A Fable

How peace is made.

Tha fable begins:

This brief blog entry takes you through a series of negotiations over time between peacemakers and terrorists:

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of a line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker introduces himself. The terrorist kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker asks, "why did you kill my friend?" The terrorist kills him and rapes his wife.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker says, "Stop that!" The terrorist kills him, rapes his daughter and kills his wife.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker says, "I'll pay you $1000 if you stop attacking us." The terrorist agrees to the deal, takes the $1000, and kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker appeals to the United Nations. The United Nations says the peacemaker is at fault. The terrorist kills him...

More follows.

Not A Whole Lot Of Votes Amid The Aborted And Never Conceived

It turns out that the selfish shall not inherit the earth. An OpinionJournal piece examines the liberals' failure to reproduce.

excerpt:

On the political left, raising the youth vote is one of the most common goals. This implicitly plays to the tired old axiom that a person under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart (whereas one who is still a liberal after 30 has no head). The trouble is, while most "get out the vote" campaigns targeting young people are proxies for the Democratic Party, these efforts haven't apparently done much to win elections for the Democrats. The explanation we often hear from the left is that the new young Democrats are more than counterbalanced by voters scared up by the Republicans on "cultural issues" like abortion, gun rights and gay marriage.

But the data on young Americans tell a different story. Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

...

Democratic politicians may have no more babies left to kiss.

The article contains this nice crybaby explanation from a liberal:

As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation." It would appear liberals have been quite successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party.

Actually, In An Ideal World, You Would Have The Right To Be Seen And Not Heard

Ace Of Spades links to a "Children's Bill Of Rights" (PDF), created in progressive Portland, OR. Supposedly written by the kids, but it reads like the typical leftist manifesto. In addition to demanding free access to everything under the sun (nutrition, support for hobbies and sports, healthcare, housing, etc, etc), it contains this little gem:

"Employment: We are entitled to any funds that we earn."

Thanks, young-uns, for showing us that you really can have it all.

Succinct

This cartoon:

Things Ain't All Bad

Ralph Peters:

[W]hat on earth might give us cause for hope?

* Israel's recent defeat, for one thing. Yes, you read that right. The truth is that Israel got a relatively cheap, if embarrassing, wake-up call. And Israel's a part of Western civilization, not of the Middle East's decaying cultures. That means that Israel doesn't just wallow in blame - like Americans, Israelis figure out what went wrong and then fix it. After the post-war soul-searching and investigations are finished, failed leaders will be replaced and Israel will re-emerge with a renewed sense of mission, a stronger government and a powerfully reformed military - the next time the IDF goes to war, watch the way it devastates its enemies.

* The "unity of Muslims" confronting the West is history (it was always a bogus, ramshackle affair). Sunni-Arab leaders increasingly grasp that the real threat isn't from the United States or Israel, but from the explosion of Shia ambitions, prowess, wealth and desire for vengeance. The future of the Middle East could go a number of ways, but we may find ourselves as bemused spectators, while our sworn enemies and phony friends kill each other. Afterward, we'll pick up the pieces.

* Iraq still could muddle through - but even if it doesn't, our stock in the region is headed up, not down. The paradox is that a future civil war between Iraq's Sunnis and Shias makes our military protection more essential than ever to the effete Gulf emirates and the cowardly Saudis. Avoid linear analysis and reflexive predictions of doom for American interests: The Middle East will always do more harm to its natives than it does to foreign powers. Human beings may hate a distant enemy in theory, but they generally prefer to kill their neighbors.

* Terrorist groups with global aspirations continue to pursue grand, counterproductive gestures rather than effective actions. Plots to blow up a series of airliners, lesser strikes on subways or trains in the West and even the eventual "big one" they'll pull off won't convince the West to surrender. Despite intermittent left-wing lunacy, our debates and disagreements are about how best to solve the problem - not how to capitulate. Bit by bit, the Western mood is turning from disbelief regarding the "terrorist threat" to hard-knuckled realism about extremist Islam. 9/11 taught the terrorists little of use and many wrong lessons. It may be hard for some of us to discern what's really happening, but the Islamists are resurrecting a militant, ruthless West.

The florid American master of horror fiction, H. P. Lovecraft, warned his characters, "Do not raise up what ye cannot put down." Islamist terrorists are reviving the West's thirst for blood. And this time it won't be slaked in Flanders.

Things are going to get uglier east of Suez. And we're going to win.

Tying It All Together

Cartoon:

Chilling Comment

Chilling post, with this chilling comment (both by wretchard):

Let me tell a fable. It is precisely two days after nuclear weapons have destroyed New York, London and Sydney. And it is 24 hours after the President of the United States, after consulting with the Prime Ministers of Britain and Australia, has ordered a ten thousand warhead strike on the entire Muslim world, followed a second strike using tailored biological weapons.

At that very moment a famous Washington law firm calls the White House with an important message. An attorney for Osama Bin Laden has been instructed to deliver a video tape to the media upon the event of his death, which now appears certain. The entire situation room staff turns on the television and watches the familiar face, greyer and more lined, deliver a prepared speech in curiously triumphant tones.

"Brothers," he begins. "If you are listening to this then I am already dead and what was formerly known as the Muslim world has been entirely destroyed. I had forseen this response when I put into motion the plan to use our only three atomic weapons."

"Only three?" he continued. "Three was all we could afford. Yet with these few devices we had to ensure not only the destruction of your infidel civilization but the perpetual triumph of the uncorrupted and essential Islam". Looking directly at the camera Osama continued. "You have killed more than a billion people. Some of them were fighters. But most of them were children. Up until your magnificent thermonuclear warheads blossomed above their heads they were going to the market, laughing at their silly entertainments, playing games in fields. And you killed them. Killed them in a moment of fear; a moment which became inevitable because you were not men enough to fight Jihadis with your hands; and who therefore you destroyed with your unearthly weapons."

"Never again can such a people as you enter your churches, recite your prayers, read your literature, or pretend to nobility without knowing that it is all a lie. And the more you pray to your Jesus, to your Buddha, to your Yahweh the more hypocritical you will feel, until you give it up altogether. No, that door is closed to your forever by your own fear, cowardice and evil. The first of my goals, which is the destruction of your infidel civilization at its roots, I have already accomplished."

"And you, my brothers, for I may you call you that, are now my true spiritual heirs. More magnificent than those illiterate fighters I gathered in Afghanistan, who knew nothing of science and technology. And yet as evil -- now -- as any of my pupils have ever been. I have shown you your true selves. I have gathered you to my fold. Your are the new Ummah and you know it. Come to prayer. Come to Islam."

Keep It Up, Jihadis. The Patience Well Is Starting To Go Dry.

Victor Davis Hanson:

A surprised Israel now has a good glimpse of the terrorists’ new way of war, and probably next time will attack the supplier, not the launcher, of the rocketry. And when the Reuters stringers go away, the “civilians” of southern Lebanon, off-camera, might not be so eager to see more real fireworks lighting up their skies — or far-off, pristine Syria and Iran in safety praising the courage of the ruined amid the rubble. Note how Hezbollah already is desperately racing around the craters to assure its homeless constituency that it has enough Iranian cash to buy back lost sympathies.

Even the ceasefire can come back to bite the Islamists and their supporters. Hezbollah won’t be disarmed as promised, much less stay out of Katyusha range of the border. And that defiance will only reveal the impotence of the Lebanese and the U.N., reminding both that they have talked themselves into a corner and now are responsible to keep caged their own pet 7th-century vipers. This can only work to Israel’s favor when the next rockets go off, since no one then will be proposing an “international” solution — although it will be interesting to see whether Jacques Chirac talks of the “nuclear” option once his soldiers begin to be picked off by Hezbollah.

In a larger sense, the foiled London terrorist plot won’t endear either Islamists or their appeasers to millions in the world who face travel delays, cancelled flights, and body searches — on top of paying billions more to the Arab oil producers who in response whine even more in their victimhood.

As the cliché goes: the Middle East needs to wake up and disown Islamic fascism. Otherwise, insidiously the entire world is turning against it, as radical Islam proves to be every bit as frightening an ideology as German Nazism or Soviet Communism — whether this is ascertained from the use of human shields, tribal lynchings and beheadings, Joseph Goebbles-like propaganda, Holocaust-denial, racist rants, or primordial hatred of Jews.

Three years ago no one was talking about profiling at airports. Now the British are exploring how best to do it. Indeed, one of the stranger developments in recent memory is now taking place the world over: Young, Middle-Eastern, Muslim men are eyed and studied by passengers at every airport — even as governments still lecture about the evils of the very profiling that their own millions are doing daily. Muslims can thank al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and an entire culture that won’t condemn terrorism for such ostracism, which only increases with each suicide bomber, human shield, hijacking, kidnapping, and macabre reference to genocide and Jew-killing.

In an amorphous war of self-induced Western restraint, like the present one, truth and moral clarity are as important as military force. This past month, the world of the fascist jihadist and those who tolerate him was once again on display for civilization to fathom. Even the most timid and prone to appeasement in the West are beginning to see that it is becoming a question of “the Islamists or us.”

In this eleventh hour, that is a sort of progress after all.

Monumental Screw Up

Hopefully Israel will learn from the mistakes it made in Round One. Ralph Peters:

August 17, 2006 -- ISRAEL'S rep for toughness in tatters. Hezbollah triumphant. Iran cockier than ever. Syria untouched. Lebanon's government crippled. An orgy of anti-Semitism in the global media. Anti-Americanism exploding among Iraqi Shi'as inspired by Hezbollah.

Thanks, Prime Minister Olmert. Great job, guy.

The debacle in Lebanon wasn't even a war. It was only round one of a war. And Israel's back in its corner, dazed and punch-drunk.

Israel got in a gut jab, but Hezbollah landed three ferocious haymakers:

* Despite the physical damage the Israeli Defense Forces inflicted, Hezbollah's terror-troops were still standing (and firing rockets) when the bell rang.

* At the strategic level, Hezbollah's masterful manipulation of the seduce-me-please media convinced the region's Shi'a and Sunni spectators alike that Hassan Nasrallah is the new Great Arab Hope. He's got a powerful Persian cheering section, too.

* While Israel couldn't plan or execute a winning campaign, it also failed to think beyond the inevitable cease-fire. But Hezbollah did. The terrorists had mapped out precisely what they had to do the moment the shooting stopped: Hand out Iranian money, promise they'll rebuild what Israel destroyed - and simply refuse to honor the terms of the U.N. resolution.

Israel couldn't wait to throw in the towel and start pulling out troops. Then Hezbollah's fighters emerged from the rubble of towns Israeli leaders lacked the courage to conquer - and the number of terror-soldiers who survived shocked the Israelis.

...

Sucker-punched (well, don't fight with your eyes closed), Israel's complaining to the ref. While staring around in bewilderment.

Want more good news? After finally calling our enemies by the accurate name of "Islamo-fascists," President Bush backtracked so fast the White House lawn was smoking. Then he declared that Israel had won.

That's about as credible as insisting the Titanic docked safe and sound.

...

The IDF has great combat leaders and brave soldiers. But Hezbollah's boys proved tougher - and we can't pretty it up. The terrorists were willing - even eager - to die for their cause. Israeli leaders dreaded friendly casualties. And IDF troops - except in elite units - lacked the will to close with the enemy and defeat him at close quarters.

Israel tried to fight humanely. Hezbollah was out to win at any cost. The result was inevitable.

On the ground in southern Lebanon, the IDF was able to muster a ten-to-one advantage around contested villages. But its leaders lacked the guts to do what needed to be done. And Hezbollah's frontline fighters survived.

You can't win if you won't fight.

The IDF needs pervasive reform. Still structured to defeat the conventional militaries of Syria and Egypt, it faced an enemy tailored specifically to take on the IDF. Historical reputation isn't enough - the IDF must rebuild itself to take on post-modern threats. As one senior American general put it, "The IDF's been living on fumes since 1967."

Hezbollah cleared the air.

All this is heartbreaking. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I could back up our president's surreal claim that Israel won. I wish Israel had won. I wish it had the leadership the Israeli people deserve.

...

There will be consequences. Iran's convinced it's on a winning course. Syria got away with murder (literally). And Hezbollah will come back more determined than ever.

...

And the world is going to let Iran build nuclear weapons.

Get ready for Round Two.

O, Stone Be Not So

This is good. Weird Al does a sendup of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” using only palindromes. H/T Anchoress.

Unfrozen Caveman Voter

Good TCS column references the famous Phil Hartman skit.

excerpt:

Everywhere we see evidence of the Unfrozen Caveman Voter, and the evidence says that he is getting slowly thawed out. Bill Quick, a well-regarded blogger in California, recently wrote a post excoriating George Bush for not following through with the war's prosecution, asking why we allow two of Bush's "most dangerous regimes," North Korea and Iran, to possess "the world's most dangerous weapons." Tigerhawk, another blogger who writes a great deal about military strategy, recently asked, "What will it take to militarize the West?"

I recently had dinner with a friend, another Marine, who said, "You know, at their basic core, Americans are Type-A, aggressive personalities who want nothing more than to just kick a**!" He's right, and not the first to notice this. General George Patton, in his harangues to his troops, frequently pointed out how different they were from those of other countries:

"Many of you have in your veins German and Italian blood. But remember that these ancestors of yours so loved freedom that they gave up home and country to cross the ocean in search of liberty. The ancestors of the people we shall kill lacked the courage to make such a sacrifice and remained slaves."

And then this,

"We Americans are a competitive race ... We love to win. In this next fight, you are entering the greatest sporting competition of all times. You are competing with Americans and with Allies for the greatest prize of all -- victory."

The Unfrozen Caveman Voter is begging to be released. But at the moment, he is being misread by both national parties, and especially the Democrats. Sure, some people oppose the invasion of Iraq or simply hate George Bush, period. And sure, some people distrust all Muslims and are racists. But the vast majority of America falls in the middle of these extremes. However they think of it now, they thought confronting Iraq was a fine idea, and wish it had gone better, but that doesn't translate at all into defeatism, as it is defined, refined and reiterated in the press. On the contrary, they'd like to see more action, more activity, a seizure of the initiative in some way. Using defensive policework and intelligence measures to catch bad guys before they blow up more aircraft are all fine and well, but the Unfrozen Caveman Voter wants very badly to see more offensive measures too.

Don't caricature this attitude with a desire for more invasions, more nation-building, more regime-change, random airstrikes, or wanton slaughter. It's hard to say just what policy exactly might satisfy the caveman demographic. But really, the Unfrozen Caveman Voter intuits a large portion of the art of warfare: opportunities must be created and then exploited -- or if they come by luck, they must be exploited all the same. And finally, the use of extreme and otherwise intolerable violence is necessary if used in the service of victory.

It's not healthy in our republic for such a large slice of the populace to be unrepresented by any politician. But that is the case today. Soon enough it will change...

I do find it kind of funny that the MSM lefties think that Bush's low approval ratings on the war means we've all become peaceniks. If they were really interested in the truth, I guess they'd be asking more detailed poll questions.

The Foreign Policy Disaster That Is Liberalism

After Harry Truman more than half a century ago, have the liberals been worth the slightest damn on national defense? Kennedy and Johnson and the 70's Democratic Congress gave us defeat in Vietnam. Carter ushered in the Iranian mullocracy. The Arafat-loving Clinton gave us the Oslo delusion in Israel, as well as not keeping his pants on long enough to deal with growing threats to the US. This is all one hell of a pathetic legacy.

Regarding Israel's delusions, we have this excellent piece that I've seen quoted here and there, but now is being republished at FrontPageMag.

excerpt:

In the difficult summer of 2006, the State of Israel is declaring in astonishment: They surprised us. They surprised us in a big way. They surprised us with Katyushas and they surprised us with the Al-Fajr rockets and they surprised us with the Zelzal missiles. They surprised us with anti-tank missiles. And they surprised us with the operational skill of the anti-tank squads. They surprised us with the bunkers and the camouflage. They surprised us with the command and monitoring. They surprised us with strategy, fighting ability and a fighting spirit. They surprised us with the astonishing power that a small death-army with low technology and high religious motivation can have.

However, more than they surprised us in Summer 2006 with the strength of Hezbollah, they surprised us this summer with our own weakness. They surprised us with ourselves. They surprised us with the low level of national leadership. They surprised us with scandalous strategic bumbling. They surprised us with the lack of vision, lack of creativity and lack of determination on the part of the senior military command. They surprised us with faulty intelligence and a delusionary logistical network and improper preparedness for war. They surprised us with the fact that the Israeli war machine is not what it once was. While we were celebrating it became rusty.

Generally it is not right to conduct an in-depth investigation of a wartime failure during a war. However, at the end of the most embarrassing year of Israeli defense since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Israeli government is not drawing conclusions. It is not reorganizing the system, there is no evidence of a real learning curve and it is not radiating a new ethos. On the contrary: It is adding another layer of folly onto a previous one. Its slowness to react is dangerous. Its caution is a recipe for disaster. Its attempt to prevent bloodshed is costing a great deal of bloodshed. So that now of all times, just when the forces are moving toward south Lebanon, there is no escaping the question of where we went wrong. It is so that Israel will be able to achieve a last-minute victory and so that the troops will be able to achieve their goals and so the soldiers will be able to return home safely, that we must ask already now: What happened to us? What the hell happened to us?

A simple thing happened: We were drugged by political correctness. The political correctness that has come to dominate Israeli discourse and Israeli awareness in the past generation was totally divorced from the Israeli situation. It did not have the tools to deal with the reality of an existential conflict. It did not have the tools to deal with a reality of an inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict. That is why it focused entirely on the Palestinian issue. It made the baseless assumption that the occupation is the source of evil. It assumed that it is the occupation that is preventing peace and causing unrest and perpetuating the instability.

At the same time, political correctness assumed that Israeli strength is a given. That Israel is insanely strong. Therefore, political correctness disdained any attempt to build and maintain Israeli strength. The defense budget was cut, the values of volunteerism were mocked, the concepts of heroism and fortitude became despicable. Since the Israel Defense Forces was identified as an army of occupation - rather than as an army defending feminists and homo-lesbians from the fanaticism of the Middle East - they had reservations about it, they shook it off and became alienated from it. After all, in the spiritual world of political correctness, power and army have become dirty words.

Any national idea was rejected because of the sanctity of the private sphere. Every cooperative ethos was dismantled in favor of the individual. Power was identified with fascism. Masculinity was publicly condemned. The pursuit of absolute justice was mixed with the pursuit of absolute pleasure and turned the reigning discourse from a discourse of commitment and enlistment to one of protest and pampering.

Much more follows.

MSM Cannot Even Be Trusted With Basic Arithmetic

I just noticed something in this story. Can you spot the problem?

I'm 60 and I hate it: Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton hates it, but it is true: He will be 60 on Saturday, and he is often the oldest man in the room.

The former baby-boomer-in-chief and 42nd US president admitted at a world AIDS conference here -- at which delegates serenaded him with "Happy Birthday" -- that his approaching milestone filled him with trepidation.

"In just a few days, I will be 60 years old. I hate it, but it's true," the snowy-haired veteran of two tumultuous White House terms said.

"For most of my working life, I was the youngest person doing what I was doing. Then one day I woke up and I was the oldest person in every room," said Clinton, who was a youthful 44 when he was first elected president, in 1992...

So, it seems he'll be 60 in a couple of days, which means that in November, 2006, he'll be 60. November 1992 is 14 years ago. 60 - 14 is 46. But the article said he was 44.

So there ya go.

Profiling

Even Mark Shea has lost patience:

If, all over the world, the most obvious fact was that every time a bomb went off, a terror plot was discovered, and innocent human beings were being targeted by nutjob Catholics, I would aquiesce to the fact that a) there's something sick in the soul of the Catholic population and b) the outside world has every right to focus their wariness on Catholics in general.

...

[W]e are constantly being told we must fret about "Muslim sensitivities". I'm sensitive when real injustice is done. Round up and torture innocent Muslims on the theory that you might get lucky and I will protest that this is unjust. Bomb some funeral procession of Muslim civilians who are mourning the death of yesterday's bombing of civilians and I will empathize that this is unjust.

But I have no sympathy for cartoon riots. I have no sympathy for PC imbeciles who forbid this passport photo:



out of fear of offending "Muslim sensitivities".

And I frankly have no sympathy left for a community that is far more concerned about being offended than about the fact that it is the locus of the nutjobs who are blowing up planes and trying to kill thousands and even millions of innocent civilians. I could not care less if their sensitivities are offended by profiling. It's about time.

Red In Tooth And Claw

Mark Shea (from sublink):

Yet at the same time, it also seems to me that Catholics ought to point out to Fundamentalists the curious parallel between the view of natural history they emphatically reject and the view of supernatural history they often emphatically affirm. For one of the weirdest ironies of American Fundamentalism is that it often regards any trace of evolutionary theory with fear and loathing while simultaneously holding a view of Christian history that reads as a kind of Darwinian myth.

The myth runs something like this:

Jesus creates the little cell called "the early church" on the day of Pentecost. It is, as the cell was to Darwin, a featureless, structureless blob of protoplasmic goo which definitely has no bishops, certainly has no Petrine office and reproduces by splitting into other equally undifferentiated blobs of structureless "fellowship" with no authority and no doctrine except "the simple word of God--the Bible." This "Church as Algae Colony" model does not, however, last. Under pressure from the Greco-Roman environment, the primitive life form of the early Church begins to develop various structures and to mutate. Depending on who you talk to, the date may vary, but many Fundamentalists posit that the Church experienced some sort of Mass Extinction in the first, second, or third centuries. Theories vie for whether mass extinction happened shortly after the death of St. John or when Constantine legalized Christianity. But at any rate, some immense Comet of Apostasy slammed into the earth, according to this scenario, and "true Christianity" was nearly annihilated, hiding in the shrubs and underbrush of Europe like a tiny primitive mammal while, for the next 1500 years, enormous powerful brutes called "Catholics" roamed the earth like herds of tyrannosaurs, holding councils, electing Popes and having terrible earth-shaking doctrinal battles in which they imported all manner of pagan mutations like the Eucharist, Marian beliefs, bishops, statues and relics.

The roots of this apostate Catholic Church are, according to this scenario, from a totally different evolutionary line than that of True Christianity. It turns out that Catholics are actually the descendants of Babylonian Mystery Religions which swelled to immense proportions in the vacuum left by the Mass Extinction of True Christians. Sure, the Babylonian Mystery religionists repudiated paganism wholeheartedly and died for their refusal to renounce Christ. Sure, they fought fiercely to preserve Scripture from the scissors of Marcion. Sure, they defied the might of the State for the name of Jesus. Sure, they held the ecumenical councils, canonized Scripture, settled the most vexing questions concerning the nature of God and Christ, evangelized Europe, established the rule of civilization in the demon-haunted lands of barbarians, fostered the growth of science, philosophy, art, music, law and education, cared for the poor, challenged nations to be holy and preserved learning through waves of Viking, Mongol, Vandal, and Islamic invasions. But such "Christians" were an evolutionary dead end because they believed in bishops, the Eucharist and prayer to Mary. True Christians were the nameless, faceless, unknown "hidden church" that did nothing, said nothing, and accomplished nothing for 1500 years while the Catholics of the Mesozoic Era ruled the earth.

Finally, after centuries pass, God sends yet another comet, the Black Death (and a Wycliffe, a Hus and a Renaissance or two), to cause another mass extinction. The Beasts of Popery reel and fall! And then, out of the chaos God again raises up one organism (Martin Luther) who receives the divine spark and evolves to a higher plane of being. But, according to the scenario, Luther is not evolved enough. He still venerates Mary, for instance, and he believes in baptismal generation. So, ever reforming, God abandons this early evolutionary theological equivalent of the Megatherium and continues the march through the ages, "raising up" Calvin, then Wesley, then Finney, then Moody, then the Asuza Street Revival, then the Latter Rain Revival, and so forth till at last, today, we have... Me and My Sect who have finally arrived at highly-evolved, truly spiritual purity. And this must go on ad infinitum. For the only thing that keeps the spiritual gene pool pure is precisely the constant battle for survival among the various sects. That is why Loraine Boettner suggests in Roman Catholicism that "the diversity of the churches, with a healthy spirit of rivalry within proper limits, is one of God's ways of keeping the stream of Christianity from becoming stagnant." It is not love, but competition, that ensures the life of the Church. Indeed, Boettner goes on to quote Walter Montano to say that competition is essential in order for the Christian to know the freedom of the gospel at all. In Montano's words: "Organic unity is a foreign element in Protestantism. The lack of organic unity is the strength, not the weakness, of Protestantism, and assures us of our freedom before God... Unity and liberty are in opposition; as the one diminishes, the other increases. The Reformation broke down unity, it gave liberty..."

Now, for a theology that utterly repudiates "survival of the fittest" ideologies and claims faith in a supernatural God of love, this is a very curious way of looking at God's dealings with the human race...

"If You Were A Tree, Adolph, What Kind Of Tree Would You Be?"

"So many people want to know more about the moustache. What inspired it?"

"Finally...Eva. What a fabulous-looking couple you two make! How did you meet?"

The interview Mike Wallace did with Ahmadinejad was apparently along those lines. Dennis Prager writes about the interview that he should have given.

It Shouldn't Be That Easy To Provoke More Terrorism

Good points in this FrontPageMag article:

“Officials in Brussels have embarked on an unusual exercise, combing their dictionaries to excise words and phrases that could cause offense. When the review is complete and the rules laid down, you will not, for example, hear EU officials talk any more about ‘Islamic terrorism’…EU policymakers worry that it lumps all Muslims into the same category, and angers them.”

Friso Roscam-Abbing, an EU spokesman, said, “‘The politically more correct term will be ‘terrorism that abusively invokes Islam.’…[H]e rejects accusations that the EU is soft-soaping ‘Islamic radicals’--another phrase that is coming under the microscope.” Another EU official added, “‘You don’t want to use terminology which would aggravate the problem.’”

...

Meanwhile, if “aggravating the problem,” or using language that “can breed resentful terrorists,” as the article also suggests, is a security concern, doesn’t that demonstrate that there’s some sense in “lumping all Muslims into the same category?”

Isn’t it a tacit admission of something to say that just using insulting language can make a Muslim snap into kill mode? If policies, protocols and language lexicons are changing based on “Let’s not anger them,” the implication is that those who aren’t terrorists are simply not terrorists yet. We are being told, in so many words, that Muslims as a group are at-risk, that the average Muslim has terroristic inclinations.

If terrorism indeed has a distinct appeal to the average Muslim, and yet the religion is not the cause, then what is? Genetics? Is it time to start talking about the terror gene--and asking the uncomfortable question: Do they choose it, or are they born that way?

And if Islam isn’t the cause of murderous proclivities, have we considered that at the very least it must be a symptom? Take, for example, Denver Safeway killer Michael Ford. When he could no longer take the unspecified jabs at his religion that his family claims he was getting from co-workers, he opened fire on them. Admittedly, it’s possible that here, it wasn’t the religion which drove him to kill, but insults to the religion.

The Reuters article “U.S. Muslims bristle at Bush term Islamic fascists” reports that many American Muslims who reject the term “say they have felt singled out for discrimination since the September 11 attacks.”

It’s time to pin down those feelings for what they are--displacement. Every other group trying to secure its place in Western society has instinctively personalized and internalized the crimes of its own--feeling a sense of embarrassment for far smaller-scale crimes than what Muslims and Arabs inflict on their host societies. Who can forget the Jews and the Italians out-praying each other in the hope that the Son of Sam killer wasn’t “one of ours”? When we learned his last name was Berkowitz, the Jews plotzed. Then we found out he was an Italian adopted by Jews, and the Jews breathed a sigh of relief (“He’s adopted! He’s adopted!”) while the Italians cringed.

The welcoming Statue of Liberty lets immigrants feel they have nothing to prove, but from the beginning, every arriving group has had the decency to not take it to heart. Until now. When you refuse to have natural feelings of collective shame, you project them out onto society as discrimination. Muslims outsource the guilt that they decline to feel, which then leads to appropriate suspicions of them. In contrast, when you hang your head in shame over what other members of your community do, the surrounding society in turn lessens your guilt. Picking up on the good will of a community that has those human feelings of shame, society does the work to disassociate that group from bearing collective responsibility. Suspicions lessen, and there emerges a functional relationship that becomes part of the social fabric.

The "discrimination" that the indignant Muslims and Arabs among us are feeling--despite our running to protect mosques and yelling “They’re not all like that!” every time they help prove that they are--is their own unfelt guilt. The resulting caution, which is perceived as "discrimination" and which would have subsided by now, will only grow.

Dr. Sanity

Has a couple of very good posts. The first examines the dynamic by which our concern for the wellbeing of enamy civilians tends to put them in more danger (be sure to read the complete BlackFive post to which she links). The second looks at the insanity of feminist support for Hezbollah (insane only if you assume feminists care about what they say they do, rather than being a bunch of nihilistic self-haters).

The Bottom Line Is Really Quite Simple

Ace of Spades (yet again):

[E]ven more anti-American is allowing ourselves to be butchered by a population riddled with killers and saboteurs plotting treason and mass-murder every hour of the day, as well as their moral support system that encourages them.

There is too much equivocation about terrorism. There is too much protection of hate-preachers and actual terrorists. There is too much coordination with the terrorists' message of the day. There is too much support, active support or the sorter sort of moral support, for the terrorists in Muslim communities.

You guys had better get your [stuff] under control, pronto. Because the American Street is growing very angry indeed.

You wouldn't like the American Street when it's angry.

Do you not realize that, due to our compassion, openness, and commitment to tolerance, we have lost more than 3000 lives, spent billions on security measures and unprecendentedly humane military interventions, seen hell wreaked on our economy, and have seen our lives disrupted and inconvenienced and just made generally poorer overall?

At what point do you think the limits of compassion, openness, and commitment to tolerance are reached? Do you imagine our virture -- or weakness, as you would have it -- in this regard is infinite?

Do you not comprehend that at some point the majority of the American, British, Australian, etc. people aren't going to realize their lives could be better and safer were it not for the expensive and dangerous presence of a great many Muslims on their soil? Muslims who seem to place a greater value on loyalty to their correligionists than they do to loyalty to their ostensible country of citizenship, or even to the basic human value that human life shall not be snuffed out maliciously?

When do you imagine the paradigm shifts from "deport only those found beyond all reasonable doubt to be supporters of terrorism" to "deport any and all you legally can, because we are just tired of living in the shadow of death"?

This country stamped out the KKK. It will take less to stamp out the Islamic KKK, because half of the recently-minted Islamic "citizens" in Britain and even America will be found to have, if we look carefully enough (and we will begin looking carefully, very soon) irregularities and small misrepresentations on their visas and citizenship applications that will serve nicely as a pretext for large-scale revocations of citizenship and deportation back to their home hellholes.

Get your vile, racist, hateful, murder-porn culture under control, or we are going to eventually use every legal pretext possible to de-export it back to the s---holes you come from, and quarrantine your vicious madness there.

A commitment to tolerance cannot be stretched to become a suicide pact.

We don't want to do anything like that. Even I, at my most disgusted with Muslim political pornography, still hold out hope for sanity to return to the Muslim population.

But this has to stop. Now.

Stop peddling hate and murder-porn, stop protecting jihadists.

On simple economic grounds every new Muslim immigrant or visitor is a net losing proposition for America -- and any other Western country. Due to the increased chance of terrorism and the massively costly security measures we now have to implement, every single new Muslim immigrant or visitor to this or any other Western country makes that country poorer.

Is every Muslim a terrorist or terrorist supporter? Of course not. But enough of them are, and too few Muslims are willing to expose them, that any group of Muslims will contain one or more potential terrorists, and, because of that, every new Muslim in America makes it poorer in both actual wealth and quality of life.

The first step is a complete halt to further Islamic immigration and visitation to the US. And that will come.

Unless Muslims themselves walk back from the edge of the abyss they themselves have created.

PS, although I've usually been careful to use the preferred term "Islamofascist" as most "resepctable" commentators do, with the occasional sloppy slip-up, as a means of distinguishing peaceful, loyal Muslims from the terrorists--

I'm dropping that practice, as of today. Until the Muslim community can demonstrate it is, in word and deed, as opposed to the slaughter of its fellow citizens as true citizenship in the UK, US, Australia, etc., demand, I'm not pretending we have an "Islamofascist" problem anymore. What we have is a Muslim problem.

If the Muslim community wanted to eliminate terrorism, it could do so within a month.

As it's not part of the solution, it's part of the problem, and it's time to judge it as such.

Update: Some more great Ace rhetoric in this post entitled "It Begins: Racial Profiling A Go In Britain".

Just Some Good 'Ol Boys!

Ace of Spades:

"Three Texas Men" Arraigned On Terror Charges For Throwaway Cell Phones, Etc.
– Ace

"Three Texas Men," huh?

The "Three Texas Men," as AP so accurately describes them, were:

* Louai Abdelhamied "Jim Bob" Othman,

* Adham Abdelhamid "Billy Ray" Othman, and

* Maruan Awad Muhareb, also known as "Cactus Jack" Muhareb, also known as "Deuce-In-The-Hole" Muhareb.

Yeeeee-had!

Ace Demolishes A Journalistic Double Standard

Very nicely done.

Couldn't CAIR Less

Dr. Sanity:

Yesterday, the President used the term "Islamic fascist" to describe the enemy that we are fighting. He has started doing this with some regularity lately; a development which I am glad to see sinc the word "terrorist" is too vague, and the "war on terror" too vapid for my taste.

Nevertheless, with a predictable quality reminiscent of Freud's repetition compulsion, the Islamic facists apologist group known as CAIR condemned the terminology and came out with its latest variations on its ongoing theme of Islamic victimhood and oppression--not, as a reasonable person might think, the victimhood and oppression caused by Islamic jihadists; but rather the victimhood and oppression suffered by same:

"We believe this is an ill-advised term and we believe that it is counter-productive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group.

"We ought to take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims," he told a news conference in Washington.

"We urge him (Bush) and we urge other public officials to restrain themselves."

Quite honestly, it would make much more sense if they exhorted the fanatics of their own religion to "restrain themselves"; or even if they could summon up the intellectual and moral courage to admit that Islam and muslims have "started up a religious war" against everyone else.

I'm afraid their CAIRing attitude is beginning to really grate on me as they so obviously try to bamboozle the MSM, who uncritically present their perspective since it [coincidentally, I'm sure] happens to fit into their "bush-is-bad-America-brought this-on-itself-get-rid-of-bush-republicans-and-this nightmare-will-all-go-away" template.

CAIR has consistently and with malice aforethought twisted every act of Islamic violence, cruelty and barbarism into an indictment of America and the West. Their professional propagandists play the victimhood card--as well as, or even better than, an Al Sharpton or Cynthia McKinney--in every news release, press conference, and public statement. And, of course, they manage to shirk all responsibility for what is being done in their religion's name, thus eroding any credibility they might have in the discussion of how to deal with the problem.

Nor have they done anything to further the cause of the many decent, moderate muslims in the U.S. or elsewhere.

If there is a growing Islamophobia in this country and the world, groups like CAIR have done their best to fuel it. As we say in psychiatry, you aren't paranoid if they really are out to get you. And the Islamic fascists/jihadist/terrorists have made it perfectly clear through their words and actions that they ARE out to get us.

...

The truth is that CAIR has failed to demonstrate either reason or goodwill; nor have they demonstrated common sense or any degree of credibility at all since their organization has come into the public spotlight since 9/11.

They are just another propaganda mouthpiece for the jihad.

A Certain Lack Of Unifying Principles

Jay Nordlinger:

Let’s play bumper stickers:

Dear Jay:

I recently saw a car (Honda Civic), the back of which was plastered with liberal bumper stickers, including these two beauties: meat is murder and pro-child/pro-family/pro-choice.

I was disgusted. I’d love to respond with a pair that said: abortion is murder and steak or chicken — that’s a choice.

I’d probably get my windows knocked out.

You got that right.

One time I was driving on the freeway, and I came up to a car on my right. This car was sporting a giant lengthwise sign on its roof, and the back of the car was covered with anti-gun, anti-hunting, and pro-vegetarianism bumper stickers. The sign on the roof said simply, killing for the sake of pleasure is obscene. So I rolled down my right window, honked, and yelled over to the guy, "Hey, are you pro-life or pro-choice?" He proudly smiled and yelled back "Pro-Choice!" I looked up at his sign, shook my head a little, and gave him my "What are you, some kind of idiot?!" look.

I have a psychological theory that a lot of these folks take the positions they do precisely because they support child-sacrifice-by-abortion. I guess my answer to them would be a bumper sticker saying tree hugging does not atone for baby killing.

Portrait Of The Dam Which Keeps Us From 'Going Roman' -- A Dam Which Will Most Probably Eventually Break

Victor Davis Hanson examines the absurd nature of the current war situation. His well-written piece discovers the following six apparent principles:

1. To win these wars, our soldiers must not die or kill.

2. To win these wars, there must be no news of them.

3. To win these wars, a liberal Democrat must wage them.

4. To win these wars, we must win over the Europeans by ensuring they can always earn a profit.

5. To win these wars, we need to outsource the job to those who can fight them with impunity.

6. To win these wars, they should be over in 24 hours — but at all cost no more than 8 weeks.

As a sampler, here is how Hanson establishes points one and two:

To best deal with certain difficulties we’ve encountered in these battles thus far, perhaps the United States should adopt the following set of surreal rules of war.

1. Any death — enemy or friendly, accidental or deliberate, civilian or soldier — favors the terrorists. The Islamists have no claim on morality; Westerners do and show it hourly. So, in a strange way, images of the dead and dying are attributed only to our failing. If ours are killed, it is because those in power were not careful (inadequate body armor, unarmored humvees, etc), most likely due to some supposed conspiracy (Halliburton profiteering, blood for oil, wars for Israel, etc.). When Muslim enemies are killed, whether by intent or accidentally, the whole arsenal of Western postmodern thought comes into play. For the United States to have such power over life and death, the enemy appears to the world as weak, sympathetic, and victimized; we as strong and oppressive. Terrorists are still “constructed” as “the other” and thus are seen as suffering — doctored photos or not — through the grim prism of Western colonialism, racism, and imperialism.

In short, it is not just that Western public opinion won’t tolerate many losses; it won’t tolerate for very long killing the enemy either — unless the belligerents are something akin to the white, Christian Europeans of Milosevic’s Serbia, who, fortunately for NATO war planners in the Balkans, could not seek refuge behind any politically correct paradigm and so were bombed with impunity. Remember, multiculturalism always trumps fascism: the worst homophobe, the intolerant theocrat, and the woman-hating bigot is always sympathetic if he wears some third-world garb, mouths anti-Americanism, and looks most un-European. To win these wars, our soldiers must not die or kill.

2. All media coverage of fighting in the Middle East is ultimately hostile — and for a variety of reasons. Since the 1960s too many reporters have seen their mission as more than disinterested news gathering, but rather as near missionary: they seek to counter the advantages of the Western capitalist power structure by preparing the news in such a way as to show us the victims of profit-making and an affluent elite. Second, most fighting is far from home and dangerous. Trash the U.S. military and you might suffer a bad look at a well-stocked PX as the downside for winning the Pulitzer; trash Hezbollah or Hamas, and you might end up headless on the side of the road. Third, while in a southern Lebanon or the Green Zone, it is always safer to outsource a story and photos to local stringers, whose sympathies are usually with the enemy. A doctored photo that exaggerates Israeli “war crimes” causes a mini-controversy for a day or two back in the States; a doctored photo that exaggerates Hezbollah atrocities wins an RPG in your hotel window. To win these wars, there must be no news of them.

Such a situation is inherently unstable, and I don't expect it to last. If the jihadis manage to pull off something much worse than 9/11 in this country, then I think they'll find that we've simply run completely out of patience and mercy. Somewhere I've read, "To end our conflict with Islam, either they must learn to think and act like us for a couple of generations, or we must learn to think and act like them for a couple of months". Fortunately, when total annihilation of that part of the world becomes thinkable to us, it will be vastly easier to do the many things short of that that will help things immensely. Some ideas: occupy Saudi Arabia and get control of our oil again. Starve the other Islamic oil-producing countries with the resulting low, low prices. Shut down the hatred-preaching mosques in this country. Deport or jail Islamic trouble-makers. Profile the hell out of young Middle Eastern men, instead of hassling grandmas. Prosecute sedition and treason to the full extent of the law. Judiciously lay waste to certain terrorist-infested areas. And other common sense stuff.

What eventually happens is far more up to the jihadis then it is up to us. Despite all of the nonsense we're putting up with now, I don't honestly expect us to ultimately "go gentle into that good night". There will eventually be a winner. And it won't be Islam.

Latest Reuter's Photo-Chicanery

Quite funny:



Satirical story behind this authentic photo here.

Rhetorical Skill

Andrew McCarthy writes well:

Reality has once again inconveniently burst the antiwar, anti-security, anti-American balloon, just as the November victory ballrooms were being booked.

Just as central casting was whipping the articles of impeachment into shape. The high crimes and misdemeanors of George W. Bush include: hunting down terrorists, detaining them, interrogating them, penetrating their communications, and following their money.

These damn jihadists just won’t cooperate. Can’t they read the polls?

As British authorities continue trying to round up around 50 — fifty! — mostly homegrown Muslim militants who were attempting to execute over the Atlantic the very plan master terrorists Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed nearly pulled off over the Pacific a dozen years ago, it’s worth reminding the triumphalist antiwar Left of an important point.

As much as they sometimes seem to have in common with jihadists when they speak about America, its government, its military, and its president, the two are drastically different in one crucial particular.

The antiwar Left wants to wield American power. The jihadists want to destroy it … and us. All of us.

The antiwar Left has a conveniently flexible moral compass. Consequently, the Clinton era Echelon program was fine, but Bush’s NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program is an impeachable offense.

Mishandling classified information by a Clinton CIA director was worthy of a pardon, and destroying classified information (and lying to investigators about it) by a former Clinton national-security adviser was worthy of a pass, but leaking the unremarkable fact that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA is the crime of the century.

Bombing Kosovo without U.N. approval was a moral imperative; invading Iraq after over a dozen U.N. resolutions is a violation of international law.

Renditions conducted between 1994 and 2000 were just good national-security sense; renditions conducted between 2001 and 2006 are war crimes.

Indicting Osama bin Laden in 1998 and then doing nothing to capture him while he bombed two American embassies and an American naval destroyer, killing hundreds, was aggressive yet intelligently modulated counterterrorism; allowing Osama bin Laden to evade capture in Tora Bora while killing and capturing hundreds of his operatives and decimating his hierarchy is irresponsibly incompetent.

Wet fingers firmly in the wind, the Left looks you in the eye and tells you that what is depends on what the definition of “is” is, then votes for it before voting against it. The object of the game is power, and they are willing to gamble, even with our lives, to get it or keep it.

Jihadists are very different. When it comes to our national security, they’re not partisan politicizers. They wanted to kill us when Reagan was in charge, when Clinton was in charge, now that Bush is in charge, and tomorrow no matter who is in charge. They want to kill us where Tony Blair is in charge, where Ehud Olmert is in charge, and — no matter how he contorts himself — even where Jacques Chirac is in charge.

They are not foul-weather fiends. Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Shebaa Farms, Gitmo, flushed Korans, Salman Rushdie, the Crusades, etc., etc., etc…. These are not causes. They are excuses...

Grumman TBF Avenger Still In Service!

If only in political cartoons:






BTW, I also liked this sad-but-true cartoon:

Beautiful Story

I saw this video last week, but didn't know the story behind it. Today, via e-mail, I happened to receive the story. Read it, then watch the video.

The story:

Strongest Dad in the World

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I stink.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.''

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care)and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every > weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

Cute Picture

Here.

Train-Wreck Cognition

Poor Microsoft. Poor, incompetent, laughing-stock Microsoft. This short video report on a failed voice-recognition demo is a must-see. H/T Peeve Farm.

Republicans Should Support Lieberman

John Hawkins gives 8 good reasons why. One of the biggest reasons is that it would be fun to turn supporting Lamont in the general election into a Vietnam-style quagmire for the lefties. Make them pour their blood and treasure into the fight! War by proxy! If we're Iran, then Lieberman is our Hezbollah!

Winning Is A Triumph Of Democracy, Losing Is A Clarion Call For Revolution

Mary Katharine Ham on Cynthia McKinney:

McKinney Election Stolen...By 11,000 Votes

Right, Cynthia.

Check out her "concession" speech at the bottom of the Hot Air election coverage from last night.

President Kennedy warned us that, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Are you threatening me, Cynthia?

Electronic voting machines are a threat to our democracy. So let the word go out-- we aren't going to tolerate any more stolen elections.

Um, you lost by 16 percent in a district that's more solidly Democratic than the Kennedy Compound. It ain't the voting machines, sugar, unless by "machines" you mean "citizens."

We're watching you and we want our leaders back or we will become the leaders. And not only do we want our country back, we want our party back.

We'll become the leaders by blabbering about Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, attacking Capitol Police officers, and subsequently losing by 16 percent in a run-off, and blaming it on the "machines." Wait, you don't think that'll work?

There is a growing force for peace in this country, and the peace movement that we're building is backed by millions of young people.

But it could inevitably become violent at any moment, so watch your back. Peace cannot be stopped!

Some Republicans have discussed whether it's good that McKinney went down, given that she has that special talent for making Democrats look even more batty than usual. I say her going home is good for the country and very, very good for the people of Dekalb, bless their hearts. Seriously, an elected official fomenting stolen-election conspiracy theories after a 16-percent loss in a district she knows dang well should could have kept if she'd kept her mouth shut?

It's disgraceful, and perpetuating the myth of the disenfranchised black voter-- especially in the South-- is the worst kind of race-baiting. Georgia will be much better off without McKinney representing it...

How Deep Does This Rabbit Hole Go?

Michelle Malkin highlights some more lying propaganda photos taken at face value by our MSM (who, as a matter of general policy suspect everything our own gov't says and nothing that Hezbollah says). These ones are brand new examples of complete photo fakery, and add to what Reuter's was caught with over the weekend.

Update: Good Pajamas Media roundup here.

Update: More from Michele Malkin at HotAir here.

Nice Summation

Some good writing by Dean Barnett, as he examines the decline of the once-great Democratic party.

Litany Of Fear

Excellent:

It seems that the current incarnation of the Democratic Party -- now caught up in a Moveon.org/HuffPo trance - has quickly become a sum of its countless fears. The party that once resisted fear has now become one that champions it in every strange and shadowy shape.

If the country and perhaps the geopolitical balance weren't at stake, it would be funny. Actually, even with those in peril, it's still funny. Very, very funny. I am fearful that it may be the funniest thing ever. Almost as funny David Mamet's napkin art. Or Rebecca Pidgeon's downloads. Remember those?

Hilarious stuff!

You say that the Republicans are fear mongers, what with their inconvenient reminders that terrorism is rampant in the world. But it seems to me that the real fear mongers are on the left, as amply demonstrated here with this list I made after reading a week's worth of Huffposts, all while sitting in my underwear under a sun lamp:

THE HUFFPO LIST OF THINGS TO BE FEARFUL OF!

The litany follows, and it's a good one, so do click over to it.

Sales Are Slow, So Let's Jack Up The Price

Thomas Sowell:

It was a common political move when Chicago's city council voted recently to impose a $10 an hour minimum wage on big-box retailers. There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.

What was uncommon was the reaction.

...

While the $10 an hour minimum wage was politics as usual, the unusual backlash against it provides at least a glimmer of hope that more people are beginning to consider the economic consequences of such feel-good legislation.

A survey has shown that 85 percent of the economists in Canada and 90 percent of the economists in the United States say that minimum wage laws reduce employment. But you don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know that jacking up prices leads fewer people to buy. Those people include employers, who hire less labor when labor is made artificially more expensive.

...

There is no free lunch. Higher labor costs mean fewer jobs.

Since all workers do not have the same skill or experience, minimum wage laws have more impact on some than on others. Young, inexperienced and unskilled workers are especially likely to find it harder to get a job when wage rates have been set higher than the value of their productivity.

...

In the United States, the group hardest hit by minimum wage laws are black male teenagers. Those who refuse to admit that the minimum wage is the reason for high unemployment rates among young blacks blame racism, lack of education and whatever else occurs to them.

The hard facts say otherwise. Back in the 1940s, there was no less racism than today and black teenagers had no more education than today, but their unemployment rate was a fraction of what it is now -- and was no different from that of white teenagers.

What was different back then? Although there was a minimum wage law on the books, the inflation of that era had raised wage rates well above the specified minimum, which had remained unchanged for years.

For all practical purposes, there was no minimum wage law. Only after the minimum wage began to be raised, beginning in 1950, and escalating repeatedly in the years thereafter, did black teenage unemployment skyrocket.

Most studies show unemployment resulting from minimum wages. But a few studies that reach different conclusions are hailed as having "refuted" the "myth" that minimum wages cause unemployment.

Some of these latter studies involve surveying employers before and after a minimum wage increase. But you can only survey employers who are still in business. By surveying people who played Russian roulette and are still around, you could "refute" the "myth" that Russian roulette is dangerous.

Minimum wage laws play Russian roulette with people who need jobs and the work experience that will enable them to rise to higher pay levels. There is now a glimmer of hope that more people are beginning to understand this, despite political demagoguery.

Cheap And Tawdry Propaganda

The big story over the weekend (big except in the fantasy world of the MSM) was the obviously-doctored-via-photoshop "news" photos put out by Reuters (a Hezbollah subsidiary). Good overview here.

Update: Ann Althouse points out:

Really crudely done photoshopping -- with obvious political intent -- has gotten past the editors at Reuters in the last few days. Quite apart from the dismaying ineptitude of missing the clear evidence of manipulation that bloggers will eagerly and easily throw in their faces, we should worry that there is much more subtle and expert use of photoshopping going on all the time. These recent incidents should wake us up and make us mistrust every photograph that is ever offered up as anything other than an imaginative illustration.

Update: Michelle Malkin video-blogs the Reuters story at HotAir.

Christianophobia

Dr Sanity:

At the end of the 20th century, it was apparent that both leftist and rightist totalitarian forces had been soundly beaten by on the battlefield of reality. Sadly, neither was out for the duration, and what we have seen since that time is a alliance between leftist intellectual thought (via postmodern philosophical attempts to compensate for the reality of their intellectual defeat) and the rightist religious fascism of Islam as it is practiced in most of the world.

Islam wherever it exists is trying to impose a theocracy. What the leaders of Hamas, Al Qaeda, Iran and others say explicitly, openly, and repeatedly, doesn't ever seem to register on the intellectual leadership of the left.

...

The intellectual leadership of the left consciously know all this, but have allied themselves with this particular theocracy anyway. In their arrogance, they do not feel threatened by Islam, because Islam has shown itself to be compatible with their ideology of totalitarianism and social tyranny. They believe that when they and Islam get rid of their mutual enemies--freedom, capitalism, and individuality--they will be able to handle the the religious details and come out on top.

In the meantime, the psychological displacement and denial that they actively encourage works to their advantage in the general population, who became genuinely and realistically fearful of Islam and its adherents after 9/11.

Displacement is a psychological defense mechanism where there is a separation of emotion from its real object and then redirection of the intense emotion toward something less threatening.

When was the last time you heard of a Christian fundamentalist nation? When was the last time that Christianity killed non-believers and tortured those who ran afoul of the religious laws?

If you answered, "the middle ages"--you are correct.

...

But, as we all know, there is a religion-- now, today-- that encourages its adherents to kill non-believers. That relegates women to second class citizenship and makes their sexuality a sin punishable by death. There is a religion where homosexuality is not tolerated and individual thought is suppressed.

There is a religion practiced today that rules as a totalitarian theocracy in a number of countries; and its religious leaders regularly give permission to its beleivers to kill Americans, Christians, and Jews. Devoted believers of this religion piloted airplanes into American buildings, killing thousands. They would do it again if they get the chance. Devoted believers in this religion behead people who disagree with them and can be convinced to blow themselves up in order to kill people they don't like.

Between Christianity and the religion described above, which do you suppose is the real threat to America and its citizens? The one that advocates peaceful solutions to problems? Or the one that advocates jihad and death to America?

The left and their political front, the Democrats, would have you believe that because some Christians disapprove of abortion or homosexuality on moral grounds; or that they are vocal in their objection to the state-sanctioned murder of innocents that this is a sign of the impending theocracy. Thus, instead of rational argument and disagreement, the left has chosen to IMPOSE their particular beliefs on each of these topics by passing laws--exactly what they accuse the religious right in this country of trying to do. This psychological technique is called projection; and the political technique of imposing one set of beliefs--religious or not-- on another group by law is known as tyranny. Neither side is correct in trying to impose their particular religion across the nation. But, as the city of San Francisco continually reminds us, local populations may vote to be as ridiculous and amoral as they choose over whatever issues they desire. They simply have to stick within the general guidelines of the Constitution of the U.S. and their particular state.

However comforting it is to believe that Christianity is the religion that poses a threat to freedom and democracy, the real world eventually intrudes on such fantasies. While these clever people "bravely" confront the straw man religion they have set up as the enemy, the real danger slips in unnoticed and without hindrance. Doesn't it strike you as somewhat bizarre that we are exhorted to be "sensitive" to the grossly oppressive beliefs of Islam (e.g. in the case of the rather innocent and childlike Danish cartoons); yet, it is considered avantgard and progressive--and an issue of "freedom of speech" to display pornographic images of Christ or dung-laden images of his mother?

When do you suppose the "secular humanists" and Leftists will organize a conference to discuss the threat that Islam poses to their political freedoms? Don't hold your breath. They actually share the same politics with those who explicitly desire to impose a religious theocracy.

Once again, denial, projection and displacement are at work. They brought us the phenomenon of Bush Derangement Syndrome; and have simultaneously caused a co-occurring disorder: Christianophobia, or Christianity Derangement Syndrome, or antichristianism--call it what you will.

...

In case you have not achieved the expected level of paranoia about how dangerous Bush is; and how imminent is the imposition in America of a Christian Theocracy; then it is clear that you are not making the necessary "connections" that the left sees so clearly in its version of reality...

If Darwinists Wonder Why ID Is Gaining Adherents, All They Need Do Is Look In The Mirror

Evangelical Outpost has a list of reasons why.

BTW, if any Darwinist makes the typical comment : "This is ignorant. Just what is a 'Darwinist', anyway?", my answer is: "If you don't know, than why do you assume I'm talking about you?" Another answer might be, "A Darwinist is someone who gets a kick out of seeing the following mocking item stuck on the back of a car: a Christian fish with legs added, which rather than the greek letters IXOYE, contains Roman letters within it spelling a certain name."

And if he makes the comment that ID is losing ground, I can only observe that it is a mainstream topic today. Ten years ago, no one knew about it. If this is losing ground, then I hope it loses a lot more.

Update: Part II of the '10 Reasons' post is here.

Update: Part III of the '10 Reasons' post is here.

Clans Of The Alphane Moon

Is the title of this bravura ShrinkWrapped post.

The Road To Vicious And Brutal World War

It's getting hard for me to see how it's going to be avoidable. At least the victorious West that emerges will have its spine back, and will have lost its tolerance for relativistic nonsense. Pity the barbarians, though.

Victor Davis Hanson has a rather haunting piece about the 1930's-style madness that is descending on the world.

excerpts:

When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.

...

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

...

And finally examine here at home reaction to Hezbollah — which has butchered Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia — from a prominent Democratic Congressman, John Dingell: “I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah.” And isn’t that the point, after all: the amoral Westerner cannot exercise moral judgment because he no longer has any?

...

There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region”) — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil, terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic Jew-hatred.

It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.

Update: The Anchoress has a good commentary on the VDH piece.

The Real Story

Krauthammer is about as succinct as anyone I've seen in explaining the Israel/Hezbollah situation.

excerpts:

For decades there has been a debate in the U.S. over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970, Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982, American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).

...

America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.

...

America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances, give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the U.S. to let Israel take down Hezbollah. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.

Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. Defeating Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. It would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower.

The U.S. has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war Cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive Cabinet debates are broadcast to the world as was Olmert's own complaint that ``I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night." (Haaretz, July 28.) Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.

His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation, but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.

Great Quote

Seen at American Digest.

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin." - H.L.Mencken

Colbert Does It Again

This is great.

Wow.

The Anchoresss has been keeping a pretty low profile lately. It's been a while since she's come up with a serious "taking-the-liberals-to-the-woodshed" post like this new one. Nicely done.

Not An Onion Headline

Theme park calls off "Muslim Fun Day"

Colbert Interviews Barney Frank

More good Colbert here.

Chad Vader

I got a kick out of these: Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager, episodes one and two.

Nicely Executed

A Counter-Analogy

According to most neurophysiologists, the "soul" obviously emerges naturally from the tangled thicket of neural interconnections in the brain (this is from the well-known and incontrovertibly established physical law that if a deterministic machine gets seriously frickin' complicated, then a ghost should be expected to emerge from it. I think it's the fourth law of thermodynamics or something).

While this is not the first time I've encountered the idea of the following analogical counter-example, it is the first time I've seen this particular expression of it:

"Imagine an intelligent and curious person who knows nothing about electricity or electromagnetic radiation. He is shown a television set for the first time. He might at first suppose that the set actually contained little people, whose images he saw on the screen. But when he looked inside and found only wires, condensers, transistors, and so on, he might adopt the more sophisticated theory that the screen images somehow arose from complicated interactions among the components of the set. This hypothesis would seem particularly plausible when he found that the images became distorted or disappeared completely when components were removed, and that the images were restored to normal when these components were put back in their proper places."

Of course, the real facts of the case are that the images are not generated by the set at all, and come from somewhere else. The set only allows them to be expressed locally on the screen. The potential analogy is with the soul, which while needing a body and nervous system to express itself and act in the world, is not thereby generated by the body and nervous system.

H/T tinabrewer in this comment thread.

The Happy Couple

Taken at a little dinner party a few days after the engagement.

Psalm 51 Brutally Fisked

Mark Shea has written an excellent, intelligent parody (inspired partially by the Mel Gibson brouhaha, and partially by those who are "hardliners" when it comes to forgiveness).

Sidenote: I wouldn't be surprised to read something with this tone (fisking not the Psalm itself, but the exact same general sentiments as stated by the Pope, a bishop, a pastor, or a theologian) as a serious article in the New Oxford Review, a formerly excellent Catholic magazine, which has, in the last five years or so, turned itself into a pit of holier-than-the-pope vitriol and ruthless judgmentalism. Of course, I'm sure the editor could make an airtight case that I am an abject fool, who is endangering his own salvation by even thinking such a thing...

Hope Is Emo

Amusing Goth-kid vidcast parody. H/T Ace Of Spades.

The Founding Spirit Of This Country Is, After All, Along The Lines Of, "Screw World Opinion!"

It's comical to me that so many Dhimmicrats and assorted fellow-travellers want the USA to be deeply concerned about "world opinion". If I'm not mistaken, this is a country made up of immigrants trying to get the hell away from the rest of the messed-up world and its ludicrous opinions about how things should be run. Yes?

Dennis Prager:

"[W]orld opinion" is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world's cruelest countries.

Why is this?

Here are four reasons:

First, television news.

It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news. Even when not driven by political bias -- an exceedingly rare occurrence globally -- television news presents a thoroughly distorted picture of the world. Because it is almost entirely dependent upon pictures, TV news is only capable of showing human suffering in, or caused by, free countries. So even if the BBC or CNN were interested in showing the suffering of millions of Sudanese blacks or North Koreans -- and they are not interested in so doing -- they cannot do it because reporters cannot visit Sudan or North Korea and video freely. Likewise, China's decimation and annexation of Tibet, one of the world's oldest ongoing civilizations, never made it to television.

Second, "world opinion" is shaped by the same lack of courage that shapes most individual human beings' behavior. This is another aspect of the problem of the distorted way news is presented. It takes courage to report the evil of evil regimes; it takes no courage to report on the flaws of decent societies. Reporters who went into Afghanistan without the Soviet Union's permission were killed. Reporters would risk their lives to get critical stories out of Tibet, North Korea and other areas where vicious regimes rule. But to report on America's bad deeds in Iraq (not to mention at home) or Israel's is relatively effortless, and you surely won't get killed. Indeed, you may well win a Pulitzer Prize.

Third, "world opinion" bends toward power. To cite the Israel example, "world opinion" far more fears alienating the largest producers of oil and 1 billion Muslims than it fears alienating tiny Israel and the world's 13 million Jews. And not only because of oil and numbers. When you offend Muslims, you risk getting a fatwa, having your editorial offices burned down or receiving death threats. Jews don't burn down their critics' offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats.

Fourth, those who don't fight evil condemn those who do. "World opinion" doesn't confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do -- most notably today America and Israel.

The moment one recognizes "world opinion" for what it is -- a statement of moral cowardice, one is longer enthralled by the term. That "world opinion" at this moment allegedly loathes America and Israel is a badge of honor to be worn proudly by those countries. It is when "world opinion" and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you've lost your way.