How Hugh Shelton developed a taste for vodka.

... or excreted by ... and you won't be able to stop laughing.

Hypocrisy? What hypocrisy?

(Hat tip Darren.)

There are no Americans in Baghdad?

My boys are fascinated with dinosaurs. This may have been how they left us -- and how we may leave us. Mine the links -- very thought provoking...

A Kuru-like Plague?

Yeooouch! Check out Austin Bay:

Mad Howard's frantic, peptic rise to top dog in the Democratic pack exhibits similar symptoms, from his "unsteady" (retracted) crack about rebel flags to his hideous conspiratorial "hint" that President Bush knew in advance of 9-11, to his demand we deal with the Soviet Union (it's Russia now, Howard), to his huff that America is no safer with Saddam Hussein incarcerated, followed by his startling revelation that Job is his favorite book in the New Testament.

Imagine the monthlong jihad Maureen Dowd and other smirky national press pooh-bahs would have waged had Bush done a similar job on Job. [Emphasis added.]

Definitely a RTWT! Smiles abound...

WHOOPS? More Clinton lies?

We must explore the universe in order to reject it!

This is just outstanding -- just as Bush prepares to announce a return to space! Lileks rocks... Read it -- you need a good laugh.

Who are the Slovaks again?

Splitters! (Hat tip Glenn.)

Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil, who turn darkness into light and light into darkness . .

The Wall: Prelude.

It's finally bad enough that even Benny Morris is becoming conflicted.

Gurgling and gassing in the Baath tub...

The Bush tax cut made him do it...

I knew the day would come. I now have incontrovertible proof that Dennis Kucinich is smarter than everybody else.

Nuanced Dominoes

A nice job critiquing the Bush administration on Iraq by Ken Pollack. This is what reasoned critique based on historical perspective and unblinkered analysis looks like. I can't resist quoting his swing at the leftist's race-based arguments about democracy being impossible in the MidEast because they're just stupid Arabs:

It's not a matter of dominoes falling, it's something somewhat different. For the first time ever Arabs will be able to look at Iraq and see an Arab democracy. Often when we say democracy, Arabs hear Britney Spears, sex on TV, same-sex marriages and hip-hugger blue jeans. They know they don't want any of that. But once you get that first democracy formed in a region, it has a remarkable transformative effect. This is what the East Asian historians say about Japan. Fifteen, twenty years after the occupation of Japan was over, when there was a functional democracy in Japan, it changed a lot of perceptions throughout East Asia. For the first time East Asians could look at Japan and say "That's the kind of state that I could imagine living in."

Before Japan, East Asians thought about democracy the same way that Arabs do now. They thought of it as being an American or a European thing. Those were the only examples they had, and they knew they didn't want that. But then Japan came along and proved that you could build a democracy that was very different from a Western-style democracy. To me, Japan is more dissimilar from our form of democracy than Hosni Mubarak's Egypt is from our democracy. But it is a functional democracy that is consistent with Japan's values, traditions and history. And if we get it right in Iraq, for the first time there will be a democratic Arab state with a free-market economic system that will be consistent with Arab values, traditions and history.

He also says a number of critical things but does so in a level-headed and insightful way (Pollack served under Clinton BTW.) When I see one of the Dem candidates actually paying attention to someone like Pollack, then we'll have a race for the White House. Right now Lieberman is the only one with a clue. Otherwise the Dems are toast this go-round...

W is the one who's stupid? Uh huh...

Some entertaining perspective from Australia. (Hat tip Totten.)

Mandatory reading today from Michael Totten on the distinction between liberals and leftists. Well done with the good sense to include a classic Churchill quote.

The Trouble Threshold

Volokh has a fascinating summary of "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" by Abigail & Stephan Thernstrom. I've always pointed out that the concern with "white superiority" in academic achievement is actually quite ignorant and misses a critical point: Asian achievement outstrips white achievement by about the same amount that White achievement outstrips Black and Hispanic academic achievement! (Did you know that Asians constitute some 50% of the student body at Berkely and UCLA -- the most prestigious public institutions in California -- in spite of "swimming against" affirmative action and comprising less than 10% of California's population?)

Volokh quotes a review by Clarence Page that contains this nugget:

Among the most intriguing possible reasons for this disparity is an intriguing group difference in the way students measure their family's "trouble threshold," according to one study that the Thernstroms cite. The "trouble threshold" is the lowest grade that students think they can receive before their parents go volcanic with anger and start clamping down on TV time, etc. In the survey by Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University social scientist, published in his 1996 book, "Beyond the Classroom," most of the black and Hispanic students surveyed said they could avoid trouble at home as long as their grades stayed above C-minus.

Most of the whites, by contrast, said their parents would give them a hard time if their children came home with anything less than a B-minus.

By contrast, most of the Asian students, whether immigrant or native-born, said that their parents would be upset if they brought home anything less than an A-minus. [Emphasis from Volokh.]

In critique of this, my wife (whose background is in education) points out that Asians have a particularly high suicide rate perhaps derived from such standards! My counter is that too much ignorance leads to an unacceptably high homocide rate.

In the end, the world is not a simple place and lots of factors matter -- not least of which include nutrition and genetics. But I believe that downplaying the role of culture is wrong-headed in the extreme...

A Tale of Two Earthquakes

In one word. (Hat tip LGF.)

And a Happy New Year to everyone. And that would include best wishes to everyone, everywhere. Even Jacques Chirac. Although I better quit before I have second thoughts about Osama and Kim Jong Il. Whew, that was a close one...

Of tribes and soldiers... (Hat tip Kaplan.)

WHOOPS... And more shutting up in snail country. (Hat tip Glenn.)

Evidence to hold over their heads...

Can you say evil spitting hatred? I thought you could...

Totten provides a nice fisking of the man the Dems are empowering to commit suicide for them.

Hmmmmm. And then I realized the Dems have more reasons to sympathize with terrorists than I could have previously believed. Nihil-brained suicide is a common ethos for both of them!

Condescension panderama. Period. Paragraph. End of story.

More on planning for the postwar environment...

Of "arch foes" and where the heart of hatred really lies...

Merry Christmas!

Keep safe...

Insanity Makes for a Flexible Approach to Survival

Check this out:

Yesterday, Col. Gaddafi called on other “rogue states” to follow his dramatic example if they were to prevent “tragedy” from striking their nations. [Ed Note: Wow, how could you piss off the Islamofascists more than that?]

The move has led to widespread speculation about Col. Gaddafi’s motives, but largely overlooked has been the impact that Western intelligence co-operation could have in helping Col. Gaddafi suppress his hardline Islamic opponents. ...

Three other armed groups, the Islamic Movement of Martyrs, Libyan Jihad Movement and Islamic Movement for Change, are also battling Col. Gaddafi and at one point had “thousands, if not tens of thousands of supporters,” CSIS said.

As with most real-world situations, Whacky G probably has LOTS of motives for caving -- including us catching an incriminating shipment red-handed. And who could be surprised that not being pure enough for the Islamofascists is in the mix?

Rethinking GWB's relationship with evil. (Hat tip Totten.)

Rekindling the Code of Hammurabi

WOW.

A quick excerpt so you can't escape:

But goodness is, in my view and that of almost all ethicists, essentially bound up with freedom. We cannot praise a coerced virtue, nor blame an enforced crime. The very core of morality, enjoined by God himself in almost all religions, is the spontaneous assent to divine grace. Paradoxically, to enforce the law of good is to destroy it. Paradoxically, the freedom to do evil -- as long as it does not violate the right -- is required for the freedom to do good. The law of right is at its center the law of freedom, and is thus, paradoxically again, the only thing for which one can rightly resort to coercion and war. All of this is not to say that the law of good must bottle itself up within the individual and the closed community, and render itself impotent. Instead it means that the law of good must win the world the hard way, by the noncoercive means of persuasion, gifts, and the marketplace -- must win the population one by one by one. And it can only do so under the wing of the law of right.

Just WOW. If you don't read anything for the rest of the year then this needs to be the last thing you do... AND IT JUST GOT ADDED THE THE CLASSICS LINKS -- FITTINGLY, RIGHT NEXT TO THE "CHURCH OF THE LEFT"...

Needless to say, this will draw more analysis later...

The Big Hmmmm...

And luckily for the Fascifists there is once again absolutely no evidence that this will make us any safer or that it was linked in any way to the invasion of Iraq and the capture of Saddam. Not other than the fact the negotiations started as Iraq was invaded and the agreement came just after Saddam was captured. Move along now, nothing to see here...

And some self-indulgent writing -- on writing ;) Nice Keith, nice...

Time to link to a good fisking. Thanks Michael, I needed that...

The Task of Doing Nothing

Wretchard has some concise perspective to color your holiday contemplations:

But of the fate of the United Nations, little has been said. In hindsight, the UN succeeded admirably at the task of doing nothing. The Security Council, the functional core of the UN, was designed to create a permanent state of deadlock. This kept the Great Powers from conflict by freezing everything in place. But the avoidance of world war was purchased at the price of accepting a permanent state of misery and regional conflict. In the succeeding years, nearly 60 wars would come to the attention of the Security Council for resolution. It would act in only two: Korea 1950 and Kuwait 1991, the first by accidental Soviet absence, the second, after the multipolar system had already collapsed by the accession of the United States to global dominance. Ultimately the price proved too high. Under the shadow of the Cold War, itself a consequence of the stasis designed into the peace of 1945, petty tyrants multiplied, millions were oppressed, and the most backward ideologies flourished. The aircraft that destroyed the two World Trade Center towers figuratively started their flight in Yalta, flown by men born literally not very far from where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin pored over their maps. [Emphasis added.]

And he has a very smooth punchline so I won't give it away since the piece is a quick read -- AND A RTWT.

Agrily Biking -- Without Harley

Steyn is unbeatable today. It's really almost impossible to pick the best snippet but here's a shot:

Howard Dean catapulted himself from Vermont obscurity to national fame very ingeniously. His campaign was tonally brilliant. He was an angry peacenik, an aggressive defeatist, he got in-your-face about getting out of Iraq. The problem with pacifism as a political position is that it's too easy to seem wimpy, wussy, nancy-boyish, pantywaisty, milksopping, etc. In that sense, his fellow Democrat, Dennis Kucinich, has a pacifist mien: I'm not saying he's a pantywaist or milksop, but he comes over as a goofy nebbish, as the Zionist neocons would say. The main impact he's made on the Granite State electorate seems to be his lack of a girlfriend, which has prompted a New Hampshire Web site to try and find a date for him. Somehow one is not surprised to hear this. By contrast, when Howard Dean, shortish and stocky, comes out in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, he looks like Bruce Banner just before he turns into the Incredible Hulk, as if his head's about to explode out of his shirt collar. Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus, but Dr. Dean is Venusian in a very Martian way. He's full of anger.

But only for peripheral issues. Ask him serious questions about the president's key responsibilities--national security and foreign policy--and the passion drains away as it did with Chris Matthews. David Brooks, visiting Burlington in 1997 in search of what eventually became his thesis "Bobos in Paradise," concluded that the quintessential latté burg was "relatively apolitical." He's a smart guy but he was wrong. All the stuff he took as evidence of the lack of politics--pedestrianization, independent bookstores--is the politics. Because all the big ideas failed, culminating in 1989 in Eastern Europe with the comprehensive failure of the biggest idea of all, the left retreated to all the small ideas: in a phrase, bike paths. That's what Bill Clinton meant when he said the era of big government was over; instead, he'd be ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government that, when you tote 'em up, works out even more expensive than the era of big government. That's what Howard Dean represents--the passion of the Bike-Path Left. [Emphasis added.]

And I even left out the analysis of Dean not caring where Osama gets tried! RTWT. Period.

Russia, China and France: Open and Say Ahhhhhh...

Bill Hobbs hits one out of the park on the left's latest pygmy-brained retort to Saddam's capture:

It's one of the common refrains of the anti-war crowd, the claim that the United States "created" Saddam Hussein by providing him weaponry for the Iran-Iraq war. It's a lie. The three biggest sellers of arms to the Hussein regime from 1973 through 2002 were ... drumroll.... Russia, China and France, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Those three countries combined sold Saddam 82 percent of his weapons during that period. The United States sold him 1 percent. Chart here.

Remind me again - which members of the U.N. Security Council promised to veto any resolution authorizing the use of military force against Saddam Hussein? Oh, that's right. Russia. China. And France.

Thanks to Saddam's regime, Iraq owes billions to France, Germany and Russia. For what? For weapons and for components needed to develop weapons of mass destruction. A public trial may well allow the world see the real reason France, Germany and Russia actively opposed efforts to remove Saddam from power.

For that reason, I have a hunch France might try to derail a trial, perhaps by proposing Saddam be sent into exile to live out his days incommunicado under armed guard, in exchange for providing the world with information as to the whereabouts of the weapons of mass destruction, and a full accounting of the regime's trail of mass murder. France will argue that the information is more valuable than revenge via execution, and Russia and China will nod and agree with the proposal - but it will really be all about covering up their complicity in arming and propping up one of the worst mass-murdering tyrants in world history.

Come on now, open wide and say ahhhhhh...ggggggrrrrrrr. And don't choke on your foul-smelling spittle...

And Don't Forget al-Husseini

Found on Healing Iraq:

Adolf Eichmann was not a doctor (that was Josef Mengele). He was the SS officer who rounded up Jews from all over Europe and transported them to the death camps. Hitler decided on genocide after the urgings of Mohammed Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and organizer of the 1941 pro-Nazi coup d'etat in Iraq.

When the government of Israel -- on behalf of hundreds of thousands of its citizens who lost relatives to Eichmann's thugs or were themselves enslaved -- put Eichmann on trial after abducting him in Argentina, the international elite (the New York Times, the unanimous UN Security Council) howled in protest. Sound familiar? [Emphasis added.]

Don't forget "The Previous Jaw Dropper"...

Nice, Then, To See Him Found Like A Rat In A Hole

Hitch weighs in on Saddam's ignominious end:

HE had all his visitors body-searched and all his food tasted in advance. He was obsessed with hygiene and stray infections.

He wore a different uniform every day and built himself a vulgar palace in every city of his miserable country. Nice, then, to see him found like a rat in a hole, covered with grime, sprouting a dirty grey mane, and being shaven and combed for lice.

"He was in our minds at all times - and that was power, of a kind." These words, from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, convey a faint sense of the symbolic and practical importance of the fact that, today, we enter the post-Saddam epoch.

Try to imagine seeing his face on your front page every day for three decades, and hearing that voice and seeing that face every time you turned on the radio or TV.

Try to imagine being unable to escape from it when you went to the opera, the cinema, the theatre, or the football. For millions of Iraqis under 35, this indoctrination started at infant school, where lesson one was that Big Daddy was supreme, and could do what he liked to your or your family.

Kanan Makiya's brilliant profile of Ba'ath Party rule, The Republic of Fear, had a title that was, if anything, understated. In Baghdad in the old days, I knew people who said you could smell the fear. Others said no, you could taste it. The one who came closest said you could actually eat it.

Just the mention of the name was enough to bring a look into the eyes of almost any Iraqi: the look of a broken dog that is once again shown the whip. This is why I can't stand those who refer with a sneer to the courageous Iraqi opposition as "exiles".

THE risk of uttering the mildest criticism of Saddam entailed savage torture followed by brutal execution, with the same being visited upon your family.

Those thousands who fled Iraq had no guarantee they would not be followed by assassins and murdered overseas. Many were.

Those who remained were used as cannon fodder in crazy and destructive wars, or shovelled into mass graves.

He's not done yet -- so click through and RTWT. (Hat tip Totten.)

Consistency ...

... the hobgoblin of little minds:

QUOTE OF THE DAY I: "The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we're never going to have a consistent policy," - Howard Dean, 1998, arguing against exactly the kind of foreign policy he is now advocating.

And don't miss "YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" while you're there.

Where to Find Real Stupidity

And why it loses:

As we wait for the details behind Saddam's capture, want to know why we got Uday and Qusay? The reward was tempting. But the deciding factor for their unhappy host was more visceral: Saddam's boys smacked around his wife. At that point, our money and the promise of relocation abroad became irresistible. Uday and Qusay signed their own death warrants with a temper tantrum.

Hate and unquenchably bad manners. There are folks in this country that behave like that too -- and it's not surprising they wanted Saddam to remain in power...

Why not us too?

Wretchard dices...

Nothing new under the sun...

And Whittle Can Still Zing

Zzzzinngggg:

On September 12, 2001, we woke to a new world, a world where the chattering classes of the intellectual elites made a prediction: a prediction framing the upcoming fight, and the nature of the two opposing camps:

One of them was soft, decadent, a nation of braggarts and bullies, without the guts for a real fight, capable of dishing out pain but bound to cut and run like cowards when they were finally hit hard enough.

The other force was hard as nails, dedicated, unstoppable, unrelenting. Their belief in their ideology made them impervious to casualties, and they would bear any hardship and endure any pain and never, ever surrender until they had achieved total victory, for their revenge on the crimes done against them.

They could never be defeated, these people: never. Not with the cause they believed in. They would die, seemingly to the last man, to defend their ideology.

You know what? Turns out those preditions were completely, totally, astonishingly correct.

Merde!

I haven't been paying enough attention to Merde In France:

UPDATE: In an incredible display of hubris and French 'sophistication' (no, rather the lack thereof) a somber looking Dominique Villepin™ (he's a guy) just gave a point-by-point statement (live on LCI) of what must be done in Iraq now that Saddam is out of the picture. Aside from supplying port-a-potties, I have no idea how the French could help out in Iraq. Villepin, I don't want to see your face unless you are in a restaurant serving me grilled frogs legs with plenty of Tabasco sauce. Now scoot!

But with any luck Saddam might figure a way to drag Chirac into the crossfire during his interminable war crimes trials! Can you say "enemy"? I can now -- you'll admit it later ;)

Where To Begin?

The following beautiful little zinger from Christopher S. Johnson (Hat tip Glenn):

Dear Lord, where to begin? I find it savagely ironic that (1) people who claimed that Saddam Hussein was no threat to any other countries now think other countries should have a part in his trial, (2) people who want Iraqis to run their own affairs right now don't want them to run this trial and, (3) people actually think that the UN should try him for the crimes it consistently refused to do anything about.

Can you say Purrrrrrfect? I thought you could...

That Sinking Feeling

OJ is on a roll. The following was found on DemocraticUnderground.com:

Erik Latranyi: "Well, tha capture of Sadaam takes the 'failure to capture' issue off the table. Now that the economy is picking up (mall was packed yesterday), Iraq is getting better, prescription drugs on the way, education spending at an all-time high, no further terrorist attacks--what is left? Oh, yes, the capture of Bin Laden. If that happens, we are completely sunk."

Better slap the tinfoil hat back on there son -- it's the only thing left when money for the drug habit runs out...

INTERLUDE: Lifted from OpinionJournal:

Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Rant

"Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq--will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging?"--former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 12

"The officials said Halliburton did not appear to have profited from overcharging for fuel, but had instead paid a subcontractor too much for the gasoline in the first place."--news story, New York Times, Dec. 12

MmmmHmmm. The all-knowing and pervasively evil Haliburton rules the earth and controls your subconscious. (Fade to noisy crinkling sounds...)

And Wretchard weighs in nicely...

Can You Say "Hypocrisy"?

Glenn has the real news angle on Saddam's surrender without a fight. Of course the truth is that none of this is about principle or even "oppression" by the West. It's about a power trip by tyrants who live in a 7th century world. Is Arafat wiring his kids to be suicide bombers? Horsepuckey pure and simple. They live in Paris than you very much...

And he also has a great email from Roger Simon that makes me smile from ear to ear:

I am here in Paris to research a new novel, celebrating the overthrow of Saddam with your one time Paris correspondent Nelson Ascher and journalist/novelist Nidra Poller and we would all like to say that atmosphere here tonight is that Chiraq is shaking in his boots and may be headed for Damascus to seek political asylum.

Those who think this laughable aren't paying attention. I do seem to recall a quote or some intel tidbit where Saddam was reputed to say something about tattling on those who didn't support him enough ;)

We're far from out of the woods yet but now the pall of fear has lifted maybe the intel will get strong enough to actually take on the Al Qaeda in Iraq. But I still think it will take years since I'm sure Osama commands a similar level of fear to to Saddam...

UPDATE: Darren Kaplan points out Strategy Pages prescient take on Task Force 121.

Totten on jerks. A heart-warming affirmation of the right of Judeo-Christian expression by an atheist.

NEWSFLASH: Saddam Taps Nidal -- And Then Taps Him For Good

AN ATTA BOY WHOOPS

Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

Hat tip Charles. And as Charles points out, this might be more than a little germane to the "mysterious" death of Abu Nidal in Baghdad in 2002...

But don't worry -- there's still no evidence! You can sleep easy at night. Safely bet your last dollar. First born. All of that. You betcha...

It's also true that Saddam never held a grudge against anyone. Absolutely not. Well not other than his assassination attempt against Bush 41. But surely that's irrelevant isn't it? (Soft crinkling sounds in the background ... Fade back to deep unconsciousness... )

UPDATE: And you need to read this too.

And now for the body slam while you're down on the mat:

But even if ailing, a veteran terrorist like Abu Nidal ought not to have needed to empty his magazine in order to end his life. If Iraqi security services helped him out, the question is why?

The official explanation could well be true. Saddam, like Nidal himself, does not require much evidence to take action against a suspected traitor.

But there is another plausible explanation. Nidal's specialty was airplane hijacking and sabotage. At least two Iraqi defectors have said Saddam maintained at Salman Pak, a military base 21 miles from Baghdad, a Boeing 707 on which "Islamicists" practiced hijackings.

Ziad Jarrah was at the controls when United Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County. He had come to Germany as a student in 1996, where his apartment was paid for by his great-uncle, Assam Omar Jarrah. Assam Jarrah has been identified by German intelligence as an operative for both the old East German secret police and the Abu Nidal organization. Assam disappeared two months before Sept. 11.

Could Saddam have been eliminating a piece in the chain of evidence linking him to the 9/11 attacks? Stay tuned.
[Emphasis added.]

Move along folks. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all. Just plug your nose and pretend that nothing has happened...

The only problem is that us rural folk distrust people who reinvent themselves.

Wretchard on being "Flat Broke". He's on a roll -- this one's pretty thought provoking too...

When not corruption, then this...

The Thunder Run

Are you kidding, sir? (login: laexaminer, password: laexaminer)

Proof positive that fiction can't match reality. And why Baghdad Bob's lies were a very, very stupid idea -- never ever get Americans really motivated against you...

Where are all the well adjusted suicide bombers?

And check out Pilar Rohola on combating Euro Judaeophobia. Orianna Falaci and Bridgette Bardot are not alone after all... (Hat tip Simon)

Pilar Rahola The most absurd thing is to watch leaders of the left today greet and celebrate Arab leaders, even when they are fundamentalists. For example, in the debates that followed the attacks of September 11, we heard an anti-American discourse here, pooh-poohing the victims, something which is in and of itself terrible ! And there were those who tried to downgrade—with that tawdry third-worldism which characterizes some circles of the left—the danger embodied in individuals like Bin Laden, who is, in fact, an authentic fascist. I believe that for the moment the world remains blind to the biggest totalitarianism of the twenty-first century, which is Islamic fundamentalism. Now we must prepare ourselves seriously to face this danger : For me, this totalitarianism is without any shadow of a doubt comparable to Stalinism and Nazism, the biggest scourges of the twentieth century.

Part Deux

from Julie. She starts like this:

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr published his Letter To An Anti-Zionist Friend: "Anti-Zionism is inherently anti-semitic, and ever will be. What is anti-Zionism? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the globe. It is discrimination against Jews... because they are Jews. In short, it is anti-semitism." MLK - what a mensch! A saint in the street; a superman in the sack. And this being so, no reason at all to be envious of the Jews.

and it just gets better and better... (Hat tip Simon.)

Hitchens weighs in with an update...

And part 45781 "hardly exists".

I Am Your (Inanimate) Master -- You Feel Bad

And that should trump all other considerations. And maybe we will finally stamp out classicism once and for all while we're at it! (Hat Tip AnalPhilosopher.)

And part 45780.

Zionism reversed Jewish historical passivity to persecution and asserted the Jewish right to self-determination and independent survival. This is why anti-Zionists see it as a perversion of Jewish humanism. Zionism entails the difficulty of dealing with sometimes impossible moral dilemmas, which traditional Jewish passivity in the wake of historical persecution had never faced. By negating Zionism, the anti-semite is arguing that the Jew must always be the victim, for victims do no wrong and deserve our sympathy and support.

And we insist that America be a victim also. And what makes you think that 3,000 dead in the heart of your largest city gives you the right to respond? Victims have no rights...

Anti-Semitism Reprise (Part 45779)

It turns out that Pejman has identified that ala Nietzsche, there is "much stupidity to forget" regarding anti-semitism and Brian Leitner is working on a monopoly:

It is amusing that Leiter, a devoted Chomskyite, apparently forgets that Chomsky is, by training, a linguist. As such, one cannot help but think that if Chomsky really wanted to set up a relative comparison in his comment, he would have had the sophistication with language to do so. All of this makes Leiter's whitewashing of Chomsky's statement quite laughable, and reading a "comparison" into Chomsky's statement where Chomsky didn't even bother to set up a comparison himself is the height of either (a) dishonest rhetoric, or (b) an inability to read, and comprehend English.

Perhaps even this doesn't convince Leiter as to the holes in his logic. So let's try a thought experiment, courtesy of the debate engaged on this issue by the worthy and masterful Enthymeme (follow the first link in the post). Supposing that I said the following:

Anti-black prejudice scarcely exists now, though it did in the past.

Now, I have no doubt that Leiter would scream with rage at this remark. But what if my comments were defended by faithful Pejmanesque acolyte Nairb Retiel, who--eager to play Luke Skywalker to my Yoda-- blithely explains that compared to the past, which included black slavery, Jim Crow laws, "separate but equal," and lynchings, my statement is true? Would that satisfy Leiter? Doubtful. Nor should it--of course there remains prejudice against blacks, and what's more, I didn't set up a comparison or a relative statement in my hypothetical remarks. It would be thoroughly disingenuous for Nairb Retiel to do so, and to therefore whitewash my remarks. [Emphasis added]

A thing of beauty, no? DEFINITELY A RTWT...

Islam: the best friend gays have ever had. It's really quite rational I think that large numbers of radical left gays think Bush is their number one enemy in the world. (Soft sound of crinkling in the background.)

Crinkle, Crinkle, Little Fascifist

Get out your tinfoil hat for A Mystery, Wrapped in a Riddle, Stuffed in a Turkey. But don't worry about the glare when you put them under a light -- the fascifist conspiracists are really quite normal. Doesn't EVERYONE make crinkling noises in the breeze? Who could deny it???

UPDATE: And get this, a reporter actually ASKED this question about Bush's Baghdad Turkey trip: "Q What are the legalities of filing a fraudulent flight plan?"!!! Yuppers. This is so incredibly hilarious! The big press doesn't even seem to have caught on that Bush also spent part of his time there meeting with reps of the Iraqi Governing Council and getting a status update from the Coalition commanders! This question is actually the equivalent of complaining FDR didn't announce his routes to meeting with Churchill and Stalin in WWII.

The big press can only be described as insensate cubed.

Does the public have the right level of trust in the elite media? Looks like it to me. (Yet more refutation of the fascifist canard about how brainwashed and stupid the unwashed masses are. Could it be that the media are even more stupid than the general public? To ask the question may be to answer it :)

HINDSIGHT CHECK. I'm growing VERY weary of self-righteous fascifists who take no responsibility for their continuous stream of fantastic predictive failure. But then that's the point isn't it -- their ideal is that NOBODY take responsibility...

ANTI-SEMITISM NO LONGER PROBLEM, SAYS NOTED HOLOCAUST DENIER. Nuff said.

Whoops Again...

More no evidence:

The CIA is convinced that Atta’s terrorist group must have been led by professionals from an intelligence service, perhaps Iraq’s. U.S. experts believe that during the two aforementioned Prague visits, the execution of the terrorist action was to be confirmed. Atta was to visit Prague a third time in April 2001. The Czech secret service received from one of its informers a warning that Al-Ani, the Iraqi consul, was to meet with a “distinguished Arab student” from Hamburg—this is information that up until now was top secret. BIS monitored the meeting: The men met in a Prague restaurant on the evening of April 8. To this day, it remains unclear whether this “Hamburg student” was Atta. Yet again, three days after that meeting, $100,000 arrived in Atta’s Florida account.

... deaf, dumb and blind and thus can hardly comprehend anything.

Prudence gridlocked

Lileks: Dems are as American As Apple Pie

When Lileks gets up a head of steam even apple pie can't save the Dems:

Howard Dean: Well, you have to understand that George Bush not only doesn't get the complex history of splicing and cross-breeding that led to the modern apple, he's alienated the countries in the world whose apple stocks might replenish our own after the worst environmental policies since Catherine the Great threatened the domestic Macintosh-producing regions. You can't solve that by flying to Baghdad and serving pie -- which I understand was pecan, an ironic choice, since they've stopped serving pecans at VA hospitals because of Bush cutbacks.
...
In the same interview Dean referred to the Iraq campaign as "a unilateral pre-emptive" action. He meant this in a bad way, of course -- as if attacking bin Laden's base in Afghanistan and killing him dead before Sept. 11 would have been a bad idea. Dean said we should also enlist the help of the "Soviet Union" to put pressure on Iran. (They really should update the atlases in the Vermont Foreign Affairs Department.) He vowed to break up media conglomerates like Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire, presumably because it's government's role to save you from Bill O'Reilly.

In short: Howard Dean says a lot of things. Come the presidential election, the GOP will have a two-word response:

Roll tape.

(Hat tip Hewitt.) My advice to the Dems is to start stocking up on cable and satellite TV jammers now -- you're going to need them desperately to counteract the Repubs "instant replays". No other strategy has a prayer of working.

Orwellian Prudence?

Check out this snippet on Orwell in relation to this blog's recent fixation:

In his last years, Orwell had an odd friendly acquaintance with Evelyn Waugh, based on wary mutual admiration. Orwell was planning an essay in which he proposed to call Waugh as good a writer as it was possible to be while holding impossible opinions. In return, Waugh deplored Orwell's irreligion and "unreasoned animosity of a class war". But he also recognised something more important than any animosity or "ism", his "unusually high moral sense and respect for justice and truth". That perhaps describes better than any longer analysis the politics of George Orwell, and why we still love and revere him.

Must ... pull ... harder ... against ... the memory ... hole ...

Prudence Isn't Dead Yet?

Check out this piece by Robert Samuelson of Newsweek:

Just so. Today’s polarization mainly divides the broad public from political, intellectual and media elites. Of course, sharp differences define democracy. We’ve always had them. From Iraq to homosexual marriage, deep disagreements remain. But the venom of today’s debates often transcends disagreement. Your opponents—whether liberal or conservative—must not only have bad ideas. Increasingly, they must also be bad people who are dishonest, selfish and venal.

Among politicians, the bitterness reflects less political competition, especially in the House of Representatives. Democrats and Republicans increasingly have safe seats. In 2002, 83 percent of House incumbents won at least 60 percent of the vote; in 1992 only 66 percent of incumbents won with that margin. As a result, members speak more to their parties’ “bases,” which provide most electoral and financial support. There’s less need to appeal to the center. The Founders saw the House as responding quickly to public opinion. But “the barometer is broken,” says veteran congressional correspondent Richard E. Cohen of National Journal.

As for media and intellectual elites—commentators, academics, columnists, professional advocates—they’re in an attention-grabbing competition. They need to establish themselves as brand names. For many, stridency is a strategy. The right feeds off the left and the left feeds off the right, and although their mutual criticisms constitute legitimate debate, they’re also economic commodities. To be regarded by one side as a lunatic is to be regarded by the other as a hero—and that can usually be taken to the bank through more TV appearances, higher lecture fees, fatter book sales and larger audiences and group memberships. Polarization serves their interests. Principle and self-promotion blend.

All this is understandable and, in a democracy, perhaps unavoidable. But it distorts who we are and poses a latent danger: Someday we might become as hopelessly polarized as we’re already supposed to be. [Emphasis added. Hat tip Simon.]

A rare "journalistic lapse" from Newsweek -- almost up there with John Burns of the NYeT. READ THE WHOLE THING -- AND THEN REMEMBER THIS LITTLE DITTY? Brewing, brewing, brewing...

Please remember to cross the invasion of Taiwan off your Christmas shopping list.

"Buries its fossil hippie head in pillows." I just couldn't let it whither ;)

This is a religious war.

"WHATEVER"

Prudence is Dead -- And We Miss Her So

Also caught on Simon:

The modern Left despises individual liberty, because it naturally produces inequality.

Many Leftists will murder hundreds of millions and upend all the laws of human nature in an attempt to produce an impossible utopia in which inequality doesn't exist.

Most Leftists will turn away from such drastic measures and it is those people whom the Right must reclaim as fellow guardians of Western Civilization.

Democracy only works when democrats of both Right and Left compete against each other in the battle of ideas.

That's what makes this current nihilistic phase of the Left so scary.

An entry is brewing...

Orwell and More 30s Reprise

Caught this from Roger L. Simon:

AND YET ANOTHER: Reader Bill Rudersdorf has reminded me of what might be the best term of all--from Orwell, not surprisingly, in the 1930s. He called them "fascifists." Oh, that Orwell! [Emphasis added.]

FASCIFISTS -- it just sings with beauty about the cycles of history...

He Couldn't Do It With These People

Check out today's David Brooks column:

But despite all this, their epic bouts of complaining are interrupted by bursts of idealism. Most of them seem to feel, deep down, some elemental respect for the Iraqis and sympathy for what they have endured. Far more than the population at home, the soldiers in the middle of the conflict believe in their mission and are confident they will succeed.

When you read their writings you see what thorough democrats they are. They are appalled at the thought of dominating Iraq. They want to see the Iraqis independent and governing themselves. If some president did want to create an empire, he couldn't do it with these people. Their faith in freedom governs their actions.

Most of all, you see what a challenging set of tasks they have been given, and how short-staffed they are. And yet you sense that in this war, as in so many others, the improvising skill of the soldiers on the ground will make up for the cosmic screw-ups of the people up the chain of command.

If anybody is wondering: Where are the young idealists? Where are the people willing to devote themselves to causes larger than themselves? They are in uniform in Iraq, straddling the divide between insanity and order. [Emphasis added]

Nah, since so many of our soldiers come from "flyover country" they must all be evil imperialists. Arrrggghhhh.

Quote of the Day

"Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope." -- Samuel Huntington

Another Angle ...

... on the memory hole:

Stalin was reportedly fond of a certain saying: "There is a man, there is a problem. No man, no problem." The left, to save the history it wants to embrace, has removed Stalin from it. Despite countless testimonials from Louis Aragon, Lillian Hellman, Pablo Neruda, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others, he wasn’t really of the left, it turns out; he was merely an "aberration." No Stalin, no problem. [Emphasis added.]

Whenever I think of Hitler, it's hard to forget good ole Unca Joe. What's a few tens of millions dead between friends after all? We'll just hush it all up -- shhhhhh now. BUT SCREAM VISCERAL HATRED AT THEM IF THEY TRY TO SAY A BAD WORD ABOUT HIM!

A Sea of Lampshades Revisited

A letter writer from Tehran tries the moral superiority game on Den Beste -- and runs headlong into checkmate:

If my nation was made up of the kind of monsters who "debate final solutions" and feel no qualms about "mass murder", you'd already be dead, because Tehran would have been converted to a glowing crater about 12 hours after the collapse of the WTC towers. [Emphasis added.]

My take on it a while back was that we would have rendered them as a "sea of lampshades". Hitler would have considered nukes to be too painless I'm quite sure.

But don't worry -- the left follows in Hitler's footsteps as surely as I breath crisp Colorado air. The next time you hear rants of hate just remember the masterful footsteps they emulate:

Hate, hate, and more hate. There is nothing that sustains you like hate! - Adolf Hitler

The church of the left careens into the arms of its final authority -- and final solution.

It's not exactly Vietnam -- and this post lays it out beautifully. But "his donkey rockets impress the media".

THE QUOTE OF THE DAY: "It seems to me a certainty that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammed and the utter degradation of the Arab women are the outstanding causes for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have been developing." -- Gen. George Patton (From Blackfive)

Burchill Lets Loose

Good for Julie Burchill. She's had enough of the Guardian and is going out with phasers on full stun:

If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it's a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban. [The emphasis is redundant]

And, da*m she can write. So read the whole (short) thing. (Hat tip LGF.)

Whew

I thought I was having a bad dream that the liberals were on their way to supporting stoning women for adultery. After all, you would have thought that if there's anything beyond the pale maybe that would qualify. Whoops -- it turns out nothing is too depraved for liberals.

A Reprise To Frost Your Stuffing

At Solovki, one of earliest Gulag camps, Soviet administrators put up a sign that expressed the Communist program: "With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness." That slogan captures the murderous nature of the utopian vision of the hard left.

Austin Bay

strikes again:

Klaus, interviewed by the always trenchant Arnaud de Borchgrave, was specifically addressing the EU's failure (for the ninth straight year) to certify its budget. The extensive problems led Klaus to suggest "democratic accountability" can't exist "in anything bigger than a nation state." That's a smart guy's slap at the glazed brains who believe the Brussels government will morph into a superpower utopia of eternal peace and easy prosperity. Frustrating, isn't it, that European intellectuals like Klaus get zip air time with Peter Jennings.

Klaus' comments also have resonance for the United States and the entire "Western world," and not merely in terms of echoing classic democratic propositions like the government that governs best governs least or the more "local" the democratic action the more accountable.

Klaus touches on "the West's" most troublesome strategic weakness: the fat cats' lack of will and courage. The "dream world" of wealth and leisure is dandy as long as someone with courage and competence is policing the real world's vicious nightmares.

The United States didn't sleep during the 1990s. Washington fought a slow war with Saddam. Al Qaeda, however, declared war on the United States, and until 9-11 Washington thought it could keep that war "over there." On 9-11, responsible Americans woke up, though two years on, a predictably irresponsible clan willfully buries its fossil hippie head in pillows.

Klaus recognized the War on Terror implications of his insight when he added: "It is quite normal that the principal targets of Al Qaeda are the U.S. and the U.K., as they have taken the lead to do something about those who launch the terrorist attacks. ... We understand the fragility and vulnerability of today's world, and we know these attacks are coming close to us, but as someone from a small country, I have a tendency to take domestic issues first and then look at the external ones."

Translation: You do what you can do, but recognize the sacrifice of those doing the most.

I love it. "buries its fossil hippie head in pillows". Perfect.

The Memory Hole, X-rayed

Wow. Just plain WOW:

Haynes: Jamie, many of those you speak of live in a different reality from that of the rest of us. Psychologically, they do not see what you see. They see the present and the past through a special lens. What is overwhelmingly clear to them is an imagined future collectivist utopia where antagonisms of class and race have been eliminated, the economic and social inequalities that have driven people to crime have been removed, poverty does not exist and social justice reigns, world brotherhood has replaced war and international strife, and an economy planned by people like them has produced economic abundance without pollution or waste. Coupled with this vision of the future is loathing of the real present which falls woefully short of these goals and hatred for anyone or anything that stands in the way of their illusion of the radiant future.

At Solovki, one of earliest Gulag camps, Soviet administrators put up a sign that expressed the Communist program: "With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness." That slogan captures the murderous nature of the utopian vision of the hard left.

Jamie, you look at Soviet history and see the Gulag, the executions of the Terror, the pervasive oppression, and the economic failure. Psychologically, the leftists you speak of see little of that. They see a Communist state that articulated their vision of the future and which sought to destroy the societies and institutions they hated. They cannot see the horror that communism actually created. They look on that horror and see something else because they cannot admit to themselves that their vision is beyond human grasp. The German Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht, when challenged that thousands of innocents had been sent to the Gulag by Stalin, replied, "the more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die." To you or I this remark is disgusting, but to the hard left it reflects their eager willingness to kill any number of persons without concern for innocence or guilt if it might assist in bringing about the socialist future.

The idealized future that has not happened is more real and more important to them than the past that really did happen. Because the imagined future is more real and important to them, they seek to remold history (human understanding of the real past) to the service of the future. In his distopia 1984, George Orwell gives the Ministry of Truth of his totalitarian state the task of rewriting history. Orwell's point was that those who control the politics of the past (history) also control the politics of the present and thereby the future. The academic left, like the Orwell's Engsoc ideologists, believe that history is malleable and can assist in legitimating current politics and bringing about the utopian future.

You will get few mea culpas from hard left academics because they feel no guilt. You think they should regret getting the facts of history wrong. They care not at all about the facts of history, only about the politics of the future. They feel they got the politics right and so no mea culpa is due.

The facts of history that they got wrong can be, in their view, rationalized, redefined, minimized, or otherwise set aside in service to the idealized future they seek. Many have learned no lessons from the failure of communism; they will ardently pursue the same goals by the same means, albeit under new names.

You note the incongruity of hearing historians who are supposed to care about the past dismiss new information from Soviet archives as useless concern for "old ghosts" and "engaging in necrophilia." But those who say such thinks are not really historians, they are propagandists for the future left utopia who camouflage themselves as historians. They are interested in the past only when it can be put to the service of the future they seek. The flood of information out of Communist archives does not serve their goals, thus they define those matters as, as you noted, "ancient" and of no interest. [Emphasis added]

DEFINITELY A READ THE WHOLE THING!

Obscenity of the Day

How depraved and utterly irrelevant have our feminists become when pictures like this are not deplored with non-stop deconstruction and ostracism:



(That possible person on the left in the black bag is supposed to be his wife. But don't worry there's no evidence whatsoever that the person on the right is a HATEFUL MYSOGYNIST. None whatsoever. Come to think of it, I think I'll just go put a black bag over my wife's head right now and see how she reacts. Ugggghhhhh.)

Instead we're supposed to believe that this practice is for the protection of his wife. This is a steaming plate-full of garbage to only be believed by mental midgets.

Our feminists have become utter hypocrites. And collection-plate filling members of the "Church of the Left".

The bottom line is that the radical feminists live in a tinfoil-hat fantasy world imagining hateful oppression by their fellow countryfolk -- and are therefore completely blind to what a real "enemy" looks like. And the enemy has taken double advantage of it by the terrorist tactic of hiding in civilian populations and claiming to be "just another group oppressed by hateful whitey".

No Different Than Pat and Jerry...

Another classic that I managed to miss! Check this out -- I starts out like a blow to the plexus and never relents:

Sometime during the past thirty years, liberalism stopped being a mere political perspective and turned into a religion. I mean that literally. Liberalism now functions for substantial numbers of its adherents as a religion: an encompassing worldview that answers the big questions about life, lends significance to our daily exertions, and provides a rationale for meaningful collective action.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Liberalism arose as a solution to the destructive religious wars of Europe's past, and succeeded because it allowed people of differing religious perspectives to live peacefully and productively in the same society. Designed to make the world safe for adherents of differing faiths, liberalism itself was never supposed to be a faith. But that is exactly what liberalism has become. And this transformation of liberalism into a de facto religion explains a lot about what we call "political correctness."

Have you ever wondered why conservatives nowadays are so often demonized, even by mainstream liberals? No matter how balanced, well-reasoned, or rooted in long-established principle conservative objections to, say, affirmative action or gay marriage may be, conservatives are still likely to find themselves stigmatized as racist homophobes. By the same token, reasonable conservative ideas are regularly deemed unfit for reasoned debate. This preference for ostracism over engagement amounts to a brilliant strategy on the part of the Left, but the demonization of conservatives can't be explained as a mere conscious tactical maneuver. The stigmatization of conservatives only works because so many people are primed to respond to it in the first place.

So why have conservatives been demonized? Maybe it's because the religion that liberalism has become is so badly in need of demons. Traditional liberalism simply laid out ground rules for reasoned debate and the peaceful adjudication of political differences. One of the main reasons why politics in a liberal society could be peaceful was that people sought direction about life's ultimate purpose outside of politics itself. But once traditional religion ceased to provide modern liberals with either an ultimate life purpose or a pattern of virtue, liberalism itself was the only belief system remaining that could supply these essential elements of life. [Emphasis added, but once more not needed]

Hitchens has pointed out rather eloquently in his "Against Rationalization" the similarities of the radical, pro-Saddam left with the likes of Falwell and Robertson:

But the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about "the West," to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. [Emphasis added]

So the answer to the question: what happens to the Liberal sheep? ... Lies in plain sight! Kurtz continues:

The young students who now live in "multicultural" theme houses, or who join (or ally themselves with) multicultural campus political organizations are looking for a home, in the deepest sense of that word. In an earlier time, the always difficult and isolating transition from home to college was eased by membership in a fraternity, or by religious fellowship. Nowadays, multicultural theme houses, political action, and related coursework supply what religion and fraternities once did. But if the multicultural venture is truly to take the place of religion, it must invite a student to insert himself into a battle of profound significance. The fight for slave reparations, and the unceasing effort to ferret out examples of "subtle" racism in contemporary society, are techniques for sustaining a crusading spirit by creating the feeling that Simon Legree and Bull Conner are lurking just around the next corner. Conservative opponents of affirmative action or slave reparations simply have to be imagined as monsters. Otherwise the religious flavor of the multiculturalist enterprise falls flat, and the war of good against evil is converted into difficult balancing of competing political principles and goods in which no one is a saint or a devil. [Emphasis added -- but superfluous]

By now you've figured out you need to READ THE WHOLE THING. AND NEEDLESS TO SAY IT JUST GOT ADDED TO THE CLASSIC LINKS RIGHT YONDER...

MORE EURO NIRVANA:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Europeans are living in a "dream world" of welfare and long vacations and have yet to realize "they are not moving toward some sort of nirvana."
The Czech Republic is a candidate for European Union membership, but Mr. Klaus, who was elected president in February, made clear in an interview his distaste for the organization.

...

EU auditors could vouch for only 10 percent of the $120 billion the bloc spent in 2002. It was the ninth successive year the auditors were unable to certify the budget as a whole.
Europeans have not yet faced up to such "serious underlying issues," Mr. Klaus said, because "they are still in the dream world of welfare, long vacations, guaranteed high pensions and cradle-to-grave social security."

More Hateful Garbage

Brian Anderson has a masterful evisceration of the recent companion volume to Mien Kampf that goes by the title of "Empire". My sincerest of apologies to Brian for not finding this sooner -- it was published in early 2002 but stands as a timeless classic.

The stuff of "Empire" is the penultimate icon of what can only be described using Hitchens' phrase "hateful garbage". Those moderates on the left either really don't understand what they're standing shoulder to shoulder with or need to re-examine their premises and friendships -- and they can do it none too soon:

Apolitical abstraction and wild–eyed utopianism, a terroristic approach to political argument, hatred for flesh and blood human beings, nihilism: Empire is a poisonous brew of bad ideas. It belongs with Mein Kampf in the library of political madness.

Do Empire’s many fans really believe their own praise? Does Time really think it’s “smart” to call for the eradication of private property, celebrate revolutionary violence, whitewash totalitarianism, and pour contempt on the genuine achievements of liberal democracies and capitalist economics? Would Frederic Jameson like to give up his big salary at Duke? To ask such questions is to answer them. The far left’s pleasure is in the adolescent thrill of perpetual rebellion. Too many who should know better refuse to grow up. The ghost of Marx haunts us still.

For all its infantilism, the kind of hatred Hardt and Negri express for our flawed but decent democratic capitalist institutions—the best political and economic arrangements man has yet devised and the outcome of centuries of difficult trial and error—is dangerous, especially since it’s so common in the university and media. It seems to support Islamist revolutionary hopes, the increasingly violent anti–globalization movement, and kindred political lunacies. September 11 has reminded us of the fragility of our freedom and prosperity. But the continued influence of the far left, which some mistakenly dismiss as inconsequential, can weaken our collective will to protect ourselves from our enemies. Why fight for a political and social order that is so contemptible?

The journalist Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argued that one consequence of September 11’s terrorist assault will be to discredit permanently the views of those who, like Hardt and Negri, despise democratic capitalism every bit as much as the Taliban does. I hope he’s right, but I’m not so optimistic. After all, Empire is the “Next Big Idea” after a century in which more than 125 million people lost their lives because of antibourgeois political movements. A few thousand murdered Americans may not be enough to end the hold the radical left still has on elite culture. [Emphasis pointlessly added.]

And no closing comments necessary. READ THE WHOLE THING, IT JUST GOT ADDED TO MY CLASSICS LINKS.

Hitchens on the Turkish Synagogue Bombings

Sit down -- you'll need to. You will read this but here's the closer lest there be any chance whatsoever of you missing it. For this is what a true master of reality can visit upon brainwashed midgets:

In a way, this effort doesn't quite meet the standard of moral cretinism that I had suggested. It actually fails to make any link at all between the actions of the murderers and the policy of Bush and Blair. Rather, it simply assumes that the victims are to have their deaths attributed in this fashion. The prevalence of this assumption, along with its facile appearance in the pages of a great liberal newspaper, is something worth noting.

As the author undoubtedly knows—she elsewhere demonstrates some knowledge of Turkish Jewry—and as I reminded readers yesterday, the Neve Shalom synagogue has been lethally attacked before. The last occasion was in the late 1980s. At that time, the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher governments had for some years taken a pro-Saddam Hussein "tilt" in the Iran-Iraq war. I can't remember what the excuse of the Jew-killers was on that previous occasion, but it most certainly wasn't their hatred for regime change. Maybe they didn't come up with an excuse, imagining that the action spoke for itself. Anyway, why bother with a justification when there are so many peace-loving and progressive types willing to volunteer to make the excuses for you? [Emphasis added, but once more not needed]

Thanks Chris. Pour me another one soon.

The Americans Love Pepsi-Cola

Mark Steyn knocks another one out of the park:

If you're so inclined, you can spend the week listening to long speeches by George Galloway and Harold Pinter. Or you can cut to the chase and get the message from Maulana Inyadullah. In late September 2001 Mr Inyadullah was holed up in Peshawar awaiting the call to arms against the Great Satan and offered this pithy soundbite to the Telegraph's David Blair:

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death."

That's it in a nutshell - or in a nut's hell. And, like Mr Inyadullah, if it's Pepsi or death, the fellows on the streets of London this week choose death - at least for the Iraqis. If it's a choice between letting some carbonated-beverage crony of Dick Cheney get a piece of the Nasariyah soft-drinks market or allowing Saddam to go on feeding his subjects feet-first into the industrial shredder for another decade or three, then the "peace" activists will take the lesser of two evils - ie, crank up the shredder. Better yet, end UN sanctions so Saddam can replace the older, less reliable shredders, the ones with too many bits of bone tissue jammed in the cogs.

...

The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lapdancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too Godless, America is also too isolationist, except when it's too imperialist.

...

Two years ago, NBC held a discussion on the growing alienation of the Muslim world: the al-Munaif family who, after the Kuwaiti liberation, had "slaughtered sheep in tribute to one President Bush", were now disenchanted and had named their newborn son "Osama". While the Arabists on the NBC panel chewed over the problem thoughtfully, on this page I was more insouciant: there's no point trying to figure out which way a guy who sacrifices sheep will jump. That's the way I feel about this week's polls and protests. The Min of Ag has already sacrificed all the sheep, but, that detail aside, much of Britain is now about as rational on America as the al-Munaif family. My advice to Bush is: make sure you know where the exit is and try to avoid eye contact. [Emphasis added -- but not needed for the sane human]

Weeeehaawww! Go Mark! And you go read the whole thing.

MORE ON DE-NIHILISM:

Not even the Romans faced such an enemy, through centuries of patrolling their most distant frontiers; and probably no other people previously encountered nihilism in so extreme a form. An enemy for whom the "suicide bomb" is not even a weapon, but an aesthetic gesture. Whose only purpose is to advance Armageddon. And who captures the imagination of the young.

We couldn't surrender, even if we wanted to. We must instead find new ways to fight. [Emphasis added]

David Warren keeps earning his link. The Left wants us to surrender. The great irony is that the harder they fight for surrender, the greater the catastrophe we will be required to inflict on the enemy in proportion to that which they will be allowed to inflict on us. If the hard left were actually people of rational good will instead of the nihilist heirs of Kant and Stalin, they would be able to understand this truth...

Miles to Go Before He Sleeps -- Welcome!

A beautiful followup over at Spock's. This from a Spaniard after reading DenBeste's article about the US being a Non-European country:

Now the thing is, that all this time I have felt as if I was "in the wrong place". Being the only one with one idea, while virtually all the people around me (in fact, all the europeans) is against it, makes me feel as if I was not from there. But then, if not Catalan, Spanish or European, what am I???

I haven't had the complete answer to this question until today, when I read your article. Now I do know it.

I'm American. In the wrong place, far from home, but American.

Welcome brother! Get on the boat like my ancestors! As Spock says in the same article "It is more important what you stand for than who you stand with."

But don't get complacent; our leftists are far down the road to an "It's not cool to be smart" culture. In fact, let me buy your plane ticket -- we need you!

But No Complaints About Auschwitz

This is just fascinating. The Red Cross, bombed by terrorists, thinks the U.S. remains the font of all evil and feels sorry for the terrorists. Here's a commentary that starts to put it in perspective:

The continuing detention of captured al Qaeda and Taliban members at Guantanamo is fast becoming the favored cause of international activists opposed to the aggressive prosecution of the war on terror. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has traditionally maintained "neutrality" on such questions (declining even to publicly criticize the Third Reich's death camps during World War II), recently attacked the U.S. for failing to establish a timetable for trying, or freeing, the Guantanamo detainees. A few points should be made in defense of the administration's policy.

The ICRC's primary complaint is that "after more than 18 months of captivity, the internees still have no idea about their fate." As the ICRC knows very well, this is the case with respect to all captured enemy combatants in every war. The laws of war permit such individuals to be held for the entire duration of the conflict--primarily to ensure that they cannot rejoin the fight. Contrary to the claims of the ICRC, other activist groups and even some U.S. allies, the detainees are not being held "indefinitely." The length of their confinement is purely a function of how long the war lasts. The administration's critics might reflect how Churchill would have reacted if, during the Battle of Britain, the ICRC had asked him how long his Axis prisoners would be held. [Emphasis added]

Oh I forgot -- there was no Holocaust. And no Auschwitz you liar! That's hate speech to impugn Hitler's reputation. He's just misunderstood! Yeah, that's it. Burn down a few more Holocaust museums and there'll be no more proof. Jooooos go to Palestine! No wait -- JOOOOOOS OUT OF PALESTINE! The JOOOOOOS are Nazis! No wait, the Nazis were misunderstood... [Ed: You should be starting to understand who the real intellectual midgets are by now.]

WHO SAID THIS?

George Bush blew that war. I think he'd had only 300 Americans killed and I think he felt at the end of the war that day, it would be a great record. So he didn't want to go on one more day. If he'd gone on one more day there might not have been 100,000 Iraqi killed. But in any event, war is merely one of the horrors that face us. If you're going to take an absolute liberal position, as for instance Victor did, and said let's do it through the UN, the fact of the matter is the UN is not competent to find out where all the nuclear things are buried. We're going to miss the KGB before it's all over because they were good at that. The CIA is probably pretty good at that. You need that kind of information.
We're entering an extraordinary world where all the old signals are off. It used to be that Third World countries were wonderful little places that were terribly exploited. Now they're ugly places that are run by maniacs very often. We have to face that fact. If you keep using liberal jargon forever you will finally die in your own platitudes.

Now click through to see a near jaw-dropper...