DON'T EVEN think it.

You haven't been reading Tammy have you?

What Can I Say?

But to give credit where credit is due -- it's just one of those days where Glenn has the world of betters beat to the draw by about a year. Or is that 60 years?

This is the disheartening tale of a noble people ignobly led. The Administration is both author and protagonist of that tale, and to the Administraiton must be read this indictment and this prophesy:

You have deceived once: now you must deceive again, for to tell the truth would be to admit having deceived. If your better judgment leads you near the road of rational policy, your critics will raise the ghost of your own deception, convict you out of your own mouth as appeaser and traitor, and stop you in your tracks...

You have told the people that American power has no limits, for flattery of the people is "good politics": now you must act as though you meant it.

Your own shouts, mingled with the outcry of the opposition, have befuddled your mind...

You will meet public opinion not at a point still compatible with the national interest, but rather where, regardless of the national interest, a deceived populace will support policies fashioned in the image of its own prejudices.

Where a knowing purdent and determined government would endeavor to raise the people to the level of its own understanding and purpose, an ignorant, improvident, and weak government will follow its own propaganda to that low level where uninformed passion dwells. You will become, in spite of your own better self, the voice not of what is noble, wise, and strong in the nation, but of what is vulgar, blind, and weak.

The leader will then have become the demagogue; as the mouthpiece of popular passion, you will at last have forsaken leadership altogether.

Follow the link to the punch if you haven't already. Can you say Memory Hole?

The more things change, the more they stay the same old chap. (Look up near the top of the page...)

Our Betters Update (Glenn Edition)

OUR BETTERS at the MSM. Here's hoping they don't spread suicidal depression any further. Or make people think that placebo is a viable treatment for people suffering from arthritis. One of my aunts died almost 10 years ago and suffered greatly from arthritis -- I can just hear her clicking her tongue over this. It's gotten so bad that I heard on the radio this morning that top management at Pfizer has had to come out and said they will personally keep taking it.

OUR BETTERS at the ACLU. Needs no comment whatsoever.

OUR BETTERS are not hypocritical about exposes on private lives. NYeT I mean...

And OUR BETTERS insist we fire Secretary Stimson:

Back in Washington, despite lofty rhetoric from the White House about the "liberation" of Europe, many had always been skeptical about the prospects for defeating Germany. As they correctly point out, the Germans are after all defending their homeland, and no matter how bad the alleged depravations of the Nazi regime, all familiar with the German character know that they can be depended on to fight to the death against any foreign invader, no matter how well intentioned. Many of the German dead or captured for the past few weeks have been adolescents, some only fourteen or fifteen years old, with dead, untrained yet willing hands clinging to their rifles. Seeing such images of dedication to the cause, it's difficult for many to believe that victory is possible.

As a result, the new setback has renewed rumbling among some that the time has come to seek an accord with the Nazi regime that could allow a withdrawal from Europe with honor, and not lose any more American troops in a hopeless cause, let alone bog them down for an unforeseeable period of time. "It was Japan that attacked us, not Germany," pointed out a Senate staffer. "We need to focus our resources on the true enemy in the Pacific."

Some staffers on Capitol Hill implied that the timing itself of the offensive was suspicious. "Hitler wanted Roosevelt to be reelected, so that he could continue to fight a war against a sick, senile incompetent. Had he started this offensive before the election back on November 7th, everyone would have seen what a disaster this president has been on foreign policy, and Hitler would have had to confront a young, vibrant Tom Dewey."

Others, representing moderate Democrats, seemed resigned. "We're stuck with a stubborn megalomaniac who's eventually going to have us at war with the rest of the world. How long will our Russian allies put up with this kind of behavior? How can we found or host a 'United Nations' when we ourselves are the author of so much aggression?"

Would it be snarky if I just said LOL? I thought you might understand...

Did I mention that the "reality-based" community is ON THE OTHER SIDE?

Bizarre bridges.

And "reality-based" ballot intent divination turns out to be mysteriously determined by the party of the ballot judges.

Armor-plated leftist brains resist all facts. The "reality-based" community in other words...

Of blind eyes and blind clerics.

The hate us, they hate us not...

A lump of Cole just in time for Christmas -- and so richly deserved...

Whoa Boy...

Just a wee bit altered -- and if I had any sense I'd censor it. Just so you're warned... (Hat tip INDC)

Don Kofi makes me want to puke ... and Amnesty possibly even more so ... UPDATE: and Glenn has thoughts about the vast right wing conspiracy against Kofi.

A conscience is like a chocolate bar ... no -- wait! -- like an SUV ... oh, I guess they've given up!

Duh-oh!

The Missing Middle: Iraq Edition

I heard Brett Baer comment on Fox news last week that there's a shortage of mid-level leadership in Iraq. He basically just mentioned this as a problem that continues to plague us that we're working to correct with training.

Let's see -- could there be some reason for this?

How about hazarding a guess that there was mid-level leadership in Iraq? It just happened to have a different focus than what Westerners would expect -- say, that of spooning out children's eyeballs in front of their parents, feeding them and their parents into plastic shredders feet first and then gleefully dumping the whole bloody mess into mass graves.

Now where could they have gone? Beheadings and roadside bombs anyone?

Duh-oh! We now openly call them terrorists; but they always were. A fine day for gassing the Kurds, no?

The difference now is that we now have Al Jazeera camera crews on scene to "glorify" the carnage. What's interesting is that it's not clear that Saddam's former middle management are actually able to kill as many innocents as they used to. Even lefty humanitarian organizations seemed to have low estimates on the order of 10,000 "disappeared" each year in Saddam's Iraq. On the other hand, National Geographic reported last spring that an Iraqi organization says there could be millions of "disappeared".

Gee, it's funny you never seem to read that in the MSM, huh?

The other factor in play here is that totalitarianism of all sorts -- including the Mideast variety -- is just is not very fertile soil for the initiative required to foster productive mid-level management. I know, I know, "productive mid-level management" is considered ra^ther an oxymoron in our "Dilbert saturated" society.

But if you look at the productivity of the U.S. vs. the old USSR you will find in any objective analysis that mid and low level productive initiative, adaptability and creativity was (and remains of course) vastly superior in the U.S. -- that's how we buried them. Likewise, the Israeli's ability to "smoke" superior numbers of Arabs in their various wars hinged heavily on the same sort of inequality as the Israelis were typically outmatched in numeric terms.

So on top of the "duh-oh" there is just a long road to slog digging out of the "totalitarian deficit". Russia and the slow recovery in Eastern Europe are living proof of this -- though some are doing better than others.

Iraq is a long term investment commitment brought on by the failed policies of the past:

Ewards 2008 is out of the gate like a rocket scientist!

They'd ra^ther have a whitewash. (Did I mention they're forgeries?)

The mission of our generation.

Can you say "Wahhabiski"? I thought you couldn't. Yuppers. Condoleeza knows nothing useful. Uh-huh.

Of totalitarianism -- Christianity and Capitalism that is...

Feminists For ...

... W!

Another Redux -- And Projection Re-appears

Who wrote this?

I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If [my critics] imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.

Beautiful. Simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.

That was the redux.

Here's the something new that caused me to remember it: I've started re-reading Lee Harris' "Civilization And Its Enemies". What an eye-opener this book is! Here's an excerpt from the Preface:

Civilized people forget how much work it is not to kill one's neighbors, simply because this work was all done by our ancestors so that it could be willed to us as an heirloom. They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish. They forget that to fight an enemy it is necessary to have a leader whom you trust, and how, at such times, this trust is a civic duty and not evidence of one's credulity. They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy.

That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct.

Our first task therefore is to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason and not ours. He does not hate us for our faults any more than for our virtues. He sees a different world from ours, and in the world he sees, we are his enemy. This is hard for us to comprehend, but we must if we are to grasp what the concept of the enemy means.

We have some very serious problems with projection as a civilization, don't we?

Carl's Jr. on ze separate race.

Cycles Recycled Cyclically

NOTE: This post can be originally found here, and then again here. After reading VDH's little number on the Ents and Tolkein's penchant for 11th hour recoveries, I realized it was once again time:

I can just imagine exactly this kind of debate going on in Rome right up to the point that the Huns kicked in the gates. It strikes me that any society that has to start asking itself if it is committing “professional suicide” by ignoring the threat posed by barbarians with a completely alien world view and bent on their destruction is already beyond help. Geopolitical navel-gazing must be the last stage in the evolution of a society before it is too morally ambivalent to defend its own sovereignty. (Or, maybe it results from the unwillingness to do so?)
Let me lay it out for you…

Stage 1: We need a revolution to set us free from tyranny!

Stage 2: Hey, what happened to our colonies?

Stage 3: Oh, yeah. Uh. Colonialism is bad. Yeah. That’s it. So, that must mean any use of military force against anyone anywhere is bad. Right?

Stage 4: Oh gosh, we just need to all be more tolerant of other people. And hey, at least all those imigrants always vote our way. Besides, aren't we all really just immigrants on this big old space ship we call Earth anyway?

Stage 5: Didn't we used to have elections this time of year? Hey, where’d all the Barbies go?

Stage 6: Now repeat after the nice man with the machine gun… “There is one God and Mohamed is his prophet.”

Stage 7: GoTo Stage: 1, repeat as necessary.

Or, the alternative evolution...

Stage 5: Hey, didn't there used to be a couple of big buildings right about here?

Stage 6: Jihad? I've got your Jihad right here baby!

Stage 7: Okay, so we got a litte rough there, but they deserved it.

Stage 8: GoTo Stage 3: repeat as necessary.

So you see, all the terrorists would have had to do to take America out of the equation was leave us alone for another 50 years or so and we would have evolved into sophisticated pro-globalization pacifists all by ourselves. But, nothing sets back political entropy like a good old Pearl Harbor style sucker-punch, eh?

Posted by: Dacotti on September 25, 2003 01:07 PM [NOTE FROM BOB: The address is Dacotti -at- hot mail dot com]

Luckily for U.S., we have selected the "alternative" cycle for now -- Europe has not of course...

Amsterdamned In Eurabia

turns out to be a pretty important read to get more than a surface understanding of developments in the murder of Theo Van Gogh. It's long with two parts but I'll whet your appetite with some sad commentary on where "tolerance" is leading the Dutch:

Qaradawi is the Muslim cleric who was controversially invited to London by Ken Livingstone, the city's mayor, to speak against the hijab ban in French schools. According to a dossier compiled by Livingstone's opponents, Qaradawi has written that homosexuality is a capital sin, that wife beating is justifiable, and of the existence of a Jewish world conspiracy. In these respects, at least, he would appear to be in accord with Sheikh Abu Bakr Jabir al-Jasairi, whose book The Muslim Way is on sale at a number of mosques in Holland. Van Gogh was fond of quoting from the book, especially the part which described the appropriate punishment of homosexuals. Sheikh Abu Bakr demands that they should be thrown off rooftops, and if they survive they should be stoned to death.

Elatik dismissed Qaradawi's alleged homophobia by arguing that it was typical of clerics of all faiths. 'All Muslims are really asking for in this country,' she concluded, 'is respect.'

Yes, of course. That would most certainly be typical of my pastor for instance. In case you've never heard of sarcasm before, here's how to interpret what I just said: Hell could freeze over and all gays that ever lived could arise from the dead and make all straights their slaves and even the vaguest notion of saying anything remotely homophobic would never occur to her. How's that for a refutation of Qaradawi's vile nonsense?

Another taxi driver, who did not want to give his name, seemed in no mood to offer respect. 'They hate us,' he told me, referring to Muslims. 'They hate our way of life. I don't understand. We're supposed to tolerate their culture, but they want to change ours. And if we protest, we're called racists. I like Italy, and when I go there I adapt to their culture, I don't expect them to adapt to mine. Van Gogh was rough with his words, but in Holland if you don't like what someone says you can go to court.'

There's another problem with Holland -- they have no concept of a First Amendment. Which leads us to the grand finale:

According to reports, one of the teachings of the al-Tawheed mosque is that it discourages contact with unbelievers. A young man, no more than 20, explained that no individual could talk to me because no one could speak on behalf of the whole mosque. I was given a phone number of a man called Farid, an apparent spokesman, who also told me that he could not speak. Farid sent me to a mosque down by the dockside, where, he said, someone would talk to me. But again, when I arrived, I was told that no one would meet me.

Since van Gogh's murder there have many calls for improved dialogue. But van Gogh was murdered for speaking out, the religious associates of his killer refuse to talk, and van Gogh's collaborator, Hirsi Ali, is in hiding, in fear of her life. The silence deafens the many words that have been written and spoken since that bloody Tuesday morning. The man who would have most dearly savoured a no-holds-barred debate is dead. Van Gogh, his friend and enemies agree, possessed a character that was larger than life. It remains to be seen if his legacy is larger than death.

The fact that this article was even printed in the Guardian is quite amazing -- please read it all to learn some important background about the real catastrophe gathering momentum on the continent.

And Melanie Phillip's has found a WOW essay in Britain. (Hat tip Roger)

But what will the Ents do?