Save Western Civilization

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. . . .

2006-01-08T09:47:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'll have to hibernate the ol' blogs for a while. My micro-business has become mega-time-consuming lately. In the meantime, please peruse the Featured Posts section and check out the Companion Sites. Be sure to visit the recommended blogs, all of which are eminently worth your while, hosted by some very smart, hardworking folks.

Barbarians With Nuclear Weapons Update

2005-10-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

Iran's chief psychopath dreams of a world without America:

"[W]e shall soon experience a world without America and Zionism, notwithstanding those who doubt."

An achievable goal, if the regime is allowed to develop nuclear weapons (or if it already has).

Bashing Bad Religion

2005-10-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

I'd like to know who originated the asinine notion that it is the equivalent of racial discrimination to criticize a religion. We've all seen some variation of this boilerplate: "No discrimination based on race, color or creed."

Creed?

God forbid we criticize someone's fanatical, homicidal, supremacist creed.

Fortunately, as to Islam, our civilization's opinion leaders seem to be abandoning the naive "religion of peace" chestnut. This Investor's Business Daily editorial is an encouraging example:

Continuing to pretend that terrorism is a distortion of Islam's supposedly "peaceful" and "tolerant" nature -- and not a predictable outcome of jihad, its 6th pillar -- may soothe the savage beast of political correctness. But it's no way to win a war against real savages. That can only come from frank national discourse over what is motivating them, where they are getting that motivation, and how to implement effective methods to disrupt it.

A must-read.

Will Iran Strike First? - Part 2

2005-09-26T22:57:00.000-07:00

No, no cause for concern here. Back to sleep everyone.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Under pressure over its nuclear programme, Iran flaunted its ballistic missiles and warned any nation considering attacking the Islamic republic would face a "destructive and fiery" response.

On show at an annual military parade on Thursday were thousands of troops and a range of hardware including six of Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missiles -- which sported banners saying "Death to America", "We will crush America under our feet" and "Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth".

The slogans prompted a diplomatic protest by European military attaches.

The event marked the start of "Sacred Defence Week" -- the anniversary of the outbreak of a destructive eight-year war with Iraq in 1980 -- and began with another tough speech by hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Will Iran Strike First?

2005-09-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

Michael Ledeen pulls no punches and (unfortunately) is mostly correct:

The mullahs are altogether capable of deciding that events are now running strongly in their favor, and that they should strike directly at the United States. They look at us, and they see a deeply divided nation, a president who talked a lot about bringing democratic revolution to Iran and then did nothing to support it, a military that is clearly fighting in Iraq alone, and counting the days until we can say "it’s up to the Iraqis now," and — again based on what they see in our popular press — a country that has no stomach for a prolonged campaign against the remaining terror masters in Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

Osama bin Laden came to similar conclusions, and ordered the events of 9/11. Why should the Iranians — who have been major supporters of the terror network ever since the 1979 revolution — not do the same?

Innocent Moslems and a Terrorist Flight Attendant

2005-09-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

No, this is not satire. It's the key plot point in the new Jodie Foster movie.

A Providential Warning

2005-09-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm ashamed to admit I only yesterday discoverd Tony Blankley's fine Sept. 7th column on the most important lesson from Katrina:

Collectively, the country: 1) failed to listen to credible warnings, 2) assumed that our good luck would continue unabated, 3) failed to adequately assess the magnitude and likelihood of the danger, and 4) permitted the compelling pressures and benefits of business as usual to drive from its mind a serious consideration of a radical, bad change from the status quo.

. . .

Because, as heartbreaking, appalling and disgraceful as this event covering an area the size of Kansas is, it is merely a warning, writ small, of the danger facing the entire country (indeed, our entire Western civilization) if we continue to face the Islamist threat with the same complacency with which we have faced the threat to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

. . .

I happen to think that regarding the Islamist threat, President Bush has shown more concern and provided more action than most of politicians and journalists. But even the president's actions and thoughts are very dangerously short of what is needed. As much as he has done, it still falls within the category of complacency if one seriously thinks about the threat.

The mortal danger we face comes not merely from Osama bin Laden and a few thousand terrorists. Rather, we are confronted with the Islamic world -- one-fifth of mankind -- in turmoil and insurgent as it has not been in at least 500 (if not 1,500) years.

We don't yet know whether this passion has touched 1 percent, 10 percent or 50 percent of over a billion souls. But combined with the sudden and untimely availability of weapons of mass destruction to any sufficiently determined large group of people -- and facilitated by the dangerously interconnected globalized world -- the threat to us all must be as urgently dealt with today, as New Orleans should have been last week and last year and last decade.

I argue that across the board -- from cargo containers searched, to Arab translators hired, to borders guarded, to domestic and foreign intelligence collected, to rational scrutiny of Arab and Muslim young men, to political correctness snubbed, to the size of our military, to our (and Europe's) willingness to defend our culture from Islamist intimidation, to our international diplomacy -- we remain as complacent and exposed to mortal threat today as were the poor dead souls of New Orleans last week.

But at least we, the still-living, have been given a providential warning.

2005-09-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

Just one question: What would happen had Harry Smith said this to a Moslem?

2005-09-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

Jihad Watch features a rather lame attempt at Stalinism by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

9/11 and the Death of Art

2005-09-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

Among the fine insights in the latest issue of the American Enterprise Online:

Militarily and diplomatically, an enormous amount has been accomplished across different parts of the globe since September 11, 2001. Back home, though, in our own politics and culture, much of America has been surprisingly little changed by the most deadly attack ever on our homeland.

You can see this in many places. For instance, for more than two years now I’ve been trying to gin up an article for TAE cataloguing some worthy art inspired by 9/11. Surely, I assumed, an event of this historical moment and psychological impact must have hatched lots of powerful poems and plays and pictures. I was wrong.

Here was a cataclysm whose Ground Zero was literally a stroll away from the main centers of American painting and sculpture, music composition, filmmaking, literature production, and other imaginative work. You would think the sheer magnitude of this event in their own backyards would have grabbed the imagination of many artists (not to mention editors and producers and gallery owners) and sent cadres of long-haired men and short-haired women running to their studios to produce arresting works.

Yet this hasn’t happened. There is no “Guernica” painted for 9/11. Nothing like The Red Badge of Courage, or All Quiet on the Western Front, or Slaughterhouse-Five has been written. No "Music for Prague 1968," or anything close, is now being played. The Manhattan creative class hasn’t produced even a Forrest Gump to capture in popular form the circumstances and emotions of that searing day.

Why not? My conclusion, after watching this odd black hole spread through America’s creative communities over several years, is that most contemporary artists are unwilling to absorb the hard lessons of this event. They’d rather not face the implications. [Or maybe it would cut into their work for the Leftist-Islamist alliance's fifth column - ed.]

Lord knows, the creative class mobilized their artistry in response to the AIDS epidemic. Remember the endless AIDS Quilt projects? The interminable string of Broadway plays documenting the personal horrors of HIV?

But recognizing that America has ruthless and evil Third World enemies who will kill us unless we kill them first? Umm, I think I’d rather work on my novel about the secret repression of gay pastors in Dallas, or polish my screenplay assailing greedy corporations for selling infant formula in Africa.

C.S. Lewis on Katrina

2005-09-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

I think it was Dostoyevsky who once noted that humans are three dimensional beings in a four dimensional universe, meaning there is a dimension only God's mind can comprehend. Devastating events like 9/11 and Katrina always seem to generate discussion of the "How could God let this happen?" question. Our small human minds may be unable to arrive at a satisfying answer, but I find C. S. Lewis' explanation to be as good as anyone could formulate:

That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behaviour of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of the Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore, stable, world, demands that these occasions should be extremely rare. In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you concede everything that at any moment happened to suit him - if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking - then you would have no game at all. So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any life is possible. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

The Problem of Pain, P. 21-22

2005-08-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

More insight from Robert Spencer:

When will official Washington stop mistaking wishes for facts? When will there come a politician, Republican or Democrat, with the guts to call jihad what it is and do what is necessary to fight it? When will the outmoded, inadequate models of realpolitik, constructed for other wars against other foes, be discarded?

Or will we simply continue on this path of concession and negotiation with those who would subjugate us until they succeed in reducing us all to dhimmi status, and only then will we finally realize that they all along considered the willingness to negotiate a weakness to take advantage of, rather than a sign of good will?

The Retreat

2005-08-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

I'm shocked, shocked that Abu Mazen is not satisfied with the Gaza giveaway. The always pithy Robert Spencer sums it up:

Neville Chamberlain, call your office: it seems the Sudetenland won't be enough.

It's The Profile, Stupid

2005-07-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Lefties, please excuse Charles Krauthammer for thinking clearly:

The American response to tightening up after London has been reflexive and idiotic: random bag checks in the New York subways. Random meaning that the people stopped are to be chosen numerically. One in every 5 or 10 or 20.

This is an obvious absurdity and everyone knows it. It recapitulates the appalling waste of effort and resources we see at airports every day when, for reasons of political correctness, 83-year-old grandmothers from Poughkeepsie are required to remove their shoes in the search for jihadists hungering for paradise.

The only good thing to be said for this ridiculous policy is that it testifies to the tolerance and good will of Americans, so intent on assuaging the feelings of minority fellow citizens that they are willing to undergo useless indignities and tolerate massive public waste.

Assuaging feelings is a good thing, but hunting for terrorists in this way is simply nuts. The fact is that jihadist terrorism has been carried out from Bali to Casablanca to Madrid to London to New York City to Washington by young Islamic men of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin.

This is not a stereotype. It is a simple statistical fact. Yes, you have your shoe-bomber, a mixed-race Muslim convert, who would not fit the profile. But the overwhelming odds are that the guy bent on blowing up your train traces his origins to the Islamic belt stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia.

Yet we recoil from concentrating bag checks on men who might fit this description. Well, if that is impossible for us to do, then let's work backward. Eliminate classes of people who are obviously not suspects.

We could start with a little age-pruning -- no one under, say, 13, no one over, say, 60. Then we could exempt whole ethnic populations, a list that could immediately start with Hispanics, Scandinavians and East Asians. Then we could have a huge saving, a 50 percent elimination of waste, by giving a pass to women, except perhaps the most fidgety, sweaty, suspicious-looking, overcoat-wearing, knapsack-bearing young woman, to be identified by the presiding officer.

You object that with these shortcuts, we might not catch everybody. True. But how many do we catch now with the billions spent patting down grandmothers from Poughkeepsie?

You object that either plan -- giving special scrutiny to young Islamic men, or, more sensitively, just eliminating certain demographic categories from scrutiny -- will simply encourage the jihadists to start recruiting elderly, Norwegian women.

OK. We can handle that. Let them try recruiting converts, women and non-usual suspects for suicide missions. That will require a huge new wasteful effort on their part. And, more important, by reducing the pool of possible terrorists from the hundreds of millions to the, at most, tens of thousands, we will have reduced the probability of an attack by a factor of 10,000. Those are far better odds at far less cost to us in money and effort. And infinitely less stupid.

What Could Happen Here

2005-07-08T13:01:00.000-07:00

In the brief period since the 7/7 attack, there has been a lot of pundit rumination on whether what happened in London could happen here. The fact is that what could -- and probably will -- happen here will be much worse. In his column a year ago, Charles Krauthammer summarized it well:

There is no gradualness and there are no countermeasures to a dozen nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously in American cities. Think of what just two envelopes of anthrax did to paralyze the capital of the world's greatest superpower. A serious, coordinated attack on the United States using WMDs could so shatter the United States as a functioning advanced industrialized society that it would take generations to rebuild.

The chances of stopping this civilization-shattering attack are looking increasingly slim. Yet we must go down fighting. Here's my partial list of what we should be demanding from our government:

Strict, wartime-level control of our borders, including military patrols, an Israeli-style fence, and sustained, redundant and comprehensive immigration law enforcement.

A sensible policy of ethnic and religious profiling for would-be entrants to the US.

The willingness to use coercive means, including military, to eliminate the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats, and the other nuclear threats that are sure to arise.

More should be done, but these would at least be a start.

The World War II generation was the last one to achieve psychological adulthood. If its members were running our country, these steps would have been implemented on 9/12/2001. True adults know they must face challenges, not hide from them.

Are there enough adults left to save our civilization? Probably not, but the odds against success do not absolve us of the moral obligation to fight for its survival.

Update: Michelle Malkin's new column contains her agenda. Including that:

A true state of "heightened alert" would mean immediate deportation of illegal aliens from terror-sponsoring and terror-supporting nations, increased National Guard dispatches on both the northern and southern borders, aggressive police-federal cooperation to catch illegal border crossers and overstayers on the interior, and vigorous encouragement of volunteer border security efforts like the Minuteman Project.

Don't Go About Your Business

2005-07-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

Today, in response to the 7/7 attack, US public officials will of course once again tell us to fight Al Qaeda by going about our normal lives, to demonstrate we are not frightened by terrorism.

I disagree. If we continue to "go about our normal lives," we're dead. Today, interrupt your normal life and tell your elected representatives what you think about this, this, this and this. Links for doing so are here.

Yes, we need to defy the jihadists by continuing with our lives. But our foremost duty is to fight, to burn the evil out from our midst.

Become informed. Act. Don't be normal.

Atrocious Yes, Surprising No

2005-07-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

No one should be surprised* that Al Qaeda has managed to attack London, home of the infamous Finsbury Mosque and posters celebrating the "Glorious 19" 9-11 hijackers. We are too soft on our jihadists here in the US, but in Britain the situation is ridiculous.

If the Brits want to respond properly, they should double their troops in Iraq, wish them good hunting, and increase by tenfold their efforts to kill and capture the jihadists who are so at home within Britain's own borders.

I hope this attack serves as a warning to the US, but then again we have been warned before.

It will be interesting to see if the MSM reports on the inevitable delight and celebrations among the "Palestinians" and other Arabs and Moslems at the murder of infidel children.

*via Jihad Watch

2005-06-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

The brilliant Thomas Sowell has turned 75. Among other wisdom his column offers this reminder:

After Churchill was appointed Prime Minister, he said to his chauffeur: "I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best." He had tears in his eyes.

The war would be more than three years old before the British -- or anyone else -- won a major battle against the Nazi war machine. When the British finally won a battle against the German army in North Africa near the end of 1942, Churchill declared frankly, "we have a new experience. We have victory."

Quite a quagmire, that World War II.

A Good Man and a Bad Doctrine

2005-06-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

Billy Graham's embrace of the Clintons, though troubling, is a minor transgression compared to his embarrassing and lethal interpretation of Romans 13, as manifested in his 1982 trip to the Soviet Union:

These verses of Jesus may explain why as prominent and personally fine a Christian as the Reverend Billy Graham, the most widely listened to Protestant in the world, failed to call evil by its name when he visited the Soviet Union in 1982. Indeed, true to Martin Luther's teachings, Graham called on Soviet Christians to obey the Soviet authorities, and did not publicly side with persecuted Christians. Rather than refer to the Soviet Union as an enemy of Christianity, the Reverend Graham only referred to "the common enemy" of nuclear war. At the time of the visit, George Will wrote:
Graham's delicacy [about the Soviet Union] is less interesting than his "common enemy" formulation.... His language suggests a moral symmetry between his country and the soviet Union.

The Washington Post reports that when Graham spoke in two churches, both "were heavily guarded, with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of KGB security agents . . . were in the congregation." Graham told one congregation that God "gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities." How is that for a message from America;

Graham is America's most famous Christian. Solzhenitsyn is Russia's The contrast is instructive.2

Nobody's perfect, I suppose. But the imperfections of the powerful can have some very grave consequences, such as possibly prolonging the tenure of the most evil empire mankind has seen (thus far).

***

This site has the original Washington Post article:

MOSCOW, May 9 Evangelist Billy Graham preached a message for disarmament in Moscow's only Baptist church today as a hymn-singing overflow crowd held an extraordinary service behind the police barricades in the street outside.

In his sermon Graham told the 1,000 worshipers that while their first commitment was to Jesus Christ they must also remember that the Bible calls on them to "obey the authorities." Speaking on a major Soviet public holiday, the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, he sought to use the memory of U.S.-Soviet wartime friendship for a new joint disarmament effort. "At that time the United States and the Soviet Union were allies against Nazi Germany," he said. "Now we have another common enemy, the possibility of a nuclear holocaust."

At the end of his 45-minute sermon, which was simultaneously translated into Russian, a woman in her early twenties unfurled a banner from the balcony reading, in English, "We have more than 150 prisoners for the work of the Gospel." The banner apparently referred to Baptists who have been imprisoned for preaching and holding services without permission. Another banner, also in English, was simultaneously raised in the aisle directly in front of Graham. It read, "Deliver those who are driven away to death."

Graham said later he did not read the messages. He also declined to approach about 250 people outside the church, many of whom said they traveled hundreds of miles to hear him speak but could not enter the church without tickets. An aide to the evangelist said privately that Graham did not want to offend his hosts during his one-week visit because "he wants to develop this relationship," implying that he expects to return to the Soviet Union presumably for a preaching tour.

Religious services outside registered churches are forbidden in the Soviet Union, and several believers said a service in a Moscow street had not been heard of since the 1917 Communist Revolution.

The woman who unfurled her banner in the church was detained by plainclothes officers after the service. It was not known whether she was released. The service, originally planned for this evening, was rescheduled for 8 a.m., apparently because that was the time Voice of America erroneously announced it would be held.

During his sermon and later in an address at services at the Yelohovski Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Graham did not mention religious or human rights. Instead, he told the audience, "God can make you love people you normally would not love. He gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities."

Both churches were heavily guarded with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of KGB security agents, mostly young and well dressed, were in the congregation that included a large number of foreigners. Only about one-third of the people were local worshipers; most of them were women. Graham and numerous other churchmen are here for a conference opening Monday that will discuss reducing the threat of nuclear war. The conference is organized by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is paying the bills for more than 400 foreign visitors representing many religious groups from all parts of the world. Perhaps because of his prominence in the United States, Graham is regarded as a star attraction at the conference. He has been allotted 20 minutes for his speech instead of the 10 minute slots all other churchmen were allowed. He also is being driven around Moscow in a Chaika limousine while the others are shepherded around in a fleet of buses. In contrast with the somewhat austere atmosphere at the Baptist church, Graham spoke at a splendid service in the Yelohovski Cathedral with bearded bishops in rich vestments led by Pimen, patriarch of all the Russians, in attendance. It is unclear whether Graham plans to see six Russian Baptists who took refuge in the U.S. Embassy here more than three years ago. They are seeking to emigrate on grounds that they were victims of religious persecution. There are 500,000 Baptists in the Soviet Union, many of whom are members of unregistered and therefore illegal congregations. Moscow's official Baptist community numbers about 5,000.

Chances are the KGB did not haul that woman away in order to treat her to a foot massage and some herbal tea. Could Graham have intervened and helped her and others? Yes. Did he? Well, (please excuse the lawyer-esque phrasing) to my knowledge, no, he did not.

Are we to believe that Romans 13 dictates brave souls like Corrie ten Boom should have "obeyed the authorities"? George Washington & Co. should have shut up and submitted to King George, I guess.

Absurd.

2005-06-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

The moral idiots at the National Council of Churches call the war to liberate Iraq (and thus protect the US) dishonorable. Jesus.

Update: Meanwhile, the Anglicans libel Israel and attempt to destroy it. How Christlike. Not. (Via LGF)

Lest We Forget

2005-06-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

In a post on Zbigniew Brzezinski's arrogant response to President Bush's weekly radio address, Powerline gives us a concise refresher on why Jimmy Carter is the top contender for the title "Worst President in American History":

Carter/Brzezinski presided over our greatest setback ever in the Middle East, the rise of a fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran, which they basically invited by signaling their lack of support for Shah knowing that his strongest enemies were fundamentalist clerics. They also presided over and basically invited a Communist takeover in Nicaragua. Under Brzezinski's tutelage, Carter was shocked, betrayed, and unprepared when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And who can forget what may be the worst piece of incompetence the U.S. has been associated with in its modern history, the failed rescue attempt of our hostages in Teheran?

2005-06-26T01:27:00.000-07:00

This is disturbing.

A Spine Installation for Congress, Please

2005-06-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Powerline makes a poignant observation on the House's risible action to amend the Patriot Act to forbid its use to subpoena records from libraries or booksellers:

The upshot of this, if it becomes law, will be that the FBI can obtain an order permitting it to obtain possession of any tangible object whatsoever, from any person or organization, except the records maintained by libraries and bookstores. I, as counsel of record for any party in any civil lawsuit venued in any state or federal court in the United States, can obtain records from libraries and bookstores. But the FBI can't, at least not if it is conducting a terrorism investigation.

These weasel politicians will do anything to escape being labeled "anti-civil liberties."

Noonan on Narcissism

2005-05-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

The political kind, that is:

People who charge into burning towers are heroic; nuns who work with the poorest of the poor are self-denying; people who volunteer their time to help our world and receive nothing in return but the knowledge they are doing good are in public service. Politicians are in politics. They are less self-denying than self-aggrandizing. They are given fame, respect, the best health care in the world; they pass laws governing your life and receive a million perks including a good salary, and someone else--faceless taxpayers, "the folks back home"--gets to pay for the whole thing. This isn't public service, it's more like public command. It's not terrible--democracies need people who commit politics; they have a place and a role to play--but it's not saintly, either.

I don't know if politicians have ever been modest, but I know they have never seemed so boastful, so full of themselves, and so dizzy with self-love.

Ladies and Gentlemen . . .

2005-05-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

Please enjoy: The Parade of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes

(Via Michelle Malkin)

Now For The Good News

2005-05-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

Zarqawi may -- just may -- be experiencing a slow, painful death. Eternity in hell is not going to feel too good either.

That Crappy Deal

2005-05-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

The verdict from all the best pundits is unanimous. Powerline sums it up:

Senator Graham and his friends have likely given away one of the president's most important powers -- the power to nominate Supreme Court Justices of his choosing and get an up-or-down vote on them. I hope they enjoy the praise they are about to get from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Will the Republicans learn too late that, whether it is offered to the Democrats or the Jihadists, the wages of appeasement is death?

2005-05-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

It's a religion of peace, honest.

Great Moments in Education

2005-05-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Dawn Patrol exposes Sex Week at the University of Washington:

A group of eighth graders touring campus from Odle Middle School in Bellevue sheepishly giggled as they looked at tables set up for Sex Week on the HUB lawn. Some of the boys took free condoms and some of the girls gathered in front of the "who do you want to do?" poster to write in their favorite pick.

"It's a good view of college life -- which includes sex," said Gary Abbrederis, a 14-year-old student from Odle.

Read it all.

The Animal and The Diabolical

2005-05-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

Recently finished re-reading C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Here's a favorite passage:

"Finally, though I have had to speak at some length about sex, I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the centre of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."

That last line is priceless. It's a real shame this book is not outselling the rather frothy Purpose-Driven Life. How far we have fallen.

2005-05-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Satanists may need to order new stationery:

Recently a very ancient copy of a Greek New Testament manuscript from the Book of the Revelation has been deciphered. In this document the number of the Beast is 616 not 666.

I for one won't be accepting either number on the back of my hand or forehead. Can't be too careful.

Rent "Tender Mercies" Instead

2005-05-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

Bad news about the new Ridley Scott film, from The American Thinker:

The New York Times’ Alan Riding recently opined that

“…[The C]rusades were waged, [by] European monarchs, lords, knights and their armies of devout followers to fight - and settle - in an area stretching between what is today Syria and Egypt. The Muslims responded [emphasis added] with their own sporadic jihads until finally, by 1291, the Christians had been driven out.”

He further lauds the fact that in Ridley Scott’s new film portrayal of the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven

“…Mr. Scott and his screenwriter, William Monahan, have tried to be balanced. Muslims are portrayed as bent on coexistence until Christian extremists ruin everything.” [emphasis added]

2005-05-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

As always, great work from Michelle Malkin:

STOP SMEARING THE MINUTEMEN

Dems Were For It Before They Were Against It

2005-04-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

Ending the filibuster, that is.

2005-04-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time to learn much about the new pope, but I like the sound of this:

Pope Benedict XVI: Enemy of Jihad

2005-04-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Our Marines are not to be messed with.

New York Times Newspeak

2005-03-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

Desertion = Un-volunteering.

(Via Michelle Malkin)

2005-03-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

Must-see photos from the "How Berkeley Can You Be?" parade.

Warning: Full frontal nudity (and full frontal idiocy) on display.

2005-03-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

Cell phone noise has now graduated from merely obnoxious to obscene.

2005-03-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

First IKEA annoys us by selling the ugliest furniture on earth. And now this.

2005-03-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

The cognitive dissonance is so thick you can cut it with a knife in this New York Times review of "In the Womb":

Full-frontal images of a vagina are available on cable Sunday night, but they come at a price. You have to watch a bloody, hairy baby burst through that vagina, and before that you have to watch the little creature in utero, growing in all its Operation Rescue propaganda detail, in the National Geographic Channel's latest unveiling of the hideous miracle of life.

"In the Womb" is actually a cool, beautiful movie, a celebration of computer imaging and the 4-D ultrasound. It exhibits a minimum of politics, probably because it appears to have been made in England, where the acknowledgement that humans in the womb are complex, dreaming, pain-experiencing, memory-having, walk-practicing, music-enjoying entities does not instantly put you in the same camp as doctor assassins and purveyors of "The Silent Scream."

Huh?

Those fetus/baby things are either disgusting or beautiful. She just can't decide.

Legally, of course, it depends on whether the little critter is wanted by its mom.

2005-03-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

"I don't want to pollute the world anymore."

A new trend? Let's hope.

2005-03-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

Michelle Malkin has a nice roundup of analysis on the FEC vs. Blogs controversy, complete with links for contacting the relevant officials.

She also has more on Moslems crossing the border to do jobs Americans won't do (like fundraising for Hezbollah).

2005-03-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

LGF has a great excerpt from Victor Davis Hanson on Europe, Islam and cheap angst.

2005-03-03T17:53:00.000-08:00

It's hip . . .

It's new . . .

It's the Left's latest pejorative: "heteronormative."

Compare and Contrast

2005-03-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

This by Paul Johnson in 2005:

As for European intellectuals, who command so much power in the media, universities and opinion-forming circles, they have done everything they possibly could to abuse America's initiative in Iraq and to prevent the installation of freedom. Some make it clear that they would much prefer Iraq to be run by men like Saddam than by American-backed democrats. Of course, intellectuals pay lip service to free elections but in practice have a profound (if secret) hatred of democracy. They cannot believe that their votes should count for no more than the votes of "uneducated" people who run small businesses, work on farms and in factories and have never read Proust.

The intellectuals wanted the Iraqi elections to be defeated by terror. But now that the elections have actually taken place, they want the new government to fail. They want democracy to fail in Afghanistan as well so that they can smile smugly and say, "We told you so." For if democracy were to triumph everywhere, what role would there be for the intellectual critic? As Shakespeare put it, "Othello's occupation's gone."

And this by Eric Hoffer, some 50-odd years ago:

The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning- from minding other people's business- and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.

Maybe someday we'll learn contempt for "intellectuals" is the beginning of wisdom. And we will stop listening to and submissively subsidizing them.

Making North Korea Pay

2005-02-25T11:03:00.000-08:00

Thus far in the North Korean nuclear nightmare scenario, misbehavior has brought only benefits to Kim Jong Il. In his essay Kim Jong Il's Nuclear Winter, American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt makes a persuasive argument for employing sticks, not carrots, in dealing with the lunatic dictator:

We in the outside world can only speculate about the timing of North Korea's self-proclaimed entry into the nuclear-weapons club. As we reflect on the sorry record of events that has led us to this juncture, however, a most worrisome possibility is that the North Korean state has actually been learning from its interactions with the United States and the rest of the world.

To date, an ever more menacing North Korean nuclear program has in practice encountered only token resistance from the United States and others, despite the obvious and increasing threats that program poses to national interests in many countries. Each new round of North Korean nuclear provocations has generated clear-cut benefits for the North Korean state, rather than incontrovertible costs. It will be very unpleasant--and very expensive--to un-teach Pyongyang the lessons of the past two and a half years.

"We don't have any red lines" for dealing with North Korea, Colin Powell confided on camera in October 2004. So far as can be told, he was telling the absolute truth. The message was intended to be reassuring. In fact, it is chilling. Far from deferring or mitigating the peril of conflict with North Korea, such Western fecklessness only magnifies the eventual scale of the expected disaster.

2005-02-24T10:15:00.000-08:00

Sadly, it's not your mother's YWCA.

2005-02-24T10:04:00.000-08:00

Charles Krauthammer does a nice job of explaining the real problem with Social Security:

If 2042 were an actuarially significant date, all of this could be forgiven. The president would simply have to work extra hard on getting us to imagine it. But pointing to a date that will instantly lose 90 percent of the audience is doubly crazy when that date is meaningless. 2042 is the fictional date for the fictional bankruptcy of a fictional trust fund.

2005-02-22T00:25:00.000-08:00

Cal Thomas is asking the right questions:

If terrorists are slipping into the country over the Mexican border, is the Bush Administration doing enough to defend us and defeat them, or will it wait until weapons of mass destruction wipe out one million more of us? Then what?

Government's primary responsibility is to protect its people. The question that should be asked now, not after another attack, is whether enough is being done to find the fanatics who mean us harm.

Shouldn't a first step be closing the mosques and radical Islamic schools (which receive "teaching" materials from the Wahabi radicals in Saudi Arabia) that foment terrorism?

How about answering these questions and performing these actions now before disaster strikes again?

2005-02-21T23:56:00.000-08:00

Michelle Malkin has info on the campaign to free the jailed Iranian bloggers.

2005-02-21T23:51:00.000-08:00

This is appalling, but not surprising.

Ward Churchill: Not an Aberration

2005-02-18T01:44:00.000-08:00

Since we all support universities with either donations, tuition payments or tax dollars, we should all be listening to David Horowitz:

For nearly thirty years conservative candidates for university faculties have been informally blacklisted and conservative students discouraged from pursuing academic careers, through constant derogation and political harassment in the classroom. Anyone familiar with the result knows that there are thousands of programs like the Kirkland Project and tens of thousands of professors like Rabinowitz and Churchill.

The nation at large has now gotten a little glimpse of what this means. Hopefully, the scandals at Hamilton and Colorado won't be mistaken for a scandal about a couple of bad apples. The system itself is broken. The academic enterprise has been corrupted. Hamilton and Colorado are the Enrons and WorldComs of the university system. It was their misfortune to blunder onto the nation's radar screen and expose a wider corruption. But the erosion of academic standards is now very broad indeed and the rot deeper than you think.

A Moderate Islam

2005-02-16T13:45:00.000-08:00

In the book Successful Intelligence, Robert Sternberg offers a step-by-step approach for problem solving. As I recall, one step was "representing information," referring to the accurate representation of information as crucial to determining a solution.

In solving the problem of defeating the Jihadists, Robert Spencer, in quotes like the one below, offers us some rare accurate information -- information we may not want to confront, but eventually must:

The people whom non-Muslim analysts tend to call "Islamists" are those who believe that Sharia should be the law of the land -- every land -- and are willing to do violence to bring that about. But these people are merely traditional Muslims, acting on the example of the prophet Muhammad and core teachings of the Qur'an and Hadith. They move about freely among Muslims and are found in every Muslim community. Most often, Western analysts use the term "Islamists" to suggest a vast majority of Muslims who do not accept "Islamist" premises or principles. Unfortunately, however, such people do not in fact generally exist. There are Muslims, often known as moderate Muslims, who are unaware of or indifferent to the premises of political Islam, and a much smaller number who are honestly trying to reject or reform those principles; but a genuinely moderate Islam -- a Muslim system that accepts the principles of Western pluralism and is ready to teach Muslims to live in harmony with non-Muslims as equals, not as current or eventual superiors and masters -- does not exist.

Bottom line: the fact that we wish there were a system of moderate Islam, does not make it so.

Counter-Jihad

2005-02-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder what you'll tell your grandchild when he asks, "What did you do in the war against Islamic terror?"

Daniel Pipes has excellent suggestions on What You Can Do To Help Win the War on Terror

Or to put it more starkly, Rita Katz of the SITE Institute says in the current issue of Newsweek, "Almost every [Islamist] Web site has a section on how to do jihad over the Internet" and these advise would-be holy warriors: "If you can't do jihad physically, do it on the Internet." The same applies to counterterrorists.

2005-02-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

Ward Churchill's replacement is in training.

2005-02-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

Important alerts from the Susan B. Anthony List here and here.

2005-02-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

This is satisfying news for those of us who were rather unhappy with Evangelicals after the 2000 election.

A new Pew Forum poll has affirmed that "values voters" turned the November election for President Bush.

Dr. John Green at the University of Akron helped conduct the study of voters, finding that traditional evangelical Protestants and Catholics voted heavily for Bush.

A Chance to Praise Good Behavior

2005-02-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

I didn't see this year's Superbowl halftime show, but apparently it was a big improvement over last year's (but then, a test pattern would have been a big improvement over last year's). In any case, Citizenlink has set up a Capwiz form you can use to transmit your opinion to the NFL. If you complained last year, and if your were pleased by this year's show, this is a rare opportunity to offer some praise.

Did You Like This Year's Halftime Show? Let the NFL Know

We've heard from several readers over the past 24 hours
who were pleased with the family-friendly nature of this
year's Super Bowl halftime show and wanted to make their
appreciation known to the NFL.

We've made it easy for you to give your feedback -- even
if you were less-than-thrilled with the show, which
featured Paul McCartney. Just click on the link below, and
you'll find an easy-to-use e-mail form that will allow you
to send a message to Joe Browne, the NFL's executive vice
president of communications.

Surviving the Islamic Bomb

2005-02-08T11:38:00.000-08:00

Scary, scary stuff at Time.com this week:

The Man Who Sold the Bomb

Khan's Dangerous Game

Can the U.S. Defuse Iran?

In the face of all this, Time Magazine being, well, Time Magazine, of course counsels appeasement. But the pieces contain some good information. One of the more disturbing articles deals with al-Quada's nuclear program: The Other Nuke Nightmare:

With sufficient fissile material in hand, a trained engineer could build a crude device without too much difficulty. The most basic design is that of the Hiroshima bomb, which fired two pieces of HEU at each other from opposite ends of an artillery tube. The bomb could be assembled at a basic machine shop and would fit in the back of a truck. If smuggled into the U.S. and detonated in a major metropolitan area, such a weapon could kill hundreds of thousands.

What can we the concerned citizens do about these threats? For starters, contact President Bush and our representatives and express support for aggressive immigration control and nuclear interdiction including, particularly in the case of Iran, military action.

Lots of praying wouldn't hurt, either.

Update: Not depressed enough yet? Check out this series of old but still relevant nuclear terrorism posts from my former blog Political Devotions.

Ledeen on The Iranian Referendum

2005-02-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen explains why a US endorsement of the call for a referendum on the Iranian regime would be useful, even though it would almost certainly go unheeded. And he offers this reminder:

As everyone knows, a steady stream of information shows that these evil people [the mullahs] are relentlessly pursuing their dream of building atomic bombs, which they foolishly believe will protect them against the forces of freedom.

It is a measure of their madness that they have it backwards. The closer they get to the gateway to the nuclear club, the greater the urgency to bring down the regime. Most experts believe the mullahs are very close indeed, which means that revolutionary steps need to be taken quickly.

2005-02-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

Still another reason why California conservatives are embarrassed by their state: 9/11 hijacker used bypass to obtain California license

2005-02-05T23:20:00.001-08:00

Instapundit notes:

"In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, 'Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,' adding that government funding, 'ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.'"

Sounds like a "risky gamble" -- that would have benefited Americans immeasurably.

Update: More at GOP.com

A Plea From Tehran

2005-02-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

(Via Roger L. Simon)

Dear Mr President;

I heard your wonderful world loving speech ; it brought tears to my eyes ; you couldn't imagine how you made me feel!!!
Your policy is right about Iran ; please don't let anyone get in your way specially the Europian Union ; all they care for , are their benefits (black gold , multi million dollar contracts and etc... )
for price of what ???World humen lives!!! (Terrorism and atomic bombs)!!!
We are behind you %100 ; we would love to have good relations with you ; our nations have mixed with each other ; my son is half American and so lots of others like me.
Our country is in the hands of terrorists who have been brain washing our people for 26 years to hate ; to die ; to kill etc...
On walls of streets they write death to America ; also on the roads!!!
They are anti American and overall western world!!!
We are just like prisoners here in our own country ; no freedom of speech ; no freedom of press ; no freedom of thoughts ; no freedom of religion ; no freedom of pre marriage relationship ; no freedom of social activity (music) , no social freedom ; no political freedom ; no ecconomical freedom and on and on and on!!!!!
Your prisons in U.S have much better living condition than here!!!
Do not trust them for a second ; they are the biggest liers world has ever seen , they might say ok what ever you say in the last minute ; to buy time and when your presidntial term is over ; no doubt they would start again!!!
I am cofident that %99 of our people want regime change!!! Please support us by not negotiating (any talks) and don't let any other country do it either.
Put pressure on our opposition leaders to becaome united ; also our media.
Make sure that people inside hears the leadership by radio station that can't be disturbed by any parasites or noise.
Our movement must be organized to work.
I have a lot more things to say to you but knowing that you are very busy ; I cut it short.
If it's possible for your adminstration ; please reply my email by your comments ; Thank you so much

Babak from Iran --- Tehran
Babak -- sos214(Member of sosiran )
Please support www.sosiran.com

2005-02-05T22:31:00.000-08:00

Several bloggers have touted this essay as Victor Davis Hanson's best ever.

They're right.

FYI

2005-02-05T16:38:00.000-08:00

Death to America Day has been cancelled.

Well, cancelled at the Bethesda Marriott anyway.

This is one of those stories that's both a joke, and deadly serious.

The Problem With Europe

2005-02-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

From Vaclav Havel's EU and Cuba: Freedom vs. Appeasement:

It is suicidal for the EU to draw on Europe's worst political traditions, the common denominator of which is the idea that evil must be appeased and that the best way to achieve peace is through indifference to the freedom of others.

Ouch.

2005-02-04T09:37:00.000-08:00

OpinionJournal does a nice skewering of the "exit strategy" Democrats:

Only in the rarest of instances, however, do politicians take positions that are both unpopular and unprincipled. That is where the Democratic Party leadership finds itself today on Iraq.

Iraqis Fighting Back

2005-02-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

Powerline has an encouraging post on recent incidents of civilian Iraqis striking back at the terrorist insurgents. Here's one:

Citizens of Al Mudiryiah were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday. The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars. 3 citizens were injured during the fire exchange. The Shiekh of the tribe to whom the 3 wounded citizens belong demanded more efforts from the government to stop who he described as "Salafis".

Looks like ordinary Iraqis have determined who is the strong horse in this race.

Is it Something in the Coffee?

2005-02-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

This reflects a new level of moral idiocy, even by Seattle standards:

Flip the channels after midnight, past Nick at Nite and the infomercials. If you stumble upon the Seattle area's public-access channel, you might see a man and a woman having sex in a hot tub, followed by another man and woman doing it in a kitchen.

Little is left to the imagination.

In fact, nothing is.

Now questions are being raised again over whether the graphic clips taken from porn movies should be allowed to appear on public-access television. The Seattle Community Access Network, which runs the public-access station for King and south Snohomish counties, has warned Mike Aivaz that his show "Mike Hunt TV" will be yanked off the air if he does not stop airing "the presentation of actual sex acts."

Aivaz says that's censorship, particularly on a channel meant to give access to the airwaves for programming outside the mainstream.

An appeal is scheduled tomorrow night before SCAN's three-member content review board. One member says it will be a difficult decision.

Difficult???

2005-01-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

How sweet is this?

Very.

2005-01-30T22:02:00.000-08:00

From the UK Times' mouth to God's ears: Chairman Kim's Dissolving Kingdom

2005-01-30T10:08:00.000-08:00

Ask yourself: Would you vote, even as you faced terrorists' threats to behead your children?

These folks did.

Yep, it's a great day.

What You Won't Hear in School

2005-01-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

Paul Graham, in his essay advising high school students, has a fresh take on the importance of self discipline:

One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee.

Now I know a number of people who do great work, and it's the same with all of them. They have little discipline. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. One still hasn't sent out his half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox.

I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline. You probably need about the amount you need to go running. I'm often reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don't run for several days, I feel ill. It's the same with people who do great things. They know they'll feel bad if they don't work, and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.

The essay in its entirety is about 4000 words, and well worth your time, even if high school is only a distant memory.

Thoughtcrime at Harvard

2005-01-26T10:40:00.000-08:00

Dennis Prager analyzes the reaction to Harvard President Lawrence Summers' accidentally letting the truth slip out concerning sex differences:

Over 100 Harvard professors signed a petition against President Summers, leftist alumni threatened to give no more money to Harvard, and the vast majority of Harvard's professors kept a cowardly silence while their colleagues sought to suppress completely respectable intellectual inquiry. Consequently, President Summers felt forced to apologize.

In the year 2005, nearly four centuries after Galileo was forced to recant observable scientific facts about our solar system, the president of Harvard University was forced to do a similar thing. He was compelled to apologize for advancing an idea about men and women supported by scientific research and likely to be true.

. . .

What is most amazing about the Harvard story is that by and large neither the Harvard community nor any other university seems to be embarrassed by it. And one can only weep for America over the president of its most prestigious university fully caving in and apologizing for saying what he knows to be true.

Support Social Security Reform

2005-01-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

An alert from the National Taxpayers Union:

Shortly after his re-election, George W. Bush began to use the "bully pulpit" of the Presidency to push Congress toward implementing several reforms that are essential to the continuation of the Social Security program. Simply put, Social Security reform is necessary in order to secure the retirements of millions of Americans and head off the system's inevitable slide into insolvency. Wisely, President Bush has chosen to make two of the guiding principles of reform the creation of individual savings accounts and doing so without raising taxes. Speak out today! Don't let Congress turn a blind eye to this problem. Let them know that you support reforming Social Security.

To take action on this and other alerts, sign up with the NTU Taxpayer Action center at NTU.org.

2005-01-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

Robert Spencer has proposals for Taking Jihad Seriously.

2005-01-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal editorial page heralds the long-overdue end of the judicial filibuster.

A Must-Read

2005-01-24T11:03:00.000-08:00

More on the HEROES Act at 2Slick's Forum.

2005-01-21T10:08:00.000-08:00

From the don't-think-it-can't-happen-here file: "Homeschooling Illegal" Declares German School Official

2005-01-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Dignan comments on how the Seattle Left supports the troops.

2005-01-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a photo essay you'll never see in the mainstream media. (Via Little Green Footballs.)

2005-01-20T15:44:00.000-08:00

Robert Spencer challenges President Bush's Judeo-Christian-Islamic values.

2005-01-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

Seventeen magazine brings your daughter tips on hair, makeup and sorcery.

2005-01-20T13:59:00.000-08:00

Tony Blankley asks if we are sleepwalking toward the abyss.

Sure looks like we are.

Name That Country

2005-01-20T13:36:00.000-08:00

About 600 people, including women and children, punched the air and chanted Allahu akbar (God is greatest) as they were shown videos of hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001.

Care to hazard a guess as to where this little religious get together occurred?

Iran? Syria?

Guess again.

2005-01-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

Lance in Iraq wants those human shields back.

Freedom or Power?

2005-01-20T11:30:00.000-08:00

Today President Bush spoke forcefully of the human aspiration toward freedom, and how it can provide a catalyst for lasting peace among nations. This is the core of his strategy in the war on Islamic terror, and I hope his idealism is proven to be realism.

Developments like this, however, buttress the argument that Man is far more a power-seeking being than a freedom-seeking one:

Stalin back in favour as new statue goes up in Moscow

A NEW statue of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is to be erected in Moscow, returning his once-ubiquitous image to the streets after an absence of four decades, a top city official said yesterday.

Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, a number of Soviet symbols - including the national anthem and an army flag - have been restored to use, reflecting widespread nostalgia for the communist era.

But the rehabilitation of Stalin - denounced by Soviet leaders after his death in 1953 for encouraging a cult of personality and killing millions of real and imagined opponents - had remained out of bounds. Statues of him were removed from Moscow in the 1960s.

Oleg Tolkachev, Moscow's senator in the upper house of parliament, said a monument was to be erected to Stalin and others who led the war against Hitler. A statue will also be built in the Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border.

In another sign of Stalin's growing appeal, many prime-time television shows have recently depicted him in a positive light.

2005-01-18T13:17:00.000-08:00

Move America Forward has a great idea.

2005-01-18T13:10:00.000-08:00

Two recent, very moving pieces on adoption here and here.

2005-01-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

Considering that we're already at war with Iran*, this is good news.

*and Syria.

2005-01-18T11:57:00.000-08:00

Michelle Malkin has a post in support of the HEROES Act, complete with a link for contacting your reps.

Back in Business

2005-01-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

The SaveWesternCivilization.com blog is back in business after a long hiatus. So I'll be blogging here on a range of topics, including of course all threats to Western civilization, both foreign and domestic. My former blog site, TenMinuteLobbyist.com is undergoing some changes, described here.

The Undead Issues

2004-10-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that, during this long dark posting drought, lots of still-pending action issues can be found in the archives both here and at my former blog Political Devotions. In fact, for your convenience, Political Devotions has the posts categorized by topic at the left of the page. It's all part of the service, ma'am. :-)

I'll Be Back

2004-09-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

My sincere apologies for the lack of posts this week. A recent influx of work has really cut into the blogging time. Gotta put food on the table, unfortunately, so posting will be sparse, if at all, for a week or so.

What a Creep

2004-09-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

More evidence as to why decent people admire and respect Statesman Dick Cheney and despise Spoiled Narcissistic Gigolo John Kerry:

Cheney Blasts Kerry for Allawi Comments

Vice President Dick Cheney chastised Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on Thursday, saying his criticism of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi showed an appalling "lack of respect."

Allawi, who was in Washington on Thursday to address a joint meeting of Congress and meet with President Bush, gave a rosy portrayal of progress toward peace in his country. Shortly after he spoke, Kerry said the prime minister's assessment contradicted his own previous statements as well as the reality on the ground.

Cheney said Kerry was being disrespectful of a man who had survived an attack by Saddam Hussein's assassins.

"I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man of courage, when he rushed to hold a press conference and attack the prime minister, a man America must stand beside to defeat the terrorists," Cheney told several thousand supporters.

"John Kerry is trying to tear down all the good that has been accomplished, and his words are destructive to our effort in Iraq and in the global war on terror," Cheney said. "As Prime Minister Allawi said in his speech, and I quote, ‘When political leaders sound the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more violence.' End quote."

If you would like to do your part in defeating Kerry in November, the Republican National Committee is taking signups for its 72 Hour Taskforce here.

It's a Felony, Kenneth

2004-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Charles Johnson, editor of the premier warblog Little Green Footballs, has issued a call to action on Rathergate. LGF currently receives 100,000 to 200,000 visits a day. If I were Dan Rather, I'd be scared — scared as an innocent armadillo being hunted by a pack of sadistic Republican rednecks on a too-hot Texas afternoon, as Dan might say. Here's part of the sample letter for your congressional rep or senator:

I believe that somewhere in this great nation there is someone who is guilty of perpetrating a crime, a crime against the American people. They are guilty of the crime of election fraud, guilty of attempting to influence the upcoming presidential election through deceit and misrepresentation. Such an attempt is abhorrent and must not be tolerated.

As I write this, CBS is asserting that the content of the memos has been vindicated by virtue of some 30 year old opinions, carefully selected opinions at that. They are defending forgeries with selected opinions!

I am writing to you to request that you support a Justice Department inquiry into this event. I want to know who it was that made the attempt to influence my vote by providing fraudulent documents to CBS. I want to know how and why CBS broadcast this fraudulent message to millions of American voters without sufficient safeguards to ensure the veracity of the story. Such actions by the media cannot be simply rationalized away.

A crime has been committed. Right now, CBS is abetting that crime. Media source confidentiality does not apply when the source provides blatantly false information in the commission of a crime.

We cannot, we must not, allow an attempt such as this, to subvert our electoral system, to go uninvestigated and unpunished. Turning a blind eye will only encourage more outrageous acts in the future. I expect you, as my representative, to pursue this travesty to its rightful conclusion.

The entry includes legislator contact links or, as always, you're welcome to use the Ten Minute Lobbyist's Basic Contact Links.

Hate Speech Against Homeschoolers

2004-09-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Michelle Malkin brings us an amazing story of Education Monopoly hate-mongering:

The public school establishment hates homeschoolers. They've smeared the movement as a conspiracy of conservative Christian zealots. They've scoffed at homeschooled kids as social pariahs. They've painted homeschooling parents as uneducated and negligent.

And now, under the guise of preparing students for a violent terrorist attack, educators in one public school district are casting homeschoolers in the role of bomb-detonating militants.

She quotes the Muskegeon Chronicle's story on the drill:

"The exercise will simulate an attack by a fictitious radical group called Wackos Against Schools and Education who believe everyone should be homeschooled. Under the scenario, a bomb is placed on the bus and is detonated while the bus is traveling on Durham, causing the bus to land on its side and fill with smoke."

This is not a joke. A taxpayer-funded drill is using public school students to enforce anti- homeschooling bigotry under the guise of preparing for terrorism. Terrorism by whom? By Islamic jihadists who hijack planes and incinerate kids headed to Disneyworld. Islamic terrorists who take hundreds of children hostage in Beslan, force them to drink their own urine and shoot babies in the back. Islamic terrorists who groom toddlers as suicide bombers.

Our enemies are Islamic extremist murderers. Except if you happen to attend the Muskegon County, Mich., schools, where the menacing faces of terrorism belong to parents who make untold sacrifices to give their children the best education they know how by schooling them in the loving environment of their own homes.

I recall the Islamist-sympathizing admonition included in the National Education Association's touchy-feely, post-Sept. 11 curriculum: "Do not suggest that any group is responsible" for the terrorist attacks, one tip for parents and teachers urged. Unless, it should be amended, you can work an anti-homeschooling hate angle into the lesson.

When President Bush's education secretary, Rod Paige, likened the NEA in jest to a "terrorist organization," teachers' union officials and the media became completely unhinged. How dare he make such an odious comparison, they gasped. How dare he make light of the real terrorists, they fumed.

"I can tell you what my first response was: Scary. That's really frightening," said Diana Garchow, a special-education teacher at Highland Elementary School in Bakersfield, Calif., to the Associated Press after Paige's remarks. "It's scary that you can't voice an opinion in this country without being called a terrorist. . . . I don't care if it was a joke or what it was, that was a totally inappropriate comment."

Paige was forced to apologize to teachers. What about the Muskegon County, Mich., school system? Will its public education militants apologize to homeschoolers for taking an intolerant swipe at their beliefs? Or will this politicized "Wackos Against Schools and Education" terror drill be coming to a classroom near you?

If you would like to express your opinion to the guilty parties, the Happy Homeschooler has contact information here.

Vote Early

2004-09-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

An alert from President Bush:

The election is less than seven weeks away and our momentum is building. As I travel the country, the crowds are big and the mood is upbeat. There is real excitement for our agenda, and I know that this enthusiasm will mean a tremendous turnout.

On Election Day, you may be one of many who will be working the polls, driving voters to their polling locations, or making Get Out the Vote calls. Our message must be: No matter what you're doing, be sure to vote. The stakes are high.

Starting today, you can request your ballot by mail, and soon you can cast an early ballot at early vote locations in your area. If you're going to be busy on November 2nd, I encourage you to take this opportunity and vote early. There's even a special page on our campaign website to make the process easier.

www.GeorgeWBush.com/VoteEarly

Using this link, you can get your Absentee/By Mail ballot request or find a list of early voting locations near you. By casting your vote early, you can avoid lines at the polls on Election Day and still be sure your voice is heard in this important election.

This election is critical for our nation.

The choice is between winning the war on terror by defending the homeland, taking the battle to the terrorists and fighting them where they live and train - or retreating to a pre-9/11 worldview that treats acts of terrorism as a law enforcement issue.

The choice is between a practical approach that puts doctors and patients in control of health care decisions or a government-run system that would cost more than $1.5 trillion and put bureaucrats in charge.

The choice is between an economic agenda that recognizes America's economy is growing, but can do more, or an agenda that raises taxes, increases regulations and stifles our economic recovery.

Your vote is important to winning and to building a safer world and a more hopeful America. I hope you will take the opportunity to vote early - either by mail or in person.

www.GeorgeWBush.com/VoteEarly

Suicide by Stupidity: How John Kerry Would Destroy Western Civilization

2004-09-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

In a recent editorial, The Wall Street Journal analyzed the Kerry-Edwards nuclear arms control policies. The policy as to North Korea is laughably naive. The policy as to Iran is flat-out insane:

Mr. Edwards recently said that a Kerry Administration would allow Tehran to fire up its Russian-built nuclear reactors, and even provide them with fuel, so long as the mullahs agreed to let the international community repossess the weapons-usable byproducts.

This too is the triumph of hope over experience. Just yesterday the member countries of the International Atomic Energy Agency were meeting in Vienna to discuss the next steps in response to nearly 20 years of Iranian deception. Two years ago an Iranian resistance group alerted the world to Iran's previously undeclared nuclear sites, and subsequent inspections have provoked a familiar pattern of bluster and lies that practically screams "bomb program."

Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center points out that the fresh nuclear fuel that Messrs. Kerry and Edwards want to give the mullahs is already halfway along the enrichment process toward being weapons-usable. With sophisticated and hidden enrichment capabilities of the type we know Iran already has, the country could be within days of having a bomb core were it to seize and divert the reactor fuel. In any case, the mullahs are currently ruling out the possibility of a Kerry-Edwards type deal, demanding to be recognized as a normal nuclear nation with a right to control all stages of its nuclear fuel cycle.

IAEA member states are increasingly frustrated by the mullahs' deceptions and may be ready to refer them to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions by next time the IAEA meets in November. We wish we could be more confident that the Bush Administration was working on pre-emptive military options should they become necessary. But at least it has refused to accept the inevitability of a Persian nuke. "We're determined that they're not going to achieve a nuclear-weapons capability," says Undersecretary of State John Bolton.

The essence of the Kerry-Edwards proposals, by contrast, is that if Iran and North Korea have a history of dealing in bad faith it's because we Americans aren't being cooperative enough. "The idea that there's a big bargain out there that the Iranians will live up to is nutty in light of the last six months," says the Nonproliferation Center's Mr. Sokolski.

So Americans really are getting a proliferation policy choice presented to them this November. If voters think that arms-control agreements like those in the 1970s and during the Clinton years are the best way to rein in rogue states with nuclear ambitions, they should vote for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.