We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Having sent Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden, do we propose to deal with Gaddafi by unleashing fierce lawyers at the Hague?...
Our current notions seem to reflect the cosmopolitan notion that we must care about everyone equally. In 2005, one of the leading theorists of cosmopolitan ethics, David Held of the London School of Economics, defined it this way: “Humankind belongs to a single moral realm in which each person is regarded as equally worthy of respect and consideration.” If you take this seriously enough, you will find it very hard to fight a successful war.
Gateway Pundit: “Like with everything Obama does, there’s no more than a two degree of separation between him and some America-hating leftist radical.”
VERY cool graphic: which supplements have evidence of working for various conditions, or not (go to "show me" tab on right side to see which work for which conditions; higher and bigger on the scale is better)
Neptunus Lex:" “Possible UN sanctions” for a Syrian nuclear plant that was destroyed almost four years ago? Talk about barn doors and fled horses.”
Surber: Lefty on the Lefties:“firebagging lefties constantly project on anyone with the temerity to question their paranoid conspiracy theories and character assassinations.” – There’s a HuffApp for that
Anomalocaridids. Say that 100 times, fast. They’d eat you or a distant ancestor.
Remembering The Brave. This slide show consists of photos taken at a formal dinner at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, VA. It is a beautiful presentation of the honor, commitment and pride today's heroes share with yesterday's.
Senate votes: Obama budget 0-97; Ryan House Budget 40-57 – Inching closer to facing the facts?
So one naturally asks: do the Democrats have something better to propose? The answer is: No. The Democratic Senate has not come up with a budget in two years, thereby violating federal law. President Obama has not proposed a replacement for his laughable FY 2012 budget, which not a single member of Congress is willing to support. The Democrats have no budget; no plan; no path out of the fiscal disaster into which they have led the United States. They are bystanders and political opportunists, utterly unfit to govern.
Why New York's future is fleeing -- Actually, its future has been fleeing since the ‘60s and ‘70s. When I left, NYC was THE only crazy city to live, as sanity was sought elsewhere. The infection has spread to most other cities. Many of the NYC emigres carried it, along with their liberal politics.
The Dems' 'breathtaking' refusal to pass a budget: “The most amazing thing about all this, to Republicans, is that Reid’s abdication of responsibility has attracted so little attention. In a country drowning in debt, where’s the outrage?” – Senate Democrats:Bujeets! We don’t need no steenken bujeets
The Keynesian end point --The truth? "QE2 has created a massive new bubble in dollar-based financial assets, from stocks to gold. Meanwhile, it has had zero visible effect on the real economy."
How the Left Went Wrong on Islam: “The Soviet Union had tried to turn Muslim identity into a Communist identity. And that effort failed badly. The Communists remained infidels. Now we are trying to turn Muslim identity into a Democratic identity, and failing just as miserably.”
Prediction: In September, President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy blows up in his (and our) face(s). It’s totally obvious and yet no one is focusing on it.
I’m not referring to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for unilateral independence at the UN. I’m referring to the Egyptian parliamentary election.
It is totally obvious that in that election Egypt will elect a radical, anti-American, hate-Israel parliament which will then write the country’s new constitution….
On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the United States will be watching the triumph of the ideology and movement--not Usama bin Ladin, of course, but his smarter counterparts--in much of the Middle East.
PS: Here's an excellent guide to Egypt's political parties so far which proves my point . Note that there isn't a single serious moderate party. Amr Mousa isn't forming a party while Muhammad ElBaradei, Obama's favorite, isn't doing anything but complain. There is a "Facebook party." So far it has 1000 "likes." Egypt has about 85 million people.
Bipartisan foreign policy: “House lawmakers from both parties are siding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over President Obama in their differing approaches to the Israel-Palestine border dispute.” – Plus, Netanyahu gets more standing ovations than Obama, and without a teleprompter Netanyahu actually connects with authenticity.
The audience:Wiseguy member of the media joked, “If he nuked Tel Aviv, maybe the Jewish vote would go down to 60 percent.” [He forgets that Reagan won 40% and Bush#2 35%, before President O alienated more.]– And, Jewish support for Israel is not declining.And, consciousness is rising. So, another solid 2008 O-group will not be so overwhelming in 2012. Ari Fleisher: “If Jews go 4-1 Democrat (as they did in 2008) Republicans lose, he says, but: If the Democrats win three to one it almost always tips it to the Republicans in Florida and Ohio.” – Isolationists among Republicans –Paul, for example- do not help, though.
There are journalism awards that honor great journalism. There are journalism awards with which one can argue. And then there are journalism awards that completely discredit the awarding entity itself. This is one of those latter category of awards.
“The Amsterdam court that is trying Mr. Wildersis engaged in a surgical operation for political purposes under the mandate of the Dutch ruling class. Its task is to excise the PVV leader from the Dutch body politic and restore the multicultural state to its previous dominance.”
Interesting parallels to today (1989 paper by a dear friend Miriam London, and wife to another dear friend Ivan London, both profs during my college days)
Like some Soviet experts before them, on whom they cast no backward glance, they were practitioners of the intellectual pseudo-faith of the century, dreaming up the City of Perfect Justice on Earth.
More useless gov't: “This is major expansion of government -- a separate branch of the Federal Reserve with immense powers to regulate "all consumer products." The excuse for it is bogus…”
Irony Meter Explodes: California, which imprisons 30,000 illegal immigrants, ordered to release 30,000 prisoners due to overcrowding – But, California likely to release the ill prisoners, who will then start collecting MediCal, shifting billions of costs back to Washington.
Keep on Dancing: Haitian Salsa Champion Gets Second Chance to Dance due to Israeli Doctors – “We are extremely pleased to announce that George has been invited by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York to be featured in a float in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade [June 5].”
Barry Rubin (director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal):
Israel is not going to allow a president with no credibility, who clearly doesn’t understand what’s at stake, fails to support his Arab allies, is soft on his Iranian and Syrian enemies, doesn’t learn from his past errors, is sacrificing U.S. interests in the region, and pays no attention to what’s happening in Egypt, to determine its future.
Thomas Merton and Buddhism: “Merton, who helped to popularise "Eastern spirituality" in the West, really misconstrued and misrepresented Buddhism.”
Ryan turns the other cheek: ““A candidate who is timid on entitlement reform is not qualified to lead the country,”
Well written police report:
Orville Smith, a store manager for Best Buy in Augusta, Georgia, told police he observed a male customer, later identified as Tyrone Jackson of Augusta, on surveillance cameras putting a laptop computer under his jacket. When confronted, the man became irate, knocked down an employee, drew a knife and ran for the door.
Outside on the sidewalk were four Marines collecting toys for the "Toys for Tots" program. Smith said the Marines stopped the man, but he stabbed one of the Marines, Cpl. Phillip Duggan, in the back. The injury did not appear to be severe.
After Police and an ambulance arrived at the scene Cpl. Duggan was transported for treatment.
The subject was also transported to the local hospital with two broken arms, a broken ankle, a broken leg, several missing teeth, possible broken ribs, multiple contusions, assorted lacerations, a broken nose and a broken jaw...injuries he sustained when he slipped and fell off of the curb after stabbing the Marine.
Alternative medical treatments rarely work. But the placebo effect they induce sometimes does “Dr Ernst is no breathless promoter of snake oil. Instead, he and his research group have pioneered the rigorous study of everything from acupuncture and crystal healing to Reiki channelling and herbal remedies. Alternative medicine is big business. Since it is largely unregulated, reliable statistics are hard to come by.”
The decision is opposed by the Midwest Dairy Association, a trade group of 11,000 dairy farms. While applauding the focus on health, the association noted that chocolate milk sold in Minneapolis schools has less sugar than other versions and only 20 calories more than a carton of 1-percent-fat milk.
In addition, research funded by the dairy industry shows that bans on chocolate milk are counterproductive. Children who switch to white milk end up throwing more away and getting less calcium and Vitamin D, said Carolyn Hudson, a dietitian with Midwest Dairy. "If the kids don't drink it," she said, "they won't get it."
The president just finished speaking to a packed convention room at the AIPAC policy conference. He was not booed when he entered; most stood and offered brief applause. Still, the crowd during the speech had long periods of stony silence, and audible boos were heard when he brought up his plan to base an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal on the 1967 border lines. President Obama took nothing back from his foreign policy speech on Thursday and blamed the press for any controversy. He doubled down, making this upcoming presidential election a time for choosing for friends of Israel....This president once again has proved an apt negotiator on behalf of the Palestinians and a thorn in Israel’s side.
Conveniently, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has now released a statement, transforming Obama’s border guidelines into preconditions for renewed talks. Until recently the Palestinians had no problem negotiating without those preconditions. It was widely recognized that the Palestinians were trying to get to Obama’s position—a final status agreement structured around the 1949 lines plus land swaps—but that they would have to negotiate to it and make concessions along the way. Now Erekat is insisting that “there is no point talking about a peace process” unless Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu accepts the final Palestinian position as everyone’s starting position. Since that’s not going to happen under any circumstances—nor should it—we are again in a situation where President Obama’s de-facto advocacy for the Palestinian cause has made peace more difficult to achieve.
Me:
Obama to Israel, "Let's agree to disagree, and you'll pay for it later, out of sight of this audience."
Netanyahu replies: "My audience will hear from me tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, despite your sellouts."
As The Wall Street Journal explains, “For a 10-year policy that costs $135, he [Centre] and his band of atheists promise to come to their [true believers’] homes after the Rapture, collect their pets and care for them. He says his 259 clients tend to be devout believers over the age of 40 ‘who love their pets and are sincerely concerned for what will happen to them.’”
Mr. Centre carefully screens all job applicants, making sure they are both animal lovers and, perhaps more importantly, not Jesus lovers.
“These are people not likely to be Raptured under any circumstances,” Mr. Centre told The Washington Post.
Continued the paper: “After a background check, each rescuer must satisfy Centre by blaspheming in accordance with Mark 3:29, the part of the New Testament that reads: ‘But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.’”
PowerLine’s Scott Johnson, its music aficionado, reminds meof the most popular song among us Marines in Vietnam in the late ‘60s, “The Letter”. At the 1st MarDiv Hqs EM Club (a large shack), beer flowed (why always Black Label? A mystery, but who cared, it had alcohol), funding traveling shows of sexy girls doing cover songs, very well to our horny ears (horny ears? Yeah, Devil Dogs).
I guarantee you that we sang “The Letter” much better, louder (at the top of our lungs) and with more real feeling than this video of Joe Cocker with the All Stars of Mad Dogs & Englishmen. (The original by the Box Tops was recorded in 1967, and -- comments? -- better done.) We had more reason to sing and dance than the Hippies listening to Joe Cocker. And, even with much beer, we weren’t as spasticated.
DEAR CONGRESS: Your Credit Application Has Been Turned Down. “Our records indicate that your annual income for the 2011 taxable year was $2,170,000,000,000. You have requested a credit limit of $17,000,000,000,000. These figures exceed the American Public’s debt-to-income guidelines for credit issuance.” (HT: InstaPundit)
Meanwhile, consumerism and a crass popular culture, which increasingly constitute the common ground of being American, fill the void—and I’m not sure that a sustainable national identity can be built on a shared appreciation of fast food, bad movies, and vulgar popular music. Immigration can work again in this country. But for that to happen, schools and government must recommit themselves to teaching and reinforcing the common culture and political principles that immigrants once learned to become Americans.
The Problem with (Un)strategic Ambiguity -- And, Kissinger indicates US is getting ready to throw Taiwan under the bus. It’s getting crowded under there. President Obama’s revised Dale Carnegie: “How to lose friends and influence enemies to be determined”. “Mr. Kissinger suggests negotiations with the mainland "in which the de facto autonomy of Taiwan is preserved." On the model of Hong Kong? "Certainly beyond the Hong Kong pattern," he says.”
How Medicine Became a Growth Business: “The public is seeking care far beyond any need or reasoning. The influx of well, worried well, and worried sick people into a system designed to find medical diseases in sick people leads to large increases in false positives.”
Moonwalking: President Obama tries to backpedal (or staggers back), his Middle East speech. Smooth shuffle doesn’t hide his direction, reversal of sense and security, nor that of his syncophants:
What to make of all the liberal Jewish groups and pundits who fawned over the speech and insisted there was no change in U.S. policy contained in Obama’s statement on the 1967 borders (which is a misnomer; there is only the 1949 armistice line)? They have, to the extent they had any credit, discredited themselves as reliable translators to Jews and Americans at large of the peace process. Whether through ignorance or through an insatiable need to defend a liberal president at all costs, they leapt into the fray to deny that Obama said anything damaging at all. The proof of Obama’s misstep is his swift backpedal, which, I suspect, will continue today.
The “liberal union” label doesn’t sell?“Forty-five years ago one in every five Americans belonged to the “seven sister” mainline Protestant denominations. Today, only one in 15 still does.”
NYT: "Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality," an unsmiling Netanyahu told Obama in the Oval Office.
Reactions: "Respect goes two ways and Obama, a leader who has a history of cavalierly dismissing the sensibilities of American allies, cannot pretend that he is the injured party here."
Bird Dog is off gallivanting again. Pictures (and more pictures, and more pictures) at his return. Meanwhile, all others ducking the honor, you're stuck with me. I'm so excited to see you every morning.
Fresh combat regiments of Vietnam Peoples Army's soldiers are now converging in a key province of Northern Vietnam to attack and arrest thousands of Hmong Catholic, Protestant and independent Animist religious believers demonstrating for human rights, religious freedom, land reform and an end to illegal logging and deforestation.
Thanks to mandatory “volunteer service” (or, as I call it, “community servitude”), the children I know are disinclined to do any type of volunteer work and much inclined to engage in scams and cheats.”
“Unemployment duration ain’t what it used to be. In 1982, the last time unemployment tipped double digits, joblessness was more of a short-term affair. Across these four categories, the plurality of folks were unemployed for fewer than five weeks. In 2011, by contrast, about half the jobless have been out of work for at least 27 weeks….In 1982, unemployment was a terrible cold, measured in weeks and maybe months. Today it's pneumonia.”
Anyone remember the elbow test? (That's how I met my first wife, really.)
Between 1964 and the present, the study of Western Civilization has literally disappeared from most college curricula.Not only is it not required, you’ve often got to searchpretty hard to find individual history courses that tangentially cover bits and pieces of the themes once commonly encountered by most undergraduates.
Roger Ebert take down: “What kind of man hears coded racism in the words “food” and “stamps” on Sunday but excuses pro-Nazi/anti-Israel remarks on Wednesday?”
““Everywhere I went, it was, ‘we only take online applications; apply online,’” he groused. “Half the time, they couldn’t even be bothered looking up. So, you clean up, wear decent clothes, walk in trying to project a positive attitude and you hit this wall of disinterest. There’s no Human Resource Department. There’s no one interested, just these cogs in the wheels telling you that your best shot is to enter a lottery to become a cog in the wheel.”
Colbert punks … self? “how Colbert started off trying to skewer the Supreme Court over the Citizens United v FEC ruling, and ended up getting a lesson in its necessity”
Reaction to Obama’s latest big speech: Forgetaboutit
Wonder why? Here's a recent example from the West Bank:
... at a ceremony honoring all 73 Palestinians from Bethlehem serving life sentences in Israeli prisons, the PA unveiled a "Tree of Freedom for Prisoners." Its branches are decorated with "photographs of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment."
The following prisoners were mentioned in the first article: Riyad Al-Amour - Serving 11 life sentences for murder of 9 Israelis and 3 Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel. Adnan Al-Afandi - Attempted to kill two children by stabbing them, 1992 Nasser and Mahmoud Abu Sorour - Participated in the murder of a member of Israeli Intelligence, 1993. Rizq Salah - Killed an Israeli soldier with a bomb in Bethlehem, 1993
And here's another recent example from the West Bank Palestinian Authority's partner, Hamas in Gaza:
Hamas TV Extols Female Palestinian Suicide Bombers and Jihad Fighters: Jihad-Fighting Mothers Urge Their Sons to Seek Martyrdom
Here's a top-level analysis of Israel's security needs for a viable peace.
Many Jews and decent liberals are having a “consciousness-raising” experience. The three incidents at CUNY this past academic year honoring extremist foes of Israel, and throwing up chaff about academic freedom to distract, have struck to the quick in New York City and spread throughout the country. The contamination in our core institutions of the blatant Israel-hate that has melded the far left and Palestinian apologists and advocates has activated a ground-swell of reaction. Can this be the start of a roll-back? Yes, as more and more Americans speak up in defense of Western values and strike back at those who undermine them.
The Obama-CYA, George Soros funded, Palestinians apologists of J-Street, leftist Jews, defended Tony Kushner receiving an honorary degree from CUNY as “a victory for all of those in the Jewish community and beyond who cherish freedom of speech and are unwilling to punish people for the content of their political views.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has written to the Chair of the Board of Trustees at CUNY, Benno Schmidt, and to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. This Council represents approximately fifty Jewish organizations (including the ADL, AJC, Hadassah, Hillel, Jewish National Fund, Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, UJA, Union of Reform Judaism, the Orthodox Union, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, ZOA, the American Sephardi Association, etc.) and is headed by some Major Jewish Players.
We are troubled though that it appears that the explicit right and duty of a CUNY Trustee under Policy 1.19 – to express his/her views and vote his/her conscience – are now being challenged….We believe that academic freedom cannot be exclusively limited to faculty and/or students. Indeed, that right applies to all sectors of the academy, including Trustees. We are shocked that people – including zealous advocates of academic freedom and free speech – have called for a Trustee’s removal because they disagree with his ideas and/or his desire to articulate them. Mr. Wiesenfeld’s freedom to state his views and opinions – whether one agrees with him or not – is equal to the freedom granted to faculty, students or even honorary degree nominees.
There are of course other contexts in which academic freedom is at stake, but the awarding of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner or anyone else isn’t one of them.
The 55,000 member Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, on 3500 worldwide campuses, wrote to the CUNY Board of Trustees to reverse the decision to grant an honorary degree to Tony Kushner:
By rejecting your earlier decision to table the nomination and put it up for discussion, you have, sadly, abrogated your responsibility….
The roll-back needs your active involvement in your house of worship, in your alma mater, in your newspaper. This is a "tea party" requiring all to attend.
UPDATE: Tony Kushner, on Facebook, says, " it seems like with each successive fight around the Israel-Palestine issue (first Moustafa Bayoumi, then Kristofer, now this), our side gets stronger and stronger." Kushner calls for "You want Wiesenfeld off the Board? Organize for it..."Now let's make a bigger, f-ing deal. Go to it, folks!" Bring it on, Tony, as you cement your and your allies reps lower than already. Kushner titles his post, "We Won." Kushner, you've won a whoppin'.
My tailor grandfather taught me the difference between being a Jew and being honored.
When I was a little boy, holding my grandfather’s hand as we exited the synagogue, all the well-dressed people were walking around a disheveled, crying man at the bottom of the steps.My grandfather immediately went up to him and asked what was the matter. Years later, my grandfather told me that the man replied with sobs that he’d lost his job because of drinking, his wife had left him after he had an affair, and he was too ashamed of what had happened to his life to come into synagogue. My grandfather took him by the hand and in they went, me trailing behind.
Afterwards I asked my grandfather why he hadn’t also invited the man home with us for supper.My grandfather answered that as long as the man behaved, he should be welcome in synagogue, but due to how he had behaved toward his responsibilities he wasn’t welcome in his house. Any Jew who wants to join communal prayers can do so. Any Jew who dishonors his people doesn’t deserve to be honored.
Our universities used to be called temples of learning but most universities have relaxed their former standards, as have many Jews.
The Euro-MidEast international Eurovision song competition each year is usually one of my favorite shows. Each country's entry is usually superb, and making a choice of winner difficult. This year, however, the sameness of many of the entries, and the increased prevalence of English from almost all countries, made the choices easier, for me anyway. There's usually griping, with much justification, that there's much favoritism in the final rankings. Here's my favorites from the 25 semi-finalists: Greece, France, Spain (with extra points on top of artistry for being in native tongues), and for a lovely performance Azerbaijan (in English). Azerbaijan won the competition, maybe because its entry didn't have the hoochy-koochy, look-alike theatrics of so many of the others.
Here's a sampling of the top 25. After that, click around for your favorites and other countries entries. Nice way to idle away a few hours.
Yesterday it came out that at the City University of New York City College's (CCNY) graduation ceremony, the Palestinian flag will be hoisted among those flags of UN members, although it is not a UN member. This singular honor speaks volumes about the moral and political rot within CUNY.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who’s been at the center of the Kushner controversy, said that the flag issue seemed to point to a double-standard at the university.
“I would think if we were going to fly the flags of aspiring nations, then we should certainly those of aspiring nations that have been in the mix even longer, like Tibet, like Kurdistan,” Wiesenfeld said. “In other words, whatever the policy is, it should be based on a consistency, but not a fashion of the moment.”
One City College faculty member said it reflected a deeper problem in academia....
Flying the Palestinian flag is not a problem in itself. But flying it alongside the flags of UN member countries, at a public university, makes a particular statement. It says that CUNY’s City College is recognizing the state of Palestine, and its quest for UN member status, regardless of the outcome of the peace process. The college is free to argue that this has “nothing to do with foreign policy,” but the reality speaks for itself.
If CUNY really wants to speak up for repressed peoples -- many really ruthlessly oppressed -- it might raise the banner for these members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), which are not UN members. The UNPO is accredited by the UN as an NGO.
What distinguishes these peoples from the one honored by CUNY's City College is that: 1) they are not favored or in most cases even paid attention to by liberal elites -- or others (several years ago I asked the leader of a major refugees NGO why it paid no attention to the Hmong; he answered that the NGO had other prorities.); and 2) The Palestinians would not subscribe to the Covenant of the UNPO, which includes:
Convinced that the principles, methodology, and practice of Gandhian nonviolence and nonviolent civil-resistance are the most effective means of pursuing and enforcing both collective and individual rights, we, the undersigned Nations and Peoples, reaffirm our unreserved commitment to such principles, rejecting in the process terrorism, extremism, and violence in all its forms;
[T]he New York cultural elite, which may be caricatured in this case as an interlocking directorate of playwright, pundits, and professors, the presumption of impunity is absolute. Academia, in particular, has a "sacred mission," to be defined solely by the faculty and under no circumstances to be questioned. That the faculties themselves tend to be monolithic in their political and ideological orientation may help to explain their wild overreaction in the present instance and others like it. Delusions of infallibility combined with well-deserved insecurity and profound authoritarianism make for a potent brew.
Yesterday, CUNY's Vice President for Communications said:
“The City College flies all of the flags that are flown at the United Nations,” the Vice President for Communications Mary Lou Edmondson told me. “It has nothing to do with foreign policy.”
CUNY's Vice-President for Communications today digs deeper.
CUNY’s City College VP of communications Mary Lou Edmondson emails this response: “I regret that I misspoke about the flags flown at the United Nations."
So, CUNY's CCNY chooses to fly the flag of its "chosen" people, the Palestinians. Need I say more?
Though America has been at war for the last decade, the size of our standing army is such that most of us don’t know anyone serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, let alone someone who died there. By contrast, Israel is a small country that has been at war for every day of its existence and most people there serve in the military or perform national service after high school. Most men then do time in the reserves. It seems as if everyone there either has lost a relative or knows someone who has. The price that has been paid for Israel’s survival against the odds is measured in the long rows of soldiers’ graves to which families journey to this day. Perhaps after the Civil War, from which our Memorial Day derives, or during subsequent mass conflicts, Americans felt about the day the way Israelis do now but that understanding has clearly been lost.
Too harsh, I think. But, for too many of us the connection between our freedoms and those who fought for them and gave the ultimate has been lost. Not for these Israeli young people, waving their flag for freedom.
Happy 63rd birthday, Israel, and happier ones to come, please dear G-d.
Bottom Line: “We lost the war in Vietnam.” That is irrefutable. The continuing arguments are about: who “we” are, why, who is responsible, and what could have been.
As someone who has been deeply involved in these debates since the 60s (including serving in Vietnam, USMC intel at 1st MarDiv HQs), I have to recommend an enlightening book and an essay.
The book is better than the Pentagon Papers which presented a hodge podge of US decision makers comments during the earlier phases of the war. This book is the candid after-action, after fall of South Vietnam, considered writings by leading South Vietnamese generals. The Vietnam War: An Assessment By South Vietnam’s Generalsis edited by highly regarded historian Lewis Sorley.
The monographs cover every conceivable aspect of the war, from combat operations to budgets, from relations with advisors to logistical support, from uniforms to pay to desertions to refugees to bombing to pipelines to prisoners of war to combat rations to family support and even South Vietnamese society. A considerable amount of this material, based on the firsthand observations of these highly placed Vietnamese authors, is to be found nowhere else.
By no means can supporters of the US in Vietnam take comfort in the book. The authors provide enough quotes to fill any anti-war essay. Lewis Sorley comments: “I think, for one, that they are in many instances far too hard on themselves and on the Vietnamese in general, both politically and militarily. They make few excuses, and instead are forthright in assigning, and assuming, blame.” That is, also, a strength of the book. It is an honest assessment, which if actually read by critics of the war and today’s students, cuts through the perplexities about our ally and battleground in the Cold War. Sorley: “Now, we know, however, that when well armed and equipped, and well led, they performed gallantly and with spirit.”
At almost 1000 pages, the book is comprehensive, well-written, and possibly the most valuable on the war.For length and price ($60), and for failing to meet one-sided prejudices, few will read it. But, anyone at all serious about understanding the perplexing questions and arguing with any integrity must read it. I’ve taken weeks to read it, at almost every page learning something new, and at many pages having my prior views enlightened. Similarly, noted and knowledgeable critic of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tom Ricks, in preparing his own forthcoming book on the Vietnam War calls this book “terrific (and massive).”
Fortunately, historian Mark Moyar presents an enlightening essay that will help students of the Vietnam War understand the conflicting historical accounts, Vietnam: Historians at War. It is an invaluable survey of the “orthodox” historians of defeat (“…most academic and journalistic accounts of the war written during and shortly afterwards depicted Vietnam as a bad war that the United States should not have fought. Antiwar history of the Vietnam War thus acquired the label of “orthodox” history.”) versus the “revisionist” historians who disagree and have unearthed formerly unreleased or unknown facts.
The recent revisionist histories, in contrast to some earlier revisionist works, have generally been backed by voluminous research, captured in numerous footnotes. Although not all of their authors are excellent scholars, they are generally more rigorous in their analysis than their orthodox counterparts, because they are so often challenged that they have become adept at anticipating and countering contrary assertions. Because experience has given revisionists a better understanding of the importance of wrestling with differently minded people, they have also been much more willing than orthodox historians to invite the opposing side to conferences they organize….Slowly but surely, the revisionist view is gaining ground.
If a student needs an understanding of the historiography of the Vietnam War and a guide to differing accounts, Mark Moyar’s essay is a great launching point.
P.S.: For historical record, below is the never before published look back at the last diplomatic days of South Vietnam as told by its longtime Ambassador to the US, Bui Diem, at a conference last year.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld never had a chance against Tony Kushner.
So it now looks as if the City University of New York is going to overturn a decision by its own board of trustees to refuse to give an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner. The ironies of modern academic politics here are too rich to pass by without notice.
Start with the Friday announcement by CUNY "Chairperson"—that's his official title—Benno Schmidt that he plans to convene a meeting today of the board's seven-member executive committee to reconsider the decision the full board made against the Kushner degree only last week.
"I would not ordinarily ask for reconsideration of a decision so recently taken," said Mr. Schmidt, who was once president of Yale. "But when the board has made a mistake of principle and not merely of policy, review is appropriate and, indeed, mandatory."
As it happens, Chairperson Schmidt was on hand when this "mistake of principle" was made but didn't raise a voice at the time. In the course of considering a slate of honorary degrees, trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld asked for a moment to speak and objected to the honor for Mr. Kushner due to his extreme anti-Israel views. His full remarks are available on the CUNY website.
After Mr. Wiesenfeld spoke, a board majority did not prevail for the full slate of honorees. The board then voted on a motion to table Mr. Kushner's degree, and the other nominees were approved. Whereupon the CUNY faculty and the New York arts and media world rose in fury to assert that the school had done a grievous wrong by failing to honor such a pillar of the theater as Mr. Kushner.
So now Mr. Schmidt wants a subset of the board to overrule a decision taken by the ostensible overseers of CUNY. If there was ever definitive proof that university officials see their trustees as mere check-writing rubber stamps, this is it. Even on the symbolic matter of conferring university prestige, the trustees get put in their place when they don't meet the politically correct standards of the faculty.
Mr. Schmidt's statement includes the implication that the trustees had violated the right to "freedom of thought and expression" and that they had offended university norms by letting "politics" interfere with an honor intended to recognize Mr. Kushner's "contribution to the American theater."
But no one is denying Mr. Kushner's right to say whatever he wants about Israel, or anything else. The point is whether he should be honored by CUNY, and Mr. Wiesenfeld was invoking his own right to freely express his opposition. As for the separation of art and politics, the New York Sun wryly notes that "you would need a late-model electron microscope spectrometer" to separate the two in Mr. Kushner's work. It is precisely the liberal politics in his art that has caused the academic elites to rise up on his behalf.
Mr. Wiesenfeld's "mistake" was not appreciating that hostility to Israel has become such a deeply embedded principle of the modern academy that objecting to it earns you denunciation as a censor and philistine. The only greater uproar might have come if CUNY's trustees had voted to award an honorary degree to, say, the CIA interrogators of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
It looks like the executive committee of the board of the City University of New York is going to convene on Monday to approve an honorary degree for the playwright Tony Kushner that the full board was not prepared to approve a week earlier. In announcing this dodge, CUNY’s chairman, Benno Schmidt, said it was necessary because the trustees had made an error of principle in declining to approve the degree for Mr. Kushner the first time around. But if principles are the issue here, what is the logic of the decision of a full board of trustees being overturned a few days later by a subset of the trustees?
Richard Louv is not an environmental extremist but a lover and appreciator of nature. A review of his latest book, The Nature Principle, contains his question:
“What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in electronics?”
Another quote reminds me of a friend who would take me on nature walks:
Louv takes us along with him on a walk near Lake Hodges, where the guide, a botanist, shows him the stunning biodiversity of this region. “Your eyes don’t know what to look at,” the botanist says, “so you don’t see.” By the end of the afternoon, Louv has discovered “a world that suddenly seemed as exotic as a rain forest.”
Louv used to be a columnist for the San Diego Union Tribune. I miss his columns and the walks with my friend.
For mothers who have lost a child to wars, to ill-health, to accidents, there is no consolation that will ever fill their hearts as did their child. If you know such a mother, you know what I mean. If you don't, count yourself fortunate. Either way, take a moment with her or with yourself to count the blessings during life of a child. Hallmark should have a card for this, but there are no words that can communicate the sharing of such a loss. There's only your quiet embraces for the mothers who feel such sorrow on Mothers Day.
Mother’s Day couldn’t seem farther from Yom Hazikaron, but it turns out that it didn’t start that way. The 19th-century poet and feminist Julia Ward Howe, best known for penning the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” began crusading for a Mother’s Day for Peace in the wake of the horrific devastation of the Civil and Franco-Prussian Wars. Around the same time, Anna Reeves Jarvis was advocating for a Mother’s Work Day with a similar purpose. When Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, took up the mantle. But the second Jarvis was more concerned with honoring mothers and less concerned with promoting peace....She successfully lobbied Congress for her cause (no one wants to be on the record against mothers), and in 1914 Woodrow Wilson signed a joint resolution that made the second Sunday in May officially a day to recognize mothers. Anna Jarvis soon became disillusioned with the commercialization of the holiday she had helped create, noting that “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit.”
The book review in the New York Times of the new edition of Friedrich Hayek's Constitution of Liberty credits his thought -- at core, distrust of central government and its ability to coordinate society better than the agglomeration of individual and local choices -- as winning since the 1980s. As the reviewer says, "President Obama’s return to “big government” didn’t last more than a year before it was met with fierce resistance."
The reviewer, still, raises limitations on that core thought as presented from Left and Right, but moreso from practicalities and realities in some cases, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 needed central government to correct a long-lasting wrong.
All well and good. But, doesn't undermine Hayek's core point, except in cases of major and agreed need.
The criticism from the Left is spurious. The economic and social schemes of government to increase the freedom, as the Left sees it, of the population have proven largely failures and counterproductive.
The criticism from the Right bears more weight, although the reviewer doesn't delve deeper than this:
A second critique of Hayek has tended to come from the right. He is necessarily a moral relativist, since he does not believe that there is a higher perspective from which one person can dictate another’s ends. Morality for him is more like a useful coordinating device than a categorical imperative. But surely the Western tradition that Hayek celebrates is as concerned with virtue as with freedom, whether from the standpoint of Christianity or that of classical republicanism. One searches in vain through this or any of his other books for a serious treatment of religion or the moral concerns that animate religious believers.
Just as Big Government is a slippery slope, so too is moral relativism.
Read the review for yourself, and comment. (I've omitted the reviewers name from this post so as not to have it, one way or the other, influence the reader's consideration.) Above all, I think Friedrich Hayek would want you to think for yourself.
In that vein, The Institutional Risk Analyst, presents an essay on Keynesianism corrupted by "today's econometricians pretending they are." The essay requires subscription, so it is presented below (via one of the co-authors blog; and don't miss the real story of Gunnar Myrdal, Hayek's co-winner for economics of the Nobel Prize). First, an excerpt:
It is true that Keynes was an interventionist, that he believed government had a role and should employ it, to curb and limit the business cycles which have dominated modern economic life since The Industrial Revolution began with the advent of capitalism -- and perhaps before. But Keynes set strict limits on how governments might borrow and toss capital into the machinery to get it up and going again.
