Maggie's Farm

I am a democrat [believer in democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. . . . I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. . . . The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

C.S. Lewis, in his essay Equality (as quoted at Evang. Outpost)

Is Iran on the path to self-destruction? Forbes

Jihadists on the police force. Riehl. Yes, that is suicidal.

The newest line on Iraq: "The Iraqi government let us down." Blame them. Of course, there is some truth to it.

Alan Johnson's ransom paid by the BBC: 5 million dollars and a million bullets. Where does one buy a million Kalashnikov bullets? And does the Beeb care who those bullets end up inside of?

Samizdata quotes a Telegraph review of The Islamist, which is written by Ed Husain, former terrorist:

Mr Husain, whose book, The Islamist, exposed the workings of Hizb ut-Tahir, is contemptuous of the idea that the latest plots were inspired by the West's intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This is just an excuse. They reject Western culture full stop, not just 'slags in night clubs'. They would have supported the bombing of Muslims attending the cinema in Cairo in the 1950s. They do not want Muslims to enjoy social freedoms. If it was not Iraq they would cite Chechnya. Or Palestine. These are angry men. Accommodation is not an option. It has to be containment or annihilation."

A quote from Augean Stables, re dealing with the Moslem manipulations to which some are so foolishly susceptible:

...isn’t it time we stopped being condescending racists, treating them as children even as we loudly proclaim our respect for them?

The conflict right now divides along two mutually exclusive lines. The hawks say, “let’s get tough, only force will work.” The doves say, “let’s be nice, only talk will work.” How about some verbal confrontations? How about every Western newspaper publishing the Danish Cartoons (with the three fake ones identified as psy-ops incitement) so that Muslims the world over are embarrased by the revolting behavior of their co-religionists, rather than we and decent Muslims are subject to the temper tantrum of the touchiest and most violent of the lot? How about the Pope saying “you’ve got to be kidding!” when the Muslims violently insist he apologize for calling them violent? How about the Brits saying, “We take this level of self-criticism as part and parcel of a decent and tolerant society. If you can’t stand the heat, a) get out of the kitchen, and b) don’t expect us to take your criticism of us seriously until you can take the heat?

Re the above, Cal Thomas: "I'm going to keep pointing it out until they blow me up"

Isaiah 66: 10-16

¹⁰Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her— ¹¹that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. ¹²For thus says the Lord: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees. ¹³As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. ¹⁴You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with his servants, and his indignation is against his enemies.

¹⁵For the Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to pay back his anger in fury, and his rebuke in flames of fire. ¹⁶For by fire will the Lord execute judgment, and by his sword, on all flesh; and those slain by the Lord shall be many.

Our Aliyah Diary author has been truant from Maggie's for too long. He has not yet completed the lengthy and arduous aliyah process required for becoming an Israeli citizen, but his Hebrew and his riflery are getting better and better, I understand. He files this report of his visit to a fellow physician in the Bedouin village of Rahat last week.

          An afternoon and evening in Rahat, guest of a gentle Bedouin Professor A., who was my Virgil in a tour through the fringes of Hell.  A Bedouin town, one of seven built by the Israelis in the early 70’s, Rahat, meaning water-hole, a place to gather for shepherds, so too to gather-in the wandering Bedouin. A town of several thousand, located geographically at the northern tip of the Negev desert, but in other ways, located someplace between here and the fringe of Bombay.

           I begin with my leaving. Too late, too tired, I see what A., driving his VW diesel Passat, does not: a man, perhaps a father, red broomstick whipping over his head, full-armed whacks on three children to get into the yard. The youngest, a girl perhaps five, has arms upraised, futile, trying to fend off the next blow.  He does not always swing; at moments he motions threateningly, stand at the steel corrugated gate.  Then, he lets loose once more on the girl’s back and the gate is closed to the outside world.

            A. says a few moments later that it is better to tour Rahat at night: the darkness hides what should not be seen.

            I have spoken about courage among Israeli soldiers at Ben Gurion University, thinking at the back of my neck how there are Bedouin colleagues in the audience. Awad has invited me to his home afterwards. Dinner, early.

           Awad studied medicine in Rumania during the era when the Israeli Communist Party gave scholarships to Arab students to learn in Soviet medical schools.  He lived there some six years, got a degree and a Slavic wife, L.  It is an evening all in Hebrew.  L. is flaxen, angular-faced, has a large wart punctuating the end of her left eyebrow.  Seems a Slavic trait – a punctuated face.

           A. and I enter the house and I barely notice at my right, sitting beneath a tent suspended from the house, is an ancient woman,  a white cotton shawl over her head, the left margin clamped at the left corner of her lips.  She is there when I arrive; she remains there six hours later.  We pass her once more, A. and I. He says nothing, nor does she. She is his mother. 

Read the rest on continuation page below.      

Cartoon on temporary loan from Theo:

No Second Troy

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being as she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Good clean fun!

We already know that those Islamists are fun people with a great sense of humor, and the gift of being mature enough, and emotionally secure enough to laugh at themselves, so our cuz across the pond Theo has a contest.

If you have time, give it a whirl your own self.

Image of the now- famous Rage Boy (he is very very angry) borrowed from Snapped Shot.

"Men," a sergeant told his people aboard ship before our invasion of the island, "Saipan is covered with dense jungle, quicksand, steep hills and cliffs hiding batteries of huge coastal guns, and strongholds of reinforced concrete. Insects bear lethal poisons. Crocodiles and snakes infest the streams. The waters around it are thick with sharks. The population will be hostile toward us." There was a long silence. Then a corporal said, "Sarge, why don't we just let the Japs keep it?"

From William Manchester's Goodbye, Darkness. (h/t, Buddy)

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if, only, by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube."

Ayn Rand, borrowed in toto from SDA

At 247', Mirabella V is the world's largest single-masted sailboat. She can do 20 knots under sail: that lengthy waterline helps with boat speed.

Best of all, you can lease her, with crew, by the week - but it's a bit pricey for the average workin' stiff at $300,000 per week. Summers in the Med, winters in the Caribbean.

Details and great photos at Mirabella V.

We praise Sen John McCain for sticking to his convictions. Unfortunately for him, his convictions do not garner a great deal of support.

Hitchcock film techinques: Synthstuff

A Victoria Cross and a Presidential Citation. Jim Miller. But the news is all Michael Moore and Paris Hilton.

The great Artur Schnabel: Terry Teachout looks at Schnabel's life and career, at Commentary

Re the UK bombings, a darn good question at SDA:

How does a 26-year-old become a practicing neurologist? What is this, the Readers Digest version of medical school or just Mohammed Jamil Howzer?)

This was a great business concept. Talk about easy money. Coyote. Funny how people can't resist tossing a coin into a fountain.

From the Weekly Standard review of The Dangerous Book for Boys:

"If you see a girl in need of help--unable to lift something, for example--do not taunt her. Approach the object and greet her with a cheerful smile, whilst surreptitiously testing the weight of the object. If you find you can lift it, go ahead. If you can't, try sitting on it and engaging her in conversation." Ovid couldn't have put it any better.

The Scooter Libby manufactured outrage was totally predictable, as is the stench of hypocrisy.

There is a fine line between a successful terror attack and one which looks bumbling and bungled. A good point, at neoneo

Freak Show. Looks like the Coney Island side shows have moved to San Francisco.

Old media vs. new media: Driscoll. With a bit of an inside view from an anonymous old media person.

Women are perps of domestic violence far more often than men. Dr. Helen.

Washington is not working? Who wants it to? Who wants "efficient government"? Mussolini was famous for it, but I prefer a paralyzed government most of the time unless they are killing our enemies. A quote from Jay Cost from a piece at Betsy:

Washington is "not working" not because it lacks strong and effective managers. Washington is "not working" because it was designed not to work when there is an absence of political consensus, which there is right now. Washington "fails to work" more often than not because ours is a diverse nation with many competing interests, and our Founders feared the possibility that one interest might railroad another. They thought that the best way to preserve our republican form of government would be to make political change next-to-impossible without a political consensus.

A warning from John Adams, in a letter in 1814:

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.

From Hansen. A quote:

It is stereotypically easy to identify authoritarians who seek restrict civil liberties during war in the name of "national security." But it is much harder to take on crusading special interest groups, district attorneys, court justices, and liberal Senators who ignore, twist, or subvert our constitutional freedoms under the liberal clarion call of helping minorities, stopping the war, or championing the underclass.

If we are to lose our civil liberties, it won't be all of sudden due to Patriot-Act zealots in sunglasses and flattops, but rather insidiously and incrementally by egalitarian professors, moral crusaders, muckraking journalists, and government utopians all unhappy that constitutional justice is too little and too late for their ever impatient desire to ensure heaven on earth.

Their utopia is my Brave New World nightmare, and I am sure that VDH agrees. Read the whole thing (h/t, Jules).

With the new server, Maggie's Farm should load noticeably faster, and pages should load faster, and it should speed up further over the next few days.

Still some problems if you access via AOL. 

Beverly "Bubbles" Sills died at 78. Una Voce Poco Fa (1976), from the Barber of Seville.

Dalrymple thinks about why Australian academics are in love with the idea of genocide of their aborigines. A quote:

...if you are unhappy in a country like Australia, you have to consider the possibility that the problem lies with you rather than with the conditions that surround you.

This is a disagreeable thing, particularly for an intelligentsia, which is deprived by it of a providential role for itself. What does an intelligentsia do when a country is already as satisfactory in its political arrangements and social institutions as any country has ever been? Intelligentsias do not like the kind of small problems that day to day existence inevitably throws up, such as termites in the woodwork or conflict at work over desk-space: they like to get their intellectual teeth into weightier, meatier problems.

What could be a weightier problem than a prosperous, fortunate country that was founded upon genocide? Clearly, if it was so founded, an intelligentsia is urgently needed to help it emerge from the dark moral labyrinth in which it exists, hitherto blindly. For only an intelligentsia is sufficiently used to thinking in abstractions to be qualified to act as guide to the nation.

Read the whole thing.

Photo: Australian Aborigine with didgereedoo

Our host installed a super-duper new server today, so we have been down. It may take AOL a while to catch on, and for full function to reappear.