The physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that the universe created itself. Here is the gist of John Lennox’s response to him, in the Mail:
According to Hawking, the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being. The Big Bang, he argues, was the inevitable consequence of these laws. ‘Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.’Lennox’s simple, commonsensical argument pleases and persuades me, while Hawking’s argument, that physical laws by themselves created the universe, reminds me, if this doesn’t seem too far afield, of the neoconservatives’ abstract view of America. The neocons are forever stating that certain ideas, certain ideas about universal rights and self-government, certain ideas on their own, certain ideas that are contained in our founding documents, created America and indeed are America. Furthermore, they believe not only that the ideas by themselves were sufficient to create and maintain America, but that the same ideas, by themselves, are sufficient to create and maintain copies of America everywhere in the world, in every country on earth. In reality, of course, America along with its founding documents could only have been created and maintained by human beings, and not just by any human beings, but by human beings with particular intentions and particular qualities. The neocons’ bloodless view of America is like Hawking’s godless view of the universe.Unfortunately, while Hawking’s argument is being hailed as controversial and ground-breaking, it is hardly new.…
… contrary to what Hawking claims, physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.
What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine.
That is a confusion of category. The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone had to build the thing, put in the fuel and start it up. The jet could not have been created without the laws of physics on their own—but the task of development and creation needed the genius of Whittle as its agent.
Stephen Hawking is to the universe
what the neocons are to America
In response to “U.S. airports versus Asian airports,” David M. writes:
I travel extensively in the U.S. When I travel on business I have such things as a light meter, electronic tape measure, a device that helps identify ballast types in light fixtures, and several other tools. Add to this my having two titanium knee joints and a CPAP machine and things become interesting to say the least. I’ve never been held for questioning, but clearing security is always a dragged-out process. Starting a few years ago, they started doing bench inspections of my CPAP machine rather than just letting it pass through the scanner. Now, I just take the weight penalty and pack it in my checked bag.The behavior of the TSA personnel has varied from very kind and understanding in Nashville TN, to rude and attitudinal at Detroit, to the behavior shown by prison camp train platform guards in Los Angeles.
My international experience is limited, but clearing customs and immigration in Thailand is generally three to five minutes maximum. Los Angeles, it takes two to three hours, depending on the backlog at the entry desks, whether or not the luggage conveyors are broken again, and the “coral” at baggage inspection.
My limit on airport indignities used to be trips of 400 miles or more—meaning that if my destination was fewer than 400 miles away, I would drive. It reached 500 after the knee replacements, and is well on its way to 600. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:00 PM
Rasmussen’s Daily Presidential Tracking Poll reports today:
Overall, 42% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. This matches the lowest approval rating yet measured for President Obama. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove.This will assuredly set off the usual shouts in the conservative Web about how Obama’s approval rating is “plummeting,” it’s in “free fall”—a “free fall” that has been going on for months yet somehow he’s still falling and hasn’t hit the ground yet.
But in the next paragraph Rasmussen has this clarification:
While the president’s daily rating is at the low end of the range today, a Month-by-Month review of the president’s numbers shows amazing stability. On a full-month basis, the president has been at 46% or 47% approval for nine straight months.How about that? His approval rating hasn’t been in free fall, it’s not falling at all, but has been quite steady. And now think about all those articles in the conservative Web over the last nine or so months acting as though Obama were in the act of crashing to the earth. MORE…
Karel De Gucht is the former Belgian foreign minister and now the European trade commissioner. The Wall Street Journal reports:
On Thursday, with the Middle East peace process in the news, Mr. De Gucht picked yet another fight. Jews, he told Belgian radio, have a “belief” that they are “always right.” He described his frustration at debating the Middle East because “it is not easy even with a moderate Jew to have a conversation.”Afterwards, he made some meaningless excuse that he hadn’t intended to “stigmatize” anyone.
Meanwhile, Jews are leaving France and other European countries because of the attacks on Jews being carried out by the Muslims whom the EU has welcomed into Europe.
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John Podhoretz writes:
[President Obama] is moving into the permanently-out-of-touch territory in which the Elder Bush found himself mired throughout his final year in office. When this president next week begins proposing expensive new measures to save us from a crisis he has just told us we are emerging from, he is going to compound the growing sense that he has no idea what he is doing or where to go to fix the mess.
Roy Beck has a hard hitting article at Numbers USA on the murders of illegal aliens attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico. As Clark Coleman puts it, “Especially interesting is the treatment of illegal aliens themselves. No sentimentality about how they are just looking for a better life, etc. It’s time we got past that position in our public rhetoric.”
Pro-Amnesty Groups Culpable In Record Deaths Of Illegal Aliens In U.S. Desert & MexicoBy Roy Beck, Sunday, August 29, 2010, 3:36 PM EDT—posted on NumbersUSA
Terrible recent reports of a record pace of deaths of illegal aliens in the U.S. desert and in Mexico at the hands of ruthless gangs point an accusatory finger at the political, media and religious leaders of this country who talk incessantly about their plans to reward the act of illegal immigration with U.S. citizenship.
It is not a stretch at all to say that people who talk big about winning a “comprehensive immigration reform” amnesty bear great guilt for enticing these illegal aliens to their deaths. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:50 PM
Charles T. writes:
There has been another case of someone throwing acid into someone’s face. This time in Arizona. This case involves two females as well. The article is at Fox.Here are some interesting quotes from the article:
“Investigators reportedly believe the incident was not a random attack and say the suspect hid behind Velarde’s vehicle, waiting for the 41-year-old to get out of work.”
So this is not being treated as a random event. However, in the Washington state attack, authorities do not believe the victim, in that case, was targeted. The article states: MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:43 PM
This past Monday, August 31, I wrote to a friend, with whom I was planning a car trip to Long Island on Thursday:
We need to keep track of possibility of a big hurricane moving into our area in mid week, affecting the City and Long Island, though it’s probably the media indulging in their usual overdramatics.Today the AP reports:I never watch network news but just turned it on for one minute. All three were discussing the hurricane. All three had this excessive tone of excitement, aimed at stirring up the fear and excitement of the viewers. Everything in network news is aimed at intensifying emotion, not informing the mind.
US says goodbye to Earl as storm spins into CanadaYARMOUTH, Mass.—In the end, Hurricane Earl wasn’t even as bad as some of the no-name nor’easters that pound New England from time to time.
The storm, far less intense than feared, brushed past the Northeast and dumped heavy, wind-driven rain on Cape Cod cottages and fishing villages, but caused little damage. It left clear, blue skies in its wake, the perfect start to the Labor Day weekend. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:01 PM
A friend makes a powerful and disturbing argument about the mosque debate. He says that the Ground Zero mosque opponents, by objecting only to the location of the mosque, are giving Muslims a golden opportunity to trick America into surrendering to Islamization.
All that the Cordoba Initiative needs to do is reverse its position and agree to move the mosque farther from the World Trade Center site. That will instantly end the controversy. Feisal Rauf will be universally praised for his conciliatory attitude, for proving that Muslims are moderate after all, for proving that Islam critics have been hysterically exaggerating the dangers of Islam. At the same time, the mosque opponents will have nothing left to complain about. In effect, all mosques in America that are not next to Ground Zero will henceforth be ok. There will be no basis to oppose the steady spread of mosques and Islam in our society, since the mosque opponents have made it such a principle that it is only the closeness of a mosque to Ground Zero that is objectionable.
The underlying problem, once again, is that the supposed Islam critics are not critics of Islam, but critics of “extreme” Islam, of “supremacist” Islam, of “insensitive” Islam. Therefore the Muslims simply need to pretend for a while not to be “extreme” and “insensitive,” and the critics of “extreme” and “insensitive” Islam, who already are declaring that they “love Muslims,” will open their arms to them even further, and the future steady Islamic takeover of America will be assured.
My friend predicts that a day or two before the scheduled 9/11 anti-mosque rally, Feisal Rauf will announce that he is moving the mosque to a different location. This will leave the 9/11 rally with no reason for taking place, and it will be cancelled. Or else, I would suggest, if it goes forward, its only remaining message will be praise for that great moderate Muslim Imam Rauf, who has shown the way to the successful assimilation of Islam into America.
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Is this a further aspect of how, according to the Bush supporters, the Iraq war made us more secure? CBN News reports:
‘Islamization’ of Paris a Warning to the WestPARIS—Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.
This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:34 PM
Understandably enough, Bush supporters have been consumed with the question of why Obama did not say anything positive about the Iraq war in his speech this week. He did not even repeat to the nation what he once said to a group of GIs at Fort Bliss, that the war made the United States more secure.
Paul at Powerline quotes Bush Defense Department official Douglas Feith on the various ways that the Iraq involvement made our nation more secure:
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Gintas writes:
Steve Burton calls himself a “Fellow Traveller” at What’s Wrong with the World, because
for the record, and just so there’s no misunderstanding: I’m still gay, and I’m still agnostic—and I’m still way into “human bio-diversity.”Did I know this? I didn’t think I did, and I search my Google mail archives, and I find this mail I sent to you over a year ago. I was wondering how Burton even got a spot posting at WWWtW, especially in view of Paul Cella’s calling him “illustrious,” seeing as he had no track record as a philosopher or online writing. I’ve bolded my joke. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 05:52 PM
Note to readers: I will not be posting comments presenting various theories about the “true” circumstances of Obama’s birth and why he has concealed them. As I have remarked in the past, such theories in their very multiplicity make the issue far too complicated for anyone to grasp, and they only cancel each other out, since only one of them can be true, and thus they have the practical effect of letting Obama off the hook. Instead, the birthers (and I am one) should stay with the minimal and undeniably true position, which is that we do not know the facts of Obama’s birth, that Obama and the State of Hawaii have not revealed his birth certificate, and that this is totally unacceptable. Finally, that minimal, absolutely solid position is also the position of Lt. Col. Lakin. This was reproduced at Diana West’s blog, from Stand-Up America, the blog of Gen. Paul Vallely (US Army ret.):
Washington, D.C., August 31, 2010.Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney has supplied an affidavit in support of Army Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin, who faces trial on October 13-15. The retired Air Force three-star is the highest ranking officer yet to lend public support to LTC Lakin. His affidavit acknowledges widespread concerns over the President’s Constitutional eligibility and demands the President release his birth records or the court authorize discovery. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:27 PM
When Robert Spencer, speaking on behalf of himself and his anti-jihad partner Pamela Geller yesterday at Jihad Watch, called the planned 9/11 rally against the Ground Zero mosque “our protest,” meaning Spencer’s and Geller’s protest, that was not a slip of the tongue. He’s done it again today:
A message from Pamela and Robert:We are grateful that a wide spectrum of 9/11 families have declared their unequivocal support for our September 11 Rally of Remembrance honoring the victims of 9/11 and ensuring that their memories will not be desecrated by the construction of an Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero.
Based on a story in the Dutch newspaper de Telegraaf, Reuters reports today that a Muslim cleric in Australia, Feiz Muhammad, has called for the beheading of Geert Wilders. Up to this point the threats against Wilders’s life, going back to 2004, have come from anonymous Muslim sources in the Netherlands. Now they are coming from a public Muslim leader. We know that “inciting discrimination” against certain minorities is a crime throughout Europe and the Anglosphere. Is calling for the murder of an individual a crime in Australia?
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I discussed the other day how the Israel-Palestinian peace talks currently being conducted at the White House are beyond farcical and not worth paying the slightest attention to. However, here is an aspect of the farce, explained by the Christian Science Monitor, that few of us are even aware of. The term of office of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, which began in January 2005, expired in January 2009. It was then extended by members of the non-functioning Palestinian Legislative Council. The illegitimate extension is due to expire next January. But since the PA feels that if Abbas leaves office, the PA could collapse, it has once again extended his term of office beyond next January. One reason the PA doesn’t want new elections is that it is afraid it would lose them to Hamas. Hamas of course defeated Fatah, the party of Abbas, in legislative elections several years ago and then violently seized control of Gaza. Hamas does not recognize Israel’s existence and is formally committed to Israel’s destruction. Yet Gaza is part of the Palestinian Authority which is supposedly negotiating with Israel. So we have “peace talks” between, on one side, Israel, and, on the other side, an entity, the PA, the president of which is illegitimately in office, and a major section of the territory of which is under the power of a different entity that opposes the very idea of peace with Israel.
CORRECTION: the pantomime of the handshaking smiling zombies is not taking place at the White House with Obama as the mediator, as I had thought, but at the State Department with Hillary Clinton as the mediator. Nor is it an ongoing meeting until they reach an agreement, but rather a one-time meeting. Here’s what they agreed on today: that they will meet again in two weeks (in Sharm el-Sheikh), and then once every two weeks after that, until they reach an agreement, with the aim of reaching a peace treaty within one year. So this is not like Camp David in summer 2000, when the parties met together until they either produced an agreement or didn’t; it’s not like the White House in January 2001, when the parties met together until they produced an agreement or didn’t. Rather it’s an agreement to engage in a series of meaningless one-day meetings once every two weeks.
Hillary reproducing role of her husband in ‘93—
First time tragedy, second time farce
A 49 year old female doctor in Bakersfield, California pursues her estranged 58 year old man friend by climbing down his chimney, gets stuck in the chimney, and dies of asphyxiation.
I see it as further evidence of the hyper egotism and aggression that sexual liberation and feminism have planted in the female sex, and that have made them lose their minds.
Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac in 2007.
BAKERSFIELD, CALIF. Cops: Woman gets stuck, dies entering by chimneySince Kotarac was born in 1960 or ‘61, it’s a fair assumption that she was named after Jacquelyn Kennedy. Thus a namesake of the quintessence of femininity loses her life by climbing down a chimney to chase a man. That sort of sums up the transformation of women over the last fifty years, doesn’t it?Police say a California doctor apparently tried to get into the home of the man she had been dating by sliding down the chimney. Her decomposing body was found there days later. Police Sgt. Mary DeGeare says investigators do not suspect foul play in the death of Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac. Authorities say the 49-yearold apparently climbed on the roof Wednesday night, removed the chimney cap and slid feet first down the flue after unsuccessfully trying to get into the house other ways. DeGeare says the man whom Kotarac was pursuing had left the home unnoticed to avoid a confrontation. The body went undiscovered for several days until someone noticed odors coming from the fireplace.
Here is a much fuller article, from the Bakersfield Californian:
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Paul Nachman sends this, from Dennis Prager’s current column:
Little has changed regarding the Left’s inability to identify and confront evil. And its moral equation of good guys and bad guys was made evident again in recent weeks by hosts on three major liberal networks—ABC, NPR and PBS.First, on May 25, PBS host Tavis Smiley interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the ex-Muslim Somali writer and activist for human, especially women’s, rights in Islamic countries. After mentioning American Muslim terrorists Maj. Nidal Hasan (who murdered 13 and injured 30 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood) and Faisal Shahzad (who attempted to murder hundreds in Times Square), this dialogue ensued: MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:48 AM
An Indian living in the West writes:
I found your recent comment about the idiotic security procedures in American airports very interesting.I can certainly compare the process in American airports with those in other countries. During my business travels I have been amazed at the efficiency of airports in East Asia. During my last trip through Singapore, South Korea and Japan, I spent no more than five minutes from the moment I stepped out of the aircraft to the moment I got into a taxi. On my last trip to the US, it took me nearly 90 minutes to get through immigration alone. It was stupid beyond belief.
From September 1 at Astronomy Picture of the Day, what the earth and moon look like as seen from near the planet Mercury.
An Indian living in the West writes:
Please watch this about Tony Blair when you have time. It opened new insights for me.LA replies:
Can you give me a little hint what it says? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:28 PM
A VFR commenter said ironically earlier today that the Discovery Channel gunman, an environmentalist radical, was at least on the conservative side, in that he is an immigration restrictionist. Now that turns out not to be the case.
Discovery Channel gunman prosecuted here for alien smuggling
Lee, slain after standoff in Maryland, was sentenced to 18 months in prisonRecords in U.S. District Court in San Diego show that a James Jae Lee was sentenced in August 2003 to 18 months in federal prison for trying to smuggle an illegal immigrant in a hidden compartment in a car through the San Ysidro Port of Entry. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 06:30 PM
Whatever question they have about human nature, or, rather, whatever view of human nature they want to push, the Darwinists, liberals, and libertarians find the “answer” in some evolutionary adaptation that they imagine took place among hunter gatherers 50,000 years ago. The latest view they want to push is that female sexual promiscuity is the natural form of human society. Wendy Shalit does a hilarious send-up:
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Robert Spencer writes at Jihad Watch:
Please bring flags, not signs, to the 9/11 rally against the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground ZeroMORE…Pamela and I respectfully request that those of you who will be attending our protest against the Ground Zero mega mosque bring American flags, not signs. 9 x 12 sized flags. Nothing with big poles: the NYPD won’t allow big poles. Please get the word out now.
We are asking that we all respect and honor that day with the flags, states flags, flags of other countries … lots of flags … PLEASE don’t bring signs. Nothing politically aggressive on a day of mourning. It is a solemn day. No signs. FLAGS. Tens of thousands of flags.…
Thomas Bertonneau writes:
How does environmentalist hostage-taker James J. Lee sum up the intellectually low-grade, but emotionally high-powered Gnosticism that today dominates our social and cultural environment? Let us count the ways.Lee was apparently fixated on a book, presumably for children, by environmentalist writer Daniel Quinn. According to the Kirkus review posted by Amazon, My Ishmael (a sequel to Ishmael) concerns “a telepathic ape who dispenses ecological wisdom about the possible doom of humankind.” The review tells us further that: “Once more, Quinn focuses on the Leavers and Takers, his terms for the two basic, warring kinds of human sensibility. The planet’s original inhabitants, the Leavers, were nomadic people who did no harm to the earth. The Takers, who began as aggressive farmers obsessed with growth, were the builders of cities and empires, and have now, in the late 20th century, largely run out of space to monopolize.” The rhetorical gimmick of My Ishmael is that Ishmael (a distinctly Muslim name), comes into telepathic communion with a twelve-year-old girl, Julie Gerchak, “who is wise beyond her years, having had to deal with an alcoholic, self-destructive mother.” Inspired by Ishmael, Julie conceives “an earnest desire to save the world.” MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:47 PM
Yesterday I briefly mentioned former New Jersey governor James McGreevey. Here, from August 2004, are my reflections on McGreevey’s weirdly proud resignation statement after it was revealed that he had made his Israeli boyfriend, who had no experience in security matters, the head of the state’s Homeland Security department with a six figure salary.
Turning failure and wrongdoing into an official identityWith his remarkable resignation/coming out announcement, especially its most memorable line, “My truth is that I am a gay American,” Governor James McGreevey has inaugurated a new cultural dispensation in American life. From now on, whenever anyone is put on the spot for some failure or wrongdoing, he can follow McGreevey’s model and turn his inadequacy, objectionable conduct, or crime into the name of a new, and presumably victimized, and of course proud, minority group. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:10 AM
Perhaps the radical environmentalist James J. Lee was driven to his act of criminal violence by the continuing discrediting and collapse of the manmade global warming fraud, as reported today by Matthew Patterson in the New York Post:
Meltdown of the climate ‘consensus’If this keeps up, no one’s going to trust any scientists.
The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.
For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world’s governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium—and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to “save the planet.” MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:03 AM
Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding cultures.James J. Lee, the gunman who took hostages yesterday at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Virginia with bombs strapped to his body and whom police snipers shot dead before he could harm anyone, was simply carrying to its logical end the radical environmentalist worldview: human life is no good.
— James J. Lee
Here is AP’s story, updated this morning. I am told by Clark Coleman that in the original AP story, posted yesterday, the headline and lead paragraph created the impression that Lee was a right wing anti-environmentalist. Only further down in the body of the article did it become clear that he was a left-wing environmentalist. Let’s also not forget that the left, including the New York Times, treated the Unibomber, another leftist assassin opposed to technology, as a hero.
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In a counter-comment to the thread on Afghan pederasty, a reader tells about the very positive experiences that a friend of his, a U.S. Army major, had in dealing with Afghan villagers. I reply that the positive relationships that Americans may develop with individual Afghanis tells us nothing about the success of our policy overall.
Title VII of the Act gave the federal government the revolutionary power to force private employers to hire people whom the government said they must hire. Namely the Act declares that employers in making hiring decisions cannot discriminate on the basis of race, religion, and national origin. Thus if a clothing store chooses not to hire a saleswoman wearing a Muslim head covering, that is religious discrimination, and the federal government has the power to sue the store.
And we’re supposed to believe that Glenn Beck’s embrace of this unconstitutional, leftist law is part of a brilliant strategy by Beck to empower constitutionalist conservatism in America.
Who you gonna believe—Beck or your lying eyes?
Feds sue Abercrombie & Fitch over Muslim scarf
San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 2010(09-01) 17:51 PDT MILPITAS—A federal civil rights agency sued Abercrombie & Fitch on Wednesday on behalf of an 18-year-old woman who said she applied for her first job at the company’s store at the Great Mall in Milpitas and was turned down because she wore a Muslim head scarf.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission went to court against Abercrombie & Fitch last year over a similar incident in Tulsa, Okla. In Wednesday’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the agency again accused the Ohio company of discriminating on the basis of religion. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:42 AM
A blogger named Lexington Green thinks he’s figured out Glenn Beck. Beck, he says, is a genius who has transcended the usual political paralysis. By giving conservatives/Americans confidence in themselves and in America, he is empowering conservatism in a way that normal conservatism cannot do.
Hmm, let’s see if I understand this. Beck is empowering conservatives, by giving them an overwhelmingly liberal message?
Look, either Beck is a wayward clown, and I’m right to reject him, or Beck is a genius, and I’m wrong. If I turn out to be wrong, I’ll happily admit it. But for now, I see him as a clown, and I’ve given my reasons why.
Here is Lexington Green’s entry:
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The assailant was a stranger and the attack was unprovoked. MSNBC does not mention the race of the assailant until the last sentence of the article.
Acid attacker: ‘Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this?’
Wash. woman in serious condition after unprovoked attack in VancouverVANCOUVER, Wash.—A 28-year-old woman severely burned when a stranger threw an acid-like liquid in her face was listed in serious condition in a Oregon hospital.
Bethany Storro, of Vancouver, Wash., was getting something out of her car in downtown Vancouver when the attack happened Monday evening, her mother Nancy Neuwelt told The Oregonian.
Neuwelt said a young woman walked up to her daughter, said: “Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this?” and tossed a cup of liquid in Storro’s face. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 05:19 PM
As Hanna Saigo writes at Alternative Right, based on the reporting of liberal William Saletan at Slate, Glenn Beck’s rally took “white self-flagellation to a completely unheard of level.” Here is the entire article:
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One thing about the surge must be acknowledged: that it quieted things down enough, for the time being, to allow our forces—or at least our fighting forces—to leave. “Things being quiet enough for the time being to allow our forces to leave” is not victory, but it is a success of sorts, especially when we remember the alternative: Iraq as it was in late 2006 and early 2007, with sectarian murders everywhere, with the country on the verge of collapse into chaotic violence, and with fears of a ruinous U.S. withdrawal. So even if, as Diana West points out, the second, political goal of the surge—namely a functioning, pro-Western Iraqi government—was not reached, the fact that the first, security goal of the surge—namely a reduction of violence and increase of personal safety—was reached, was of decisive importance, and should be acknowledged by critics of President Bush.
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A weird story in Britain. Foreign Minister and acting prime minister William Hague (you may remember him as the somewhat clownish Conservative Party leader in the late 1990s) is publicly denying that his relationship with a 25 year old male advisor, Christopher Myers, is anything other than professional. Apparently the suspicion that it is other than professional is based on three factors: (1) Hague has appointed Myers as his special policy advisor, with salary paid from public funds, though Myers has little policy experience (echoes of New Jersey’s Gov. James [“I am a Gay American”] McGreevey a few years ago who installed his Israeli boyfriend in a six figure state position); (2) a year old photograph of a casually dressed Hague and Myers chummily walking together on the Victoria Embankment in Westminster (which evidently has some particular significance to the Brits); and (3) they shared a hotel room during the general election campaign. Factor number three means nothing; men who are traveling together or attending a conference share hotel rooms as a matter of course. But Factor number one does raise questions. And as for Factor two, that photo does look rather, how shall I say …
Indeed, according to Canada’s National Post, Cameron is taking several weeks off from his job to be with his new born daughter and his wife:
From politics to parenthood: U.K. PM takes paternity leave
Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010
He is the father of a newborn baby girl, who, like millions of other dads, wants to take some time off work to spend those first few precious days bonding with the new addition to the family and providing support to the recovering mother. But when David Cameron takes the next few weeks off work [emphasis added] following the birth of his fourth child, a daughter named Florence Rose Endellion, he will become the first British prime minister—and possibly the first world leader ever—to take his statutory paternity leave. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:39 AM
Sometimes you don’t need to read entire articles and debates about an issue to understand it; a single phrase can be enough.
Thus today’s Wall Street Journal says about Obama’s speech last night on the end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq:
“He gave short shrift to Iraq as a potential democratic example in the autocratic Middle East…”
The Journal is dissatisfied that Obama did not boast that Iraq has been made into an example of democracy in the Middle East. But note the adjective preceding the words “democratic example”: “potential”. That sort of alters the idea, doesn’t it? Does the Journal seriously expect Obama to boast that Iraq has been made into merely a “potential” democratic example ? If it’s only a potential democratic example, then it’s not actually a democratic example, is it? In which case, what is there for Obama to boast of?
This ambiguity runs through all the recent pro-Bush, pro-democratization conservative discussions about the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq. On one hand, the neoconservatives loudly tell us that Iraq has been a great “success.” On the other hand, they keep quietly letting on (though rarely in the same sentence as the sentence in which they assert the success, as they did in this case) that this “success” has, uh, hmm, well, not actually occurred yet, but is still a hope for something that may happen in the future.
This dishonest way of speaking has characterized the neocon treatment of the Iraq democratization policy from the beginning. They kept touting their various hopes—for “success,” for “victory,” for “democracy,” for “Iraq as an example of democracy,” and, finally, for the “spread of democracy in the Middle East”—as things that had already been achieved or that were so close to achievement that we could regard them as already achieved. The dishonesty was so built into the neocons’ thought and speech patterns, was so automatic for them, that I believe they never recognized that it was dishonest. For them, what they expected and guaranteed would turn out to be true, was already true. Their hopes were reality. They have now lived in this psychopathy for seven years.
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An Australian TV news program has a long (about 20 minutes) segment on Geert Wilders. Despite the host’s open hostility to Wilders, the program—utterly unlike what would happen on U.S. television—gives a fair view of him and his positions. It is the fullest media presentation of Wilders, and of his place in Dutch politics, that I’ve seen. To be watching a mainstream television news show and see Wilders say, in his reasonable yet firm and determined manner, that Islam is a threat to the West and that its ingress into the Netherlands must be stopped, period, is thrilling. Among other things, he is light years beyond the American conservative anti-jihadists, who to this very moment, and despite their support for Wilders, are unable to state that Islam is the problem, that Islam must be stopped, that Islam doesn’t belong in the West. The anti-jihadists—with their attacks on “Islamism,” not Islam, with their “I love Muslims, I just don’t want the mosque to be so close to Ground Zero,” are frightened and uncertain children who stick their toe into the water of the Islam problem and then run back to mommy. Wilders is an adult who has grasped the simple truth about Islam and states it without equivocation.
When the West has acquired more adults like Wilders, it will proceed to save itself. And—who knows?—maybe some of the currently still frightened Islamism critics will be among them.
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Political controversies are too much with us. For a change to something more leisurely, here is the meditative and delightful opening passage of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, or The Whale. I suggest reading it aloud.
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:21 AM
I’ve been wanting to say this for weeks, but just got around to it now, in response to a reader’s comment.
(Note: see Mark Jaws’s forceful disagreement with Buddy’s and my comments. See my idea on how white conservatives should reply when they are accused of racism simply because no nonwhites come to their meetings. And see the continuing discussion in “Pro Palin, Pro Beck.”)
Buddy in Atlanta writes:
You wrote:LA replies:“Commenters who think that there is some implied racial conservatism in the Beck followers that has the potential of emerging are, I fear, kidding themselves.”
The attendees at Beck’s rally were eager to show their non-racist bona fides, as in this picture:
And these efforts win them no points with leftists. The liberals at Pandagon, where I found this photo, are tearing these guys apart for being racist—who but a racist would carry around a sign asking “Do We Look Racist?”
That is one of the most pathetic sights I’ve seen. But how can we blame them? The whole society, or at least the right half of the society, sends out the message that this is the way for whites to behave. George W. Bush would literally say, “How can I be a racist, since Condi, my National Security Advisor / Secretary of State, is black?”, while Condi, as clueless, tone-deaf, and lacking in taste as her boss, participated in the idiocy. And in addition to being pathetic and weak from a conservative point of view, these eagerly non-racist whites, whether Bush or the white men in the photo, don’t see how offensive it is from a liberal or just a human point of view—-how condescending it is to use a black person as a prop to demonstrate one’s own virtue. So these whites degrade both their own dignity and that of the black people whom they treat as badges, while the blacks who willingly join in the charade, whether Condoleezza Rice or the black man in the photo, are blind or indifferent to how they are degrading their own dignity. That’s what right-liberalism does to people—it takes away their humanity and makes them see themselves as symbolic abstractions. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:10 PM
Do you want to lose any chance of stopping America’s transformation into a Hispanicized, Islamized, Third-World country? Then support Glenn Beck, as I explain here.
The blogger Stag Heath links to the VFR entry on Afghan pederasty and adds some pungent comments of his own. Here are excerpts:
I will only add that the whole filthy, stinking cesspool that we call the “Middle East” is not worth a scratch on a U.S. Marine. Leave them to their buggery and their Korans. And keep them, and all the other adherents of that sinister cult, out of our country.…That there are entire nations in the world that are so depraved as to tolerate such conduct is no surprise. Our great-grandparents knew the score. That’s why they didn’t want large numbers of them coming here. Sadly, after years of heavy-handed indoctrination from every conceivable medium, we have been lulled into a dream world where we actually came to believe that—what was it W used to say?—”the desire for freedom is written in every human heart.” Right.…
On the one hand we have a party that, if you turn your back on them for ten minutes, will turn the country into Cuba Norte. The other one tells you to get a patriotic lump in your throat because they are sending your son to have his leg blown off so a nation of Mohammedan sodomites can have “free and fair elections.”
LA writes:
Stag Heath wrote:
The other [party] tells you to get a patriotic lump in your throat because they are sending your son to have his leg blown off so a nation of Mohammedan sodomites can have “free and fair elections.”Unfortunately, it’s not just the Republican Party to which that description applies. It’s the Tea Party, it’s Glenn Beck, it’s the “Restoring Honor” rally where a major theme, embodied in Sarah Palin’s speech, was support for the U.S. military. Well, what is it that the U.S. military is principally doing right now? It’s over there, nation-building a nation of Mohammedan sodomites. This is what the 300,000 patriotic conservatives last Saturday were actually cheering, though they didn’t realize it. What naive conservatives like Beck and Palin and their followers don’t understand is that all our national symbols have been taken over by liberalism. Therefore, as long as these conservatives fail to recognize and criticize this fact, their support for various national symbols, such as the military, is support for liberalism.
Robert Spencer writing at Human Events finds a reason other than liberal saintliness for Mayor Bloomberg’s over-the-top support for the Ground Zero mosque: his financial data and news service business, which made him one of the richest men in America, has been greatly expanding its operations in Arab countries in recent years, and, while its profits elsewhere have been languishing. its profits in the Middle East have been increasing:
Imagine how quickly that revenue stream would dry up if Bloomberg sided with the people whom Rauf and other leaders of the Ground Zero mosque initiative are busy smearing as “Islamophobes” and “bigots.” When his company is doing poorly worldwide except in the Middle East, it couldn’t have been hard for Bloomberg to see on which side his bread was buttered.The “conflict of interest,” Spencer concludes, makes Bloombergt’s “moral dudgeon over the mosque opponents appear hollow and hypocritical.”
James N. writes:
Since 2005, I have learned so much from VFR. It has clarified my thinking on many subjects and opened up new vistas for me to explore. I’m very grateful for the enormous effort that you put into it.I must say, though, that your view of elections—the right way to think about them, and what purpose you believe they serve, is somewhat obscure to me.
Beck turning out 300 000 good guys on the Mall on a bestial day in August is a great achievement. Millions of people (a/k/a voters) identify with Palin. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:58 PM
Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in the August 29 Washington Post:
As nationalism rises, will the European Union fall?The European Union is dying—not a dramatic or sudden death, but one so slow and steady that we may look across the Atlantic one day soon and realize that the project of European integration that we’ve taken for granted over the past half-century is no more. [LA replies: Yes! Let that day come.]
Europe’s decline is partly economic. The financial crisis has taken a painful toll on many E.U. members, and high national debts and the uncertain health of the continent’s banks may mean more trouble ahead. But these woes pale in comparison with a more serious malady: From London to Berlin to Warsaw, Europe is experiencing a renationalization of political life, with countries clawing back the sovereignty they once willingly sacrificed in pursuit of a collective ideal. [LA replies: Nice choice of words. Sovereignty is a nasty thing that you evilly “claw” at, not a fundamental aspect of political and cultural existence that you rightfully claim.]
For many Europeans, that greater good no longer seems to matter. They wonder what the union is delivering for them, and they ask whether it is worth the trouble. If these trends continue, they could compromise one of the most significant and unlikely accomplishments of the 20th century: an integrated Europe, at peace with itself, seeking to project power as a cohesive whole. The result would be individual nations consigned to geopolitical irrelevance—and a United States bereft of a partner willing or able to shoulder global burdens. [LA replies: It has been the establishment’s assumption all along that the only way the countries of Europe can be relevant on the international stage is by joining together in a monstrous superstate. But is the assumption true? Maybe if the states of Europe had not poured their energies into the spirit-deadening EU project for the last several decades, maybe if they had not given up their sovereignty, liberty, and identity to the EU, they would be more significant than they are. But such a possibility cannot be raised by the likes of Kupchan, because it implies that nationhood is something positive, and once nationhood is seen as something positive, the EU loses its entire rationale. For the EU project to succeed, the nation must be seen as something bad, just as, for homosexual “marriage” to be instituted, the traditional institution of marriage must be seen as something unjust ] MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 05:48 PM
Afghanistan probably has the most pederastic culture on earth—yet we think we have some big investment in whether one group of Pashtun pederasts runs the country or another. See Diana West’s article, which in turn is based on Joel Brinkley’s reporting in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Here is the Washington Times’ editorial on the Defense Department’s supposed report on the lessons learned from the Fort Hood massacre. A calmly written editorial, or a hundred calmly written editorials, is not sufficient response. The reason the Army did nothing about Maj. Nidal Hasan with his openly threatening jihadist and pro-terror statements was that he was a Muslim. The report, by remaining silent on the Islamic nature of Hasan’s motives and murders, is continuing and raising to a higher level the very behavior that allowed the mass murder to take place. So this is worse than the “harming diversity would be a greater tragedy than stopping the mass murder” remark of Army chief of staff George Casey. That was a comment by one high-ranking official. This report represents the considered, collective, official response by the Defense Department. There is an enemy within, threatening us, killing us, and our own government is consciously and deliberately covering up his existence. If the government gets away with this, we will have taken a large step toward a Britain-like condition of political death.
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In the last half of his column in today’s New York Times, Ross Douthat gives his interpretation of the Glenn Beck event:
… the pageant effortlessly tapped into the same rich vein of identity politics that has given us figures as diverse as Palin and Howard Dean, George W. Bush and Barack Obama—but did so, somehow, without advancing any explicitly political agenda.If Douthat is right, and Beck is a figure in whom people merely see and affirm themselves, then he is no more significant than Sarah Palin. MORE…Now more than ever, Americans love leaders who seem to validate their way of life.… In a sense, Beck’s “Restoring Honor” was like an Obama rally through the looking glass. It was a long festival of affirmation for middle-class white Christians—square, earnest, patriotic and religious.… Beck proved that he can conjure the thrill of a culture war without the costs of combat, and the solidarity of identity politics without any actual politics.
Clive Crook at the Atlantic, evidently a Brit from his name, has some observations about Glenn Beck (and Sarah Palin) that echo my own thoughts exactly:
Doubtless it marks me out as a member of the uncomprehending godless elite, but I find the popularity of Glenn Beck very hard to understand. Sarah Palin’s popularity, I think I do understand. However much of an illusion it may be—all politicians deal in illusions—she projects an appealing, proud, self-sufficient ordinariness that makes her a credible spokesman for many Americans. Beck sets himself up not as a spokesman so much as an inspirational teacher and guide, blackboard and all. There he stands, with the answer to everything, gravely propounding his theories of life, the universe and everything that surrounds it. Wrapped up in his own psychodrama, his self-regard seems limitless.He strikes me as a huckster drunk on his own pitch, a true believer in his own cult, ready to hurtle off the rails at any moment… MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:14 AM
Michelle Malkin writes:
This weekend, on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, civil rights activists and hip-hop stars will hold what they call a “healing ceremony” to commemorate the disaster. President Obama will speak at a separate event in New Orleans on Sunday. But don’t expect any of these reconciliation-seeking leaders to confront the indelible stain of racial demagoguery left by the left in Katrina’s aftermath. Hating George W. Bush means never having to say you’re sorry.We know this country is mad for anniversaries—but celebrating the five year anniversary of a hurricane? I think the only reason Obama and the left are commemorating Hurricane Katrina is that this is the anniversary of which they can sing:
The Night We Drove George W. Bush Down
And all the bell were ringing
The Night We Drove George W. Bush Down
And all the people were singing
They went, Nah, nah nah nah nah, nah
Nah nah, hah nah, nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah.
Lively discussions continue in the threads on the most succinct statement of the Islam problem, the contradictions of the Beckites, and Elin Nordegren.
In the person of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who showily and with supreme self-righteousness extends liberal tolerance to a religion that is bent on destroying all tolerance, liberalism is simultaneously consummating itself and committing suicide. It is liberalism’s Liebestot (“Love and Death”) moment.
That’s my interpretation of Diana West’s column, copied below.
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A commenter writes at Rick Darby’s blog:
Now we know that the majority of Muslims are peaceful and law abiding. There is no doubt though, that once the Muslim population in any country is large enough, Muslims are required to institute sharia, and they will do so. The distinction between “moderate” or “radical” Muslims is thus totally meaningless in this context. It also means, that all Muslims, including peaceful ones, are an existential threat.That is the single most succinct statement of the problem I have seen.
Unfortunately, the same commenter then goes on to wring his hands at the supposed impossibility of stopping and reversing the immigration of Muslims. He is putting the cart before the horse. Once Americans clearly recognize the nature of the problem, the problem could be solved. There are, after all, only about two or three million Muslims in this country, and the majority of them are non-citizens who could be removed from the U.S. simply by taking away their residency privileges.
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The tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who were gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial today for Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” event share the conviction that they are trying to return America to constitutional government. Yet the rhetorical and emotional centerpiece of the gathering was support for Martin Luther King’s racial vision, and thus support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which gave the federal government the revolutionary power to tell a private employer whom he must hire.
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The August 26 New York Post has lengthy excerpts from Elin Nordegren’s silence-breaking interview with People magazine which was published immediately after the announcement of her divorce from Tiger Woods. It’s worth reading. While I had trouble at first believing her claim that she had absolutely no idea of her husband’s industrial-scale infidelities, she repeatedly says how embarrassed she is that she had no idea, and finally one must give her the benefit of the doubt. Also, when we remember that each of Woods’s myriad girlfriends believed that she was the only one he really cared for, we realize that Woods had an exceptionable ability to compartmentalize himself and convince whichever woman he with of his sincerity, and this makes it more believable that he could have fooled his wife as well.
The impact of the interview is desolating. Nordegren thought she had a husband, a marriage, and a family, and found out she didn’t: “It seemed that my world as I thought it was had never existed.” She says that “we tried for months and months” to salvage the marriage, before she finally realized that a marriage “without trust and love” wouldn’t work out. The impression you get of Woods is of a man without a soul.
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VFR’s favorite moron, Bob Herbert, now in the 19th year of his life-time affirmative action sinecure on the New York Times op-ed page, tells us how evil Glenn Beck really is. If Herbert’s pathetically stupid indictment of Beck as a “vicious,” “execrable” racial provocateur is the kind of thing that Beck thinks he must defend himself against by going overboard with liberal race rhetoric, that gives you an idea of how confused Beck himself is.
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Sorry folks, but I don’t take seriously a “conservative” leader who supports homosexual “marriage,” who keeps telling his audiences that American history is filled with racial atrocities (thus implying that it would have been better if whites had never developed a civilization on this continent), and who regards the 1964 Civil Rights Act—the law that gave birth to the modern liberal order—as his ideal of politics.
Yes, I understand that the leftist media see Beck as a radical right-winger. But I don’t take my compass readings of the political world from the leftist media. The conservatism of so many conservatives today is merely reactive: if the left attacks, say, George W. Bush or John McCain or Sarah Palin, labeling them as extreme right-wingers, the “conservatives” all assume that the left’s targets really are right-wingers, and they rally to their defense. What is needed is a conservatism grounded in its own principles, not a conservatism based on what the left calls conservatism.
I also understand that Beck thinks he can parry the constant charges of racism directed against him and the Tea Party by claiming to be more anti-racist than the liberals. But has conservatism ever advanced itself by dancing to the liberals’ tune? Conservatives and Republicans have been doing that forever. Has everyone forgotten the Republican Party’s three day minority dog and pony show at the 2000 Republican National Convention? The purpose of that was to disarm the liberal view of the Republicans as racists. Even if the dog and pony show helped the “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush get elected president, did it help advance conservatism? No. The victory of “compassionate conservatism” weakened conservatism, empowered big government, and led to the loss of direction and the demoralization of the Republican party, which led to the huge Democratic victory in 2008 and the passage of Obamacare. Conservatives who think they’re being smart by adopting liberal rhetoric and symbols are still the Stupid Party.
If you still don’t understand why Beck’s and the Tea Party’s embrace of a “color blind, post racial” America, the America of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, is problematic from a conservative point of view, just ask yourself this: why do we now have Islamic sharia spreading in America? Why do we have Muslims as a powerful influence in American life and politics? Why do we have American politicians and the entire mainstream media supporting the construction of a giant Islamic victory mosque across the street from the destroyed World Trade Center? Why are our airports crippled with humiliating security measures? For one reason and one reason only: we have a large number of Muslims in America. And how did we get a large number of Muslims in America? Through the principle of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the principle that all groups must be treated the same no matter how different they actually are, the principle that discrimination is the supreme evil that must be eliminated. That principle led directly from the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the 1965 Immigration Act, which allowed people from every country, including Muslims, to immigrate on an equal numerical basis into America. And that’s the principle that still makes it impossible for us today even to imagine stopping, let alone reversing, Muslim immigration. The only way we can save America from Islam is to start discriminating against Muslims, as a group that is radically incompatible with and hostile to our way of life. And we cannot do that so long as we make non-discrimination our supreme ideal.
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John Podhoretz in today’s New York Post explains why liberals so strongly support Feisal Rauf of the Ground Zero mosque—he speaks their lingo, using the standard leftist arguments that justify America’s enemies and blame America for everything:
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The developer of the Ground Zero mosque, Sharif el-Gamal, 37, paid $4.8 million in cash one year ago for the building where the mosque is to be built. Yet a few years earlier he was working as a waiter in Manhattan restaurants, and no one who knows him has any idea of where he got millions. This intriguing information comes from a website called Hyscience, which links several reports by Fox News on el-Gamal’s background, or lack of background. Gamel himself refuses to speak to reporters or to say where the money came from.
The eponymous author of the blog OneSTDV writes:
Friday post at OneSTDV: I argue for the utility of traditional religion in opposing the modern leftist church.
It’s a common aphorism that a society not sufficiently conservative will become liberal. Well perhaps I’ll add a corollary:
A society lacking a traditionally religious construct will adopt pseudo-religious ideas inexorably linked to the current liberal zeitgeist. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:01 PM
In the thread, “The need for a better word for anti-Semitism,” a reader makes another suggestion, “Enemies of the Jews.” But I say, what about simply, “anti-Jews”?
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The anti-Auster obsessive “Awake” (a.k.a. Mike Slumber) delivers himself of a long comment at Jihad Watch denouncing me in highly personal terms for my criticism of Pamela Geller’s attack on the August 22 anti-mosque rally. A couple of commenters point out how silly is his argument.
His main beef is that I did not explain Geller’s reason for her attack, and that this shows that I don’t care about the truth and am just out to get her. The truth is that I did not understand her reason for the attack. The attack seemed senseless to me, as it did to many other people, including several commenters at Jihad Watch, including also Herbert London, one of the August 22 speakers of whom Geller said, “I have no idea who these people are,” even though Mr. London, the president of the Hudson Institute, spoke at Geller’s own rally in June! In fact, I said at the end of my entry that since Geller’s attack on the rally didn’t make any sense, maybe she was mixing up the August 22 rally with some other ally that she thought was problematic. In other words, I was looking for an excuse for her behavior. That’s not what someone does who is trying to discredit a person at all costs.
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James P. writes:
In this item from the Washington Times, see the quote of Patrick Poole at the bottom. These are the people we are recruiting to increase “diversity” and also, supposedly, to help us win the war.
Army Muslim opposes war A private with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., is opposing plans to deploy him to Afghanistan, claiming his Muslim beliefs prohibit him from fighting in the war. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 10:00 AM
Paul Nachman writes:
I’ve long said that Robert J. Samuelson is one of the few adults in our national public life. John Bolton goes on the list, too. Here he writes why the 9/2 resumption of the “peace process” is worse than useless.LA replies:
I’m sure it’s a worthwhile piece, but really, after the 300th—or is it the 30,000th?—repetition of the transparently absurd pursuit of the inherently impossible, is it necessary for intelligent people to go on pointing out that it’s transparently absurd? Isn’t it better just to let the absurdists go on doing what they’re doing? It’s like the way I’ve viewed various black spokesmen for a long time, and the way I’ve come to view the right-wing anti-Semites. The things they say are so whacked out, so far below the level of rationality, that it’s not necessary to criticize them or notice them. They’re in a world of their own. And we don’t have the power to bring them out of that world. And—here’s our liberation—it doesn’t matter that we don’t have the power to bring them out of that world, because, in the case of the anti-Semites, no one is going to pay any attention to them anyway, and, in the case of the “peace” negotiators, nothing is going to come from their efforts anyway. So all we can do, and all we need to do, is ignore them—though, being human, and not being able to shut things out completely, we may notice them from time to time and express our astonishment or amusement or despair that human beings are capable of such folly. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:57 AM
Ken Hechtman doubts Rick Darby’s prediction of a “cultural Verdun” over the Ground Zero mosque. He says in three years we will have trouble remembering that there was even a conflict over it, or what it was about. I reply that the very essence of civilizational loss is that men forget about it.
Here’s the latest twist in the sad soap opera that was initiated by Sarah Palin when, by irresponsibly accepting John McCain’s irresponsible choice of her as his vice presidential candidate, she propelled her daughter Bristol and her daughter’s out of wedlock pregnancy into the national spotlight. Having accepted the prominent position of vice presidential nominee, she was compelled to force her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend Levi Johnston into a commitment to marry which neither of them was ready for. This led to the phony engagement (which I looked at askance [“Therefore the announced wedding is a fiction, and my previous skeptical characterization of the wedding as the ‘supposed’ wedding was correct. Levi and Bristol do not want and do not plan to marry,” VFR, September 5, 2008], while all the mainstream conservatives were cooing over it), and all the pressures surrounding the teenaged couple, which led to the breakdown of their relationship and the termination of their engagement soon after the November election. Which in turn led Levi Johnston, as the now famous former fiancé and father of the child of the daughter of a former vice presidential candidate, into his strange and pathetic career of celebrity (a celebrity which would not have existed absent Palin’s acceptance of the vice presidential nomination), including his nude photo spread in Playgirl, his disgusting smears of Palin, and his complete alienation from Bristol and her family. Which, after a year or so, was ultimately followed by a reconciliation between Levi and Bristol, their announcement of their renewed engagement, and Levi’s apology (inadequate though it was) for his smears of Palin. Which was followed, in two weeks (as a result of the revelation that Levi had fathered another child with another young woman), by the breakdown of Bristol and Levi’s reconciliation and the termination of their renewed engagement. Which in turn led to the latest twist:
Levi Johnston takes back his apology to PalinANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)—Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin’s grandson, says he wishes he hadn’t apologized for telling lies about the former Alaska governor because he’s “never lied about anything.”
Johnston said in an interview on CBS’ “The Early Show” to air Friday that he wishes that he hadn’t issued the apology to Palin.
“I don’t really regret anything,” Johnston said, who has appeared nude on the cover of Playgirl. “But the only thing I wish I wouldn’t have done is put out that apology ‘cause it kind of makes me sound like a liar. And I’ve never lied about anything. So that’s probably the only thing. The rest of the stuff I can live with.” MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:55 AM
Stephen T. writes:
Good news! The Des Moines police say they can’t find anything racial about the attacks targeting whites at the state fair. For a while there, I was worried that marauding gangs of blacks shouting “Beat Whitey” and physically assaulting whites might have some sort of sinister racial component to it, but apparently the situation was just so foggy, unclear, and ambiguous that the Des Moines Police Department is unable to discern anything about it.
Of course, the left and the media are telling us that the attempted murder of a Muslim New York cab driver by a baby-faced psychopath proves that homicidal hatred and violence have been sparked by the white racist movement to stop the construction of a harmless Islamic center and mosque next to Ground Zero.
But really, isn’t it at least as likely that the attempted murder was sparked by the jihadist expansionist movement to construct a symbol of Islamic victory and supremacy next to Ground Zero?
In other words, is it not probable that what we have here is a case of Sudden Anti-Jihad Syndrome? And if the powers that be sincerely want Sudden Anti-Jihad Syndrome to go away, rather than grow and increase, shouldn’t they think about making this country … less welcoming to jihadists?
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Other than my satirical fictional version of the just released Pentagon report that systematically ignores the jihadist statements and behavior of the Fort Hood mass murderer, I have not discussed the report itself. For the moment, I just want to say that it is the worst development so far in the U.S. government’s surrender to our Muslim enemies. Conservatives and Republicans should be declaring war against Obama over this. They should be calling for the impeachment of a President who is refusing to identify our enemy, and thus refusing to do his number one job of defending the United States.
As government prosecutor John Doar said to the House Judiciary Committee at the height of the battle over President Nixon in summer 1974, one of the grounds of impeachment of the President is conduct “grossly incompatible with the nature and function of the office.” When Muslims are waging war on the United States, and the Armed Forces, of which the President is the commander in chief, tell the nation that the threat comes from some generic “workplace violence” rather than from Islamic jihad, then we have a President and a military leadership who are covering up for, and thus siding with, our enemies. Which is behavior grossly incompatible with the nature and function of his office.
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In the light of the latest à l’outrance battle cry in favor of the Ground Zero mosque by the secular-liberal Jewish fanatic who is mayor of New York City, Rick Darby at Reflecting Light has a grim premonition about the battle still to come:
Verdun, 1916. The battle that lasted 10 months, the longest of any engagement in recorded history. It took place in a few square miles of poxy mudscape in northeastern France. The French and German armies took, lost, re-took, re-lost, again and again a few hills around a French outpost called Fort Douaumont.Neither side could win. Neither side could back down. Today, the ground contains more than 100,000 unknown soldiers, not to mention those whose remains have been identified. For decades after, shell casings, bayonets, helmets … bones turned up when farmers plowed the poor soil. Possibly they still do today.
Why do I bring this ghastly episode up?Now, what does Mayor Bloomberg have to do with this looming catastrophe?As I fear, the conflict over the Ground Zero mosque is shaping up as the modern equivalent of Verdun. No, there will not be soldiers on the field, although in a metaphorical sense this may be where the armies of the Western world and Islam face one another.
It looks now like both sides are going to take a stand over territory, and neither will back off. As I said previously, territory is the wrong thing to contest. We should be arguing over Muslim immigration, not where they want to build Fort Cordova. But for now territory is the issue.
[end of Rick Darby post]
Ramadan dinner after saying there could be “no
compromise” over the Ground Zero mosque
To understand that Jewish position, see my 2004 article at FrontPage Magazine, “Why Jews Welcome Muslims” (published two years before David Horowitz’s still-unexplained discovery that my views are too racist and objectionable for me to be published at his website).
In any case, the Ground Zero mosque must be stopped. It is like the move to legalize all illegal aliens. Amnesty would be an irrecoverable disaster for our country, and so it must be stopped, but at the same time, as Churchill said of the escape of the British army from capture at Dunkirk, preventing a catastrophe is not victory.
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This had escaped my attention until this week. Glenn Beck, in addition to making Martin Luther King his symbol of everything that is right and good, has no problem with homosexual “marriage.” The below exchange is from the August 11 edition of The O’Reilly Factor. (The linked page has a video). After dancing around the issue for a while, Beck comes out and states his position clearly:
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A reader writes:
How is this guy considered a “conservative” again? From Ron Paul’s statement:
Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?Apparently, 70 percent of Americans are “neoconservatives” now, and to be opposed to Islamic imposition is a “neoconservative” position. Once again, we see a “conservative” who hates Israel more than he loves America. Since Paul is a libertarian too, it’s also obvious how libertarianism is a woefully impotent means of supporting Western civilization.In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.
Kathlene M. writes:
Thought I’d share something that might give you a chuckle.Bob Schieffer made the laughable comment on Sunday that “despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, a new poll tells us a growing number of Americans, most of them on the right, believe Barack Obama is a Muslim.”
“MOUNTAIN OF EVIDENCE?” And the lamestream media intellectuals wonder why few Americans take them seriously anymore.
Ben W. writes:
In some respects we already have a presidential race underway. Every month or week that there is an election or a primary, the media takes note whether a Palin- or an Obama-endorsed candidate won. Or within the parties, whether a Romney- or Huckabee- or Palin-endorsed candidate did well. Likewise in Democratic circles, whether a Clinton-or Obama-endorsed candidate took the party banner. These are all proxy battles jockeying for the big ticket.