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April 22, 2006
"A Megaphone for Psychotic Killers"
It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on "our" values or "our" way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation. I know perfectly well there are people thinking, and even saying, that Tony Blair brought this upon us by his alliance with George Bush.A word of advice to them: try and keep it down, will you? Or wait at least until the funerals are over. And beware of the non-sequitur: you can be as opposed to the Iraq operation as much as you like, but you can't get from that "grievance" to the detonating of explosives at rush hour on London buses and tubes.
Don't even try to connect the two. By George Galloway's logic, British squaddies in Iraq are the root cause of dead bodies at home. How can anyone bear to be so wicked and stupid? How can anyone bear to act as a megaphone for psychotic killers?
The grievances I listed above are unappeasable, one of many reasons why the jihadists will lose.
"We Cannot Surrender: States which shelter these killers will know no peace," by Christopher Hitchens, Mirror.co.uk, July 8, 2005
Posted at 12:27 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Terrorism
April 19, 2006
The U.S. senator with today's best voting record on human rights is ... Kansas Republican Sam Brownback
I'll admit my politics have shifted in recent years, as have America's political landscape and cultural horizon. Who would have guessed that the U.S. senator with today's best voting record on human rights would be not Ted Kennedy or Barbara Boxer but Kansas Republican Sam Brownback?He is also by most measures one of the most conservative senators. Brownback speaks openly about how his horror at the genocide in the Sudan is shaped by his Christian faith, as King did when he insisted on justice for "all of God's children."
My larger point is rather simple. Just as a body needs different medicines at different times for different reasons, this also holds for the body politic.
In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders' talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.
America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.
"Leaving the left - I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity," by Keith Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 2005
Posted at 11:11 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Politics
April 11, 2006
"Marxism has been as wrong as it is possible for a theory to be wrong."
Marxism has been as wrong as it is possible for a theory to be wrong. Addicted to "the self-deification of mankind," it continually bears witness to what Kolakowski calls "the farcical aspect of human bondage." Why then was Marxism like moral catnip—not so much among its proposed beneficiaries, the working classes, but among the educated elite? Well, beguiling simplicity was part of it. "One of the causes of the popularity of Marxism among educated people," Kolakowski notes, "was the fact that in its simple form it was very easy." Marxism—like Freudianism, like Darwinism, like Hegelianism—is a "one key fits all locks" philosophy. All aspects of human experience can be referred to the operation of a single all-governing process which thereby offers the illusion of universal explanation.
"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005
Posted at 07:27 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Marxism , Nihilism
April 08, 2006
Lacrosse players
[H]ow could college lacrosse players be any more misogynous than your typical football-team steakhead? Perhaps it's because, unlike their football brethren, an unusually large proportion of college lacrosse players spend their high school years in sheltered, all-boys academies before heading off to liberal co-ed colleges. Most guys from single-sex schools are able to adjust. Others join the lacrosse team. The worst of this lot become creatures that are, in the words of a friend of mine, "half William Kennedy Smith, half Lawrence Phillips." In the warm enclave of the locker room, safe from the budding feminists and comp-lit majors, their identity becomes more cemented. How else to explain the report in a Duke school paper that, roughly two weeks after the alleged rape, members of the team were spotted drinking in a Durham bar, chanting, "Duke lacrosse!"
"Lacrosse Players: The elitism of preppies, the boorishness of jocks," by Dave Jamieson, Slate, April 7, 2006
Posted at 04:50 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Stupidity
April 05, 2006
Iran and rebellious adolescents
Suppose that we refrain from confronting Iran over its nuclear ambitions. What do we stand to gain? Will the Islamist movement outgrow its militant phase and turn moderate and mature? Will our military capability increase faster than Iran's capabilities? Will the Islamists be satisfied with attacks on Israel and Europe, and leave us alone -- and is that acceptable to us? Unless one can give favorable answers to such questions, it seems to me that Iran must be confronted.
"Fear of Confrontation," by Arnold Kling, TCS Daily, April 4, 2006
Posted at 06:43 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Gynephobes
April 03, 2006
"Being a Man: Harvey Mansfield ponders the male of the species"
The women who champion Eve Ensler's production [The Vagina Monologues] are rightly concerned about the problem of male violence. But the known solution is to teach boys (and men) to be gentlemen. "A gentleman," says Mansfield, "is a man who is gentle out of policy, not weakness; he can be depended upon not to snarl or attack a woman when he has the advantage or feels threatened." And any gentlewoman or "lady" is naturally more suited for the task of civilizing a vulgar, barbarous male than a whole army of gender warriors.
"Being a Man: Harvey Mansfield ponders the male of the species," by Christina Hoff Sommers, a review of "Manliness," by Harvey C. Mansfield (Yale 2006), The Weekly Standard, April 10, 2006
Posted at 08:17 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America