A Warren Interlude

Warren is giving an extra grace period to the government that doesn't deserve it, eh?

But he rewards us for our patience with this from Davila's "Annotations on an Implicit Text":

-- Democratic parliaments are not places where debate occurs but where popular absolutism registers its edicts.

-- Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.

-- The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows.

-- The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation.

-- Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it.

-- To have opinions is the best way to escape the obligation of thinking.

-- Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities.

-- The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it.

-- An individual declares himself a member of some group with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name.

-- The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence.

-- "To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute.

Works for me...

Whoops!

You won't read this on the MSM:

May 27, 2005: What do Arabs really think about the problems that afflict them, and how is this related to the issues Islamic terrorists are fighting and dying (and killing) for? A recent "Opinion Survey of the Arab Street 2005" by Al Arabiya news network provides some interesting answers. The survey sought to see what Arabs thought about the relative lack of economic progress in the Arab world. In answer to the question, “What is stalling development in the Arab world?,” 81 percent chose "Governments are unwilling to implement change and reform.". Eight percent cited "The ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict," while seven percent selected "Civil society is failing to convince governments", and 4 percent chose "Terrorism".

Another question, "What is the fastest way to achieve development in the Arab world?", had 67 percent choosing "Ensuring the rule of law through justice and law enforcement", 23 percent chose "Enhancing freedom of speech", and 10 percent chose "Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict".

Islamic terrorists represent a small minority of Arab thinking, and interests. But most Arab media and governments, for obvious reasons, avoid the “bad government” issues and instead concentrate on the Arab-Israeli conflict as the cause of all that is bad in the Arab world. While few Arab governments support all Islamic terrorists, many support some (like the Palestinian terrorists, or Hizbollah in Lebanon). An Arab government will support terrorists as long as there is no terrorist attacks against themselves, and the terrorists are working against the government’s enemies. Syria has played this game enthusiastically, perhaps too much so, for decades. By getting behind terrorism and hostility towards Israel, Arab dictatorships believe this will distract their people from problems closer to home. But this ploy is working less well of late. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, the forcible removal of an Arab dictator and enthusiastic participation in democratic elections has terrified Arab despots throughout the Middle East. The Islamic terrorists are generally hostile to Arab dictators, but have made deals with the devil in order to survive. Increasingly, Arab people are fed up with the tyrants and terrorists, and are willing to do something about it.

Well was I right or what?

In Iran

"stoning someone to death is not against the law. Using the wrong stone is."



This is what our "liberals" have come defend. If you don't believe me, take a look at the commenters savagery against Danielle Crittenden's post about how risible the claims are that "women's rights" in the Muslim world are comparable to the West.

Oh, and about those stones:



Moral equivalence my *ss.

Smartland vs Heartland

LGF points out a stunning article by Orson Scott Card that ends thusly:

How long did it take for the people to be utterly disenchanted by government-by-fanatics, who see every opponent as evil and make every political decision an article of faith? Afghanistan longed to be free of the Taliban; the people of Iran hunger for freedom now. And when the Puritans were toppled in England, the people rejoiced.

Just so the fanatics who now rule the Democratic Party, serving the cause of Smartland at the expense of the Heartland, will find that if they ever really get control of government, they will quickly be the most hated rulers our country ever had.

Already large numbers of Americans seethe over the puritanical laws imposed on us by anti-democratic judges, who cannot wait for compromise and the political process to "purify" us. Already we are outraged by the propaganda they foist on our children in the schools, without reference to the values of the community or the roots of the American culture.

The Taliban of Smartland will be just as repugnant to the people of America as the Islamist Taliban was to most of the people of Afghanistan.

So as we watch the Democratic Party flush away democratic processes in order to get correct outcomes, it's worth remembering that we're not so different from "those wacky Muslims."

People who are so sure they're right that they are willing to eliminate democratic processes in order to get and keep power are the enemies of freedom for everyone. We may be slow to recognize the danger, but one thing is certain: Once the Puritans have power, everyone else will finally see the cost of their utopia.

And as the Iranians and North Koreans have learned, it's very very hard to get rid of a dictatorship with a puritan ideology. Sometimes you're lucky and a big country comes along and liberates you. But sometimes there's no country big enough to do it, and you just have to hunker down and pretend to think correct thoughts and live some kind of life below the radar.

You know, the way believing Christians do right now at American universities.

[Emphasis mine.]

WOW.

Needless to say, this one gets the RTWT rating -- AND gets added to the Classics links over right.

Kudos to OSC.

Cuckoo In The Dear Darkness

Did I mention that the (literal) King of surreal butchery wanted you to vote for John Kerry. Not that you would've been nuttier than a pecan plantation if you did. Absolutely not.

Lights out.



All the time.

In case you were wondering who the title of third member of the Axis had passed to...

In Support Of Fallaci Against FGM

Let me join Oriana by repeating number 15:

15) infibulation is “the mutilation that the Muslims force on little girls to prevent them, once they are grown . . . from enjoying the sexual act. It is a female castration that the Muslims practice in twenty-eight countries of Islamic Africa and because of which two million persons die each year from sepsis or loss of blood . . .”

I guess I can't travel to Eurabia now without being thrown in their soon to be burgeoning gulags -- along with W and Rummy of course...

Unfortunately, Oriana is probably too ill to travel to Eurabia now -- how she'd love to go gesture at them in person if she could!

Today's Fascifism Update

Michael has it nailed today by first drawing on Hitch:

For whatever it's worth, I know and admire both John Barry and Michael Isikoff, and I can quite imagine that—based on what they had already learned about the gruesome and illegal goings-on at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib—they found it more than plausible that the toilet incident, or something like it, had actually occurred. A second allegation, that a whole pile of Qurans had been stepped upon at Guantanamo, is equally credible. But mere objectivity requires us to note that this is partly because every prisoner is given a Quran, and that thus there are a lot of them lying around, and that none of this "scandal" would ever have occurred if the prison authorities were not at least attempting to respect Islamic codes.

And then lowering the boom:

For one thing, if Guantanamo were the new gulag, Irene Khan would be languishing in it herself right about now – and so would her family.

And then there's this little bit of perspective for the close:

Anyway, the gulag of our times is in North Korea.

To which a commenter correctly takes him to task:

The Gulag IS North Korea, not in North Korea. Its the world's largest prison.

That would look like this:



Of course, the Fascifists would argue that I'm all wrong. That NK is merely the vanguard of what implementing the Kyoto treaty would look like. And we are evil bastards for not following their enlightened lead. And the NorKorComs must be right since they were helping to campaign for John Kerry.

What more evidence could possibly be needed that they're right?

Right over on the other side that is.

And doing their best to generate funds for the enemy propaganda machine of course:

I'm sure that the real agenda here is that Amnesty donors really open their wallets for work like this. It's all about what message sparks your donors.

Did I mention that the enemy is just getting warmed up?

Bush, Other Top Officials Should Face Torture Probes, Says Amnesty; Urges Arrests if Warranted
Abid Aslam
OneWorld US
Thu., May. 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 26 (OneWorld) - Rights watchdog Amnesty International urged foreign governments Wednesday to investigate and prosecute President George W. Bush much as they once did former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

''If the United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free, then other nations should step into the breach,'' William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement launching Amnesty's annual report.

Bush is among a dozen former or current U.S. officials who should be probed by foreign governments because Washington has failed to conduct ''a genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation'' of torture allegations against U.S. troops, commanders, and their civilian overseers, Schulz said.

Others on the Amnesty list of potential targets for investigation and prosecution include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief George Tenet.

''If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal,'' Schulz said.

''If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,'' he added. ''The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''

Remember the race between sanity and technology?

If A.I.'s leadership were given the red button, do you think they'd push it?

I do too.

"Because the left is exactly like the Muslims!"

Zimbabwefication, Eh?

"I give him until Saturday." You go David, you go!

A.I. ... should simply be renamed F.I. -- Fascifism International.

CAN. I. MAKE. A. CALL?

... A WHAT?

Eurabian Sharia Watch

"Tom Wolfe once said that Fascism is forever descending on the United States, but that somehow it always lands on Europe. Perhaps the same is true with theocracy?"

I think the countdown clock just burped forward measurably.

Sometimes Slate is worth reading beyond Hitch. But corellated by Michael of course. (HT Glenn)

"This we'll defend."

Yon be there. MSM not.

On Gorgeous George Galloway's lilly white Saddam. Oh bother.

WHOOPS!

Nazi Israeli Watch: "Were we going to deny a victim of terror an ITU bed because that bed already had a terrorist in it?"

It's Not That Newsweek...

Has never written anything I agreed with. (Or Howeiaaarrggghhh! for that matter but I foreshadow too much.) For instance, there's this:

Trippi was planning on retiring to his farm in Maryland after the New Hampshire primary. Still, he wanted to take one last shot, to "bet it all" on Iowa and New Hampshire, knowing that in a protracted fight Dean's candor would kill him. "It's probably a f---ing miracle we're even sitting where we're at," he said, utterly despondent. He fell silent for a while. "The guy," Trippi said suddenly, referring to Dean, "is not ready for prime time. I mean, he's just f---ing not ready for prime time, and he never will be." There were 11 days left before the Iowa caucuses.

Well, actually Joe Trippi said it but Newsweek somehow managed not to edit out a rational assessment of the man who can't quite figure out who his enemies really are...

... unlike the edit job Newsweek's doing on their retraction!

How many different ways can you say Cuckoo?

But James points out that with a little editing it turns out that maybe it's Trippi that's wrong and ol' Howie isn't so crazy after all:

Russert: Republicans will say that the Democrats are speaking a different tune now than they did when they were in control. Robert Byrd, when he was a majority leader in '79, said, "Now, we are at the beginning of Congress. This Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past." And the filibuster used to need 67 votes. They changed it to 60.

Dean: Mm-hmm. . . .

Dean: When the Republicans were in power, they kept a much larger percentage of President Clinton's nominees to the bench. They didn't do it with the filibuster, they did it by bottling them up in committee and not allowing them to move forward.

Russert: The numbers are pretty similar actually.

Dean: OK. They're similar. . . .

Russert: Well, you said there were weapons of mass destruction.

Dean: Some of the things that the president said on our way into Iraq, they just weren't true, and I don't think that's right. So--

Russert: Such as?

Dean: Such as the weapons of mass destruction, which we have all known about, but the--

Russert: Well, you said there were weapons of mass destruction.

Dean: I said I wasn't sure, but I said I thought there probably were. . . .

Russert: When did the president ever suggest that Saddam Hussein was responsible for September 11?

Dean: He didn't. . . .

Russert: Let me stay on your rhetoric. January, I mentioned that [you said] "I hate the Republicans, what they stand for, good and evil, we are the good." In March, you said, "Republicans are brain dead." You mentioned you're a physician--and this is April. "[Dean] did draw howls of laughter by mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh. 'I'm not very dignified,' Dean said."

Dean: Well, that's true. A lot of people have accused me of not being dignified.

Yup. Not dignified. And can't tell the difference between Saddam and Obama or Osama or whatever.

But otherwise he seems reasonable to me.

I Remember Beslan

And so does Wretchard.



Do you?

On sleeping with worms. Eh?

Bush Country.