises (cited by DiLorenzo) trenchantly observed: “The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them. It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation.” The same process applies to newly opened factories throughout the developing world today, despite the efforts by “anti-globalist” and “anti-corporate” activists in the United States to obliterate the only jobs that keep suffering millions from a return to misery and destitution.
7) CORPORATIONS DON’T DESERVE BLAME FOR “PUTTING PROFITS OVER PEOPLE,” SINCE PROFITS INEVITABLY BENEFIT PEOPLE. Corporations don’t exist in order to provide welfare for workers, or cheap products for consumers, but rather to earn profits for investors and operators. If they succeed in earning such profits they can provide more jobs at higher pay, and better products at lower cost. If a company fails at bringing in those profits it will shed jobs and provide fewer products – ultimately going out of business altogether. The idea that laborers or customers somehow benefit if a corporation feels squeezed, or facing shrinking profits, remains one of the profoundly illogical legacies of discredited Marxism. In the free market system, the boss Peter can’t benefit long term at the expense of his employee, Paul. They either prosper together or fail together. Increased profitability brings increases in capital that allow increases in productivity – directly and simultaneously rewarding management and labor (not to mention the public at large). Political demagogues who rail against “immoral” or “obscene” profits need courses in remedial economics. For a corporation, only a lack of profitability counts as immoral and going out of business represents the ultimate obscenity.
8) THERE’S NO LOGICAL REASON TO FAVOR SMALL BUSINESSES OVER BIG BUSINESS. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that the public felt more approval of “small business” than of “big corporations” by a ratio of more than three to one. This makes little sense, since virtually every “big business” started out as a small operation before success brought growth, and virtually every small business dreams of getting bigger one day. Not far from my home stands the original Starbucks Coffee stand (still operating) at Seattle’s Pike Place Market: an unprepossessing shop that couldn’t accommodate more than twenty customers at a time. Did that quaint operation do a better job providing coffee to its patrons than today’s multi-billion dollar, globe-straddling colossus? Any coffee connoisseur can certify that one of the major improvements in American life over the past twenty years involves the now universal availability of strong, delicious, gourmet coffee (and innumerable exotic derivatives), as opposed to the watery, flavorless blandness of the old-fashioned “cup of Joe.” Could any sane observer honestly believe that a small business could do a better job than big international companies in providing us with the automobiles and computers and cell phones and medical supplies that do so much to enrich our lives?
9) CORRUPTION IS MORE OF A PROBLEM FOR BIG GOVERNMENT THAN BIG CORPORATIONS. Since the beginning of the 21st Century a series of tawdry and hugely destructive corporate scandals (Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, many more) led the commentariat to conclude that business ethics had been hopelessly compromised and we needed to turn to government for redemption and purification. This assumption ignores the long history of hideous corruption in every endeavor of flawed humanity – including religion, education, charities and, most spectacularly, government itself. Giving government greater power over corporations increases rather than reduces the likelihood of corruption, since so many of the prior business scandals involved existing entanglements of bureaucracy with the free market. When political office holders decide winners and losers in the business world, the temptations for bribery and favoritism become more acute, not less so. Moreover, the public enjoys greater and swifter recourse against an abusive or inefficient corporation than it does against an abusive or inefficient government. The customer can always decline to patronize a business, a product or a service he dislikes, but with a dysfunctional government you’re stuck till the next election – or long after that, in this era of entrenched and immovable bureaucratic power. A determined individual can escape the reach of even the most ubiquitous corporation (yes, even our Seattle neighbors at Microsoft) but the only way to choose for yourself a different national government is to flee the country. Yes, corporate power frequently corrupts government, and government power even more frequently corrupts and warps corporations, but the best way to avoid this mutually destructive influence is to bring about less bureaucratic involvement in the free market, not to insist on more.
Despite all the shortcomings and silliness, bureaucratic bungling and bankruptcies, foreclosures and failures, conniving and corruption, the big corporations that inevitably emerge in free and fair markets continue to perform remarkably well in terms of giving the public what it wants and needs. Our daily lives bear wondrous witness to the amazing achievements and efficiencies of the system. Any honest examination of the past and the present must lead to the conclusion that major corporations in their appropriate pursuit of profit will continue to bless, not oppress, the people of the United States.
Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host, is author of 10 non-fiction books, including The Shadow Presidents and Right Turns.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Why should so many Americans resent and distrust the very institutions that make possible our productivity, pleasure and opportunities? Given the fact that major corporations provide virtually every one of the commodities and comforts we consume, it makes no sense to feel hostile and contemptuous of the corporate organization of the contemporary economy.
As I write these words – and as you read them –we all rely on the products of major companies with increasingly far flung and international operations. Leave aside for a moment the obvious example of the complex combination of brilliantly designed computer hardware and software that allows me to transfer my thoughts to a word processor and broadcast them to the world. I’m also relying on a light fixture above my desk and the bulb to illuminate it and the electricity to drive it, on the books stacked on the filing cabinet behind me, printed and distributed and transported across the country, on the paper and the pens that allowed the scribbled notes and, very significantly, on the ceramic mug filled with steaming coffee based on beans brought from far corners of the globe, then roasted and packaged and finally brewed in the wonderfully efficient coffee maker beneath our kitchen sink. Though “corporation” has become a dirty word to many Americans, successful corporations made possible each of these wonders and blessings and amplifications of our personal power. Without those engines of economic energy, we’d retreat to darkness and frustration and the dead ends of poverty.
The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman used to hold up a common pencil and to ask his students at the University of Chicago to consider the labor and resources that made it possible. At one point, timber workers cut the trees sawmill workers shaped into usable milled wood, while miners drew the graphite from the earth, and others smelted and shaped it into the thin but durable pencil, then encased in the octagonal rod of wood, in turn painted and varnished and stamped, with a milled metal tip (also mined and processed and stamped) connecting it to a pink and functional eraser relying on gum from remote jungles. This miracle of technology and cooperation, in other words, relies on literally hundreds (if not thousands) of workers in different corners of the earth, but then, ultimately, makes its way into your hand at the shockingly, insanely, irrationally low price of --- about ten cents. Consider the amazing efficiency that brings you this versatile and remarkably efficient common writing implement that you take for granted every day. This deceptively simple pencil costs the typical American less than 20 seconds of his time at work. For higher income toilers, you can earn yourself a pencil for a mere second of your effort.
And yet we commonly curse the very rise of corporate power and productivity that puts such wonders into our hands. “Enlightened” commentators, politicians, academics, activists and malcontents of both left and right never tire of deriding for-profit companies as some parasitic alien life form that devours honest toil, crushes creativity, pollutes the environment, and steals power from ordinary Americans.
A few undeniable truths about corporate power in the United States can liberate every day citizens and the society at large from such sour and ungrateful folly.
1) FROM THE DAYS OF EARLIEST SETTLEMENT, AMERICA EMERGED FROM RISK-TAKING AND PROFIT-MAKING CORPORATIONS. The famous colonies at Jamestown, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay (not to mention Walter Raleigh’s similarly celebrated and tragically unsuccessful settlement of Roanoke) depended on British investors who put up the considerable capital to fund the expensive business of sending “venturers” across the Ocean. Of course, some of these sponsors shared religious ideals with some of the settlers, but they all fervently cherished the (often frustrated) hope of earning a handsome return on their risky investments. Meanwhile, other corporations like the Hudson Bay Company and the British East India Company also played an outside (and sometimes heroic) role in exploring a wilderness continent and establishing a British presence in the New World.
2) THE REVOLUTION RESISTED GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE WITH FREE MARKETS, NOT THE POWER OF BIG BUSINESS. The Stamp Act Protests, the Boston Tea Party and other Colonial challenges to British authority aimed their wrath (and occasional property destruction) not at the traders or merchants who brought their products to New England, but against the government officials who insisted on telling the colonists what they could buy and how much they must pay. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson specifically condemned the king for “imposing taxes on us without our consent” and for sending his tax collectors to interfere with commerce: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.” Any contemporary American who’s faced an IRS audit can relate directly to Jefferson’s complaint. The Declaration also attacked King George for his protectionist export-import policy and “for cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.” The Founding Fathers never embraced anti-business attitudes because most of them were themselves ambitious and successful entrepreneurs. George Washington and John Hancock may have been the two richest men in the colonies – with Washington one of the largest land-holders (who loved speculating on frontier real estate) and Hancock the owner of America’s most formidable fleet of merchant ships. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the Founders laid out the powers of the new Congress and Government in Article 1, section 8, all of the first 8 provisions concern setting up an economic system (“power to lay and collect taxes,” “to establish…uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies,” “to coin money,” and so forth) before the document finally gets around to such relatively trivial matters as setting up courts and raising an army.
3) THE FAMOUS DEPRADATIONS OF THE SO-CALLED “ROBBER BARONS” INVOLVED GOVERNMENTAL, NOT BUSINESS, ABUSES. In his indispensable 1986 book “The Myth of the Robber Barons,” Burton W. Folsom of the University of Pittsburgh makes the important distinction between “political entrepreneurs” and “market entrepreneurs” who played very different roles in the development of the new nation and its economy. The political entrepreneurs WHO manipulated their insider influence relied upon sweetheart deals and special concessions and monopoly power granted by government, rather than their own efficiency and competitive advantages. At the same time, market entrepreneurs (like James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad) refused to entangle themselves with the political process and built their much more successful and durable corporations without favoritism from bureaucrats or officeholders. As Folsom writes of the emerging and crucial steamship industry: “Political entrepreneurship often led to price-fixing, technological stagnation, and the bribing of competitors and politicians. The market entrepreneurs were the innovators and rate-cutters. They had to be to survive against subsidized opponents.” Significantly, all of the most significant economic reform movements from the Jeffersonians at the turn of the nineteenth century up through the Progressives at the turn of twentieth, sought to disentangle government from its involvement in the free market, not to impose to new bureaucratic controls. As the great historian Forrest McDonald of the University of Alabama wrote: “The Jacksonian Democrats engaged in a great deal of anti-business rhetoric, but the results of their policies were to remove or reduce governmental interference into private economic activity, and thus to free market entrepreneurs to go about their creative work. The entire nation grew wealthy as a consequence.”
4) THE ERAS OF GREATEST CORPORATE INFLUENCE WEREN’T NIGHTMARISH PERIODS OF OPPRESSION AND RETREAT, BUT RATHER GOLDEN EPOCHS OF PROSPERITY, PROGRESS AND GROWING AMERICAN POWER. While historians and other intellectuals invariably deride the “Gilded Age” following the War Between the States, no generation in world history achieved comparable progress in rapidly raising standards of living, absorbing and assimilating unprecedented waves of immigration, settling the remotest frontier and building a dozen new states and scores of glittering new cities, while establishing the United States for the first time as a world power of the first rank. As the editors of American Heritage Magazine wrote in the introduction to their book, “The Confident Years,” about US life from 1865 to 1914: “It was a period of exuberant growth, in population, industry and world prestige. As the twentieth century opened, American political pundits were convinced that the nation was on an ascending spiral of progress that could end only in something approaching perfection. Even those who saw the inequity between the bright world of privilege and the gray fact of poverty were quite sure that a time was very near when no one would go cold or hungry of ill clothed. These were indeed the Confident Years.” An era of rampant capitalist power, in other words, that saw the emergence of giant corporations that touched the lives of every American, corresponded with the most dynamic and dazzling achievements in our history. Other eras associated with big business also brought unparalleled blessings of peace and prosperity to the nation at large and virtually all of its citizens – such as the 1920’s, where President Coolidge produced snickers from cognoscenti by saying “the business of America is business,” or the 1950’s, when Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson declared (not unreasonably) that “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.”
5) THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS NEVER IMPOVERISHED AND ALWAYS ENHANCED THE LIVING STANDARDS OF ORDINARY WORKING AMERICANS. In their 1998 book, “The History of the American Economy” Gary Walton and Hugh Rockoff summarize the progress of the working class. From 1820 to 1860, wages grew at a 1.6% annual rate, while the purchasing power of an average worker’s paycheck went up between 60 [SPACE] and 90 percent (depending on the region of the country). Between 1860 and 1890 (that genuinely gilded age) real wages (adjusted for inflation) increased by a staggering 50% in America. The average work week shortened at the same time, so that the real earnings of the Average American worker increased more like 60 percent in just thirty years. As Thomas J. DiLorenzo points out in his illuminating book “How Capitalism Saved America,”: “Capitalism improves the quality of life for the working class not just because it leads to improved wages but also because it produces new, better and cheaper goods…When Henry Ford first started selling automobiles only the relatively wealthy could afford them, but soon enough working-class families were buying his cars.” The efficiency and productivity made possible by corporate organization gave typical Americans a range of choices and an economic power unimaginable for prior generations. As Federal Reserve Board economists Michael Cox and Richard Allen made clear: “A nineteenth century millionaire couldn’t grab a cold drink from the refrigerator. He couldn’t hop into a smooth-riding automobile for a 70-mile-an-hour trip down an interstate highway to the mountains or seashore. He couldn’t call up news, movies, music and sporting events by simply touching the remote control’s buttons. He couldn’t jet north to Toronto, south to Cancun, east to Boston or west to San Francisco in just a few hours. He couldn’t transmit documents to Europe, Asia, or anyplace else in seconds.
He couldn’t run over to the mall to buy auto-focus cameras, computer games, mountain bikes, or movies on videotape. He couldn’t escape the summer heat in air conditioned comfort. He couldn’t check into a hospital for a coronary bypass to cure a failing heart, get a shot of penicillin to ward off infection, or even take aspirin to relieve a headache.” In this context, jeremiads about the “horrifying” gap between rich and poor miss the point that poor people in America’s 21st century enjoy options and privileges that the wealthy couldn’t claim a hundred years ago. Far from oppressing the working class, the corporate system brought about a vast improvement in purchasing power for all Americans. The 1999 book “Myths of Rich and Poor” by Michael Cox and Richard Alm indicates that a worker in 1900 worked two hours and forty minutes to earn the cost of a three point chicken; in 1999, a mere 24 minutes of toil could buy him the bird. If anything, the growth in rewards for working only accelerated in the last fifty years. In 1950, typical workers put in more than two hours to afford 100 kilowatts of electricity; by 1999, the cost had dropped to fourteen minutes. A three minute coast-to-coast phone call cost 104 minutes of labor in 1950, but by 1999 that was down to two minutes (and it’s no doubt even less today).
6) THE INDUSTRIALIZATION THAT DRIVES PROSPERITY RESCUES RATHER THAN ENSLAVES THE WORKERS IT EMPLOYS. Adam Smith, who defined capitalism more than 200 years ago in “The Wealth of Nations,” described the essence of the system as a series of mutually beneficial agreements: “Give me that which you want, and you shall have this which you want.” This captures the essential fairness and decency of the free-market system, which relies on voluntary associations that enrich both parties. Concerning the process of industrialization, which saw millions of workers engaged in powering the mighty, productive engines of major corporations, the great economic Ludwig van Mises (cited by DiLorenzo) trenchantly observed: “The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them. It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation.” The same process applies to newly opened factories throughout the developing world today, despite the efforts by “anti-globalist” and “anti-corporate” activists in the United States to obliterate the only jobs that keep suffering millions from a return to misery and destitution.
7) CORPORATIONS DON’T DESERVE BLAME FOR “PUTTING PROFITS OVER PEOPLE,” SINCE PROFITS INEVITABLY BENEFIT PEOPLE. Corporations don’t exist in order to provide welfare for workers, or cheap products for consumers, but rather to earn profits for investors and operators. If they succeed in earning such profits they can provide more jobs at higher pay, and better products at lower cost. If a company fails at bringing in those profits it will shed jobs and provide fewer products – ultimately going out of business altogether. The idea that laborers or customers somehow benefit if a corporation feels squeezed, or facing shrinking profits, remains one of the profoundly illogical legacies of discredited Marxism. In the free market system, the boss Peter can’t benefit long term at the expense of his employee, Paul. They either prosper together or fail together. Increased profitability brings increases in capital that allow increases in productivity – directly and simultaneously rewarding management and labor (not to mention the public at large). Political demagogues who rail against “immoral” or “obscene” profits need courses in remedial economics. For a corporation, only a lack of profitability counts as immoral and going out of business represents the ultimate obscenity.
8) THERE’S NO LOGICAL REASON TO FAVOR SMALL BUSINESSES OVER BIG BUSINESS. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that the public felt more approval of “small business” than of “big corporations” by a ratio of more than three to one. This makes little sense, since virtually every “big business” started out as a small operation before success brought growth, and virtually every small business dreams of getting bigger one day. Not far from my home stands the original Starbucks Coffee stand (still operating) at Seattle’s Pike Place Market: an unprepossessing shop that couldn’t accommodate more than twenty customers at a time. Did that quaint operation do a better job providing coffee to its patrons than today’s multi-billion dollar, globe-straddling colossus? Any coffee connoisseur can certify that one of the major improvements in American life over the past twenty years involves the now universal availability of strong, delicious, gourmet coffee (and innumerable exotic derivatives), as opposed to the watery, flavorless blandness of the old-fashioned “cup of Joe.” Could any sane observer honestly believe that a small business could do a better job than big international companies in providing us with the automobiles and computers and cell phones and medical supplies that do so much to enrich our lives?
9) CORRUPTION IS MORE OF A PROBLEM FOR BIG GOVERNMENT THAN BIG CORPORATIONS. Since the beginning of the 21st Century a series of tawdry and hugely destructive corporate scandals (Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, many more) led the commentariat to conclude that business ethics had been hopelessly compromised and we needed to turn to government for redemption and purification. This assumption ignores the long history of hideous corruption in every endeavor of flawed humanity – including religion, education, charities and, most spectacularly, government itself. Giving government greater power over corporations increases rather than reduces the likelihood of corruption, since so many of the prior business scandals involved existing entanglements of bureaucracy with the free market. When political office holders decide winners and losers in the business world, the temptations for bribery and favoritism become more acute, not less so. Moreover, the public enjoys greater and swifter recourse against an abusive or inefficient corporation than it does against an abusive or inefficient government. The customer can always decline to patronize a business, a product or a service he dislikes, but with a dysfunctional government you’re stuck till the next election – or long after that, in this era of entrenched and immovable bureaucratic power. A determined individual can escape the reach of even the most ubiquitous corporation (yes, even our Seattle neighbors at Microsoft) but the only way to choose for yourself a different national government is to flee the country. Yes, corporate power frequently corrupts government, and government power even more frequently corrupts and warps corporations, but the best way to avoid this mutually destructive influence is to bring about less bureaucratic involvement in the free market, not to insist on more.
Despite all the shortcomings and silliness, bureaucratic bungling and bankruptcies, foreclosures and failures, conniving and corruption, the big corporations that inevitably emerge in free and fair markets continue to perform remarkably well in terms of giving the public what it wants and needs. Our daily lives bear wondrous witness to the amazing achievements and efficiencies of the system. Any honest examination of the past and the present must lead to the conclusion that major corporations in their appropriate pursuit of profit will continue to bless, not oppress, the people of the United States.
Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host, is author of 10 non-fiction books, including The Shadow Presidents and Right Turns.
Marine with a bird's eye view opinion
This is from a guy who's in Iraq ... identified only as Jordan...
(kind of long, tactical accounts near the end very interesting)
No politics here, just a Marine with a bird's eye view opinion:
1) The M-16 rifle:
Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it's lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They lack the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the picattiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round.
Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits can't be reliably counted on to put the enemy down.
Fun fact:
Random autopsies on dead insurgents show a high level of opiate use.
2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): 223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun.
Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly (that's fun in the middle of a firefight).
3) The M9 Beretta 9mm:
Mixed bag. Good gun, performs well in desert environment; but they all hate the 9mm cartridge. The use of handguns for self-defense is actually fairly common. Same old story on the 9mm: Bad guys hit multiple times and still in the fight.
4) Mossberg 12ga. Military shotgun:
Works well, used frequently for clearing houses to good effect.
5) The M240 Machine Gun: 7.62 Nato (.308) cal. belt fed machine gun, developed to replace the old M-60 (what a beautiful weapon that was!!).
Thumbs up. Accurate, reliable, and the 7.62 round puts 'em down.
Originally developed as a vehicle mounted weapon, more and more are being dismounted and taken into the field by infantry. The 7.62 round chews up the structure over there.
6) The M2 50 cal heavy machine gun:
Thumbs way, way up. "Ma deuce" is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper, puts their dicks in the dirt every time.
The most coveted weapon in-theater.
7) The 45 pistol:
Thumbs up. Still the best pistol round out there. Everybody authorized to carry a sidearm is trying to get their hands on one. With few exceptions, can reliably be expected to put 'em down with a torso hit.
The special ops guys (who are doing most of the pistol work) use the HK military model and supposedly love it. The old government model .45's are being re-issued en masse.
8) The M-14:
Thumbs up. They are being re-issued in bulk, mostly in a modified version to special ops guys. Modifications include lightweight Kevlar stocks and low power red dot or ACOG sights. Very reliable in the sandy environment, and they love the 7.62 round.
9) The Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle:
Thumbs way up. Spectacular range and accuracy and hits like a freight train. Used frequently to take out vehicle suicide bombers (we actually stop a lot of them) and barricaded enemy. It is definitely here to stay.
10) The M24 sniper rifle:
Thumbs up. Mostly in .308 but some in 300 win mag. Heavily modified Remington 700's. Great performance Snipers have been used heavily to great effect. Rumor has it a marine sniper on his third tour in Anbar rovince has actually exceeded Carlos Hathcock's record for confirmed kills with OVER 100.
11) The new body armor:
Thumbs up. Relatively light at approx. 6 lbs.and can reliably be expected to soak up small shrapnel and even will stop an AK-47 round.
The bad news:
Hot as shit to wear, almost unbearable in the summer heat (which averages over 120 degrees). Also, the enemy now goes for head shots whenever possible. All the bullshit about the "old" body armor making our guys vulnerable to the IED's was a non-starter. The IED explosions are enormous and body armor doesn't make any difference at all in most cases.
12) Night Vision and Infrared Equipment:
Thumbs way up. Spectacular performance. Our guys see in the dark and own the night, period. Very little enemy action after evening prayers.
More and more enemy being whacked at night during movement by our hunter-killer teams. We've all seen the videos.
13) Lights:
Thumbs up. Most of the weapon mounted and personal lights are Surefire's, and the troops love 'em.. Invaluable for night urban operations. Jordan carried a $34 Surefire G2 on a neck lanyard and loved it. I cant help but notice that most of the good fighting weapons and ordnance are 50 or more years old!!!!!!!!! With all our technology,it's the WWII and Vietnam era weapons that everybody wants!!!! The infantry fighting is frequent, up close and brutal. No quarter is given or shown.
Bad guy weapons:
1) Mostly AK47's.
The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably. PKM belt fed light machine guns are also common and effective Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like shit. Undisciplined "spray and pray" type fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. ( Iran , again)
Fun fact:
Captured enemy have apparently marveled at the marksmanship of our guys and how hard they fight. They are apparently told in Jihad school that the Americans rely solely on technology, and can be easily beaten in close quarters combat for their lack of toughness. Let's just say they know better now.
2) The RPG:
Probably the infantry weapon most feared by our guys. Simple, reliable and as common as dogshit. The enemy responded to our up-armored Humvees by aiming at the windshields, often at point blank range. Still killing a lot of our guys.
3) The IED:
The biggest killer of all. Can be anything from old Soviet anti-armor mines to jury rigged artillery shells. A lot found in Jordan 's area were in abandoned cars. The enemy would take 2 or 3 155 mm artillery shells and wire them together. Most were detonated by cell phone, and the explosions are enormous. You're not safe in any vehicle, even an M1 tank. Driving is by far the most dangerous thing our guys do over there.
Lately, they are much more sophisticated "shape charges" (Iranian)
specifically designed to penetrate armor. Fact: Most of the ready made IED's are supplied by Iran , who is also providing terrorists (Hezbollah types) to train the insurgents in their use and tactics. That's why the attacks have been so deadly lately Their concealment methods are ingenious, the latest being shape charges, in Styrofoam containers spray painted to look like the cinderblocks that litter all Iraqi roads. We find about 40% before they detonate, and the bomb disposal guys are unsung heroes of this war.
4) Mortars and rockets:
Very prevalent. The soviet era 122mm rockets (with an 18km range) are becoming more prevalent. One of Jordan 's NCO's lost a leg to one. These weapons cause a lot of damage "inside the wire". Jordan 's base was hit almost daily his entire time there by mortar and rocket fire, often at night to disrupt sleep patterns and cause fatigue (It did). More of a psychological weapon than anything else. The enemy mortar teams would jump out of vehicles, fire a few rounds, and then haul ass in a matter of seconds.
5) Bad guy technology:
Simple yet effective. Most communication is by cell and satellite phones, and also by email on laptops. They use handheld GPS units for navigation and "Googleearth" for overhead views of our positions. Their weapons are good, if not fancy, and prevalent. Their explosives and bomb technology is TOP OF THE LINE. Night vision is rare. They are very careless with their equipment and the captured GPS units and laptops are treasure troves of Intel when captured.
Who are the bad guys (remember that is what the Captain called them!)?
Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi Al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province (Fallujah and Ramadi). These are mostly "foreigners", non-Iraqi Sunni Arab Jihadists from all over the Muslim world (and Europe ). Most enter Iraq through Syria (with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian govt.), and then travel down the "rat line" which is the trail of towns along the EuphratesRiver that we've been hitting hard for the last few months. Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in various "sacrifice squads". Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.). These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian), are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters (they have been fighting the Russians for years).
In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired (and led) Iraqi Shiites. The Iranian Shiia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local govt.'s, the police forces and the Army.
They have had a massive spy and agitator network there since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 80's. Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago.
Bad Guy Tactics:
When they are engaged on an infantry level they get their asses kicked every time. Brave, but stupid. Suicidal Banzai-type charges were very common earlier in the war and still occur. They will literally sacrifice
8-10 man teams in suicide squads by sending them screaming and firing AK's and RPG's directly at our bases just to probe the defenses. They get mowed down like grass every time (see the M2 and M240 above).
Jordan 's base was hit like this often. When engaged, they have a tendency to flee to the same building, probably for what they think will be a glorious last stand.
Instead, we call in air and that's the end of that more often than not.
These hole-ups are referred to as Alpha Whiskey Romeo's (Allah's Waiting Room). We have the laser guided ground-air thing down to a science. The fast mover's, mostly Marine F-18's, are taking an ever increasing toll on the enemy. When caught out in the open, the helicopter gunships and AC-130 Spectre Gunships cut them to ribbons with cannon and rocket fire, especially at night. Interestingly, artillery is hardly used at all.
Fun fact:
The enemy death toll is supposedly between 45-50 thousand. That is why we're seeing less and less infantry attacks and more IED, suicide bomber shit. The new strategy is just simple: attrition. The insurgent tactic most frustrating is their use of civilian non-combatants as cover. They know we do all we can to avoid civilian casualties and therefore schools, hospitals and (especially) Mosques are locations where they meet, stage for attacks, cache weapons and ammo and flee to when engaged. They have absolutely no regard whatsoever for inflicting civilian casualties. They will terrorize locals and murder without hesitation anyone believed to be sympathetic to the Americans or the new Iraqi govt. Kidnapping of family members (especially children) is common to influence people they are trying to influence but can't reach, such as local govt. officials, clerics, tribal leaders, etc.).
The first thing our guys are told is "don't get captured". They know that if captured they will be tortured and beheaded on the internet.
Zarqawi openly offers bounties for anyone who brings him a live American serviceman.
This motivates the criminal element who otherwise don't give a shit about the war. A lot of the beheading victims were actually kidnapped by common criminals and sold to Zarqawi. As such, for our guys, every fight is to the death. Surrender is not an option.
The Iraqi's are a mixed bag.
Some fight well, others aren't worth a damn. Most do okay with American support. Finding leaders is hard, but they are getting better.
It is widely viewed that Zarqawi's use of suicide bombers, en masse, against the civilian population was a serious tactical mistake. Many Iraqi's were galvanized and the caliber of recruits in the Army and the police forces went right up, along with their motivation. It also led to an exponential increase in good intel because the Iraqi's are sick of the insurgent attacks against civilians. The Kurds are solidly pro-American and fearless fighters.
Morale:
According to Jordan , morale among our guys is very high. They not only believe that they are winning, but that they are winning decisively.
They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. They are inflicting casualties at a rate of
20-1 and then see shit like "Are we losing in Iraq " on TV and the print media. For the most part, they are satisfied with their equipment, food and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, is that there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren't enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Iran and Syria . The Iranians and the Syrians just can't stand the thought of Iraq being an American ally (with, of course, permanent US bases there).
Anyway, that's it, hope you found it interesting.
GEN. GERALD E. MCILMOYLE, USAF (RET
(kind of long, tactical accounts near the end very interesting)
No politics here, just a Marine with a bird's eye view opinion:
1) The M-16 rifle:
Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it's lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They lack the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the picattiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round.
Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits can't be reliably counted on to put the enemy down.
Fun fact:
Random autopsies on dead insurgents show a high level of opiate use.
2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): 223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun.
Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly (that's fun in the middle of a firefight).
3) The M9 Beretta 9mm:
Mixed bag. Good gun, performs well in desert environment; but they all hate the 9mm cartridge. The use of handguns for self-defense is actually fairly common. Same old story on the 9mm: Bad guys hit multiple times and still in the fight.
4) Mossberg 12ga. Military shotgun:
Works well, used frequently for clearing houses to good effect.
5) The M240 Machine Gun: 7.62 Nato (.308) cal. belt fed machine gun, developed to replace the old M-60 (what a beautiful weapon that was!!).
Thumbs up. Accurate, reliable, and the 7.62 round puts 'em down.
Originally developed as a vehicle mounted weapon, more and more are being dismounted and taken into the field by infantry. The 7.62 round chews up the structure over there.
6) The M2 50 cal heavy machine gun:
Thumbs way, way up. "Ma deuce" is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper, puts their dicks in the dirt every time.
The most coveted weapon in-theater.
7) The 45 pistol:
Thumbs up. Still the best pistol round out there. Everybody authorized to carry a sidearm is trying to get their hands on one. With few exceptions, can reliably be expected to put 'em down with a torso hit.
The special ops guys (who are doing most of the pistol work) use the HK military model and supposedly love it. The old government model .45's are being re-issued en masse.
8) The M-14:
Thumbs up. They are being re-issued in bulk, mostly in a modified version to special ops guys. Modifications include lightweight Kevlar stocks and low power red dot or ACOG sights. Very reliable in the sandy environment, and they love the 7.62 round.
9) The Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle:
Thumbs way up. Spectacular range and accuracy and hits like a freight train. Used frequently to take out vehicle suicide bombers (we actually stop a lot of them) and barricaded enemy. It is definitely here to stay.
10) The M24 sniper rifle:
Thumbs up. Mostly in .308 but some in 300 win mag. Heavily modified Remington 700's. Great performance Snipers have been used heavily to great effect. Rumor has it a marine sniper on his third tour in Anbar rovince has actually exceeded Carlos Hathcock's record for confirmed kills with OVER 100.
11) The new body armor:
Thumbs up. Relatively light at approx. 6 lbs.and can reliably be expected to soak up small shrapnel and even will stop an AK-47 round.
The bad news:
Hot as shit to wear, almost unbearable in the summer heat (which averages over 120 degrees). Also, the enemy now goes for head shots whenever possible. All the bullshit about the "old" body armor making our guys vulnerable to the IED's was a non-starter. The IED explosions are enormous and body armor doesn't make any difference at all in most cases.
12) Night Vision and Infrared Equipment:
Thumbs way up. Spectacular performance. Our guys see in the dark and own the night, period. Very little enemy action after evening prayers.
More and more enemy being whacked at night during movement by our hunter-killer teams. We've all seen the videos.
13) Lights:
Thumbs up. Most of the weapon mounted and personal lights are Surefire's, and the troops love 'em.. Invaluable for night urban operations. Jordan carried a $34 Surefire G2 on a neck lanyard and loved it. I cant help but notice that most of the good fighting weapons and ordnance are 50 or more years old!!!!!!!!! With all our technology,it's the WWII and Vietnam era weapons that everybody wants!!!! The infantry fighting is frequent, up close and brutal. No quarter is given or shown.
Bad guy weapons:
1) Mostly AK47's.
The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably. PKM belt fed light machine guns are also common and effective Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like shit. Undisciplined "spray and pray" type fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. ( Iran , again)
Fun fact:
Captured enemy have apparently marveled at the marksmanship of our guys and how hard they fight. They are apparently told in Jihad school that the Americans rely solely on technology, and can be easily beaten in close quarters combat for their lack of toughness. Let's just say they know better now.
2) The RPG:
Probably the infantry weapon most feared by our guys. Simple, reliable and as common as dogshit. The enemy responded to our up-armored Humvees by aiming at the windshields, often at point blank range. Still killing a lot of our guys.
3) The IED:
The biggest killer of all. Can be anything from old Soviet anti-armor mines to jury rigged artillery shells. A lot found in Jordan 's area were in abandoned cars. The enemy would take 2 or 3 155 mm artillery shells and wire them together. Most were detonated by cell phone, and the explosions are enormous. You're not safe in any vehicle, even an M1 tank. Driving is by far the most dangerous thing our guys do over there.
Lately, they are much more sophisticated "shape charges" (Iranian)
specifically designed to penetrate armor. Fact: Most of the ready made IED's are supplied by Iran , who is also providing terrorists (Hezbollah types) to train the insurgents in their use and tactics. That's why the attacks have been so deadly lately Their concealment methods are ingenious, the latest being shape charges, in Styrofoam containers spray painted to look like the cinderblocks that litter all Iraqi roads. We find about 40% before they detonate, and the bomb disposal guys are unsung heroes of this war.
4) Mortars and rockets:
Very prevalent. The soviet era 122mm rockets (with an 18km range) are becoming more prevalent. One of Jordan 's NCO's lost a leg to one. These weapons cause a lot of damage "inside the wire". Jordan 's base was hit almost daily his entire time there by mortar and rocket fire, often at night to disrupt sleep patterns and cause fatigue (It did). More of a psychological weapon than anything else. The enemy mortar teams would jump out of vehicles, fire a few rounds, and then haul ass in a matter of seconds.
5) Bad guy technology:
Simple yet effective. Most communication is by cell and satellite phones, and also by email on laptops. They use handheld GPS units for navigation and "Googleearth" for overhead views of our positions. Their weapons are good, if not fancy, and prevalent. Their explosives and bomb technology is TOP OF THE LINE. Night vision is rare. They are very careless with their equipment and the captured GPS units and laptops are treasure troves of Intel when captured.
Who are the bad guys (remember that is what the Captain called them!)?
Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi Al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province (Fallujah and Ramadi). These are mostly "foreigners", non-Iraqi Sunni Arab Jihadists from all over the Muslim world (and Europe ). Most enter Iraq through Syria (with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian govt.), and then travel down the "rat line" which is the trail of towns along the EuphratesRiver that we've been hitting hard for the last few months. Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in various "sacrifice squads". Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.). These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian), are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters (they have been fighting the Russians for years).
In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired (and led) Iraqi Shiites. The Iranian Shiia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local govt.'s, the police forces and the Army.
They have had a massive spy and agitator network there since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 80's. Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago.
Bad Guy Tactics:
When they are engaged on an infantry level they get their asses kicked every time. Brave, but stupid. Suicidal Banzai-type charges were very common earlier in the war and still occur. They will literally sacrifice
8-10 man teams in suicide squads by sending them screaming and firing AK's and RPG's directly at our bases just to probe the defenses. They get mowed down like grass every time (see the M2 and M240 above).
Jordan 's base was hit like this often. When engaged, they have a tendency to flee to the same building, probably for what they think will be a glorious last stand.
Instead, we call in air and that's the end of that more often than not.
These hole-ups are referred to as Alpha Whiskey Romeo's (Allah's Waiting Room). We have the laser guided ground-air thing down to a science. The fast mover's, mostly Marine F-18's, are taking an ever increasing toll on the enemy. When caught out in the open, the helicopter gunships and AC-130 Spectre Gunships cut them to ribbons with cannon and rocket fire, especially at night. Interestingly, artillery is hardly used at all.
Fun fact:
The enemy death toll is supposedly between 45-50 thousand. That is why we're seeing less and less infantry attacks and more IED, suicide bomber shit. The new strategy is just simple: attrition. The insurgent tactic most frustrating is their use of civilian non-combatants as cover. They know we do all we can to avoid civilian casualties and therefore schools, hospitals and (especially) Mosques are locations where they meet, stage for attacks, cache weapons and ammo and flee to when engaged. They have absolutely no regard whatsoever for inflicting civilian casualties. They will terrorize locals and murder without hesitation anyone believed to be sympathetic to the Americans or the new Iraqi govt. Kidnapping of family members (especially children) is common to influence people they are trying to influence but can't reach, such as local govt. officials, clerics, tribal leaders, etc.).
The first thing our guys are told is "don't get captured". They know that if captured they will be tortured and beheaded on the internet.
Zarqawi openly offers bounties for anyone who brings him a live American serviceman.
This motivates the criminal element who otherwise don't give a shit about the war. A lot of the beheading victims were actually kidnapped by common criminals and sold to Zarqawi. As such, for our guys, every fight is to the death. Surrender is not an option.
The Iraqi's are a mixed bag.
Some fight well, others aren't worth a damn. Most do okay with American support. Finding leaders is hard, but they are getting better.
It is widely viewed that Zarqawi's use of suicide bombers, en masse, against the civilian population was a serious tactical mistake. Many Iraqi's were galvanized and the caliber of recruits in the Army and the police forces went right up, along with their motivation. It also led to an exponential increase in good intel because the Iraqi's are sick of the insurgent attacks against civilians. The Kurds are solidly pro-American and fearless fighters.
Morale:
According to Jordan , morale among our guys is very high. They not only believe that they are winning, but that they are winning decisively.
They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. They are inflicting casualties at a rate of
20-1 and then see shit like "Are we losing in Iraq " on TV and the print media. For the most part, they are satisfied with their equipment, food and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, is that there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren't enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Iran and Syria . The Iranians and the Syrians just can't stand the thought of Iraq being an American ally (with, of course, permanent US bases there).
Anyway, that's it, hope you found it interesting.
GEN. GERALD E. MCILMOYLE, USAF (RET
Thursday, October 18, 2007
GENERAL CASH, USAF (RET) SPEAKS OUT
I wrote recently about the war in Iraq and the larger war against radical Islam, eliciting a number of responses. Let me try and put this conflict in proper perspective. Understand, the current battle we are engaged in is much bigger than just Iraq. What happens in the next year will affect this country and how our kids and grandkids live throughout their lifetime, and beyond. Radical Islam has been attacking the West since the seventh century. They have been defeated in the past and decimated to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover. But they can never be totally defeated. Their birth rates are so far beyond civilized world rates that in time they recover and attempt to dominate again. There are eight terror-sponsoring countries that make up the grand threat to the West. Two, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, just need firm pressure from the West to make major reforms. They need to decide who they are really going to support and commit to that support. That answer is simple. They both will support who they think will hang in there until the end, and win. We are not sending very good signals in that direction right now, thanks to the Democrats. The other six, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya will require regime change or a major policy shift. Now, let's look more closely. Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran. We have scared Kaddafi's pants off, and he has given up his quest for nuclear weapons, so I don't think Libya is now a threat. North Korea (the non-Islamic threat) can be handled diplomatically by buying them off. They are starving. That leaves Syria and Iran. Syria is like a frightened puppy. Without the support of Iran they will join the stronger side. So where does that leave us? Sooner, or later, we are going to be forced to confront Iran, and it better be before they gain nuclear capability. In 1989 I served as a Command Director inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex located in Colorado Springs, Colorado for almost three years. My job there was to observe (through classified means) every missile shot anywhere in the world and assess if it was a threat to the US or Canada. If any shot was threatening to either nation I had only minutes to advise the President, as he had only minutes to respond. I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles at each other every day, and all day long, for months. They killed hundreds of thousand of their people. Know why? They were fighting for control of the Middle East and that enormous oil supply. At that time, they were preoccupied with their internal problems and could care less about toppling the west. Oil prices were fairly stable and we could not see an immediate threat. Well, the worst part of what we have done as a nation in Iraq is to do away with the military capability of one of those nations. Now, Iran has a clear field to dominate the Middle East, since Iraq is no longer a threat to them. They have turned their attention to the only other threat to their dominance, the United States They are convinced they will win, because the United States is so divided, and the Democrats (who now control Congress and may control the Presidency in 2008) have openly said we are pulling out. Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will obviously do if we pull out? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil will not be made available to this country at any price. I personally would vote for any presidential candidate who did what JFK did with the space program---declare a goal to bring this country to total energy independence in a decade. Yes, it is about oil. The economy in this country will totally die if that Middle East supply is cut off right now. It will not be a recession. It will be a depression that will make 1929 look like the "good-old-days". The bottom line here is simple. If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over. One way or another, Iran must be forced to join modern times and the global community. It may mean a real war---if so, now is the time, before we face a nuclear Iran with the capacity to destroy Israel and begin a new ice age. I urge you to read the book "END GAME" by two of our best Middle East experts, true American patriots and retired military generals, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney. They are our finest, and totally honest in their assessment of why victory in the Middle East is so important, and how it can be won. Proceeds for the book go directly to memorial fund for our fallen soldiers who served the country during the war on terror. You can find that book by going to the internet through Stand-up America at http://www.ospreyradio.us/, <http://www.ospreyradio.us/>, or http://www.rightalk.com/ http://www.rightalk.com/>. On the other hand, we have several very angry retired generals today, who evidently have not achieved their lofty goals, and insist on ranting and raving about the war. They are wrong, and doing the country great harm by giving a certain political party reason to use them as experts to back their anti-war claims. You may be one of those who believe nothing could ever be terrible enough to support our going to war. If that is the case I should stop here, as that level of thinking approaches mental disability in this day and age. It is right up there with alien abductions and high altitude seeding through government aircraft contrails. I helped produced those contrails for almost 30 years, and I can assure you we were not seeding the atmosphere. The human race is a war-like population, and if a country is not willing to protect itself, it deserves the consequences. Now, my last comments will get to the nerve. They will be on politics. I am not a Republican. And, George Bush has made enough mistakes as President to insure my feelings about that for the rest of my life. However, the Democratic Party has moved so far left, they have made me support those farther to the right. I am a conservative who totally supports the Constitution of this country. The only difference between the United States and the South American, third world, dictator infested and ever-changing South American governments, is our US Constitution. This Republic (note I did not say Democracy) is the longest standing the world has ever known, but it is vulnerable. It would take so little to change it through economic upheaval. There was a time when politicians could disagree, but still work together. We are past that time, and that is the initial step toward the downfall of our form of government. I think that many view Bush-hating as payback time. The Republicans hated the Clintons and now the Democrats hate Bush. So, both parties are putting their hate toward willingness to do anything for political dominance to include lying and always taking the opposite stand just for the sake of being opposed. JUST HOW GOOD IS THAT FOR OUR COUNTRY? In my lifetime, after serving in uniform for President's Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush I have a pretty good feel for which party supported our military, and what military life was like under each of their terms. And, let me assure you that times were best under the Republicans. Service under Jimmy Carter was devastating for all branches of the military. And, Ronald Reagan was truly a salvation. You can choose to listen to enriched newscasters, and foolish people like John Murtha (he is no war hero), Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, Harry Reid, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and on-and-on to include the true fools in Hollywood if you like. If you do, your conclusions will be totally wrong. The reason that I write, appear on radio talk shows, and do everything I can to denounce those people is simple. THEY ARE PUTTING THEIR THIRST FOR POLITICAL POWER AND QUESTFOR VICTORY IN 2008 ABOVE WHAT IS BEST FOR THIS COUNTRY. I cannot abide that. Pelosi clearly defied the Logan Act by going to Syria, which should have lead to imprisonment of three years and a heavy fine. Jane Fonda did more to prolong the Vietnam War longer than any other human being (as acknowledged by Ho Chi Minh in his writing before he died). She truly should have been indicted for treason, along with her radical husband Tom Hayden, and forced to pay the consequences. This country has started to soften by not enforcing its laws, which is another indication of a Republic about to fall. All Democrats, along with the Hollywood elite, are sending us headlong into a total defeat in the Middle East, which will finally give Iran total dominance in the region. A lack of oil in the near future will be the final straw that dooms this Republic. However, if we refuse to let this happen and really get serious about an energy self-sufficiency program, this can be avoided. I am afraid, however, that we are going in the opposite direction. If we elect Hillary Clinton and a Democrat controlled congress, and they carry through with allowing Iran to take control of the Middle East, continue to refuse development of nuclear energy, refuse to allow drilling for new oil, and continue to do nothing but oppose everything Bush, it will be over in terms of what we view as the good life in the USA. Now, do I think that all who do not support the war are un-American---of course not. They just do not understand the importance of total victory in that region. Another failure of George Bush is his inability to explain to the American people why we are there, and why we MUST win. By