But Fred Remembers

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Students polled in a wide range of colleges and universities showed no real improvement in their historical knowledge. Some actually forgot part of what they’d learned in high school by the time they graduated — and I’m talking about some of our best-known Ivy League schools. Less than half of college seniors knew that, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” is from the Declaration of Independence. Less than half knew basic facts about the First Amendment. Half didn’t know that the Federalist Papers were written in support of the Constitution’s ratification. Only a quarter of seniors knew the purpose of the Monroe Doctrine. This is our quandary. Memorial Day is about remembering. It’s about remembering those who died for our country; but it’s also about remembering why they believed it was worth dying for. Too many Americans, though, have never been taught our own history and heritage. How can you remember something that you’ve never learned?

Postmodern Farce

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com The postmodern left elevates clowns like Hugo Chavez and call him a "liberator"; they swoon over despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro; and have champagne toasts with fruitcakes like Kim Jung Il. Karl Marx once said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce." And he was absolutely correct. Marxism in its initial incarnation was the tragedy; and its current revival via postmodernism, is the farce.

The Heart Of The Matter

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com You think Bush is incompetent and "his" war in Iraq is a terrible mistake? Fine. You think the price of that is that we should pull everyone out of Iraq even though we all know that will be a monumental victory for al Qaeda — geometrically abetting its future fundraising and recruiting for future terrorist attacks on America? Fine. But have the good grace to say so. Don't give us this BS that you want to redeploy to fight al Qaeda, when the truth is that you want to "redeploy" to NOT fight al Qaeda. And, that is the heart of the matter. The political left and most Democrats are in psychological denial so deep that light can no longer penetrate its darkness even momentarily. They don't want to fight al Qaeda, because then they would have to admit that America is at war and that these last six years have not just been some bumper sticker created in the mind of George W. Bush.

Corpse And Memory Hole, Yglesias Style

clipped from www.michaeltotten.com All of that said, I think that Yglesias ends up being partially right (even though he doesn't mean to be) when he lays the lawlessness in Gaza at Bush's feet. The sad truth is that Gaza today is a testament to the failure of the entire 14-year project of creating the Palestinian Authority, retrieving Arafat from exile, and attempting to drag the Arabs of Palestine, against their will, into western political modernity. This process was started, and most forcefully pushed forward, by the Clinton administration, and today its corpse is still being dragged around the Middle East, Weekend at Bernie's-style, by Condoleezza Rice. Readers might be surprised to hear -- Mr. Yglesias probably among them -- that less than a year ago, Yglesias wrote the following: "I happen to think the White House made the right call on the question of Palestinian elections -- even in retrospect, even knowing that Hamas won."

The Home Of The Brave

clipped from powerlineblog.com "Early one morning, he got up before the guards were active and held up the little flag, waving it as if in a breeze. We turned to him and saw it coming to attention and automatically saluted, some of us with tears running down our cheeks. Of course, the Vietnamese found it during a strip search, took Mike to the torture cell and beat him unmercifully. Sometime after midnight they pushed him into our cell, so bad off that even his voice was gone. But when he recovered in a couple weeks he immediately started looking for another piece of cloth." We impoverish ourselves by shunting these heroes and their experiences to the back pages of our national consciousness. Their stories are not just boys' adventure tales writ large. They are a kind of moral instruction. They remind of something we've heard many times before but is worth repeating on a wartime Memorial Day when we're uncertain about what we celebrate. We're the land of the free for one reason only: We're also the home of the brave.

The State Of The MSMemory Hole This Memorial Day

clipped from powerlineblog.com Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: Those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors. Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent's grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham's Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.

"Victims" buried in section B indeed.

Coming Like Christmas

clipped from www.michaeltotten.com The bottom line is this: everyone knows that this is a rabid terrorist campaign by a psychopathic murderous thug in Damascus, who will stop at nothing. The tribunal must be established without delay, and Assad must be made to pay a tangible painful price for his murderous policy. It's as simple as that. "Engagement" (I.e. appeasement) will only be seen by Assad as a sign of surrender and encouragement to commit more terrorism. It's telling that the only time the thuggish Assad Sr. was persuaded to back off his terrorism against one of his neighbors (and Syria is guilty of exporting terrorism to all its neighbors) was when Turkey threatened to invade Syria in 1998.

Fred On "They Don't Get It"

clipped from hotair.com

And he's right.

To The Point

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Jimmy Carter calling anyone else the worst president is like John Wayne Gacy calling a shoplifter a danger to society.

Whoops

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com In this clip Lekovic talks about all the ways MPAC is helping to fight extremism—but Emerson points out that in July 1999, while Lekovic was managing editor of the UCLA Muslim Students’ Association’s newspaper, al-Talib, she published an article titled “Jihad in America,” containing this passage: “When we hear someone refer to the great Mujahid (someone who struggles in Allah’s cause) Osama bin Laden as a ‘terrorist,’ we should defend our brother and refer to him as a freedom fighter, someone who has forsaken wealth and power to fight in Allah’s cause and speak out against oppressors. We take these stances only to please Allah.” Confronted with this fact, Lekovic denies she was the editor of the newspaper. But unfortunately for her, there is proof. (PDF file.)

The Price Too High

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com One way to restate Dr. Kilcullen is to say 'the enemy has been telling his story. We have not been telling ours.' And that I am afraid, is not the enemy's fault. The wound is entirely self-inflicted. Somewhere in the last forty years the West's favorite cultural activity changed from telling it's story to disparaging it: to mocking its faith, describing its economic system as inhuman, ridiculing the continuation of its family life as bovine. This trend came under many colors: anti-establishmentarianism, sexual liberation, cultural rebellion. It occasionally described itself as avante garde, though whither this advanced contingent was heading no one could say, except that it led away. We must rival the enemy vision with one of our own, or perhaps more accurately, one that the Iraqi people can come up with. Our survival must be purchased at the cost of renewed self-belief. Alas, some will find the price too high.

The Enemy Of My...

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Since Saddam had never complied with the cease-fire and the UN resolutions on many issues, and in fact continued to fire on no-fly patrols, a state of war already existed. With that in mind and with the intel that AQ and Ba'athists would be likely allies in the near future, the US acted to secure its flank in the Middle East by eliminating the source of the 12-year war that had been ongoing. And as it turned out, it was a good thing we did -- because we found out that our allies at the UN had been undermining the "box" that supposedly held Saddam for years, stuffing billions of dollars into his pockets and military hardware in his presidential palaces. The CIA predicted this alliance before the invasion. That should put paid to the idea that no one but George Bush and Dick Cheney thought that al-Qaeda would work with secular dictators like Saddam Hussein and other Ba'athists.

Oh, yes. And ABC doesn't want you to know about this little clip any more either. So down the memory hole it goes...

Tax The (Penta) Rich?

clipped from instapundit.com What got them to the highest level? It isn't necessarily stock-market savvy: On average, folks who recently hit the $5 million mark report that only 10% of their money came through passive investments. And only 10% of pentamillionaires inherited their wealth.

Um. People are more than a little misinformed about inheritance I think. Careful, that might be you that you're talking about taxing...

And if you don't think that the rich pay their fair share of income taxes even if you now grudgingly admit that the deserve their wealth, you may want to review this. The top 1% of earners pay 36% of income taxes, the top 5% pay 57%, and the top 10% pay 68%. The bottom 50% pay only 3.3%! And that's with data updated through Sep 06 with those "awful" tax cuts pretty well engaged.

Admittedly, there isn't a perfect correlation between income levels and wealth, but this article implies it's pretty strong. The rich by inheritance as well as the newly rich do get additional leverage from the new lower 15% capital gains rate.

But before you get too worked up about that, you may want to take a look at the incredible shrinking deficit...

The New Slave Owners

clipped from instapundit.com GREG LUKIANOFF: "I have always found it fascinating that colleges and universities--which tend to believe themselves to be centers of perfect open-mindedness and progressive thought--so often end up echoing the censors of bygone eras. As we note in FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus, for example, administrators' justifications for punishing politically incorrect, ideologically incompatible, or simply inconvenient speech at times echo the rationale of southern slave owners in the early 19th century who wished to ban abolitionist speech because it "inflicted emotional injury" on slave owners. As we often have to point out, while politeness is a virtue, it is of minuscule importance when compared with robust debate and discussion."

1938 At Hugh's Today

clipped from hughhewitt.townhall.com (IsraelNN.com) Iranian President Ahmadinejad Friday launched one of his most malevolent tirades against the Jewish people to date. "There is a group that holds the Palestinians under occupation as they protect their mothers and fathers, and presents them as terrorists," Ahmadinejad said. "Do these criminals believe in G-d and the Bible of Moses? They are like animals, they have no belief in G-d. We oppose the criminals who make bad use of Judaism." So, should he be allowed to control nukes?  And it is no answer to say that he really isn't in control of the country.  The Supreme Leader hasn't rebuked any of his comments, and there is no reason to believe Ahmadinejad is not representative of the mullahs' thinking.  Prudence requires we assume he is speaking for them.

Gas In Perspective

clipped from instapundit.com In 1962 -- a year writ large in the popular imagination as the quintessential year of muscle cars and cheap gasoline thanks to the movie American Graffiti -- gasoline prices averaged 31 cents per gallon. When we factor changes in disposable income, today’s gas would have to cost $4.48 to be a comparable burden. The public likewise thinks of 1972 as the last year of energy innocence prior to the rise of OPEC and the onset of shortage. Fuel prices in 1972 averaged 36 cents per gallon, a hefty $2.77 per gallon in today’s terms. While still high, this price is not all that different than the prices we were paying earlier in the year.

Ethanol Madness Part 3487

clipped from news.com.com I can't predict global crude trends, but as more corn gets earmarked for ethanol production, this much is clear: food supplies here and around the world will suffer. The U.S. produces 40 percent of the planet's corn. The production of ethanol from corn requires a lot more energy compared to the process based on cellulosic sources. Here's the rub: if current demand for ethanol continues, then our own inventories of corn likely will fall to dangerously low levels. And with U.S. farmers devoting more acreage to corn at the expense of planting other crops, that's going to hit hard in the developing world.

Torturous Silence

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com What? No humiliating body searches by women or the disrepectful handling of Korans? what on earth do we call gouging people's eyes out? Answer: we call it nothing. My fearless prediction is that not a single human rights organization will seriously take the matter up. Harry's Place notices that groups -- like the International Solidarity Movment or RESPECT -- which claim to be concerned about the welfare of Palestinians don't even acknowledge the deaths of 200 Palestinians in recent internecine warfare in Gaza. "It is as if these Palestinians have not died at all, or that their deaths are simply unimportant and not worthy of note." And the indifference, the quiet that you hear is a very special sort of silence. It is not the reserve of diplomacy, nor the reticience of wisdom. It is the emptiness of a slaughterhouse. The palpable peace of problems we have left to solve themselves. That's the kind of intellectual silence that it is. The silence of the lambs.

The Real Goons

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The “Elevating Society’s Security” Plan is what the Islamic Republic call its savage attacks on Iran’s youths, especially females, in Tehran. Esmaeil Ahmadi, commander in chief of the “Disciplinary Forces” —what the Islamic Republic call its police force— said on Thursday that these social abnormalities (youth’s way of dressing, and their behavior) are a consequence of “the imperialists meddling in our internal affairs.” In a different gathering of mullahs for Friday’s prayer, Tehran’s police chief Ahmad Reza Radan said that since the execution of the “Elevating Society’s Security” plan more than 1,000 shops and businesses have been shut down and more than 1,200 automobiles have been confiscated. More than 75,000 warnings have also been given to both men and women for improper dress code. More than 3,000 arrests have been made.

And I'm so glad to see all of our feminists filling the streets protesting this. Oh, wait a minute.

Welcome To Iwo Jima

clipped from www.strategypage.com Anbar has become so quiet that journalists embedded with American troops there, are leaving for more newsworthy areas. That may be increasingly difficult. The Sunni Arab tribes closer to Baghdad are now signing deals with the government, to join in the fight against the al Qaeda and Sunni Arab terrorist groups. Meanwhile, the terrorists are spending more of their time trying to keep their Sunni Arab base in line. What does get reported is the high American casualty rate, which has averaged 3-4 dead per day over the last two months. This is because American troops are increasingly going into terrorist dominated neighborhoods, and finding that these guys generally fight to the death. It's like World War II in the Pacific all over again. Except that the American casualties are much lower

We Welcome The "Portugese" Pakistanis -- But Of Course

clipped from powdertracks.blogspot.com Colombian authorities claim to have dismantled an extensive counterfeit passport ring in January 2006 that allegedly supplied an unknown number of Pakistanis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, and others purported to be working with al-Qaeda with Colombian, Portuguese, German, and Spanish citizenship, enabling them to travel freely in the United States and Europe. Bogota also mentioned that the network had ties to Hamas militants

Gut Missed

clipped from powerlineblog.com Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before — and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again. Apparently, though, Edwards' chilling insincerity was not seared in Kerry's consciousness because, as we all know, Kerry went ahead and selected Edwards to be his running mate. Schrum says Kerry came to regret this decision, thinking that he should have followed his "gut" and gone with Richard Gephardt.

Nero's Fiddle: The Elusive Bipartisanship Appears In Nantucket

clipped from instapundit.com When a democratic process could be sold like this to the highest bidder, and when a U.S. congressman was present to do the honors, what did this mean for the future of America? A few of those present that evening found the symbolism of the event frightening, given the dangerous realities of the new millennium. Energy prices were steadily rising. Regular people were having trouble paying their bills. Climate change seemed to be under way. Oil and gas were in short supply and developing nations were eager to have all that electricity could provide, from lightbulbs to computers. Somehow, somehwere, sometime soon, these challenges were going to have to be addressed -- by someone willing to take the lead. . . . "Nero's fiddle," muttered a journalist watching the show.

No Torture By Al Qaeda...

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com MAY 24—In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like “blowtorch to the skin” and “eye removal.” Along with the images, which you’ll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an “al-Qaeda torture chamber.” It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses.

...move along now. Nothing to see here... And Saddam never used plastic shredders for other than their intended purpose either...

Not A Single One

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com And while Amnesty International was founded to fight for the freedom of political prisoners, the officials in charge of this organization failed to issue a single statement calling for the release of the Israeli soldiers that were kidnapped by Hezbollah and Hamas, and who have not been heard from since their illegal capture. These and many other details published in NGO Monitor’s report on Amnesty provide further evidence that this powerful NGO has lost its way, and is no longer a “respectable” or credible human rights organization.

The Novel Concept Amongst The Apallingly Superficial

clipped from www.time.com The single most compelling feature of a Thompson candidacy would be his magnetism. A natural storyteller, he speaks with a relaxed cadence and unhurried confidence, peppering his remarks with language such as "fella" and "bad guys," pausing expertly to make a point, relish an applause line, set up a joke. He is most effective when he makes fun of the superficial glamour of Los Angeles and the tangled hypocrisy of D.C. In a recent appearance, he supplied a cheeky anecdote about a fellow Senator coming up to him after he gave his first speech on the Senate floor, which was on the topic of "having Congress abide by the laws that everybody else had to abide by — a novel concept at the time." His colleague, however, merely wanted to ask him about the submarine from the film The Hunt for Red October.

On Learning

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com But the skill of organizing the tribes is but the first in a whole series of new capabilities that the West must acquire to combat the networked insurgency. It has not yet learned how to neutralize enemy sanctuaries across international borders without a conventional invasion. It has not yet discovered how to counter the insidious and hate-filled propaganda of al-Qaeda. It has not yet even learned to convey its successes to the Western public. But it has learned something. And it shows.

RTWT.

W Is Our Greenhouse Hero!

clipped from instapundit.com U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped slightly last year even as the economy grew, according to an initial estimate released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration. The 1.3 percent drop in CO{-2} emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. . . . In 2006 the U.S. economy grew 3.3 percent, a fact President Bush touted yesterday as he hailed the government's "flash estimate" that the country's carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 78 million metric tons last year.

And did I forget to mention that China was already expected to pass us in greenhouse gas emissions this year or next? This just moves the crossover closer. But you won't read that in the MSM as it ruins the meme...

The Unthinkable: Really

clipped from www.theaugeanstables.com An interesting news report from Gaza by an unidentified British TV station (crew filming is presumably Palestinian which makes the candor all the more remarkable). (Hat tip: LGF) At one point the narrator says, “And then he says what you’d think was unsayable here”: “Who will rule us? Now most of the people in this area, if you ask them, will say ‘We pray that Israel will come back and rule us again.’” “Really?” says a surprised (if understated) Brit. “Really,” he replies.

Poor (Chamberlain) Soros

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Quoting an Intelligence Ministry statement, state media said May 21 that Haleh Esfandiari and her employer, the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, were trying to set up a network “against the sovereignty of the country.” It also accused a New York-based foundation set up by U.S. financier George Soros of being involved in the network. Poor Soros! Here he’d been lambasting Bush and Cheney for their failure to use diplomacy to pressure Israel to make a deal with the “Political wing” of Hamas, and thereby weaken Iran’s influence over Hamas terrorists. Only to be bitch slapped by the mullahs.

Close The Dolts

clipped from pajamasmedia.com As I said on The Corner a while ago, it’s a typical CIA product: the opposite of a serious program. You don’t need a secret disinformation operation; instead, we need an effective, public, information effort, including a VOA Farsi Service that entertains criticis of the mullahs more than their apologists, and administration spokesthings who talk about the grisly repression of the Iranian people carried out by the regime. Above all, four little words “we support regime change” would be a great way to start. And those words should come from the White House or Foggy Bottom. So far, we’ve got the secretary of state saying she doesn’t want regime change, just “better behavior” from the mullahs. As for sabotaging the Iranian economy, it’s hard to improve on the mullahs’ own performance to date. I’d order CIA to stay out of their way. In fact, I’d order the CIA to stay away from Iranians overall. What a bunch of dolts.

Not just the Mullahs but the CIA too...

Earth To Left

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Journalists are infidels too. Austin Bay looks at a Charlie Rose interview with Iraqi journalists who explain why Islamic radicals target newspapermen. "The reason why these attacks against the media the media itself and journalism is seen by Islamists and fanatics as something invented by the West. It (journalism) is not an invention of Islam. They regard as something you should not do. It is only infidels that go into journalism and into the media. That’s actually the main reason. If you say you are a journalist you are saying you are an infidel." Strangely, this explicit declaration of hostility against liberalism and the left goes largely unnoticed. Even by the infidel journalists who are a target of radical Islam. In fact, the exact opposite conclusion is inferred. Earth to the Left: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet." Repeat until understood. Got it yet? Well, no? Don't worry. Someday, even you will understand.

Pigs Do Fly!

clipped from www.jpost.com French President Nicholas Sarkozy called Wednesday for sanctions on Iran to be tightened if the country does not adhere to the West's demands to cease its nuclear agenda. If Iran attains nuclear weapons, Sarkozy warned, a road to an arms race will be paved that could endanger Israel and southeast Europe, he said during an interview with a German magazine. Sarkozy announced that France will join the official US-led struggle against head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, who recommended that Iran be allowed to enrich uranium in some of its nuclear plants.

Tings Are Looking Peaceful Ya You Betcha

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com Kohut pointed to one of the study’s key findings that only 29% of all respondents agreed that “bloody, random violence against infidels” was “always” or “frequently” justified, versus 56% who said such violence was “seldom” or “never” justified. The approval of violence rose slightly among younger Lutherans and when the hypothetical violence was targeted against Presbyterians, but still fell well short of a majority. “The only demographic cohort we saw where murderous random violence had a majority support was among 18-35 year old male followers of the Wisconsin Synod,” said Kohut. “And that was barely above the margin of error. Even then, fewer than half (41% to 46%) said they would personally volunteer to carry out the violence themselves.” Further bolstering the findings, Kohut noted that fewer than 6% of respondents physically attacked field interviewers during the survey.

Absolutely Amazing

clipped from pajamasmedia.com “While I was at the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad on my recent trip to Iraq, a pair of Spanish journalists—a newspaper reporter and a photojournalist—walked in, fresh from their embed with the 1-4 Cavalry of the First Infantry Division (the unit with which I embedded only days later). They had spent two weeks amongst the troops there, living and going on missions with them, including house-to-house searches and seizures, and their impressions of these soldiers were extremely clear.” (Jeff Emmanuel @ American Spectator / OpinionJournal) “Absolutely amazing,” said David Beriain, the reporter (and the one who spoke English), said of the young Cavalry troops. “In Spain, it is embarrassing—our soldiers are ashamed to be in the army. These young men—and they seem so young!—are so proud of what they do, and do it so well, even though it is dangerous and they could very easily be killed.”

United We (Don't) Stand

clipped from hotair.com

Downsize Me!

clipped from instapundit.com Glenn, I'm not sure anyone's brought this up yet with Michael Moore's *Sicko*, but one of the biggest costs on US health care is... people like Michael Moore: The World Bank has estimated the cost of obesity in the U.S. at 12 percent of the national health care budget... The Lewin Group examined the costs of fifteen (15) conditions causally related to obesity. They included: arthritis, breast cancer, heart disease, colorectal cancer, type 2 diabetes, endometrial cancer, end-stage renal disease, gallbladder disease, hypertension, liver disease, low back pain, renal cell cancer, obstructive sleep apnea, stroke and urinary incontinence... This method established the direct health care costs of obesity at $102.2 billion in 1999. [Indirect costs surely boost that figure even higher].

Can You Say "D'oh"?

clipped from instapundit.com After suffering more than 1,000 dead in battles with the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines in the last year, the Taliban retired to regroup and re-equip last winter. A spring offensive was ordered by the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, and was meant to be launched in late March. But a lack of mid-level commanders has meant that there has been little co-ordination to bring about the offensive. Hey, I guess killing these guys does help. (Via Don Surber).

Sercular Delusions

clipped from onecosmos.blogspot.com As I touched upon above, it must be said that Christianity is doing a mediocre job of marketing itself, to the extent that otherwise sophisticated people believe that you must disable your intellect in order to be a practicing Christian. There is no question whatsoever that I suffered from this delusion in my sercular days, when I just dismissed religion -- western religion, anyway -- as so much shallow-minded fantasy, nothing worthy of even a moment's serious coonsideration. Now I wonder: how did I come by this attitude? -- for it was not grounded in any personal experience I had ever had. Rather, it was all just the secular brainwashing I had endured by virtue of being plunged into secular culture. But had I ever personally read, much less comprehended, the works any of the great Christian intellects -- Origen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, John Climacus, Augustine, John Scotus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart, and so many others?

What's It Good For?

clipped from victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com What, then, is the radical Left good for? Mostly psychological cover. It is our version of the Athenian elite demagogue’s dung on his boots or Medieval indulgences or the Bible in the hand of the philandering fundamentalist. Its rhetoric alone allows Edwards to enjoy his mansion, Gore his jet, the Kennedys’ their drink and drugs, Bill Clinton his sex, and Soros his billions—and China its cutthroat acquisitions abroad and its suppression at home. Proclaiming to be a man of the people these days can cover almost anything from living like 18th-century royalty to making the foreign policy of the United States look downright saintly.

Anything That Moves

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com The exodus of refugees from this seaside camp, home to 40,000 people, was spurred by a temporary ceasefire Tuesday afternoon. The ceasefire was arranged to allow a convoy of six United Nations trucks to enter the camp to deliver food, water and medical supplies. But the convoy was struck by several mortar rounds while unloading its emergency provisions. Although none of the crew were harmed, three vehicles were damaged and had to be abandoned. The U.N. said it was unsure whether the mortar fire was from the Lebanese army ringing the camp or from the Fatah al-Islam militants holed up inside. But the drivers of the trucks said they were sure it was Fatah al-Islam. "They waited for us to stop then they opened fire. They are shooting at anything that moves inside the camp," said Ahmad, one of the truck drivers, who refused to give his full name.