On death penalty

Saddam Hussein was hanged, and the liberals (especially in Europe) howled with outrage, because "civilized societies do not condone death penalty."  (I have a strong feeling that, had it been George W. Bush who were hanged, it would have been met with silence, if not outright approval by the very same people...) Aside from the many attrocities carried out on orders from one of the most ruthless dictators in recent history, here's a list of penalties that were metered out by Saddam's "justice system":

• Cutting off ears for desertion


• Cutting off hands for theft (fingers for less valuable goods)


• Breaking the spines of liars (in a very literal sense: with a cement block dropped on people's backs)


• Pushing homosexuals off of tall buildings


• Beheading with a sword (al-Bashar) for espionage, treason, and smuggling

To the mind of a European "sophisticate" hanging this monster was an act of barbarity...  Hearing this I can't help but feel Shadenfreude at the decline of Europe - a civilization this wimpy does not deserve to survive. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended". This applies to human societies as well. I just finished reading Mark Steyn's "America Alone", a very witty and very depressing book that points out the demography-driven inevitability of the transformation of Eutopia into Eurabia within a few decades. When the islamic masters take over the liberal institutions of Western Europe - after their population will have become majorities in their European host countries - they will not display the same squeamishness about harsh punishment for offenses far more benign than those  of Saddam.

I do feel somewhat conflicted about the death penalty, but for very different reasons: the way it is administered in countries such as the US, it is far too delicate a procedure, with the opponents now arguing that even the sanitized execution by lethal injection is too "cruel", as it does not kill instantenuously, letting the condemned feel a little bit of the agony of dying. And why shouldn't they? Why should we be so timid about inflicting pain on people like Cary Steiner, who in February 1999 in a Yosemite Park lodge sodomised for hours the 15-year-old Juli Sund, after having strangled her mother and a 16-year-old Argentinian girlfriend, and then drove her (and the two bodies) to a secluded spot in the park, and slit her throat? Or the Belgian electrician Marc Dutroux, who kindapped and sexually molested several young girls, whom he kept in a concrete-lined, sound-proof dungeon in one of his houses. Two of those girls, both 8-years-old, starved to death in this dungeon between February and March 1995, when Dutroux was held in jail for car theft. These "people" deserve much worse fates than a few minutes of "agony" after a lethal injection or a quick, nearly painless death by hanging. It seems that a life imprisonment might be a tougher penalty than this. We don't allow terminally-ill patients to end their lives and suffering, and yet we're offering an easy way out to "people" whose cruelty makes your blood curl. It makes no sense at all.

Science as religion

I've been watching the recorded sessions of the conference Beyond Belief with very mixed emotions. This conference, organized by the Science Network and held November 5-7 at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, gathered together scientists and philosophers, ostensibly to try to answer questions such as, "Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful as those that have traditionally sustained societies? Can we be good without God? And if not God, then what?", but mostly to bash religion, Intelligent Design, and... George W. Bush.

Now, bashing religions, if done well, is music to my ears, if only because religions have enjoyed the status of holy cows in our society way too long. However, seeing this being done by arrogant assholes like Richard Dawkins or Lawrence Kraus makes me cringe at calling myself an atheist (I so do not want to be like them!) I actually have more respect for the compassionate, soft-spoken Joan Roughgarden, who actually defended religion, that for the condescending, haughty atheists like Dawkins, regardless how many books the latter wrote.

As much as I despair over the resurgence of religious fanaticism in the world, currently unleashing mayhem and threatening to destroy our civilization, I do not see science offering a better alternative to religion as the ultimate guide for our actions. Anybody who believes science to be free of ideology and dogma obviously hasn't been paying attention. One only needs to recall the treatment given by fellow scientists to Bjorn Lomborg for his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" to know that the price for challenging the currently dominant and politically-correct dogma is steep indeed. While "heretics" who dare to cast doubt on the junk science presented in support of "global warming" as man-made phenomenon do not face being burned at the stake, they do it at a tremendous risk to their careers - a modern day equivalent of being driven out of a medieval village, covered in tar and feathers.

And what's with this visceral hatred of George W. Bush? The cheap, gratuitous jokes would have been embarassing at a divorce lawyers convention, let alone a gathering of people who undoubtedly think of themselves as "luminaries of science". ("Our current president's support of Intelligent Design is surprising, considering that his very existence disproves it." - is just one example. One has to give a bit of credit to the audience, which, although almost certainly not sympathetic to GWB, responded with few laughs.) These people are supposed o be role models??

Quote of the day

"There's something pathological about the liberal need to belittle and demean everything about a person they disagree with in any regard." - Simon, a commenter on Ann Athouse's blog. You nailed it, brother!

A cure worse than the disease

Why is it that whenever the government bureaucrats try to "fix"something, their solution is often clumsy, burdensome, and illogical? Take the airport security, for example: after the Lockerbie bombing the airline personnel receiving luggage from passengers was required to ask every passenger 3 inane questions: "Did anyone unknown to you give you any items to carry on board this aircraft? Did you pack these bags yourselves? Have these bags been in your possession at all times since you packed them?" This went on for years and I haven't heard of any bombing or hijacking attempts that had been thwarted by that dumb procedure. Luckily for the government and the airlines, the passengers played along and did not bother to answer these questions truthfully, as this would have wrecked havoc. ("To be honest, since I packed these bags yesterday I left them unattended several times to go to the bathroom and to run errands." "Full check, please!")

Immediately after 9/11 security screeners confiscated, among other things, nail clippers, although it must have been self-evident to anybody with half a brain that after the events of that day no hijackers would be able to take over an airplane, even with box cutters, let alone nail clippers! The formerly operative advice, "Stay calm and do what the hijackers tell you to do" has gone out the window, even before any government official declared it invalid. After the most recent bombing plot discovered in the UK, people not only had their shampoo and toothpaste confiscated (this was, at least, somewhat reasonable given the nature of the threat, apparently involving liquid chemicals smuggled on board and then combined to make explosives), but laptops were also banned from carry-on luggage for no discernible reason whatsoever. This latter directive was recently rescinded, but it is still bewildering why it was issued in the first place. It is still somewhat of a miracle that the government did not make us fly barefoot, given the scare with the "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.

Of course, this could be dismissed as a mere nuisance that makes otherwise comfortable lives a little bit less comfortable, but with minimal societal costs. It's a very different story with legislations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which, in reaction to the Enron debacle, imposed a lot of onerous requirements on businesses, stiffling American competitiveness and hobbling the stock market. As the Opinion Journal's John Fund writes: "Increasingly, Hong Kong and London are the places where companies are finding it easier and cheaper to list their shares and raise capital. Last year, of the 25 largest initial public offerings in the world, only one took place in America. This year, Hong Kong is likely to end up as the No. 1 market for stock offerings world-wide." This sort of governmental overreaction can have consequences far more costly and damaging than a silly ban on nail clippers.

Bush is Hitler and you're not dead yet?

If George W. Bush is Hitler, and the United States is a fascist regime, as so many from the Angry Left assert, how come his enemies are not dropping dead like flies, the way the enemies of Russia's Vladimir Putin have been recently? If Noam Fucking Chomsky - to name just one example - had been directing his venom toward Russia and not the United States, he would have been dead by now. It's funny how these assertions about the evil nature of this country are proven wrong by the very fact that they are uttered openly and with complete impunity: in most countries they would not be tolerated. And that's exactly why the Angry Left says those things - because it feels perfectly safe. It is so cowardly that it will retreat and impose censorship at a mere hint of violence from the Perpetually Offended (i.e. muslims) - under the cover of "sensitivity", of course - but it will beat its chest and spray spittle yelling about its inalienable right to say any vile nonsense about the only country that will go to great lengths to protect that right. Few things are more pathetic.

The Futurist

Almost every article in the excellent blog The Futurist is a tasty morsel of good news in the poisonous soup of negativity we are force-fed day after day by the mainstream media. (Unlike in the MSM, these articles started appearing well before the electoral victory of the Democrats. Were it not for this victory, we would never have learned from the likes of the New York Times that the American economy is doing quite well, actually.)

Check out, for example, The US Economy Today - Amazing Resilience, in which the Futurist looks at the numerous negative forces that could be expected to put a damper on our economy: terrorism, corporate scandals, Hurricane Katrina, high oil prices, and points out that only a few decades ago a subset of those would have thrown the US economy (and most other economies) into a deep recession, while today all of them combined manage, at most, to knock off a couple of percentage points from our rate of growth.

Yet the Futurist is not a Polyanna, nor a Buddhist monk reaching for a strawberry while being chased by tigers. He (I'm guessing the writer is a man) is not an incurable optimist, but someone who is very capable of backing his positive outlook with strong, rational arguments. Of course, some of this is merely predicting, which can always prove to be off the mark in a big way, but given the equally (im)plausible predictions that in the next few decades the polar ice caps will melt, or that advancements in biotechnology will increase our expected lifespans to 130 (or more) years, I'm inclined to give more weight to the latter, if only because it is something to hope for, instead of fear.Â

The End of Faith

I have just finished reading Sam Harris' phenomenal book, "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason". Without hesitation, I would call it the most important book of the decade. Reading it was both uplifting and depressing. Uplifting, because it is a wonderful feeling to have someone much smarter than I express with such clarity and force ideas that I could very well call my own. The only thing better than that would be if I were able to write so well myself, and be read by so many (this book was a bestseller in the US). Depressing, because there seems to be no viable alternative to the path of apocalyptic destruction we appear to be on. That is, Sam Harris does offer such an alternative - abandoning irrational beliefs in exchange for spirituality and ethics anchored in reason and honest inquiry - but I just can't imagine enough people taking up his challenge for it to make any difference. At least not during my lifetime, which, incidentally, may be cut short by maniacs smart enough to make and use nuclear weapons, but dumb enough to believe that for mass murder they will be rewarded in the afterlife with their own personalized bordellos, each with 72 horny virgins.

Part of the problem, paradoxically, are the very people whom one would naturally expect to provide a counterbalance to religious lunatics, namely the secular liberals. As Sam Harris points out in his book, and in the excellent essay in The Los Angeles Times, "The End of Liberalism", Western liberals have been so blindsided by self-hatred and its monstrous children: moral relativism and dogmatic multiculturalism, that they actually play into the hands of those, who want to destroy Western civilization. To know that this is true one needs only to look at the treatment the erstwhile icon of the European Left, Oriana Fallaci, received from liberals for daring to criticize... islam, and for speaking about the cultural values of the West as if they were (oh, what blasphemy!) superior to the cult of death and destruction emanating from the "islamic world". Sadly, it appears that only the religious lunatics of the West are willing to take a stand against the lunatics of the Middle East - if that's the case, I'm with the former. I can coexist with Jerry Falwell and George W. Bush, but not with Bin Laden or Ahmadinejad. There are people far scarrier than Dick Cheney. The Left, in the grips of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), disagrees. To hell with them.

Here are the major points from Sam Harris' book (as I recall them):

• The human species is on the brink of annihilation because of a clash between worldviews that spring from irrational beliefs


• We live in the Age of Unreason


• This really is a war with islam, and not with terrorism


• Islam is not, and never was, a "religion of peace"


• The role that religion plays in the current conflict has been taken out of discourse


• Islam as a religion is not unique in its aggresive stance against non-believers; the Old and New Testament also contain unambiguous calls to exterminate the non-believers. The only difference is that the adherents of Judaism and Christianity either don't read their holy texts, or don't take them seriously any more.


• Religions have been a tremendous burden on human societies, causing untold suffering and destruction, and hampering progress throughout centuries


• The current predicament of humanity is different from past ones in that now people who disdain life and crave death can get their hands on weapons with the ability to annihilate the human race


• There must be a way to have ethics and spirituality without religion. In fact, we better find it fast, otherwise we may not survive next 50 years


• Happiness and suffering could well form the basis on which to build a rational, non-religious system of ethics

10 years without America

Abandoning Iraqis to be slaughtered by their fellow muslims sounds heartless and un-American, and it probably is. Yet in all honesty I can't say that I care very much. If history is any guide, our sacrifice will not earn us much gratitute, and whetever little there will be, it will be short-lived. Just consider history as recent as the Kosovo war. If it weren't for the American initiative and leadership, the Europeans would have kept watching the Serbs "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo, until not a single moslem would have been left alive in the province. Did this win us any "brownie points" in the so-called "islamic world"? Don't bet on it. In Europe then? You must be kidding.

One could argue that the sacrifice in Kosovo wasn't that big. We just bombed the Serbs relentlessly for weeks, with almost no risk to the NATO forces, so it was just a matter of paying for the bombs. Well, maybe, but we might have done nothing at all - after all, Kosovo was of no strategic significance to the United States. And what about the II World War, where the sacrifice was enormous? Judging from the anti-Americanism so prevalent in Western Europe these days, someone not very familiar with the XXth century history would likely conclude that the USA must have been the occupier, and not the liberator. The Poles have less hatred toward the Russians, who tried for 200 years to forcibly assimilate a big chunk of Poland, and then, from 1945 till 1989 practically turned the whole country into a "17th Soviet Republic", than the French or the Germans now openly express toward the United States.

I wish we granted that troll Hugo Chavez his wish ("Yankees go home!") and went home, indeed. Let's give the Europeans the chance to defend themselves. (It is going to be quite a funny spectacle to watch them do it. Any tinpot dictator half as arrogant as Yugoslavia's Milosevic will be able to wrap them around his finger. They'll eventually adopt sharia as their law, in the hope that the jihadists will stop sending suicide bombers into European cities.) Let's have the UN continue to deal with the genocide in Sudan in the same brave and decisive way it's been doing so far (i.e. not doing a damn thing). Let's allow North and South Koreans to be finally re-united ander the enlightened leadership of the Great Leader Kim Jong Il.

There was a movie last year in the US entitled "A Day Without a Mexican", showing a fictionalized collapse of most basic services in this country as a result of all the Latino workers (legal and illegal) not being there to perform them. Wouldn't a movie "10 Years Without America" be far more interesting, not to mention scary? It's not hard to imagine the mayhem unleashed, were the United States to disengage from the world's affairs and let the chips fall where they may. That's what many around the world seem to be clamoring for - why not give it to them? Just for ten years. And then come and clean up the smoldering mess. I'm certain of one thing: the anti-American liberals in Europe and elsewhere would not survive such a world. That's "poetic justice" for you.

Winning by losing and vice versa

I admit: I'm one of those people, who lost faith in the "Freedom and Democracy in Iraq" project. Not that I had a lot of faith in it to begin with. Initially I was convinced that the war in Iraq was a mistake, primarily because I did not consider Saddam Hussein - even with the weapons of mass destruction - to be a threat to the United States, at least not as grave as Iran or North Korea. Later, I allowed myself to be swayed by the argument that having a prosperous democracy in the Arab world would change the dynamics in the Middle East, and perhaps have a domino effect in the surrounding medieval satrapies. Yes, it would have been a brilliant stroke - had it had any chance of succeeding. And so I'm back to what I have always believed, which is that democracy and individual freedom are incompatible with the Arab mindset, or even Islam for that matter - the quasi-democratic, deeply corrupt regimes in Muslim countries like Indonesia notwithstanding.

It does not mean, by the way, that I do not believe we can "win" in Iraq, if by "winning" one means suppressing the insurgency and stabilizing the country to the point where we could get out without losing face. The problem is that, unless we stay in Iraq for decades and impose - by any means necessary - our own secularized political and cultural system, Iraq will eventually slide back into bloody chaos soon after our departure. There is just no way around that. Japan and Germany after World War II are often evoked by the proponents of this project as examples of countries that the United States successfully transformed from murderous, aggressive, nationalistic dictatorships into prosperous, docile democracies. However, aside from cultural differences that made Germany and Japan more susceptible to such transformation than Iraq, neither of these two countries was surrounded by neighbors who very much remained in the pre-transformation mold, and who feared the changes taking place accross the border. In order to change Iraq we would have to change the entire Middle East at the same time - an idea as crazy and impossible as it sounds.

The only way a country like Iraq can be "stabilized" is by one of the factions being strong and cruel enough to finish off the others. That's why we can't do it - we are not capable (institutionally more that psychologically, perhaps) of being sufficiently cruel; and by "cruelty" I do not mean faking electrocutions or photographing oneself next to a pile of naked prisoners (none of them dead or being killed). I mean wiping out entire families or clans in reprisal for terrorist acts committed by one of their members; I mean throwing live people into wood choppers; leveling, Hama-like, entire villages and tows, with their inhabitants still inside; mutilating bound prisoners before cutting off their heads and videotaping all this to be shown on TV. I have no doubt that many, if not all, of the insurgent groups currently fighting in Iraq are itching to be the one committing these and other atrocities on a scale sufficient to destroy or scare the others. Mass murder in Iraq is inevitable - the only question is: how quickly will it burn itself out and who will emerge on top after blood stops flowing in the streets?

To be brutally honest, if we play our cards right, the answer to this question should be of no consequence to us. Aside from oil and helping Israel stay alive, we have no interest in this region. The two are huge ones, of course, but the issue of oil could, and should, be resolved by the combination of energy efficiency, alternative fuels, and increased domestic production of oil; this, by the way, would also help diminish the risk of a second Jewish holocaust. How? Without revenues from oil, the countries in the Middle East have no economies to speak of, so they would be forced to go back to nomadic tribalism from before the oil boom, which seems to be their dream anyway.

Whether we get out of Iraq next week or next year, the country will deteriorate into a bloody mess, so we may as well do it sooner rather than later. Yes, the jihadists will declare a victory, but so what? More such victories, and the Arab world will stop being a problem. It's kind of like the "victory" of the Vietnamese, isn't it? However, suicidal idiots that they are, they are not as stupid as to not recognize that while we may not be able to help a defeated country stand back on its feet, we can easily destroy any Muslim country, if it pushes the right buttons. (How long did it take the US military to defeat the Taliban and the Iraqi army, with negligible casualties on its side?) Having a prosperous, strong Middle East at peace with itself might actually be more dangerous to us than having a bloody mess there. Unless they change their culture and abandon their religion, a substantial percentage of Muslims will always want to conquer the world and convert everybody to Islam, so a democratic state would at some point either have to revert to authoritarian rule (like Algeria), or succumb to an Islamic takeover and theocracy. Imagine a country like Japan, with its industrial and technological power, and vast financial resources, becoming hostile and aggressive again?

Ponder this

You, who are celebrating the Democratic takeover of Congress - can you stop for a moment and consider these questions:

• How come the Republicans are behaving like adults and not throwing tantrums about "stolen elections"?


• Why are the jihadis and other assorted enemies of our country happy about the Dems' victory?

Maybe, just maybe, this will manage to wipe that smile off your face for a moment, as it should. One doesn't have to be a Republican - and I am not - to feel uneasy.

The People have spoken

I know it's been already five days since the midterm election, but the days flew by so fast, that I didn't get a chance to write my comments about it until now. I'm quite conflicted about the outcome, really. One the one hand, the huge victory of the Democrats was a surprise and a disappointment; seeing the very people, who for the last several years spewed nothing but hatred and bile directed at their country and her president, rejoice and taunt the losing side, was quite painful. In my opinion the Democrats clearly did not deserve to win, and so it felt like injustice - it was the same feeling I had gotten watching OJ Simpson get away with double homicide.

On the other hand, the Republicans fully deserved a big dope slap. They have been corrupted by power and kept making one arrogant and stupid misstep after another:

• ballooning budget deficit (Are they trying to bunkrupt the country?? Sure looks like it.)


• trying to squeeze in some sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants


• huge increase in pork-barrel spending


• unethical and reckless behavior, including, but not limited to, the "Foley affair"


• attempt to meddle in people's private lives and decisions (the Terri Schiavo debacle)


• inability or unwillingness to talk openly and forcefully about the war in Iraq, allowing the anti-war, anti-American media to distort the picture and win the propaganda battle


• wasting the opportunity to get Americans behind a bold plan toward energy independence - and not having such a bold plan in the first place

... to name just the most eggregious ones. And so they deserved to lose, only perhaps not as badly. It's not that I feel sorry for them, but the drastic measure the American electorate took seems a bit like divorcing an alcoholic to marry a heroin addict. A powerful warning would have been good enough: losing a few seats while keeping the majority, just hanging by a thread. Except, of course, elections are blunt objects, especially in the American system of "winner-takes-all". Besides, I do trust the wisdom of the American electorate - it has been proven right in the past, and there is no reason to doubt that it will be so this time as well.

Let me say a few words in praise of voluntary participation in elections, which is one of the reasons I have more trust in the electorate that I would have otherwise. Some countries force their citizens to vote, e.g. by imposing fines on those, who don't - Australia comes to mind. I could not disagree more - after all, paradoxical as it may seem, not-voting is voting. It is just indirect: by not casting my vote I let other people make the choice for me. This is a perfectly legitimate option, consistent with the idea of representative - as opposed to direct - democracy. How is this different from allowing ather people - representatives in Congress, senators, the president - to make decisions on my behalf? People who choose to vote are those who care, and I'd rather trust their collective judgment than rely on the choices of people, who don't give a shit, but go to the polls merely to avoid fines.

Then, there were the five proposals in the State of Michigan, from allowing dove hunting (rejected), to a set level of funding for education (rejected), to banning affirmative action, i.e. preferential treatment given on the basis of race or gender (passed). The fact that this last proposal (Proposal 2) passed, is nothing if not stunning, considering the opposition mounted against it. It was truly a fight of a small army of Davids against not one, but multiple Goliaths. Both the Republican and the Democratic candidate for governor spoke against this proposal. (Only the Libertarian canditate - a black person, interestingly enough - spoke in favor.)  University of Michigan, having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending its affirmative action practices in court was - obviously - vehemently opposed. Major corporations issued statements criticizing the proposal. The groups opposing its passage outspent the proponents 3:1.

Some tactics used by the opposition, most notably the very vocal and aggresive BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) were crossing into the realm of thuggery: spreading lies, intimidation, physical violence. BAMN members apparently meant it when they named their organization: any means (they consider) necessary; those means included: busing children from Detroit to Ann Arbor for a counterdemonstration that thwarted the tiny gathering of anti-affirmative-action students and involved some pushing and shoving; physically blocking signature-gatherers on UM campus from approaching people; contacting the black people, who had signed the petition to put the proposal on the ballot, and intimidating them into testifying before a judge that they had been mislead; organizing a loud and obnoxious demonstration in front of a court where supporters of the proposal were testifying - this "peaceful" demonstration included spraying the people leaving the courthouse with soft drinks from cans; mounting one legal challenge after another in order to deny the citizens of Michigan a chance to vote on the proposal; etc.

Given the resources and the sheer aggresiveness of the campaign against Proposal 2, it is truly remarkable that it passed, and by such a wide percentage margin: 58:42.

Wasted opportunity

I have been pretty depressed all day because of the UN spectacle, but then I thought: whatever verbal abuse is directed at Bush, he deserves it, in that he really created those monsters. He wasted an incredible opportunity that was obvious to anybody with half a brain: after 9/11 he could have united the country toward the goal of energy independence. He could have easily put a 50% tax on gasoline when it was still cheap, and use the revenue to promote the development of alternative energy sources and oil exploration in the US. Instead, he allowed those that hate us and want us dead to get rich and more powerful on the windfall of high oil prices. After five years, we would have been far along the road to freeing ourselves from the deadly addiction that feeds our mortal enemies. With their economies collapsing, their people would have a better chance of achieving some degree of freedom themselves, without us wasting enormous amounts of our money and the lives of our magnificent soldiers in the hellhole of Iraq.

The new Troy

After El Loco Chavez got his applause form that dictator's club, otherwise known as the UN, he repeated his stand-up routine at a college somewhere, to a standing ovation... This is the very first time ever that I felt ashamed of being an American. I literally wanted to cry. What other country would allow a third-world imbecile like Chavez or that Iranian psychopath to ridicule and threaten that country on its very soil, and not only without any consequences, but to an applause?? I know it's only the unhinged Left, that would welcome warmly Idi Amin and Pol Pot, any monster, as long as he's capable of spewing hatred toward the United States and their president. But where is the outrage of ordinary, rational Americans, who should right now be storming the UN building and getting the international bums out in wheelbarrows?

What a sad, sad spectacle. Perhaps this civilization does not deserve to be saved, after all, since it has already lost its sense of self-preservation. We're all citizens of Troy, and we are letting not one, but multiple wooden horses be dragged by a mob of dancing fools inside our gates. The only consolation left for us is a twisted one: we will die, but so will the fools.

End of appeasement?

There is a significant positive side to the ongoing brouhaha over the remarks made by the Pope, and it is the fact that the West is finally starting to wake up and see the nature of the enemy we're facing. It was easy to ingore when something President Bush said or did, caused muslim hysteria. ("What do you expect from that semi-literate cowboy in the White House?") Even the Danish cartoonists could be left to fend for themselves, dissed by the Left as a bunch of reactionaries, whose gross cultural insensitivity got them what they deserved. But with this recent incident it is becoming awfully hard to keep on blaming  the victim. (Cowboy in the Vatican? An insensitive reactionary? Doesn't quite fit...) Yes, there are still those who try: Scott Adams, the creator of the occasionally funny Dilbert cartoons, has this imbecilic reaction to the news of firebombing of churches in the West Bank: "WHAT THE HELL ARE CHURCHES DOING IN THE WEST BANK?????????" (Hmm, yes, what are churches doing in the land of Jesus? And what the hell are mosques doing in Europe and America?). However, their numbers are rapidly shrinking. Case in point: blogger Matoko Kusanagi posted her criticism of the Pope for "poking the snake". One only needs to scroll down and read the dozens of comments posted on her blog to see that appeasement no longer has the same appeal it did only a few months ago. Pope: 1, moslems: less than 0.

Tiny points of light

Writing in today's LA Times with clarity and force, Sam Harris chastises fellow liberals for ignoring the grave threat posed to our civilization by islamic fanaticism. He has put into precise sentences something I've been thinking about for a long time but never wrote down: having ranted for so long about the ills and evils of the Western civilization, the liberals internalized their loathing to the point, where they will not defend this civilization against annihilation. How can a reasonable person respond to this death wish, except by saying, "Fuck you! And may you die a prolonged and horrible death, having your head sawed off with a dull knife by a masked islamic fanatic. On video. You can go to hell, if you so wish, but you're not taking me along."

For the biggest part of my life I considered myself a liberal, albeit in the "classical sense", that is a person who would like to see more freedoms given to individuals to make their own decisions, and fewer restrictions placed by government bureaucrats on the lives of private citizens. I abhorred religious fanatics of any kind and didn't like religions to begin with. But if Christian conservatists are the only people capable of recognizing the threat and willing to fight it, then sign me up. I will become a born-again Jesus freak, if that's necessary to defeat islamic fascism, because I know that our civilization will have a chance to emerge from the temporary darkness imposed on it by Christian fundamentalism - it has done so in the past, it will do it again. But if we lose this battle, if murderous islam turns up victorius, there is no chance for us. Christianity did go through very dark, cruel episodes, but it eventually reformed, adjusted, "civilized" itself. Islam never changed. If anything, it seems to be going backwards, toward barbarism, intolerance, fanaticism, madness.
It is so extremely rare these days to hear a liberal speak up againt the gravest threat our civilization has faced since Nazism, that it is impossible not run toward these tiny points of light, like a child chasing fireflies in a swamp.

Humiliation as a weapon

Are we still fighting "for the hearts and minds of the moslems?" Because if we are, than the pope's contrition for telling the truth means that we're having our assess whipped in this fight. Islamic is a patriarchal world, where the issue of honor is a very important one. The islamofascists know that they can't challenge the West on  science, technology, or culture, so they hit us where they can reach and where their victory will reverberate among their fellow moslems. They challenged us to a boxing match they know they can't win playing by the rules, so they are biting and kicking us in the balls. It doesn't matter that this is dirty fighting, what matters is that they have us squirming and covering our balls. They can say to the muslim audience who at some time might have been attracted to Western ideas and way of life, "This is what you covet? Look at them: a moslem will frown and the head of their church wil bow and ask for forgiveness. Do you want to be like them, or would you rather stick with us and have them tremble in fear of you?"

It's not hard to guess the answer coming from the islamic audience.Â

Message to the pope: convert to islam

Pope Benedict expressed regrets that his recent remarks offended muslim sensibilities. His offense? He dared to remind the world that early islam was spread largely by force. (The pope now says that his intention was to point out that it is wrong to use any religion as justification for violence.) Now he'll have to apologize, perhaps go to the muslim equivalent of Canossa (Would it be Peshawar? Tehran? Sadr City?), stand there barefoot, clad only in a potato sack, with ashes on his head, and wait for forgiveness. The followers of the "religion of peace" are already protesting on the streets and threatening violence. It could get out of hand, like with the Danish cartoons. Of course, it is nothing more than another test of Western cowardice, to see how quickly it will promise to censor its speech and apologize profusely.

My advise to the twit in papal robes: accept islam. You know it is going to happen eventually. Once eurabia is under sharia you won't be able to hold off for long, so why prolong the agony and suffer more humiliations? Chances are, the rest of europe will follow your example, and this way the US could finally disengage from the continent that has long ago ceased to be an ally, let alone a friend. Then it will just be a matter of waiting until they attack us, and respond with full force, perhaps liberating europe once again from the grip of yet another totalitarianism that grew on its decaying body.

Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci has finally succumbed to cancer she had been fighting for years. This is very sad news - with the passing of this incredible woman there is now a little bit less courage in the West vis-a-vis the dominant cowardice and dhimmitude. It is also good news: the assholes who were dragging her to court for daring to criticize islam will not be able to touch her. I hope they spent a lot of money on lawyers already.

I can't say that I knew much about her. (I read "The Rage and The Pride", of course). I was a teenager when I saw her for the first and last time on television, when Polish TV rebroadcast her interview with ayatollah Khomeini, in the midst of which she took off the face-covering hijab she had been forced to wear. I remember being floored by the courage of this woman. (This is what "talking truth to power" means - not some imbecile carrying sign "Bush=Hitler" at a demonstration in San Francisco, knowing full well that there will be no negative consequences for him or her.)

Today, in the "multicultural" world we are being brainwashed to accept as ours, such a gesture would be met with scorn by today's leftists as "insensitive". (In this worldview it is "insensitive" to criticize anybody and anything except Western values, countries, and cultures, especially the USA). Interestingly, Ms. Fallaci was a darling of the Left back then; in recent years she's become an enemy to them. She hasn't changed, always looking for the truth, always alergic to hipocrysy and tyranny. It's the Left that has become a sad caricature of itself.

P.S. A great tribute to Oriana Fallaci by Michael Ladeen at Politics Central. More tributes at Pajamas Media.

Quote of the season

"Republicans deserve to lose, but the Democrats don't deserve to win" - Professor Bainbridge.  (via InstaPundit)

Quote of the week

A commenter Rorshach under a post in Protein Wisdom on the death of Oriana Fallaci:

"Small blurbs in Reuters and AP about her. That’s all they have to say on the subject, of course. When Noam fucking Chomsky dies, though, they’ll be writing about him 24 hours a day for three weeks."

Indeed.

Muslim chutzpah

The Morning Edition interview with Sayed Badreya and Hesham Issawi reminded me why, after five years, I still can't stand NPR. (I used to be a great fan and member...) The interview went well enough and I listened to it with some interest, until, at the very end, Renee Montagne asked, "What about America's image problem in the Muslim world?". To which Mr. Badreya immediately, almost automatically responded, "Oh, it is terrible! It's horrible! It's just horrible". After that interview I turned the radio off - I was so upset I could not listen to it anymore.
So it always comes down to this, doesn't it: America is the greater evil. At the bottom of every depravity there is America to blame. Muslims are just victims. If Americans were to say that the image of Muslims in this country is terrible, because... - well, do you really want me to count the reasons? - this would be just another evidence of our ignorance and prejudice. Never mind the beheadings, the suicide bombers, the cult of death, the daily carnage perpetrated on Muslims by Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere... Muslims are just victims, we have no right or reason to dislike them, let alone hate them. They, on the other hand, have plenty of reasons to hate us. But if that's the case, at least we have plenty of company: the bombings and thwarted bombing plots suggest that they hate India, too. And Spain. And Canada. And Germany. And the UK. They hate other Muslims, as well. They have so much hate to dish out that there isn't any left for us.
The meek acknowledgment of Mr. Issawi, that there is "still bright side to America", because he was able to make a film here that he would not be able to make in Egypt, only added insult to injury. So this country had welcomed these guys, allowed them to realize their dreams, and yet they feel that the hatred of America in the Muslim world is fully justified.
Thank you NPR, for reminding me why I should continue to be very mistrustful of Muslims and you.

Most livable small town: Midland, MI

My wife and I drove through Midland, MI last Thursday on our way back from vacations on the Upper Peninsula. This was our first visit to this town and I must say that we were very impressed. Among the things that elicited our exclammations of approval:

• Beautifully maintained downtown area (along Main Street): clean, pedestrian-friendly, filled with flowers.


• The skateboarding park. When most towns (including our own, Ann Arbor) merely forbid skateboarding and treat skateboarders as if they were criminals, Midland created a great place for the kids to have fun without bothering anybody.


• Biking trails. Both my wife and I are avid bike riders and we regretted that we didn't take our bikes on this trip. We plan to go back to Midland for a ride sometime soon.


• Free parking in downtown. Wow! In our town finding a parking spot in downtown is nearly impossible, and it costs at least a $1/hour, with many meters limited to 2, 1, or even 0.5 hour...


• Spacious, exceptionally clean riverside park with enclosed areas for dogs to run. Again, rather than prescribe the length of the leash the dogs must be kept on *at all times* (we've seen plenty of examples of local ordinances of this sort), the town's administrators gave dog owners a place to let their pets run free. We, not being dog owners ourselves, find it highly commendable.

Our brief visit, merely few hours, allowed us only a very small glimpse into Midland, but what we saw left us impressed. I can say that it is one of the nicest, most livable small towns I have seen in my extensive travels in the US. Perhaps what was most impressive was the town administration's apparent rational and citizen-friendly approach. Way too many city councils would bring up the issue of legal liability when voting down a proposal to build a skateboarding area or establish a dog park. I'm sure they considered this as well, but decided to err on the side of innovation and making life in town more pleasurable, rather than being protected from any possible legal danger.

Here are a few photos I took in Midland :

• Skateboarding park


• The Tridge


• Courthouse 

Real state secrets

Lawrence Kudlow writes in Real Clear Politics on the economic news you will not find in MSM:

Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.

And why won't you find it in MSM? Because, unlike reporting on secrets anti-terrorism measures, this news might be good for Bush. We can't have that.

The dark side of the left side

In another excellent, thoughful post, neo-neocon digs into the deeper layers of meaning behind the bumper sticker "Friends Dont's Let Friends Vote Republican". I agree with her and some of her commenters, that what lies beneath this seemingly humorous slogan is quite dark and disturbing. It's not because I am some humorless, stern ultraconservative with a stick up my ass. In fact, I love a good joke and have amassed a small collection of really good ones on my web site, including the ethnic and overly sexual ones. There was a time when I would not think dark thoughts about a bumper sticker like that, but like for neo-neocon, things have changed for me in a major way after 9/11.

I used to consider myself a liberal, too, albeit more in the "classical" sense of the word - I always hated political correctness, race-baiting, and anti-capitalism of the left fringe of the Democratic Party. I wasn't a lifelong Democrat, because I became a US citizen merely a decade ago, but I can safely say that I was a lifelong liberal. Then, 9/11 happened. It was like striking a match in a darkened room: what seemed like a cozy, safe place full of smart, friendly people, showed itself to be a monster ball. It shocked me deeply, but at first I thought it was just an illusion, a trick of perception that more light would blow away. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be.

On 9/11 I found myself in Portland, Oregon, visiting a very long time friend of mine (we went back as far as high-school). We weren't nearly as close as we used to be - actually drifted apart quite a bit, partly due to the geographical distance that separated us (I live in the Midwest) - but we renewed our contacts and good vibes in late 1990's. I was a bit taken aback upon discovering that my friend had been pulled into the radical circles of the "artsy" Left (he made a ring with the head of Lenin for his late-teens daughter and proudly showed me a communist/anarchist bookstore that he frequented). It was a bit painful and perplexing, considering that we both were born and raised in the same "workers paradise" of Eastern Europe - but heck, friends don't have to "march in lockstep", right? Our political views are one thing, and our friendship quite another, right?

Wrong! When it became clear that I did not share my friend's and his cohort's conviction that "America had it coming" and that 9/11 was our (i.e. Americans') damn fault and a proper payback for slavery, imperialism, polluting the planet, capitalism, world hunger, militarism, genocide of the Indians, etc, etc, etc., he became vicious. From a friend he turned into a bitter and vindictive enemy, and it did not stop when I finally - and with great relief - flew back home on the first flight that became available a few days later. He demanded that I return all things that he ever gave me - which I promptly did; he kept sending me nasty letters, returning my responses without opening them, until I, too, stopped receiving his; he badmouthed me to our mutual friends (whom he eventually managed to alienate as well).

Why can't I see it as just an isolated incident - a single guy, perhaps mentally unstable, turning into a vindictive asshole because someone disagreed with him? It's not a proof that the whole Left is like that! Of course, that's what I thought for a while, but then more and more matches were being struck in the dark room, and the impression that I was in the middle of a monster ball was reaffirmed.

I happen to live in a liberal, college town in the Midwest and I've seen my share of examples of how the "tolerant" Left treats those who disagree with its worldview. There were not many "Bush/Cheney 2004" yard signs in this town, and those there were put up, quickly disappeared. Mine was left on my lawn, but torn to shreds. I consider myself lucky that worse things, like a stone through the window, did not happen in response to my abhorrent political stance. I saw a car on campus with a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker, whose side (the car's, that is) was badly scratched from front to back with a sharp metal object. (That'll teach the Republican motherfucker some tolerance!) Proponents of the ballot measure to ban affirmative action were physically assaulted by members of the radical-left outfit BAMN (By Any Means Necessary - apparently, that includes violence) while collecting signatures under a petition. During the 2003 presidential election those that intended to vote for Bush hardly spoke about it with anybody, and when they did, it was in a hushed, conspiratorial tones, while glancing around to see who else might listen. It brought back very bad memories of being in the political underground in an Eastern Block state... I assure you, these people were not afraid of Bush's "fascist thugs", but of their own liberal, "tolerant" colleagues and "friends". Why do you think is neo-neocon hiding behind that green apple, afraid to broach the subject of her political conversion in her social circles? Why is Dr. Sanity hiding in the closet, too? Oh, I'm keeping low profile as well. I'm sure there is a small legion of people like us, people who asked and answered for themselves difficult questions about their political identity, now quietly living in the midst of pathological, knee-jerk Bush-hatred. Are we all paranoid, or is the fear of ostracism, job loss, damage to property, physical and verbal abuse all too real? When I was still living under a totalitarian regime, one of my friends remarked bitterly: "When you are afraid of criminals, you can always go to the police for protection. But when you're afraid of the police, who do you go to - criminals?" I did not know than that there existed a lower circle of Hell, one in which you have to be afraid of your co-workers, neighbors, friends, and people you pass on the street.

It is ironic that the Left is always first to yell "discrimination! intolerance!" at the slightest sign of opposition to its worldview. And every time you point out to them their own intolerance, they immediately throw back at you some example of that on the Right, no matter the difference in degree or prevalence. Case in point: one of the commenters to neo-neocon's post provides a link to a T-shirt you can buy on the Web, with a slogan advocating lynching of journalists. (Also, like the sticker, intended to be "funny".) Now, I've traveled extensively in the US and have never seen anybody actually wearing that shirt, or even a shirt like that one. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of aforementioned stickers, plus "Impeach Bush!", "Bush=Hitler", and similar signs in my town. Don't you think that there is a profound difference between linking to a Belgian Web site with child pornography and saying, "Belgians condone child pornography", and actually seeing people in Brussels with child pornography magazines in hand, and saying the same thing? Both statements may be ultimately unfair, but which one is closer to being true do you think?

Another case in point: the very fresh Dr. Frish "kerfuffle". In case you don't know it yet, Ms. Deborah Frish is (now "was", since she allegedly quit her job as a result of the ensuing affair) a lecturer in psychology at the University of Arizona. She has just become (in)famous in the blogosphere for posting deeply disturbing, threatening comments like this:

if I woke up tomorrow and learned that someone else had shot you and your tyke it wouldn't slow me down one iota. You aren't human to me.

on a conservative blog of Jeff Goldstein. (It gets worse.) The reaction of the Left? (scrool down to the Comments section) Oh, but you conservatives didn't condemn the inflammatory rhetoric of Ann Coulter, either! Aside from the fact that this is patently untrue, as there were multiple condemnations of Ann Coulter on the Right (Glenn Reynolds issued one of them), don't you think that there is a profound difference of degree between someone calling grown women "broads" and asserting that they were exploiting their husbands' tragic deaths for political ends, and someone who writes a parent of a 2-year old, threatening his child with death and sexual molestation?? One of the things that the Left is routinely being accused of these days is "moral equivalence" - wouldn't you say that this is a pretty good example supporting that accusation?

If there is one positive message in all of this (This site is supposed to be devoted to good news about America, and you bring this?? - Ed.) is that the Left is on the losing side and will remain so for the foreseeable future. They think that the low poll numbers of George W. Bush translate into more votes for the Democrats, but I'm convinced that they are deeply mistaken. I am angry at George Bush for many things, including his recent attempt to sell us the amnesty for illegal immigrants as something else, and I doubt that I would vote for him again. But does this mean that I would vote for John Kerry, or Howard Dean, or any other Democrat? Hell no! I'm pretty pissed off at Republicans, too, but there are few choices worse than Ted Kennedy, or Nancy Pelosi, or Carl Levin. (Pat Buchanan isn't running for office, is he?) Democrats are their own worst negative advertising, and I do not see this changing any time soon.

Land of the living dead?

OK, so a guy with a really bad brain injury miraculously recovered after spending 20 years in a semi-vegetative state on a hospital bed, with all kinds of high-tech gear hooked up to him. Well, good for him. (I guess. I'm not in his shoes and, obviously, wouldn't wanna be.) For Tammy Bruce and some of her commenters this proves that taking the famously comatose Terri Schiavo out of her vegetative state and allowing her to die was murder, plain and simple - after all, if this guy recovered, why couldn't she? If not after twenty, then maybe 50, maybe 120 years? Let's set aside the difference in the extent of brain damage in both cases, and ask these questions instead:

How much did it cost to keep this guy alive for twenty years, and who paid for it? If the money came from his savings, or his family, I'm perfectly fine with that. They can keep him in the hospital for another 20 years, for what I care. In a private room, with a view of the ocean. However, if the money came from insurance or from the government (read: taxes), then I have a problem with it. Healthcare is neither free nor an infinite resource. If insurance or taxes paid for it, then we all paid for it, without being asked to. Let's imagine, for a second, that a lot of people get inspired by this story and demand, in their living wills, to be kept alive for however long it takes. Let's further assume, that a law is passed (which people like Tammy would undoubtedly support) banning anybody from disconnecting life support from a patient, no matter how hopeless his case. (Remember Terry Wallis? His case seemed hopeless, too!)

Even with today's technology we are able to keep people alive for a very long time. Her heart failed? No problem, hook her up to this machine! His lungs no longer work? No problem, plug him in here! Brain dead? Oh, that's a piece o' cake - this apparatus over there will keep him alive forever. Most of these people will never recover. Our hospitals will turn into some bizarre version of "Matrix", with rows and rows of unconscious, "almost dead" bodies being kept alive decade after decade with sophisticated machinery. Nobody will ever die - but is this life?? This nightmare is technically possible already, and will be even easier to realize in just a couple of decades.

And what about the cost of this ghoulish folly? How many Americans already can't afford health insurance? 40 million? If we force insurance companies to cover life-sustaining machinery for thousands or milions of never-to-die bodies, a few hundred of the richest Americans will perhaps be able to afford health insurance premiums - and they don't need it anyway. When considering something, it helps to think about it as becoming commonplace. (Wasn't it Immanuel Kant, who gave us this sage advice?) Oh, and please spare me the "you can't put a price tag on human life" nonsense. Oh yes, you can. If not on life, then on everything that life needs to stay alive.

P.S. Keeping Terri Schiavo in a vegetative state all these years was nothing if not a "cruel and unusual punishment". I can't fathom how anybody with half a heart would wish this on anybody else. And it fills me with dread to think that my wife or son might be prevented from an act of mercy, were I to become brain dead. That's why I put "do not resuscitate" in my living will. I hope it will be honored.

Ethical Americans

Cavid Carnoy, editor of CNET, wrote a piece describing a very generous return policy at Costco and Sam's Club, that allows customers to return a product during a course of its lifetime (which, potentially, could be years) for a full refund, provided that the product isn't damaged. Carnoy wonders if this isn't an invitation to abuse: given the rapidly falling prices of high-ticket electronics, people will be tempted to exchange that expensive last year's HDTV or LCD TV for this year's bigger and cheaper models.

What's really interesting is the reaction of the article's readers in the Comments: most commenters piled on Carnoy for... lack of moral judgement in suggesting such an unethical way of abusing a return policy of a great company! Aside from the fact that the readers obviously misread the author's message, their outrage is very encouraging. Apparently, there are plenty of people with high moral standards in America, at least among CNET's readers.

That cesspool of crime, Europe

Dymphna in Gates of Vienna looks at crime statistics of the US and of the "Old Europe":

[...] let’s compare the crime rate in lawless New Orleans with the crime rate in, say, the city it was named for: Orléans, France. In New Orleans, the per capita rate is given in the hundred thousands. Thus, according to this report, the 2004 rate for New Orleans, for all crime, was 6,110.3 per 100,000 population.

[...] Everyone knows Europe is more evolved than America, more sophisticated, more law-abiding – they sure have plenty of laws to abide by, don’t they? The European species is more restrained, civilized, blah blah, than the crude Homo americanus vulgaris.

Heh. Orléans’ crime rate is 109.24 per thousand people. In our terms, that translates to 10,100 per hundred thousand. So, extrapolating further, Orléans, France, has roughly sixty seven percent more crime than Mayor Nagin’s soggy fair city.

Germany, France, and the UK have - and have had for a while - significantly higher (and growing) crime rates than the US, where the crime has also been sharply declining for years. Interesting, isn't it?

The American Dream Has Come True

William Langley writes in The First Post:

It is much easier, and far more fashionable, to portray the United States as a dying empire mired in a misbegotten war, outstripped economically by China, and unable to keep even tin-pot states like North Korea in line.

Yet on a recent trip back to Washington DC where I lived for the Clinton years, it was impossible to escape the good news. Almost all of America's important social indicators - the measures of the true health of a nation - are pointing in the right direction.

He follows with a list of those indicators and concludes:

We don't hear much about it, because it doesn't fit our Euro-jaundiced view of what the United States is.

It's good to know that not all Western Eurpoeans buy into the US-bashing from their leftist elites. It's unfortunate, that too many of them do.

Gladiator, American Style

A beautiful tribute to American soldiers.

Indeed, freedom is not free.

Help them move

That annoying whackjob, Cindy Sheehan, is apparently filled with shame upon seeing the American flag. Good. I hope it lasts. Perhaps the day will come when she will bo so ashamed, that she'll move someplace else - I don't know, France? I really wish there were an exchange program, under which all these "Americans" who hate their own country would be given the option to settle elsewhere, in exchange for someone settling in the US. Wouldn't it be humanitarian? Wouldn't it make a lot of people happier and, by extension, the world a happier place?

It's an idea I keep coming back to. I even thought of creating a website with a database, where people willing to emigrate to the US could register, and eventually be matched with people, who would like to leave the US and live in their country. Say, a 3-person family from Turin, Italy could be exchanged for a family from San Franciso, perhaps taking account of their level of education and social status. (One needs to be fair and make sure that the other countries don't end up with all of our nutjobs, giving us their best and brightest in exchange. We've been already accused of sucking up talent from everywhere, even without a program like this.) Perhaps, with enough matches in the database, we could exert pressure on governments to sign up and allow the exchanges to happen? What would they have to lose, except a bunch of dissatisfied people?

(Alas, there is little hope that scoundrels like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky will leave. They are making a bundle of money on their hatred of the United States - doing it from outside wouldn't be nearly as profitable, and they might end up living in a cave like that "freedom fighter" Osama.)

Oh, by the way: seeing the American flag fills me with pride. It's hearing the idiotic pronouncements of people like Cindy Sheehan that fills me with disgust.

Happy Birthday, America!

Just relax...

This is hilarious. Just make sure you have your audio turned on - it's a big part of the humor. Enjoy.

Acting crazy

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway quotes an Autralian newspaper's report that "Israel threatened to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh if Hamas militants did not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed.", and calls it "stupid beyond belief".

I’m afraid that this (the report) is a canard, but boy, do I wish it were true! It is high time for Israel (and for the US for that matter), to start behaving a bit more irresponsibly, if not outright crazy in this war. World’s sympathy? Screw it! It ended for us soon after it became clear after 9/11 that the US would not roll over and die, but intends to punch back. Oh, the outrage! The condemnations! Israel should borrow a page from the playbook by that nutcase, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and start talking about wiping Palestine off the map, or nuking Tehran. Apparently, he gets results, with the Europeans offering a “package of incentives” so that Iran does not build The Bomb. How about a nice package of incentives from the Arab countries for not hanging a big mushroom cloud over Mecca?
You can’t get the attention of fanatical killers by playing nice. They’ve been chopping people’s heads in front of video cameras, and the world gets upset because American soldiers - the savages! - photographed naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and play-acted electrocution. If the world is going to hate the Jews and the Americans anyway, why not at least give them good reasons?

Gone to live on a farm

A very funny and poignant piece by David Zincavage at Never Yet Melted illustrating how American "intelligentsia today are like children. They have no first hand experience commonly of the harsh and difficult choices adults have to make. And, like children, they are naive, sentimental, and do not understand evil."

By all means, go and read the whole thing.

Let Moussaoui live

I would not give Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty, because this is what he wants. He thinks of himself as some sort of a "martyr", and that his death at the hands of infidels will bring him the heavenly rewards he expects. It is worth remembering that islamofascism is a death cult - these "people" worship and seek death, and have repeatedly stated their contempt for the "love of life" prevalent in the West, which, in their twisted minds, is a weakness.

Therefore, a death penalty would not be a penalty for Moussaoui. I would throw him in prison, let him grow old in there, watching his side lose and be thrown into the trash bin of history, while the enemy he hates grows in strength and prospers. "Good life is the best revenge", as someone brilliantly said.

There is also the sliver of a chance - really, really tiny, I know - that he may one day be granted a horrifying glimpse into the nature of evil he helped commit, and be tormented by guilt for the rest of his days. Obviously, the chance of that happening is ridiculously tiny, so if it were the only thing, I'd say, kill the bastard. But the possibility that he will be eaten alive by his unfulfilled hatred is real. So let’s not give him the easy way out.

Letter to Senator Bill Frist

I wrote to Senator Bill Frist, stating my opposition to any sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants. It was a summary of a post I wrote on this topic. Senator Frist responed. I can't say that I'm satisfied.

Boycott Borders

I'm joining the boycott of Borders and sending back my Borders Rewards card. Read this piece in the Hartfort Currant to find out why. A quote:

Borders, which also owns Waldenbooks, announced last week that it would not carry the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine, which contains the Danish cartoons that offended many in the Muslim world. Though there have been no reports of direct threats against stores carrying the magazine, a Borders spokeswoman says the decision was "based on the potential for a compromise of the safety and security of our employees."

As Andrew Sullivan put it: "[V]iolence against free writers and artists gets results. We have all but invited more."

UPDATE: It turns out, you can cancel your Borders Rewards membership online. This is what I did.

South Park and Cartoon Jihad

I do not watch television, and I don't think I miss much, but I've heard good things about the animated cartoon "South Park", with its clever, biting satire, so I do wish I had the chance to watch it streamed on the Web, or buy individual episodes for download. Apparently, the latest episode ridiculed the sheepishness of the West when confronted with (possibility of) a threat of violence from an angry mob of Moslems. The Political Pit Bull posted a clip from the episode - do go see it - and it is, indeed, very funny (and, at the same time, very depressing, because it's so true...) [Hat tip: Michelle Malkin]

In this clip, the townsfolk of South Park are panicking, because a popular show ("Family Guy") is planning to show the famous "Mohammed cartoons" that so outraged Moslems. Fearing that their Muslim neighbors might riot, they ask the mayor of South Park what to do. An invited university professor offers this solution: bring a few truckloads of sand and have the townsfolk bury their heads in it. That way they won't be accused of watching the offending cartoons, and the rioting Moslems may leave them alone.

A lone voice protests, "We should all display these cartoons, to show that we're united in defense of our freedom of speech, and that we will not be intimidated by the threat of violence. Otherwise, we believe in the freedom of speech, but are not willing to defend it." (I'm quoting from memory, so the words used might have been different, but I think I captured the gist.) After a moment of meaning-laden silence, someone from the crowd responds: "I like the sand idea better. Seems easier." The crowd agrees.

It truly is a sorry state of affairs if cartoonists are the ones standing up for the value we seemingly hold so dear, while politicians, the mainstream media, businesses, even academia, are eager to bury their heads in sand and offer platitudes about "sensitivity".

Stuck in a time warp

What is with these bumper stickers, "Gore for President" or "Al Gore 2004" (and variations thereof)? I see quite a few of them around in the liberal Ann Arbor. What is this, a "Groundhog Day"? (Remember that 1993 movie with Bill Murray, in which he had to re-live the same day over and over again?) It's 2006, people! The election is over. (Bush won, by the way. This time by the popular vote as well.)

Ironically, the most famous outfit of the Livid Left is called MoveOn. (Yes, that's the one that held a contest of anti-Bush propaganda, in which at least one of the submitted ads equated Bush with Hitler. How original.) I hope they mean it as a reminder to themselves, because, apparently, that's one of the things the Left is not capable of doing.

There is also this yard sign that appears here and there: "Impeach Bush". That one never fails to bring a smile to my face. Yes, the President of the United States will be removed from office on the request of a few morons who put a yard sign. Why don't they add other, easy-to-fulfill wishes alongside that one? Like: "End Winter. Start Summer.", or "Free plastic surgery for every American!", or "Keep Heaven for Democrats only."

Payback time

Whoever came up with this is a freakin' genius:



If I get a request to donate to the RNC, this is what I'm going to send.

Leader of the Free World?

Didn't it fill you with pride, when, during the murderous riots in Muslim countries, spurred by a few, rather tame Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet of the so-called "Religion of Peace", our President and Leader of the Free World, George W. Bush sharply denounced the violence perpetrated by the rioting Moslems and often directed at innocent Christians, and then announced that the United States would continue to stand firmly on the side of the tiny and brave Denmark, as free speech is one of the values America holds most dear?

Only... it did not happen this way. The President, ever so brave, denounced... the cartoonists. I felt ashamed and betrayed. I voted for him in 2003 (due, to some extent, to the lack of alternatives. I could not possibly consider John Kerry), giving him the benefit of the doubt. Yes, I even admired how he kept outmaneuvering the UN, the Democrats, the Livid Left who considered him an idiot (at their peril). Now, whatever trust I had, evaporated in the aftermath of this shameful display of dhimmitude. His subsequent advocacy of amnesty (by any other name) to the illegal immigrants pushed me over the edge. I no longer trust or respect the President.

Creeping amnesty, creeping sharia...

Diana West has an excellent piece in The Washington Times [hat tip: Michelle Malkin], which she ends with:

"It all begins to make sense, in a leftist, anti-American, open-borders coalition sort of way.
My question: Why does George W. Bush seem to have signed onto this coalition? "

It is my question as well. Why, indeed?

Chutzpah

If you thought, like I did, that the extremely lenient attitude of Americans towards illegal immigrants would be met with at least some grattitue from the latter, the events of the last couple of weeks must have been quite a disappointment. Not only have tens (hundreds, by some accounts) of thousands of the illegales taken to the streets in massive demontrations demanding an amnesty - apparently, without any fear of being rounded up and deported - but their arrogance and contempt for their host country was mind boggling.

First, there were the Mexican Flags, outnumbering the American ones. The message clearly was: we came from another country, to which we remain loyal, and we have every intention of staying in your country, whether you like it or not. (How is this different from an invasion?) Then, there were Mexican flags placed on the flagpoles in front of schools, sometimes together with the American flag hanging upside down as an act of mockery. (Ironically, an upside-down flag is a signal of distress. The demonstrators inadvertently signalled to us that our country is in trouble...)

There were signs that proclaimed, "This is stolen land", or: "My ancestors were here before your ancestors" - a disturbing indication that at least some in the crowd fantacised about "re-conquering" the parts of the United States that belonged to Mexico before 1847...

There was, of course, the customary spitting on police. The police that in most other countries in the world would see this as an oportunity to arrest and deport a large number of the demonstrators. Then, there was Rudy Rios, a coach and, get this: English-as-a-second-language teacher in Chavez High School, who copied (on the schools equipment, at the American taxpayer's expense) and distributed a flyer that read:

"We gots 2 stay together and protest against the new law that wants 2 be passed against all immigrants. We gots 2 show the U.S. that they aint (expletive) with out us (sic)," [Hat tip: James Taranto.]

I can't quite decide whether this is tragic or funny, that a semi-literate moron teaches "English" and, most likely, contempt for the United States, to the the kids of illegal immigrants. I guess a little bit of both.

Angry and depressed

I haven't been so angry and depressed since the weeks following September 11, 2001. I'm starting to lose faith in democracy. Watching the clowns in the US Congress trying to shove the amnesty for illegal immigrants down our collective throat is a sorry spectacle. Why are they doing this? I can't figure that out. It's hard to imagine that this is just to gain a few measly "Latino" votes. Did they look at the polls and decided that, hey, since Congress is one of the most disdained institutions in America, what do they have to lose? Let's show these disdainful Americans that we can still spite them and pass a law that may, in the long term, destroy this country, and there is nothing they can do to stop us! I don't get it, I really don't. Nothing sensible comes to mind.

I'm an immigrant myself and have nothing against immigration. If this country needs millions of low-skilled workers to do the jobs that Americans allegedly don't want to do - by all means, bring them in. There are millions all over the world, who would gladly accept an invitation to come and work in America. But why reward those that broke the law to come here? One of the great things about democracy is that it is - presumably - based on the rule of law, rather than a whim of a dictator and his cronies. But what if our democratically elected "representatives" make a mockery of our laws? You are not supposed to sneak accross our borders and stay in this country however long you please, get a job, send your kids to school at our expense - but if you do, we will not only make it easy for you by not asking too many questions, but will eventually give you an expedited path to citizenship. And those suckers who wait for months and years to go through the legal, bureaucratic channels in order to emigrate to the US - well, screw them! Hell, some even say that there is nothing wrong with people from Mexico breaking our laws - after all they are Mexicans, and these are American laws - get it? - so why should they be obligated to obey them?

Oh, the myriad of ways logic and truth are getting twisted in this "debate" about illegal immigration! We're told, for example, that the illegal immigrants pay more in taxes that they get back in services. How is this possible? These people are here illegally, afraid (presumably) to be discovered, but they fill out tax returns?? What the hell for? And with what - fake social security numbers? Besides, most of them make so little that they wouldn't pay any taxes anyway. Oh, maybe their employers pay taxes on their behalf, like the 7.5 percent of the Social Security tax? Again: with fake SS numbers?? They can get busted and fined by the INS, so why would they risk getting discovered? I'm certain that most of them pay their illegal employees under the table, often below the minimum wage (another thing they would rather keep hidden from the authorities) - no tax witholdings. Pretending that it is otherwise is as stupid as the question on the tax forms that asks you to report income obtained through illegal means. How many drug dealers do you think will avail themselves of the "opportunity" to declare income from selling dope?

Or the other ruse, that the illegals take the jobs Americans don't want to do. Sure, not at the wages being offered, which, unless you share a rented room with five other men and eat regularly in charitable soup kitchens, you won't survive on. And why are the wages so low? Because the availability of dirt-cheap labor of the illegals keeps them down. So if you're a low-skilled American worker looking for a job, you can go screw yourself - your elected "representatives" don't give a rat's ass. (You probably don't vote anyway.)

We're told that it would be impossible to send the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants back to where they came from. And why not, pray tell? Nobody's proposing packing them in train cars and tranporting them en masse to Mexico (or wherever). All that's required is to start enforcing the damn laws, like making it difficult and costly for employers to hire undocumented workers. At the same time, opening a way for people to apply for work permits in the US, but only from within their country of origin, and awarding those permits fairly and expeditiously. Nobody would have to deport the illegal immigrants - I predict that most of them would rush back to their home countries and apply for those permits.

They hate us? Great!

A couple of days ago I caught the last few minutes of a radio interview with Francis Fukuyama bemoaning the fact that, “the United States have never been so unpopular and even hated around the world.” (Quoting from memory.) Of course, I’ve heard it before, many times – after all, it is one of the favorite mantras of the American Left, almost as popular as “Bush lied!” – but it never fails to bring a nasty expletive to my lips. It is such a meaningless statement and yet most of the time accepted at face value, as if it were, indeed, an undeniable and very unfortunate fact.

Even assuming that this is true, that the unpopularity of the United States has never been greater, why is this necessarily a bad thing? It might be a bad thing if everybody in the whole world liked the US less (or disliked it more) than before. I’m certain that this is not the case – that there are plenty of people whose admiration and respect for this country increased in recent years. Of course, I’m also certain that there are plenty of those, who hate us more than before. But before we start wringing our hands and pondering how to make ourselves more lovable, let’s consider for a moment who is hating us and why. I’ll take a stab:

The radical Left worldwide is not about to forget and forgive the fact that the wrong side won the Cold War. There is no way we can placate these people unless the US adopts socialism. I hope this will never happen, even if these people end up stewing in their hatred till the day they expire.

The Islamists want us all to die slow and painful deaths, but even if we were to do that in order to please them, I really doubt that this would diminish their hatred of us – only add contempt to the mix. Even scoundrels like Michael More, whose disdain for his own country receives such applause from the enemies of America, would probably have his head sawed off, too.

There are those, who are envious of our success and prosperity. Especially in countries that used to play the first fiddle on the international scene but now are finding out that their voice matters as much (or as little) as that of any other country. Russia and France immediately come to mind. These countries’ elites – and a significant portion of their citizenry – feel that the United States somehow “stole” their power and influence, basking in the spotlight that belongs to them. As Sylvain Galineau so eloquently put it:

“In a way, the U.S. position today is that of a geopolitical Microsoft : hugely successful, rich, powerful, sucking up the best talent, fast and nimble despite its massive size, ruthlessly efficient in crushing its opponents. Hated, insulted and derided more for it successes than its failures, the favorite subject of conspiracy theories, urban legends and other lunacies. Surrounded by lesser powers and interest groups all vying for its attention and a piece of the action. Harrassed, stalked and sued by a constellation of once great dwarflings who will never admit their diminished position has at least as much to do with their own stupidity and mistakes as it has with the giant's deft cunning. Feeling entitled to greatness and influence on the sole basis of their past, they claim what should be theirs has been stolen from them. The U.N. is their Department Of Justice. Chirac fancies himself as their David Boies. With more expensive suits. And he loves the attention.”

The Palestinians. Ah, but then they hate almost everybody. Apparently they hate the Europeans, who for many years have been pouring money and support for their cause, even more than us. Go figure.

Authoritarian regimes, especially those in the Middle East, have good reasons to fear and hate us. They used to be courted by both of the great adversaries in the Cold War, but now, with only one of those adversaries still standing, their usefulness has diminished to zero. In fact, their continued existence is against the interests of the United States. Their resentment is hardly surprising.

Now, let’s ask ourselves: would we really want these people to like us? Would Francis Fukuyama feel better about America, if newspapers abroad carried news items like these:

“Representatives of Hamas expressed their gratitude to the United States for providing them with much needed cash and weapons.”

“French president Jacques Chirac acknowledged today that since the US had started seeking France’s approval for all its international initiatives, the relationship between the two allies has never been better.”

“Mullah Omar and his Taliban supporters praised their former enemy for restoring them to power in Afghanistan and for providing tens of thousands of burkhas for the Afghan women.”

“Socialist parties around the world applauded the United States for abolishing private land ownership and promoting farm collectives in all 50 states.”

We ought to be proud and happy that people like that hate us – the alternative would be unbearable.