Tuesday, August 22. 2006
 I do not post often enough, so I am grateful that Bird Dog keeps me on the Soros-sponsored payroll.
Our worthy and self-sacrificing editor emailed this piece to me from Stumbling and Mumbling, a pleasantly cantankerous economics-oriented Brit blog. Apparently the Brit NHS has a euphemistically-named "National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence," (does that sound like something out of Brave New World?)whose job is to decide what treatments the government will pay for with your tax dollars. They try to apply cost-benefit analysis to your problem. Of course, such a process necessarily politicizes medical treatment by making every treatment, and every disease, a political football, with the loudest voices and the squeakiest wheels and the most pathetic stories winning out. And also turns every person into an expense item on a spread sheet, thus making it cost effective for everyone to die promptly without burdening their neighbors, at the precise moment when they cease to generate tax revenue. Citizens become, in essence, farm animals on a government plantation. The potentially-fatal flaw in democracy is that people can vote themselves "free" stuff, because there is no end to that childish wish. But with each "freebie," there is a loss of autonomy, of self-reliance, of adulthood, and of freedom. American patients are accustomed to have their problems insulated from government cost-benefit committees. They are accustomed to freedom, which can cost a bit more. And if they require low-cost or free care, they can go to any clinic they want, almost everywhere in the US. I work in one, for nothing, in Providence, one day a week, and have done so for 20 years - but you have to prove that you are poor. You may not take advantage of our good intentions. And if you sue us, you can, should, and will, go to hell. Well, that was a digression from the point at Stumbling that I wished to highlight. He noted that no other government "programs" are subjected to cost-benefit analysis, except for medical treatments. Now, you just have to wonder, why might that be? I have faith that, in general, Americans will never sell their freedoms for a bowl of lentils.
Monday, August 21. 2006
I would say that the sentiments expressed in this Barone piece explain, in large part, why Maggie's Farm exists. We are sick of this crap, as is Barone. One quote: Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism. At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.
He writes gooder than any of us. Read it all.
7 million of them, and, when you read their stats, you will see that not only are they happily breeding at a rapid pace, but they are doing well in other ways too. For example, 46% have a post-college degree, and their family incomes are close to the American average. Their top 3 occupations are, in order, Student, Engineer, Physician. Read the stats at Tangled Web.
How's your geography? This is a game for schoolkids.
Friday, August 18. 2006
Apparently "Quinnipiac" is Algonquin for: "Not so fast, Mr. Green Pants with whales on them."
From the NY Times to the left fringes of the blogosphere, denial of the danger of the world-wide Jihad reigns. In the hawkish side of the world (and I see no reason, other than partisan politics,?why these divisions should correspond to liberal vs. conservative), from my beloved Laura Ingraham to the hawkier blogs, I hear Jihad elevated to the diabolical menace in terms which were once applied to the world-wide Commie menace. Don't get me wrong: there was a world-wide Commie menace which was a threat to freedom, offering utopian, fascist pie in the sky at the point of a gun and a nuke warhead, and accompanied by many American Stalin-loving fellow-travelers. But my point is the extremes to which the current discussion?has gone. For example, we saw the once-rational Andrew Sullivan trying to deny the seriousness of the English bombers this week. He essentially was saying "No biggie." Why would he say that? Was the WTC "no biggie?" If they had succeeded, you already know what they would be saying: "Bush/Blair didn't do enough." Or "Iraq caused it," or ... It is a sport. Anyone can play. And I heard Ned Lamont the other day say something like "We should worry more about the quality of the kindergartens in Bridgeport." Huh? Hello??I should care about what Bridgeport teachers unions want? (Like most people, they probably want more of something - probably my money.)?I am aware that many on the Left have had a knee-jerk anti-American reflex since the 1930s, which is unfortunate and which also contaminates reasonable dialog. Our good?friends over in the shrink blogosphere - Shrinkwrapped, Dr. Sanity, SC&A, for good examples (links on blogroll), often attempt to understand such views psychoanalytically, but not only am I not qualified to do that, as a lawyer I find it to be a bit of a generic?"ad hominem." Furthermore, I think the psychological approach may miss the point of how politically-motivated, and disingenuously applied, many of the arguments are: you can never believe that politically-motivated speakers really believe what they say (witness Obama and Gore with their SUVs - they just talk to cover their Greenie flank. All politicians took Boob Bait 101 - it's an easy course to get an A in.). I do not believe, for one minute, that John Kerry really believes that we can chat Ahmadinejad into sanity. (Ned Lamont might believe it, though - he is politeness personified, and has spent his fortunate life insulated among the Christian gentry: polite, honest, and considerate people in pea-green pants in country clubs where the after-golf single-malt scotch and chardonnay is served on silver trays by brownish-skinned persons, immigrants mostly, under the green-striped awnings. Everything very nice, civilized, and honorable. Darn pleasant places, too - wonderful, but also an expensive escape from everyday reality. Too much ease can soften a fellow.) I wear green pants, too, to summer cocktail parties in CT. Everyone does, around here, with yellow blazers, or vice-versa.? On the other side, we see the hawkier bloggers and commentators, which for no reason I can determine tend to be the more conservative, elevating the Islamic Jihadis, or Islamao-fascists, or whatever, to a level of threat which is no doubt flattering to them, but which, I think, exaggerates their dangerousness. And again, do not get me wrong - their threat is obviously real - I am talking about the level of hysteria that I hear. Iraq is just a political football, at this point. The real issue is how to deal with stateless, but generally state- (including the Saudis) sponsored, Islamic Jihadists whose only tool - thus far - is terror and bombing civilians. Neither hysteria nor denial advance any discussion of the subject. And the political polarization further reduces the quality of discussion. And that is my point here: political emotions and?tactics?have contaminated rational discussion. The Left hates Bush because he (at least to some degree)?rejects their political agenda. Yet Bush makes fighting Jihad central to his presidential career. Thus, they must oppose or diminish that. Conversely, Repub and conservative types, while disappointed in Bush's big-government approaches to things, still would prefer his sort to the alternatives. So getting shrill about things supports their "side," and their guys (and gals). Oftentimes, this polarization boils down to a question of whether Jihad is a trivial criminal?threat, worthy only of police work, or whether it demands maximum effort, risk, and sacrifice. But that debate, too, is a consequence of the political polarization, not a beginning of a rational discussion. The White House has had their discussions, but they have not communicated them very well. There has been no summons to the nation, and there has been no inspiring demand for sacrifice for freedom. However, their solution?has been?a rational, if debatable, combination of intelligence, police-type work with international cooperation (FBI, CIA, plus French, Brit, German, Pakistani, etc), and undermining the sponsors of Jihad with diplomacy first, (as with Iraq) followed by war when that fails. What else could anyone do? If you buy?the Jihad?off, they will just come back for more, like any rational but dishonorable?person would who views you as sub-human. Give me some better ideas, dear readers: I am open to them. My tendency is to think that Dems, had they been in office, would do roughly the same thing, since protection of the nation from threat is their primary function and the reason we give them the power to do it. But I am not sure: Clinton only would lob a couple of cruise missiles somewhere, and be done with it, but that was pre-9/11, when the Jihadists seemed more?like feckless?pests. It breaks my heart to see people put party above country, but I am naive, because it seems to be the way the thing works - and probably always has done.?As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. The nukes are what bother me - far more than the leftists. I can handle Lefty-statists, but I cannot handle nuclear-armed loonies. A final comment, about my senator Joe Lieberman (for whom I have never voted, but will vote for in November). He is a lefty, and he comes across as unpleasantly sanctimonious, but he does try to address these questions in a non-partisan, rational manner, whether he turns out to be right or wrong. He does try to decide what is best for the country during a time of danger - and that is why he ran into trouble. He wasn't partisan enough.
Thursday, August 17. 2006
From his BBC interview, with comments in over the transom: Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Bibi Natanyahu could get a good measure of satisfaction from his interview with the British Television this morning. I guess it can be attributed to his days studying history at Harvard. The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Lebanese have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?" (A nasty question if there ever was one!)
Natanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"
Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?
Natanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children.
Perhaps you have another question?"
Wednesday, August 16. 2006
I am not the only one who is losing patience with the Iraqis. At
Monday, August 14. 2006
Re-posted from May, 2005  Pacifism
The wonderful Kentucky author Wendell Berry wrote this piece a couple of years ago. There is much in it with which to disagree, but it is a point of view shared by many good people, presented by a fine fellow. I met him one time, and I have to say that I think he's the kind of rugged guy who'd be happy to shoot you if you came onto his farm and messed with his family. But he says not...I think. The view is not far from that of the RC Church, for which Life is the high sacred value, trumping all others. There is a conflict with other sacred values, such as human dignity and freedom. Remember the Brits in the 60's marching and carrying signs reading "Better Red than Dead"? It all comes down to the question of whether anything is worth dying for. The Pacifist might ask a different question: "Is there anything worth killing for?" "... we cling in our public life to a brutal hypocrisy. In our century of almost universal violence of humans against fellow humans, and against our natural and cultural commonwealth, hypocrisy has been inescapable because our opposition to violence has been selective or merely fashionable. Some of us who approve of our monstrous military budget and our peacekeeping wars nonetheless deplore “domestic violence” and think that our society can be pacified by “gun control.” Some of us are against capital punishment but for abortion. Some of us are against abortion but for capital punishment. One does not have to know very much or think very far in order to see the moral absurdity upon which we have erected our sanctioned enterprises of violence. Abortion-as-birth-control is justified as a “right,” which can establish itself only by denying all the rights of another person, which is the most primitive intent of warfare. Capital punishment sinks us all to the same level of primal belligerence, at which an act of violence is avenged by another act of violence."
Addendum: Another view, from a piece in One Cosmos: This is why I consider Gandhi such an unqualified--you will pardon the expression--ass. The notion that violence is a priori bad or immoral is one of the most pernicious ideas imaginable. As I have said before, it is as immature, stupid and dysfunctional as the idea that your immune system is bad because of the violent manner in which it greets invaders. Pacifism is the moral equivalent of AIDs; it is like equating a compromised immune system with robust health.
Thursday, August 10. 2006
 Statement from CAIR today h/t, Atlas):
"The American Muslim community supports efforts to ensure the safety and security of the traveling public," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. "We once again urge law enforcement authorities and elected officials to caution against stereotyping entire religious or ethnic groups based on the alleged actions of individuals."
Ya never know what those Dubuque grannys might be carrying on their trip to Altanta to visit the grandkids. Am I retarded? Check the Moslems, and leave my granny alone. We might be stupid, but we aren't insane.
From an excellent essay by The Fjordman in Brussels Journal: Let me first say that there are positive aspects to the welfare state model. It would be hypocritical of me to say anything else, as I have enjoyed some of its benefits by growing up in one. It is also not entirely incorrect to say that it has worked better in Scandinavia than anywhere else. Still, my view is that there are critical flaws to this model. Although they may not bring the system down right away, they will do so over time. My bet is that we are approaching the point where the Swedish welfare state will cease to function. Even if you consider a national welfare state to be a totally closed system without migration in or out and without international competition – which isn’t possible, of course – there are internal flaws that will, over time, weaken the structure. Judging from the experiences in Scandinavia, the welfare state worked to some extent because it was based in small and ethnically homogenous nations, with a strong cultural and religious (Protestant) work ethic which had just experienced several generations of a booming capitalist economy. These traits kept the system afloat for decades, but the work ethic and the sense of duty slowly got eroded and replaced by a sense of rights, while the high taxation and the passivity bred by the system eroded initiative and the will to take risks. Again, these flaws are inherent to the model. They make time to develop, but they will, eventually.
Whole thing here.
Note to the ACLU: This came in over the transom, and I think the elimination of these insidious intrusions of the divine into governmental documents could keep your staff busy for many years. The Preambles of the constitutions of all 50 States Of The United States:
Alabama 1901, Preamble. We the people of the State of Alabama, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution. Alaska 1956, Preamble. We, the people of Alaska, grateful to God and to
those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land... Arizona 1911, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Arizona, grateful to Almighty God for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution... Arkansas 1874, Preamble . We, the people of the State of Arkansas, grateful to Almighty God for the privilege of choosing our own form of government... California 1879, Preamble . We, the People of the State of California,
grateful to Almighty God for our freedom... Colorado 1876, Preamble. We, the people of Colorado, with profound
reverence for the Supreme Ruler of Universe... Connecticut 1818, Preamble. The People of Connecticut, acknowledging with gratitude the good Providence of God in permitting them to enjoy... Delaware 1897, Preamble. Through Divine Goodness all men have, by nature, the rights of worshipping and serving their Creator according to the dictates of their consciences. Florida 1885, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Florida, grateful to
Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, establish this Constitution... Georgia 1777, Preamble . We, the people of Georgia, relying upon protection and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish this Constitution... Hawaii 1959, Preamble . We, the people of Hawaii, Grateful for Divine
Guidance, establish this Constitution.
Continue reading "One nation, under God: Our State Preambles"
Wednesday, August 9. 2006
Hey, George McGovern Ned Lamont! 
The Islamicization of Norway and Sweden, at Gates of Vienna. Photo: One I took in Norway last September. I think she forgot to bring her burkha to work that day which, for Moslems, makes her a ho. To me, she is just berry, berry lovely. 
Re-posted from August, 2005  "Redskins": One Indian's View
In a piece by Tucker at Town Hall: "The federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has already ruled that the word Redskins is racially derogatory and offensive." My reaction to such nonsense: I am Iroquois, by partial but adequate blood. You can see it in my face if you look carefully, but it mainly comes through in my eyes - I can see stuff outdoors that the Paleface cannot. Baby snakes and quiet birds and a rustling leaf and a turtle just thinking and a canvasback hidden in a snowstorm and a red-tail in a cloud. I love the name Redskins. Or Chiefs, or Indians, or anything that reminds us of our ancestry here in the New World. I do not know why almost any reference to Indians is racist. And I hate the undignified racial and ethnic whining and victim talk from Indians or from anyone else. Everyone should be thanking their God or gods that they are in America. And every human should grant themselves the dignity to not be a complainer. It is childish and reflects poorly on the complainer. In fact, I don't even mind "filthy savage," which Mrs. Bird Dog has been known to endearingly (?) label me after an unbathed and unshaven weekend clearing brush and drinking Ballantine Ale and covered with sweat and bloody scratches from prickers and branches. It's sort of a badge of pride - our Indian ancestors were not exactly emerged from the Stone Age and we did not bathe and did not change our clothes, and probably smelled terrible, and, compared to Samuel Pepys, we were savages for sure. We were happy to burn people, cut off their genitals and eat them, scalp them, and torture them, and we were always fighting with our neighboring tribes for fun, for glory, for land, or for no reason at all. Our people looked red because of the red-tinted bear fat we anointed ourselves with in the winter to keep warm. We didn't have central heating, or down parkas. Stone Age, although there was a culture worthy of anthropological study, if pre-literate barbarian culture is your bag. So I say quit it with the hyper-sensitive PC BS in our name - I would prefer that the Indian past be remembered rather than erased, stone axes and all. So Hello Atlanta, Hello Dartmouth - quit erasing us - we were tough deer-hunting, enemy-slaying, stoic, happy-to-die and short-lived braves, and hard-working squash and corn-planting and oyster-picking squaws. Our old ones crawled off into the woods to die when they felt they couldn't keep up. We had a concept of dignity. We learned to handle pain and a difficult life was what we expected. In the Northeast, our greatest discoveries were maple syrup, corn, squash, and tobacco. Good things. We got here first. Probably by mistake, while chasing a herd of Musk Ox across the Bering land bridge and getting lost in a snowstorm, and losing our GPS in the snow, so we deserve no credit for adventurous exploration. So call us whatever you want, (I prefer being called "Chief") but just don't forget us. We are part of the American heritage, but we were on the wrong side of history. It happens, and we died, mostly from new diseases like colds and flu introduced by the earliest fishermen and explorers long before the Pilgrims, but alcohol didn't do us much good either: Indian Brave like firewater too much. Not your fault, white man - you had your own problems and your own views, and we had no idea what was happening, and in a sense, we are lucky that you English saw us as even human, with souls, thanks to your Christian educations. True Indian braves, like cowboys, never complain. (Photo: An Ogalala Chief, 1907)
 Brash kid (50+) knocks the partriarch out of the box.
Oedipus Ned accomplished this by cleverly creating the illusion that he was running against Bush rather than against a fellow Left-wing Dem. Indeed, there is much illusion involved in this event. The movement Dems are doubtless thrilled: it must feel like Gene McCarthy all over again. But as the News Junkie noted yesterday, what kind of victory, really, is a victory over your own family, so to speak? This was a family battle, which damaged their family - the Dem family. Another illusion: Lieberman, I have no doubt, assumed he had his job for life, and that his prominence and popularity made him unassailable. That is understandable, but it was unwise. He is not a shoe-in as an independent, because he will be up against the CT Dem machine, and everyone is sick of Iraq, and weary of with dealing with the entire Jihad disease. And Lieberman is far too liberal for most Repubs and Independents to get excited about. On the other hand, people like him anyway, and he's on the right side of the major issue of the time. Another illusion: Ned may be the Oedipal hero of this story, thus far, but he bought this election with his own cash, and has not yet been subjected to serious scrutiny. Nobody knows who he is, yet, because thus far it has been internecine war. Lieberman will play hardball this time. Another illusion: This Dem primary was driven by Bush-hatred primarily, and by anti-Iraq feelings secondarily. But it's the anti-Iraq aspect that will carry some weight. However, the anti-Iraq piece will have more trouble bearing political fruit if it is part of an overall appeasement and anti-Israel policy. Most Americans recognize that there is a Jihadist threat, that evil and danger do exist in the world. The magnitude of that threat becomes more apparent daily. Ned and his supporters are in serious denial if they believe these people just need to be treated better. So - what do the results say? 1. About half of CT Dems are really tired of Iraq on the news. 2. About half of CT Dems are fond of Lieberman, and/or see the war as a necessary evil. None of that is very surprising, but it is a bit sad to see so little party loyalty to one of their party's decent guys. One final thought: Many, I believe, are ready to throw Israel overboard if it will appease the Jihadists. In my opinion, anything you give these folks just makes them hungry for more. The Denial Dems are foolish - and do not love their country enough to want to defend it vigorously. Image: Ned and Friends: Ned with noted race-hustler and con-artist (on left), and noted race pimp, race extortionist, and anti-Semitic adulterer (on right). Photo from last night, in Ned's hometown paper, this morning:
Tuesday, August 8. 2006
Reuters didn't need to retouch any smoke into this one, no sirree. you can feel the heat right through the internet, can't you? But there's something not quite right with the photo... I can't quite put my finger on it. Of course! George Bush is wearing a sailor outfit,no doubt to try to distract us from his shameful Texas Air National Guard record. Typical Bush.
Re-posted from January, 2006  Kling at TCS considers a new book by Caplan which addresses world views:
Caplan, in a book that eventually is to be published by Princeton University Press, argues that most people do not work very hard to arrive at worldviews that are logically consistent and factually supported, because the reward for rational beliefs is too small. He writes: "we should expect people to...believe whatever makes them feel best. After all, it's free. The fanatical protectionist who votes to close the borders risks virtually nothing, because the same policy wins no matter how he votes." Of course, I may be as guilty as anyone of believing whatever makes me feel best. But I believe that I have put considerable effort into examining and correcting my worldview. I am no longer a liberal (in the contemporary sense of the term), because my calendar did not get stuck on 1968.
Kling proceeds to discuss a series of political views, assumptions and biases which were prevalent thirty-five years ago, but which persist in many quarters, despite the facts which have emerged over these years. It's a theme to which we often refer on Maggie's Farm, whether the subject is war, race, economics, freedom, education and academia, etc. Some of us must be of Kling's generation, and, like neo-neocon, went through it but grew past it by responding to overwhelming facts. The comfortable brain is a stubborn thing. The piece is here. (Image is the famous 1967 Pentagon Flower Child taken by the wonderful photographer Marc Riboud.)
Monday, August 7. 2006
There's an awful lot of ink and pixels being spilled over the Reuters use of obviously photoshopped images, as well there should be. We've taken a crack at the absurd angle of it here as well. But... It is interesting to read all the thousands of column inches appearing magically to eviscerate Reuters, and to see the unanimity of the analysis. I feel as though I am standing in a herd of elephants, and the blogosphere is asking me if I've seen a mouse. The photoshopped image of Beirut burning, and the Israeli jet plane with the phony ordnance dubbed in, are not "made up." That is to say, Beirut was burning a bit, and that was an Israeli plane doing something. So what are we looking at? Hyperbole, at the least; exaggeration for effect. As you know, this can be a sort of benign tumor - a simple lust for attention, a digital tall story more suited to the barroom than the newsroom. Or it can be yoked to a hidden purpose -the malignant cancer-propaganda. Since Mr Hajj, and Reuters, don't seem to be in the market for airbrushing things out of their pictures, I imagine that their shenanigans mesh nicely with their worldview, and so their efforts are more to the Joe Goebbels end of the spectrum than the Paris Hilton. It's not: "look at me," it's:"will you look at that." So what's the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room? It's not: "I'll never trust the pictures in the paper again." Why did you trust them before, exactly? That's not the problem. This is: WHAT ABOUT THE WORDS?You remember words don't you? They are those things that have been acoompanying those misleading pictures since before there were pictures to accompany, and the words had to try to give you the wrong impression all by themselves. The obvious folderol with the images in question only shows that the suppliers are getting brazen. They have reported barefaced falsehoods and misrepresentation with such impunity for so long they don't feel the need to simply choose the angle they wish to portray anymore. They're not picking cherries, they're chopping down the media cherry trees now. The "reporting" in the media --what is said and what is written -- is every bit as "photoshopped" for effect as those pictures. Events are seen only through the prism of the desired effect. And the words are carefully chosen to achieve a desired result at the la-di-da outlets like the New York Times, and hamfistedly filigreed at the other end of the media dial, the internet. But the idea is the same: What used to be "news" is replaced with editorial. What used to be "editorial" is now the journalistic equivalent of a streetcorner rant from a deranged lunatic. And the streetcorner lunatic? He's not talking anymore. He's got an entry level job for Reuters, and AP, and the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and CBS, and TruthOut! and all the others caught red-handed every day either making stuff up and reporting it as news, or convoluting the reportage so profoundly that it no longer should qualify as even vaguely factual. And you're dreaming if you think that getting caught is going to change their outlook. They are not very very sorry they did it. They are very very sorry they got caught. The method will improve. The approach will stand. I've been reading the news for a long time, trying to parse what the hell might have actually happened out of the subtle and not so subtle shinola. I stopped paying attention to the TV news a long time ago altogether, because my intelligence can be insulted in print faster than having the wrong pages of a bad newspaper read to me slowly by hair farmers. Nice to see the digital age is catching up with me.
From a piece by Roy Spencer in TCS, A Little Eco-Nomics Never Hurt: The dangerous illusion underpinning many environmental efforts is that it is both possible and preferable to keep pushing toward a 100 percent clean and safe existence. Those of us who try to point out that there are practical limits to cleanliness and safety are immediately branded as shills for big business. Meanwhile, environmentalists and politicians get to hold the high ground of altruism and concern for the public's interest. P.J. O'Rourke once said, "Some people will do anything to save the Earth...except take a science course." To that I would add, "...or a basic economics course". If for a reasonable cost we can remove 98 percent of the contaminants in our drinking water and make it quite safe, is it then a good idea to spend ten times as much to push that purity from 98 percent to 99 percent? In the real world, there are only limited resources to accomplish everything we want to do, and resources diverted to wasteful ends are no longer available to tackle more pressing problems. Only in the imaginary world of the environmental lobbyist, pandering politician, or concerned journalist is it a public service to keep pushing toward 100 percent purity.
Sunday, August 6. 2006
Reuters, this time, manipulating the news. It's why we need blogs: The MSM is about propaganda, not news. This is not accidental. The Western MSM is not only anti-Israel, they are anti-Western Civilization. Why? It is a self-hatred disease - a moral, spiritual disorder probably born of decadence: too much comfort, too much wealth, too much security - and too little wisdom. Very strange. Hey, Attila. We care about your feelings. Let's be friends. We want to understand your feelings, and we know you are a nice, gentle, Socialist, loving fellow beneath that rough, macho, raping, pillaging, warlike, imperialist exterior, and are only pretending to be a meanie barbarian, probably to help your fragile self-esteem. Let's talk it over, over coffee and a muffin or two (no, not that kind of muffin - I had the orange-walnut-pumpkin muffin in mind) at Starbucks (no guns or bow and arrows, please, indoors), and relate to each-other with modern multicultural understanding. Because we care about you, and we sympathize with your grievances against evil, evil, Western Rome. We love barbarians. And you are so much in touch with nature and horsies and stuff.
Friday, August 4. 2006
 VDH's latest on the War, in NRO -a quote:
... it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.
Not any longer.
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.
It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq, the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians’ past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago.
Thursday, August 3. 2006
Ahmadinejad claims today that destroying Israel is the only solution. Solution to what? Oh, I get it. It's the Final Solution, brought to you by the Religion of Death. But I thought they said "We kill the Saturday people first, then the Sunday people." I guess these sure sound like reasonable people who can sit down and negotiate in good faith. The French, and John Kerry, say they can get along with them just fine. And the rest of the Left too. Hey - that's mighty encouraging - as long as you aren't an Israeli, or a Jew, or a Christian. Maybe they'll leave us alone if we give them Austria and Poland Israel and Lebanon?
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