The Golden Gate

A letter to the editor at the Lansing STate Journal:

Islam or death

I read Le Roy Barnett’s letter (“Muslims, speak up,” June 26) about Muslims’ opinion on Abdul Rahman’s conversion to Christianity.

Islam is not only a religion, it is a complete way of life. Islam guides Muslims from birth to grave. The Quran and prophet Muhammad’s words and practical application of Quran in life cannot be changed.

Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death. There is no disagreement about it.

Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God.

Please do not ask us Muslims to pick some rules and disregard other rules. Muslims are supposed to embrace Islam in its totality.

Nazra Quraishi
East Lansing

Hat Tip: LGF

A long-ish piece by Victor Davis Hanson that covers many elements of this war we are engaged in. As always with VDH, it is well constructed, complex,  multi-faceted, and worth reading.

I give you this excerpt not as a good representation of the peice as a whole, but becasue this is one aspect that is particulaly poignent for me right now.  All the more reason to go read the whole thing.

Finally, we are witnessing a larger existential war, in which Iraq is the central, but not the only, theater. Put simply: will the spreading affluence and liberality of Westernization undermine the 8th-century mentality of the Islamists more quickly than their terrorists, armed with Western weapons, prey on the ennui of a postmodern Europe and America — with our large gullible populations that either don’t believe we are in a real war, or think that we should not be?

Americans know exactly the creed of the Islamists and what they have in store for us nonbelievers. Yet if we are not infidels, can we at least be fideles? That is, can we any longer articulate what we believe in, and whether it is worth defending?

The problem is not that the majority of Americans have voiced doubts about the future of Iraq — arguments over self-interest and values happen in every long war when the battlefield does not daily bring back good news.

Instead, the worry is that too many have misdirected their anger at the very culture that produced and nourished them. [...]

Emphasis mine.

Over at the Gates of Vienna [the place to go for in depth analysis on all things Islam and our struggles with its global aims] the Fjordman has filed a report on the EU with a call for its destruction in order to save Europe. Here is a taste:

The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, widely presented as the beginning of the efforts towards a European Union and commemorated in “Europe Day,” contains phrases which state that it is “a first step in the federation of Europe”, and that “this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation”. As critics of the EU have noted, these political objectives are usually omitted when the Declaration is referred to, and most people do not even know of their existence. A federation is of course a State and “yet for decades now the champions of EC/EU integration have been swearing blind that they have no knowledge of any such plans. EEC/EC/EU has steadily acquired ever more features of a supranational Federation: flag, anthem, Parliament, Supreme Court, currency, laws.” The EU founders “were careful only to show their citizens the benign features of their project. It had been designed to be implemented incrementally, as an ongoing process, so that no single phase of the project would arouse sufficient opposition as to stop or derail it.” Booker and North calls the European Union “a slow-motion coup d’état: the most spectacular coup d’état in history,” designed to gradually and carefully sideline the democratic process and subdue the older nation states of Europe without saying so in public.

In 2005, an unprecedented joint declaration by the leaders of all British political groups in Brussels called for PM Tony Blair to push for an end the “medieval” practice of European legislation being decided behind closed doors. Critics claim that the Council of Ministers, the EU’s supreme law-making body, which decides two thirds of all Britain’s laws (and the majority of laws in all Western European countries), “is the only legislature outside the Communist dictatorships of North Korea and Cuba to pass laws in secret.” As one of the signers put it: “We still have this medieval way of making decisions in the EU; people hide behind other member states, and blame them. It increases people’s sense of cynicism, but what we need is some straight talking.” According to British Conservative politician Daniel Hannan, this is how the EU was designed. “Its founding fathers understood from the first that their audacious plan to merge the ancient nations of Europe into a single polity would never succeed if each successive transfer of power had to be referred back to the voters for approval. So they cunningly devised a structure where supreme power was in the hands of appointed functionaries, immune to public opinion.” “Indeed, the EU’s structure is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic.”

But be sure to read the whole thing.

UPDATE: this is good news:

Many adults in the Netherlands hold strong views on the way Muslims adapt to the European continent, according to a poll by Motivaction released by GPD. 63 per cent of respondents believe think Islam is incompatible with modern European life.

And they would be correct. And god help us all if modern European life is altered to accomodate Islam in its current form.

It is a long-ish article using Detroit as the American problem model, but any City could learn from it, including my own San Francisco:

[...] It needs to be said at the outset that no government in the U.S., not even Detroit’s, has ever imposed the kind of crushing regulations that the Indian government imposed during the height of the notorious License Raj in the mid-’50s. Key industries—steel, telecommunications, airlines—were nationalized, but even more harmful was the Kafkaesque web of regulations that the remaining private businesses had to endure in the name of ensuring a “rational allocation of resources.”

Every move of private industry, big or small, was subject to licensing. Forget setting up a new plant or a factory. If an enterprise wanted to buy or import equipment, change its product mix, or even produce more than its allotted quota for a product, it had to first obtain permission from the Directorate General of Technical Development, a process that could take years and a small fortune in bribes, points out Gurcharan Das, author of India Unbound and former CEO of Procter & Gamble, India. “Large business houses set up parallel bureaucracies in Delhi to follow up on files, organize bribes, and win licenses,” he recalls.

Confronted with a massive fiscal crisis and the prospect of defaulting on its international debt obligations, the Indian government dismantled much of this ridiculous licensing regime in 1991. In a bid to boost exports to replenish the country’s empty foreign exchange reserves, it also eliminated all import licensing and slashed tariffs on capital goods. Both were relics of India’s import-substitution days, when manufacturers were discouraged from buying equipment from abroad in order to build the domestic industry. This jacked up production costs and made the country’s exports hopelessly uncompetitive.

Trade liberalization was a boon for the I.T. industry, which already had escaped many of the stultifying controls that other industries faced simply because the architects of India’s industrial policy had failed to anticipate its birth. [...]

read the rest on your own.

…for the pro-freedom rally at the Danish consulate yesterday:

The Only Republican in San Francisco has some first hand details:

“I just got back and it went well. We had 70-80 people, among them a Danish journalism student from Berkeley, many flags, a hottie handing out Havarti and a complete absence of local media.”

Let’s hope we see more events like this. I found out about it too late to make it over there, but I’d love to get to the next one…

Interesting to see that T.O.R.I.S.F. poses the following question in the header area of his blog: “Imagine being an empirical, free-market thinker in a liberal town.”

Hmmmmmmmm… Gee, I wonder what that WOULD be like?

Personal to TORISF: let’s talk.

This image of Pakistani protestors appeared on Germany’s TV station n-tv.de.

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs.

I don’t know about you, but seeing this picture makes me want to go out and by some Danish products.

Last July 4^th I wrote a piece defending our Founding Fathers against the accusation of being equivalent to Terrorists. In it, I pointed out that to call American Patriots terrorists was to sabotage the meaning of the word “terrorism.” It might be semantically possible, but it is spin doctoring at its worse.

Now, I would like to point out a similar dilution of language around what have been called “protests” by Muslim fanatics who are burning Italian embassies for Mohammed cartoons about that were published in Denmark. To call these acts “protests” is both to dignify them beyond their due, and to cast a pall on the
great tradition of social protest. These acts of vandalism and destruction are not organized attempts to raise the consciousness of a culture, but pointless and chaotic expressions of hate, fear, and frustration.

I can hear the liberal revisionists screaming at me even now – who am I to determine what is or is not a legitimate protest? Didn’t our Founding Fathers destroy property and kill to communicate their sense of injustice? Aren’t these protests the equivalent of our own revolutionary beginnings?

Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I suggest that rebelling against your government for political freedom is fundamentally different than mindless vandalism against innocents out of a desire to control the world. American Patriots were not rebelling against the British to force the British to believe their beliefs but fighting so that each person could have their own. They were not offering million dollar rewards to quell the speech of (murder) the cartoonists that dared to disagree with them, but fighting for the freedom of speech for all.

To highlight the difference between considered social protest to further the rights of all and mindless rioting against innocents to silence the rights of others, I suggest we spin the language to its limits and elevate these “protests” to the status of rebellion – The Cartoon Rebellions. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Only these aren’t rebels without a cause, only rebels without a clue.

The Cartoon Rebellions – a world-wide swath of destruction so absurd that we would think it was a bad comic strip. Cartoons causing people to act like cartoons, while cartoon apologists strive to find politically correct ways to appease the rioters. An elaborate joke that would be hilarious if it were not so tragic, unbelievable if it were not so real.

For those of you who do not know, it was Flynt, Hustler Magazine’s Publisher, in the landmark Supreme Court case Flynt v. Falwell [yes, that Falwell] that forced this Country to decide that offending religious sensibilities was protected speech.

That was only 30 years ago folks.

Flynt:

Freedom of speech is only important if you’re gonna offend someone; if you’re not gonna offend someone, you don’t need free speech.

No shit.

Read the rest of the interview here.

By Vedran VuK

An ex-girlfriend once told me, “You treat me like a piece of property.” As an economics major, my first reaction was: How great that the center of my affection truly understands the way I feel! Butterflies in my stomach, rainbows, unicorns, big red hearts shot through my enamored mind. When someone truly understands you, what can you feel but joy?

If I treated her as if she were my property, after all, it means that I would take care of her, protect her, and treat her well above all things not in my possession.

Suddenly, I realized the look on her face did not reflect the combusting happiness within me.

Then, I realized my error. We are all self owners, she as much as I. But let’s say I were treating her like property. That raises the extremely important issue:

“Do you mean public or private property?”

Read the rest on your own over at The Mises Institute.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The cause of the tsunami has been discovered.

Glad they figured that out.

As we have probably all heard by now, the NYT printed leaked information informing us that the Bush Administration has been selectively spying domestically with the NSA via FISA. [I think in 30 instances].

Was this legal? Check out this post by a level headed libertarian with full legal analysis. Good stuff. Read it all.

And Pejman reminds us that this is really just the nature of gov’t and quotes an excerpt that deomstrates just how disingenuous the dems are being:

In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has “inherent authority” to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress’s decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.

“The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes,” Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, “and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General.”

So much for philosophical consistency. Of course, asking a partisan hack or a politician not to be a hypocrite with double standards is like asking a bear to shit in a toilet. And use paper. And flush.

Alexandra over at All Things Beautiful has a great post on The Clash of Civilizations. You get three guesses as to which civilizations [and the first 2 guesses do not count].

Just keep scrolling, reading, and clicking. She really has put together an impressive post.

And as I have mentioned before in passing we should be looking at this clash through the lens of Spiral Dynamics.

Islam is Red, GW Bush is Blue, those profiting in the War on Terror are Orange, those anti-war are Green. Those who see all sides as well as their limitations…are integral or yellow.

Those who see the dangers of Red, are grateful Blue is keeping them in check, can understand Orange’s desire for profit and appreciate the services they are providing [especially logistics], demands that Green, if it is going to condemn GW that is also condemns Islamo-fascism and Saddam and can see the need for war at times, are Yellow or Integral.

Part 0: Introduction

“When people are free to act, they will always act in a way that they believe will maximize their utility, i.e., will raise them to the highest possible position on their value scale. Their utility ex ante will be maximized, provided we take care to interpret “utility” in an ordinal rather than a cardinal manner. Any action, any exchange that takes place on the free market or more broadly in the free society, occurs because of the expected benefit to each party concerned.” –Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market

“We must not be afraid to be free.”–Justice Black

Human beings have an inexhaustible spirit. Through wars, pestilence, oppression, disasters, genocide and personal tragedy, human beings continue to express creativity and ingenuity to the very degree that they are allowed the liberties to do so. It is an unquenchable and inexhaustible Spirit. It is the best—the Divine—within each of us that makes it so. And while at times, we have varying degrees of access to the divine within us, and sometimes the light is dim and flickers, the fact remains that there is a god or goddess in all of us waiting to come out and play.

What if we could integrate our work and our play? Our spirit and our finances? Our economics and our purpose? Our job and our internal worship? The mundane and the divine?

My assertion is that not only is this possible…it is necessary…for the conscious evolution of the planet and for our survival and thrival as a species. Not to mention our personal happiness. As many of us our satisfied–that is we have all the nice stuff. Cars, houses, fine clothing, computers, iPods, great relationships, money…but we remain unfulfilled.

How many of us are seeking something. Trying to fulfill ourselves with something outside? How many of us have done this ourselves? Seeking, looking, grasping…some of us desperately. And yet, what we seek is right within us all along waiting to be discovered. Waiting to be unleashed. Waiting for the full integration into our daily lives…

–

Spiritual and Capitalism are two words that we seldom, if ever, hear in the same sentence unless derisively or pejoratively in this Country. The conventional and majority “wisdom” states that they are diametrically opposed. That one cannot live a truly spiritual life and be a capitalist and that a capitalist is never really up to any good.

Is this conventional wisdom truly wise? Is it even remotely accurate?

First, we must define “capitalism” and “spiritual” if we are to get anywhere in this discussion.

It is worth noting that “capitalism” is a term that was coined my Marx—the greatest self-anointed enemy of capitalism—someone whose economics theories have virtually all been empirically disproved—to live. The irony there is obvious on both counts. Prior to Marx, there was no definition or characterization of “capitalism” really, for it was not a system at all—it was very simply the application of liberty in the economic domain. “Free Market” meant just that—that the market was free and unrestricted. What was the market? Humans engaged in voluntary associations for mutual benefit. Nothing more. That association may have been a mine worker freely associating with the owner of a mine for some agreed upon amount of money per unit of work [hours or perhaps ponds of extracted materials, etc.] or a provider of transport for someone who wishes to travel somewhere or to send goods to a market in another geographical area or someone wanting to “buy money”—that is, take a loan out with the contract obligation to repay it plus a fee [interest], but in no case could there be violent coercion. It is also noting additionally, that “coercion” does not mean “influence” as in political vogue today, as it abrogates free will and muddies the waters. By coercion, we mean violence or the threat of violence against person or property.

It is truly a triumph of rhetoric over reason that the thinking—debunked for over a century now—that in the free market one person always gains at the expense of another still prevails among many laypeople. What has been known almost since the beginning of economics becoming a science is that both parties always benefit—or at least expect to do so—otherwise they would never engage in the association to begin with. For humans always expect—through all their choices and actions—regardless of if they are proven right or not, to benefit or improve their lot by their choices.

Of course, “liberty” does not mean you are “free” to aggress against another’s person or property as an extension of their person though their labor. Therefore, the only “restrictions” were and should be that force and fraud [fraud is implicit force or implicit theft] were actionable torts. Liberty does not mean you are free to do anything you like. Liberty and freedom are different distinctions. What liberty does mean is that you are free from violent aggression from another. You are therefore not “free” to aggress against another, as to do so would violate his or her liberty.

So “capitalism” as it is so ill-named, is liberty practically applied—the ability to freely associate for mutual benefit. Nothing more and nothing less. Anything else is a moral judgment or characterization or perhaps an aesthetic condemnation and therefore not appropriate for a definition as such.

There are, of course, questions of morality and aesthetics, which often confuse this definition or muddle the thinking around it, but for our purposes, we will address those later, if at all. However, that does not mean that they are not important and valid questions. I would love to have that dialogue, it is just beyond the scope of this piece. Let’s is suffice to say that just because you can to something does not mean you should do it. Unfortunately, in this highly politicized and philosophically muddled society, the distinctions among ethics, morality, and aesthetics have become blurred.

What then, is spiritual, for surely, “capitalism is the least spiritual system of economics” is it not–according to the conventional wisdom?

Spirituality or “being spiritual” means so many things to so many people. It may mean following this spiritual text or that spiritual text. It may mean being “Christ-like” or “possessing the Buddha mind” or it may simply mean being pious or acting for the good of others. For still others, it is following the directives of this spiritual leader or that spiritual leader. For still others it is “opening to the Divine” or “becoming one with all things” through meditation and “spiritual practice”. For still others, it is accessing their own consciousness or their creative spirit. How then can we come to a universal definition of “spiritual”?

For this, we must understand the spirit of human beings.

Spir·it n:

1. a vital force that characterizes a living being as being alive
2. somebody’s will, sense of self, or enthusiasm for living
3. an enthusiasm and energy for living
4. somebody’s personality or temperament
5. somebody or something that is a divine, inspiring, or animating influence

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

For our purpose, we will define “spiritual” as: accessing and liberating to the largest degree possible that which is our vital life force and the best we have within us—our creativity, our inspiration, etc. That is, by demonstrating behavioral alignment or pure expression of our highest values.

This could be through art, community, leadership, study, contribution, entrepreneurship, our job roles, or our chores. It could be liberating our minds through meditation. It could be making love to our partner, for anything with which we bring our Spirit to, and engage fully unleashing our highest inner self, can be, and will be, a spiritual experience and we can bring this to most activities, most notably, our ideas and the implementation or actualization of those ideas or visions.

That being the case, let’s examine capitalism, and not-capitalism very briefly.

Anything other than unfettered capitalism—full economic liberty—is marked by increasing intervention by the State. That is—the government.

What then, is the nature of government? Government in any form [from democracy to socialism to communism to monarchism or dictatorship] has two inalienable qualities:

1. a monopoly on the initiation of force over a declared geographical area, often under the pretense of “protecting” its citizens—whether they need it or want it or not;
2. it exists and operates by levying taxes—that is the coercive and compulsory appropriation of money, which if any other organization or group or individual were engaged in would be called “theft” and prosecuted

The more the government intervenes in the affairs of its citizens [including “assisting” its citizens], the more the use of force is employed and to pay for the increase in government “services”, taxation, or debt, must increase—more force. If it is taxation, it is direct and immediate force. If it is debt, it is delayed force as future generation will have no choice in the matter—they are, in a real way, enslaved to the government as a result.

Therefore, the government is always committing the very same acts that it is entrusted to prevent: violence and theft.

The emperor indeed has no clothes, yet all of society is raving about how wonderful his robes are, and how we should make more of them in various colors.

We have already seen that the most spiritual a person can be is liberation of their spirit, often through creativity, and that they have the inalienable right over their own person and body [and by extension their property] is accepted as natural law and our intuitive moral sense. It is obvious that the use of force against someone—one of the few things all humans can agree on as criminal unless it is purely defensive while protecting your person or property—is dampening to their Spirit, not liberating. Therefore, the more the government intervenes, the less “spiritual” and the more liberalized [free] the economy, the more spiritual, as human beings are free to fully express themselves in every domain of their life, including the economic.

Therefore, Capitalism is the most spiritual system.

What of the “evils” of capitalism? Some people think we have a free market in America, and/or in the Western Industrialized core of nations. We do not. We do not have capitalism. We have something between “mercantilism” and “corporate statism”. Most people who argue about the evils of capitalism know not what they speak of, nor even what system we operate within. In fact, America is not a democracy at all—it is a constitutional republic—an important difference.

But let’s leave politics aside for this discussion. For our purposes, we have the needed definitions:

Capitalism: liberty in the economic domain—that is the ability to freely associate for mutual benefit.

Spiritual: The liberation of human creativity or the human “spirit”—that which is highest in ourselves.

Given those definitions, clearly Capitalism is the most spiritual economic system as it allows the freest expression of our highest values to be fully integrated into our life in all domains.

But again…what of the “evils” of capitalism? Of course the problem with capitalism is not really a problem with capitalism per se at all—for all it does is free people to do what they want or can do and receive something in exchange. What about pollution? What about fraud? These are not capitalist. These are criminal. And they flow not from a system—but from action by people at lower levels of conscious and moral development.

What capitalism has done is expose man’s faults for all to see, not created them. Systems do not create these problems, people–individuals–do.

What about contribution? What about caring for others? What about giving? One of the major errors committed by detractors of Capitalism and liberty is that they presuppose of the government was not handling something it would not get handled. I think we can all see how silly that idea is on its face, once exposed.

However, with this increased liberty, we have proportionally increased our responsibility and our need for an acceleration of the evolution of consciousness and the values spheres to levels that will reduce our negative impact on those around us, the environment, future generations, and our very selves. However, if we are to avoid the use of force, we must do this though education, encouragement, and by becoming more aware as consumers and supporting those companies with leaders who are consciously mindful on their impact. Or, we can use the force and forceful apparatus of government, but we need to at least be honest about what we are doing: using our local, state, and federal representatives to impose our will and value sets on those around us with courts and police–who have guns–because we are impatient and self-righteous.

Is that the kind of world we want to advocate? Or would we rather raise the conscious stage to universal care voluntarily?

“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.”– Thomas Jefferson

“…since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter madness to speak of a free people’s state.”–Marx

We have defined both “spiritual” and “capitalism”. What then, is “Spiritual Capitalism”?! Spiritual Capitalism really requires no knowledge or even acceptance of the above, although it is certainly helpful to you to do so. What is required for Spiritual Capitalism is an integral approach—that is, integration of your spirituality and entrepreneurship or the free market. It is that simple.

What a shame that most are dis-integrated. That is, they live separated lives. They go to a job they hate getting paid by people they do not like or by companies that lack integrity. Some have said that the idea that I charge for the work I do is “wrong with the universe”. Which is more out of alignment with the “universe”:

1. Living your spiritual purpose and getting paid for it voluntarily though exchange with clients seeking your services
2. Working for AOL and having to shower when you get home because of the slimy dealings you had to witness in the marketing department and getting paid for that

You be the judge.

The Buddha spoke of “right livelihood” as part of morality. That is, be certain that what you are doing does not harm others or assist others in harming others. The cleanest and clearest way to be fully integrated is to live your spiritual purpose [which is always about being in service to Other or the world] and market that service with integrity and clarity.

What a beautiful world we could create together. A world of people living their highest purpose and exhibiting their highest values—contributing to one another in the deepest way–and being in service of Spirit while simultaneously attaining prosperity as a result. Fully integrated beings.

To do that there are five simple components:

1. Live life consciously
2. Discover your [Spiritual] Purpose
3. Develop an Entrepreneurial Spirit
4. Define Your Values and Change Beliefs Where Necessary
5. Knowledge and Skill Acquisition

We will explore each of them in the coming installments of this series as well as the common blocks to achieving prosperity through purpose.

For other interesting I.D.E.A.s, visit me here.

Over at the inestimable jewel’s place you can check out this round up of all things anti-globalization today.

The round up is good, but go for the picture of Mama Moonbat at the bottom of the post. I think this woman has milked it for about all it is worth. Someone please let her know she is embarrassing herself at this point. Sheehan–not Malkin. Just to be clear.

December 16, 2005 - The art of life is making necessary conclusions from insufficient premises. - anonymous

I just came accross notes I took on a book I read in the mid 90’s by Richard Brodie who writes in a field called memetics called Virus Of The Mind (a fantastic, quick read), and it got me thinking.

The wide world we experience often differs dramatically from the world we actually live in. The “facts” on which we build our understanding of what is happening are “spun” by media savvy spin doctors from every pulpit, but even more by our emotional responses to the information we are given. If our actions are a function of our thinking and values, and our thinking and values are a function of the information we get, how can we protect ourselves from the spin of our conventional media providers (polititicain, priests, professors) and the independent bloggers in the seemingly more and more conventional blogsphere?

So, take a ride with me…

“(Insert your most recent annoying person) is a big fat idiot!”

These simple and fighting words make for confrontive and often invigorating conversation. But are they an example of the very behavior they are denouncing?

Yes, I agree with Mark Twain when he said that “A person may be intelligent, but people are stupid.” At the same time, as Ken Wilber puts it, “no one is stupid enought to be 100% wrong.” We all use our intelligence to build reasonable conclusions from incomplete information. When that information is partial, inaccurate, or distorted, the conclusions we build are likewise “screwed up.”

You know, “stupid, idiotic, clueless, dumb, hare-brained, Bush-like…”

Since we are all operating on incomplete and inaccurate information of one type or another, we all say “off the mark” or “stupid” things now and again. When we do, it is often helpful for people to get in our face and point out our glaring mistakes with an epithet or two (or 20…).

However, our stupidity cuts both ways. Not only do we say stupid things, but more often, we hear intelligent things stupidly. Sometimes, someone can say something that is “right on” but we distort it according to our stupidity and end up calling them an idiot. The people who see the intelligence of the person we are calling an idiot then experience us as an idiot, often expressing their observation in lengthy and clever ways - to the delight of the crowd who agrees with them, and inflaming further invective from others…

Who wins in this battle? : The very stupidity each person is denouncing.

In blogs, this is all good and fun - I mean, HELL, I “IS” one!

In politics, when we empower the idiots with legislation, guns, TRILLIONS, and public podiums, it is tragic.

Richard Brodie gives this example inVirus Of The Mind:

–

In 1992, 37,776 people were killed by guns in the United States. An other
40,982 were killed by automobiles. Yet a casual look at reporting would
verify that guns get much more coverage than cars, even though almost half
the gun deaths (18,169) were suicides. I’m not saying guns shouldn’t get
more coverage after all, this gun problem is new and growing, while the car
problem has been with us for decades. But people get a distorted picture of
the dangers involved.

Just doing a simple calculation, the chance of any one person dying in an
automobile accident in a given year in the U.S. are one in 6224; the chance
of dying in a gun incident other than suicide is less than half as likely:
one in 13,005. If you put yourself in a low-risk group by not being a
criminal or a police officer, the odds get considerably better. But what are
people more afraid of: guns or cars?

If you’re like most people, the answer is guns. and it’s likely because of
the distorted media coverage. This kind of disturted coverage leads to an
outcry from the populace, which often leads to politicians going
off–forgive the pun half-cocked with “solutions” to the problem.

Now let’s get a handle on what it really means to have a one-in-6500 or a
one in 13.000 chance of dying. lt’s as if you lived on an island in the
South Pacific with a population of 650. You make your living by swimmuing
around in the azure waters around your idyllic paradise and spearing fish
for dinner. Yum, yum. About once every 10 years. a stray shark happens by
and eats a swimmer. That’s a one in 6500 chance of any one per­son being
eaten by a shark. just the same as the odds of dying in an auto­mobile
accident in the U.S. in 1992.

Also, about once every 20 years, two men get into an overheated argument
over a fish or a woman and one of them kills the other one with his spear.
That’s a one-in-13,000 chance of being killed in an argument, just the same
as the odds of being killed by someone else with a gun in the U.S. in 1992.
These are very sad events, and probably dinner table conversation for quite
a few days, but not the be-all and end-all of life. Fortunately, since you
live on an isolated island, these events come and go, and life goes on.

But now imagine there are 392,000 of these islands all linked by tele­vision
and INN (Island News Network). This brings the total population to about 254
million, similar to the U.S. today. Every night, INN reports on the goriest
of the 107 shark attacks and 54 spear deaths that day. Suddenly people’s
picture of the world is quite different. From a peaceful existence disrupted
only by a tragedy every few years, you go to a fear-ridden hell filled with
fear and terror.

Isn’t this interesting? Nothihg has changed except the addition of
television. Yet now it feels like you’re living in a dangerous world, not an
idyllic paradise. Same number of shark attacks; same number of spear deaths.
What happened?

Television news.

–

Thank Dick!

The question becomes: What is your “Television news?” What are the sources of information you use to get the “facts” on which to build your world, your opinions about who is or is not an idiot? Towards what emotions are they spun to inflame in you, and towards what purpose?

Intolerance breeds intolerance, and when communication breaks down, violence increases. When we cannot find enough common ground with our adversaries (political, military, or familial) to build negotiated solutions, our only alternative is to force them or be forced. And as Ayn Rand put it through the character of Francisco D’Anconia, “when force becomes the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.”

Of course, to find common ground, to look for where people are right rather than self-righteously pointing out where they are wrong, requires energy, time, and patience.

Screw that, who was the idiot that wrote this anyway?

Mark Michael Lewis
http://LastingHappiness.com

I don’t always agree with everything that the Washington Post’s George Will writes. But I certainly appreciate and applaud the fact that he, essentially, “gets it.”

Take this excerpts from today’s column “Paralyzed by Collectivism” (see, right there — fantastic title):

The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society’s balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals’ lives. This is done in the name of equality.

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Therefore, one of the collectivists’ tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern — the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. They stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

Will’s piece today addresses environmentalism and energy production. It’s a very worthwhile — if brief — read. So by all means, go read the whole thing.

I have been wondering this for some time:

“I think for a government to follow the American model of saying, for the benefit of each patron, we will provide three drinks only, would be very interesting to look at.”

Where did we go wrong?  Has it always been like this, or was I just too young to notice it before?  When did it become part of the government’s remit to decide how much I can have to drink on a Friday night?  How much I can smoke, and where I can light up?  When did we agree to that?  Can we put our finger on an exact date, or did they just go on reaching and over-reaching to see just how far they could go, getting further into our lives with each passing year?

You can read the whole silly mess if you like. Sortapundit is pretty darn funny with his comical fisking of another do-gooder with a moronic idea.

Forgive them…they know not what they do.

When did THIS happen: when did we stop asking how the government should be kept out of our lives? When did we stop asking IF the government should be in our lives at all?! Somewhere along the line in the last 100 or so years we started to look to the government to save us, make us healthy, protect us, feed us–what’s next? Clothe us and tuck us in at night? Nahhh. That’s what a NANNY would do. Surely we have outgrown that.

Or have we?

We need to awaken the debate again about the true nature of government–an entity that is based on a monopoly on the initiation of force over a given geographical area and one that is supported by money taken with that force. It used to be called tribute. Now they call it taxes. An entity that is supposed to protect us from the initiation of force.

Does no one see the irony? Do people no longer realize that government is an entity that we need to be wary of? The same people calling Bush Hitler want MORE government in other areas. Are they mad?

Sometimes–not always, but sometimes–I long for the hastening of this society to collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions so we can get back to true liberty–which is what works best.

Over at Cold Fury, Al has a great post that covers much ground in a small space. Here is the meat of it:

Of course the battle isn’t won. The couple hundred thousand Sunni clerics in Iraq are calling Zarqawi a jewish CIA agent, in order to get out the vote. But hey, that isn’t that much worse than calling Bush a lynch mob leader (which the NAACP did in 2000) or claiming that Bush had the N’awlins levees blown up because he hates black people, which Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) did last week in congressional hearings. So we’ve got a ways to go before we achieve a neat, orderly democratic process in Washington, much less in Iraq. But the future holds much promise.

Analysis: The U.S. does need to get out of Iraq because we are seen as a pain in the ass. Mainly a necessary pain in the ass, but still a pain. The Sunnis attack us to maintain credibility with their rank and file and to jockey for position and power, the Shiites ride our back because as a majority party they will fare well in a democracy, and because it’s the course of least resistance right now, and the Kurds are with us because we have been their steadfast protector against both Saddam, and bruised Turkey. In addition to acting as political lubricant, we are also acting as the foil, the invader, against which many of the parties can rail so as to rally their own people against… something, lower interest rates and inflation not being quite as high on the radar in a country with major crime and infrastructure problems. In other words, our mere presence probably encourages some of the violence and attacks, just as much as it prevents a slippage into anarchy or mullahocracy.

So we do need to pull out, but not before the Shiites and Sunnis have invested much in the political process, and not before the security forces have become more proficient, less sectarian managers of society’s bad elements. The Sunnis need to realize that if the U.S. pulls out too quick, the Kurds and Shiites will be coming with long knives, to pay them back for a half century of vicious repression. The Shiites need to realize that if the U.S. pulls out too quick, the Kurds and the Sunnis will break off thanks to the threat of Shiite retaliation and in the Kurds’ case, nationalist ambitions, and the Shiites might as well send Turkey and Iran engraved invitations to invade and partition the country. Rather like the U.S. in the post Civil War era, our various regions may not have liked each other that much, but the happenstances of history and geography threw us together, and we could do much better as a unitary whole than as two or three divided mini-nations.

But be sure to…well.. You know.

I sure hope this is not true:

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.”

Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not.  Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine – in the end – if something is legal or right.

How many other Presidents and Congresspeople do you think feel too restricted by that little “piece of paper”? Precious little protects us from them. Our life, liberty, and property is always on the table.

Vigilance.

The first libertarian intellectual was Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism. Little is known about his life, but apparently he was a personal acquaintance of Confucius in the late sixth century BC and like the latter came from the state of Sung and was descended from the lower aristocracy of the Yin dynasty.

Unlike the notable apologist for the rule of philosopher-bureaucrats, however, Lao-tzu developed a radical libertarian creed. For Lao-tzu the individual and his happiness was the key unit and goal of society. If social institutions hampered the individual’s flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao-tzu, government, with its “laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox,” was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and “more to be feared than fierce tigers.”

Government, in sum, must be limited to the smallest possible minimum; “inaction” was the proper function of government, since only inaction can permit the individual to flourish and achieve happiness. Any intervention by government, Lao-tzu declared, would be counterproductive, and would lead to confusion and turmoil. After referring to the common experience of mankind with government, Lao-tzu came to this incisive conclusion: “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”

Read the whole article by Murray N. Rothbard, Enemy of the State.

–

Speaking of being an “enemy of the state”:

“It is only thus that one can understand how it was possible for people to go so far as to reproach liberalism [libertarianism] for its “hostility” or enmity towards the state. If I am of the opinion that it is inexpedient to assign to the government the task of operating railroads, hotels, or mines, I am not an “enemy of the state” any more than I can be called an enemy of sulfuric acid because I am of the opinion that, useful though it may be for many purposes, it is not suitable either for drinking, or for washing one’s hands.”– Ludwig Von Mises

Here is a jewel by Murray Rothbard, one of the most persuasive of all Libertarian thinkers of any time. The Ethics of Liberty [PDF 7.3M]. This book was freely distributed by the Ludwig von Mises Institute a while back.

Not enough can be said about Murray Rothbard and his contributions to Austrian Economics and Libertarian thinking.

From the Introduction by Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

In an age of intellectual hyperspecialization, Murray N. Rothbard was a grand system builder. An economist by profession, Rothbard was
the creator of a system of social and political philosophy based on economics and ethics as its cornerstones. For centuries, economics and
ethics (political philosophy) had diverged from their common origin into seemingly unrelated intellectual enterprises. Economics was a value-free “positive” science, and ethics (if it was a science at all) was a “normative” science.

As a result of this separation, the concept of property had increasingly disappeared from both disciplines. For economists, property sounded
too normative, and for political philosophers property smacked of mundane economics. Rothbard’s unique contribution is the rediscovery of
property and property rights as the common foundation of both economics and political philosophy, and the systematic reconstruction and conceptual integration of modern, marginalist economics and natural-law political philosophy into a unified moral science: libertarianism.

He is also one of the clearest thinkers and writers I have ever read. This book is a must read for anyone with the call to liberty in their bones.

Also from the intro:

When The Ethics of Liberty appeared in 1982, it initially attracted only a little attention in academia. Two factors were responsible for this
neglect. First, there were the anarchistic implications of Rothbard’s theory, and his argument that the institution of government-the state-is
incompatible with the fundamental principles of justice. As defined by Rothbard, a state is an organization “which possesses either or both (in actual fact, almost always both) of the following characteristics: (a) it acquires its revenue by physical coercion (taxation); and (b) it achieves a compulsory monopoly of force and of ultimate decision-making power over a given territorial area. Both of these essential activities of the
State necessarily constitute criminal aggression and depredation of the just rights of private property of its subjects (including
self-ownership). For the first constitutes and establishes theft on a grand scale; while the second prohibits the free competition
of defense and decision-making agencies within a given territorial area-prohibiting the voluntary purchase and sale
of defense and judicial services (p. 172-73).

“Without justice,” Rothbard concluded as St. Augustine had before him, “the state was nothing but a band of robbers.”

What was the second reason?

Rothbard, as every reader of the following treatise will quickly recognize, was the prototype of a “coercive philosopher” (in the startling Nozickian definition of coercion). He demanded and presented proofs and exact and complete answers rather then tentative explanations, conjectum, and open questions. Regarding Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick had written that “some may feel that the truth about ethics and political philosophy is too serious and important to be obtained by such ‘flashy’ tools.”

T his was certainly Rothbard’s conviction. Because man cannot not act as long as he is alive, and he must use scarce means to do so, he must also permanently choose between right and wrong conduct. The fundamental question of ethics-what am I here and now rightfully allowed to do and what not is thus the most permanent, important, and pressing intellectual concern confronting man. Whenever and wherever one acts, an actor must be able to determine and distinguish unambiguously and instantly right from wrong. Thus, any ethic worth its salt must-praxeologically-be a “coercive” one, because only proofs and knockdown arguments can provide such definite answers as are necessary. Man cannot temporarily suspend acting; hence, tentative conjectures and open questions simply are not up to the task of a human ethic.

Rothbard’s “coercive” philosophizing-his insistence that ethics must be an axiomatic-deductive system, an ethic more geometrico-was nothing
new or unusual, of course. As already noted, Rothbard shared this view concerning the nature of ethics with the entire tradition of rationalist
philosophy. His had been the dominant view of Christian rationalism and of the Enlightenment. Nor did Rothbard claim infallibility regarding
his ethics. In accordance with the tradition of rationalist philosophy he merely insisted that axiomatic-deductive arguments can be attacked, and
possibly refuted, exclusively by other arguments of the same logical status (just as one would insist, without thereby claiming infallibility for
logicians and mathematicians, that logical or mathematical proofs can be attacked only by other logical or mathematical arguments).

He was a big meanie, apparently. Meanie in this day and age is what used to be known as “clear, solid, rational, deductive”, etc.

and its treatment of women:

MULTAN, Pakistan - A Pakistani man cut off the nose and lips of his 19-year-old sister-in-law after she went to court for a divorce in a tribal area of the central province of Punjab, police said on Thursday.

Abbas then attacked the girl, hacking off her nose and slicing off her lips.

A doctor treating the girl said her nose had been cut off from the bridge and her lips partially severed.

Numerous cases have also been reported of women being disfigured as punishment for offending a man‘s honour.

Full story here.

And if you can stand it, here are National Geographic photos of a similar case. Extremely disturbing. Be forewarned. See them here and
here.

This is the ideology we are at war with, people.

Hat Tip Dhimmi Watch

This is just too idiotic to even be funny:

When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it’s obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

Acosta’s stated goal of prosecuting distributors of adult porn has angered federal and local law enforcement officials, as well as prosecutors in his own office. They say there are far more important issues in a high-crime area like South Florida, which is an international hub at risk for terrorism, money laundering and other dangerous activities.

His own prosecutors have warned Acosta that prioritizing adult porn would reduce resources for prosecuting other crimes, including porn involving children. According to high-level sources who did not want to be identified, Acosta has assigned prosecutors porn cases over their objections.

Read it all here if you can stand the idiocy.

Over at Atlas Shrugs:

IRNA, the regime’s news agency reports that the disciplinary forces of the regime’s central intelligence issued a statement today, stating that: “As of Monday, these forces will meet very forcefully with wedding parties or any sort of celebration, that is disturbing and impinging on society’s order and calm.” The bulletin also read: “Certain people in their celebrations, immorally and degenerately block traffic (wedding processions) and disturb the peace of our compatriots; these people will be strongly dealt with.”

Khamnei: “These ‘goods’ will have to remain in their wrapping”

Mullah Khamnei specified, in a speech broadcast by ILNA, one of the regime’s many media outlets, that men are superior to women. While referring to women as “goods” or “commodities”, he stated: “Women’s hijab must be much more severe than those of men’s. Why? Because nature and women’s softness was at the core of ‘creation’ and IF we do not want society to lead to corruption and degenerate, we must keep these “goods” in their wrapping.”

And there’s a whole lot more like that.

Intel’s new chip design developed in Israel   
Get ready for even faster computers. Intel has unveiled its next generation micro-architecture, a multi-core processor which was completely developed at its facilities in Israel. According to top analysts, the Israeli design approach is sweeping through Intel, making them the company’s pre-eminent architects. More…

 

Global Democracy | US and Israel celebrate 20 years of free trade   
Twenty years and nearly $400 billion later, the US-Israel free trade pact is flourishing. Thanks to the bilateral trade agreement, Jaffa oranges have been replaced by other Israeli exports like computer chips and life-saving diagnostic tools that benefit the health and welfare of Americans. More…

 

Health | Israeli biotech leader asked by Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to develop treatment   
The Israeli biotechnology company Predix is already working on novel drugs for depression and Alzheimer’s in the pipeline. Now the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has turned to them to develop potential treatments for this debilitating genetic disease that affects 30,000 Americans. More…

And a while lot more…check it here.

The Weekly Standard
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
From the September 5 / September 12, 2005 issue: What the 9/11 Commission narrative left out: Iraqis.
by Stephen F. Hayes
09/05/2005, Volume 010, Issue 47

AHMED HIKMAT SHAKIR IS A shadowy figure who provided logistical assistance to one, maybe two, of the 9/11 hijackers. Years before, he had received a phone call from the Jersey City, New Jersey, safehouse of the plotters who would soon, in February 1993, park a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The safehouse was the apartment of Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who scorched his own leg while mixing the chemicals for the 1993 bomb.

When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his “pocket litter,” in the parlance of the investigators, included contact information for Musab Yasin and another 1993 plotter, a Kuwaiti native named Ibrahim Suleiman.

These facts alone, linking the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, would seem to cry out for additional scrutiny, no?

The Yasin brothers and Shakir have more in common. They are all Iraqis. And two of them–Abdul Rahman Yasin and Shakir–went free, despite their participation in attacks on the World Trade Center, at least partly because of efforts made on their behalf by the regime of Saddam Hussein. Both men returned to Iraq–Yasin fled there in 1993 with the active assistance of the Iraqi government. For ten years in Iraq, Abdul Rahman Yasin was provided safe haven and financing by the regime, support that ended only with the coalition intervention in March 2003.

Readers of The Weekly Standard may be familiar with the stories of Abdul Rahman Yasin, Musab Yasin, and Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. Readers of the 9/11 Commission’s final report are not. Those three individuals are nowhere mentioned in the 428 pages that comprise the body of the 9/11 Commission report. Their names do not appear among the 172 listed in Appendix B of the report, a table of individuals who are mentioned in the text. Two brief footnotes mention Shakir.

Why? Why would the 9/11 Commission fail to mention Abdul Rahman Yasin, who admitted his role in the first World Trade Center attack, which killed 6 people, injured more than 1,000, and blew a hole seven stories deep in the North Tower? It’s an odd omission, especially since the commission named no fewer than five of his accomplices.

Why would the 9/11 Commission neglect Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, a man who was photographed assisting a 9/11 hijacker and attended perhaps the most important 9/11 planning meeting?

And why would the 9/11 Commission fail to mention the overlap between the two successful plots to attack the World Trade Center?

The answer is simple: The Iraqi link didn’t fit the commission’s narrative.

Go and read it all.

For 250 United States. Check it here.

…is no friend to free markets. I agree wholeheartedly with this.

via Instapundit:

Utah Rave Update:

What is it about young people having a good time that riles officers over at the Utah County Sheriff’s Office so?

Worried about young people dancing to electronic music on private property in Spanish Fork Canyon, the Sheriff’s Office enlisted the Utah County Metro SWAT, the Utah Department of Corrections out of Salt Lake and Gunnison, the Department of Public Safety and its helicopter, as well as Provo SWAT. Except for those in undercover surveillance, this force of 90 was uniformed and ready to go.

“Uniformed” is putting it mildly. Decked in camouflage and helmets, they came with assault rifles and attack dogs. Revelers at Child’s ranch in Spanish Fork Canyon, more than two hours into their Aug. 20 rave, were ordered to turn off the music. Event organizers had the blessing of the property owner, a health department permit, and emergency medical personnel and security officers to check for alcohol and illegal drugs. What they didn’t have was the permission of the Utah County Commission. Such an egregious crime, you know.

Law-enforcement officers—so often overworked, underpaid and underappreciated—deserve the respect of citizenry. But based on personal accounts and digital-camera footage of that evening that have flooded the Internet since, even the most die-hard supporter of the local constabulary would feel remiss not asking questions. The event’s 250 attendees, who paid $20 per ticket to ensure that the evening’s event would be legitimate, secure, and offer outdoor toilets, allege the Utah County Sheriff’s Office unleashed what one observer described as “Iraq in Utah.” They allege petite women were kicked to the ground, rifles were pointed straight at people’s heads and faces, dogs were unleashed and tear gas dispensed. “We were treated as terrorists,” wrote one attendee. “They wanted to bust, hurt, and arrest us,” wrote another.

Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Gilbert denies anyone was beaten, bitten or treated unfairly. “I’m not going to speculate what would have happened if we went in without dogs or fewer officers. We were there to disband an illegal gathering where distribution of narcotics was going on.” Gilbert also said not a single soul has filed a complaint with his office alleging abuse that night. Any takers out there?

Go and read it all in the Salt Lake City Weekly

The first is The Strange Metamorphosis of Senator Clinton.

“I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.”

Who recently blurted that out?

Pat Buchanan? Congressman Tom Tancredo? Nope, it was Hillary Clinton.

Which Democratic senator has expressed little public remorse in voting for 23 counts to authorize war against Iraq, and has scoffed, “Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade”?

Yep, Clinton again.

And who frowned on frequent abortion, hoping that it “does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances”?

Need I even answer that?

We all know that the New York senator is moving ever rightward, but why so brazenly and all of a sudden?

The depressing answer is clear for any Northern liberal who wishes to be president: No Democratic presidential candidate has been elected without a Southern accent in the half-century since 1960. If the country in the last half-century has grown more conservative, the South is emblematic of that shift.

John F. Kennedy’s long-ago success was by a razor-thin margin. He pulled it off by emphasizing national defense, space exploration and tax cuts that apparently created the necessary patina of conservatism that Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton later found naturally in their drawly good-old-boy personas.

In contrast, given the defeats of Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, it seems that liberals from above the Mason-Dixon line have little chance anymore of winning sufficient red states to capture the Electoral College. A sort-of-Southern-sounding Al Gore came close and won the popular vote in 2000.

Many on the left, however, feel that the medicine of moving the party to the center is worse than the disease of remaining irrelevant. That said, triangulation for a chameleon Sen. Clinton relies on an emotional base that will still cry Hillary, right or wrong.

Like her husband, Hillary Clinton generates just that diehard loyalty. Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform bill for which George W. Bush would have been demonized. Without a cry from Barbara Boxer or Al Franken, he pre-empted and bombed in the Balkans despite neither U.N. approval nor a vote of the U.S. Senate.

And another is actually a review of “The Myth of Islamic Tolerance” on Hanson’s site by Bruce Thornton. Read it all here.

One of the greatest impediments in our war against jihadist terrorism is the misinformation, half-truths, and outright lies about Islam entertained by many of our public intellectuals. Examples are easy to find; here’s one from the otherwise intelligent Gregg Easterbrook, Atlantic Monthly contributor and senior editor at The New Republic, from his recent book The Progress Paradox: “Most Muslims are good-hearted, peace-loving people, just as are most Christians and Jews. A small minority of Muslims are vicious fanatics. But then the Christian ethos has spawned its share of hideous killers, among them the terrorist Timothy McVeigh, and this tells us nothing about the typical Christian.” The obviously false analogy in the last sentence — McVeigh didn’t kill with the sanction of Christian theology or belief, which has no doctrine remotely close to jihad, and millions of Christians didn’t dance in the streets after the bombing in Oklahoma City — could stand as a textbook example of this logical fallacy.

Such ignorance — on display everywhere in the media, especially among those eager to rationalize away the Islamic roots of the latest terrorist murder — makes a book like The Myth of Islamic Tolerance particularly important. Robert Spencer, in earlier books like Islam Unveiled, Onward Muslim Soldiers, and the recent The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, as well as on his invaluable website Jihad Watch (jihadwatch.org), has already done yeoman’s work in documenting Islam’s fundamental intolerance, martial aggressiveness, and sanctioning of violence against non-Muslim infidels. The 58 essays in the current book attack root and branch the widespread Orwellian myth, recently given cinematic sanction in Kingdom of Heaven, that Islamic societies have been historically more tolerant and friendly to minorities than has been Western culture.

Some call it racial profiling. To me it is simply more efficient screening in the War on Terror. And as Charles Krauthammer says, we do not need to pat down elderly women from Poughkeepsie. And I’ll be damned if I want to see my liberty slip away to make one sector of our population more comfortable with a PC approach. We know who the enemy is:

–

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.

Read the whole thing.