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Nihilism Archives

December 28, 2007

The "monkeyman realism of eco-Christians and New Atheists"

The reduction of man to an eco-janitor, a being who creates waste and thus must clear it up, is more than a cynical attempt by isolated Christian leaders to connect with the public. Yes, Williams, Owen, the Holy See and Co. no doubt hope and believe (mistakenly, I’m sure) that adopting trendy Greenspeak will entice people to return to the church. But the move from focusing on love for God and one’s neighbour to focusing on ‘respect for the planet’ represents more than a rebranding exercise: it signals a complete abandonment by the Christian churches of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. And in this sense, it is not only God that is being downgraded by the new nature-worshipping priests; so is humanity itself. And that’s enough to make even a committed atheist like me worry about the current direction of the Christian churches.
. . .
The cult of environmentalism embraced by the Christian churches does away with morality altogether. Some sceptics claim that environmentalism is a new form of moralistic hectoring; it is better to see it as amoralistic hectoring. In judging everything by how much CO2 or pollution it creates, environmentalism dispenses with questions of moral worth and judgement.
. . .
Many of the great atheists of old were concerned with making man the centre of his moral universe; with freeing him up to become the ‘superhuman’ that he aspired to be, but which he could only glimpse in an illusory God. Today, by contrast, both eco-Christians and New Atheists want to bring man and God crashing back down to Earth… so that we can set about cleaning it up like the good little earthly janitors we are. At a time of such low horizons, is it any wonder that some people still do cling on to God, and seek transcendence from mundane everyday life through a belief in divinity? There is more humanity in their ‘superhuman’ delusions than there is in the monkeyman realism of eco-Christians and New Atheists.

"Mankind is more than the janitor of planet Earth," by Brendan O’Neill, spiked, December 27, 2007 (footnote omitted)

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November 28, 2007

"Nothing in the modern world compares with North Korea"

Nothing in the modern world compares with North Korea, though it gives us some clue about how life must have been under the pharaohs, in Imperial Japan before Hiroshima, or in the obliterated years--conveniently erased from memory by blushing fellow travelers--when Josef Stalin was revered as a human god.
. . .
The main feeling the visitor has in Pyongyang is one of pity at the pathos of the place--its hopeless, helpless overestimate of its own power and importance, the deluded ignorance of millions of people carefully protected from any inrush of truth about themselves, their country, and their rulers. Every radio and TV set has been carefully neutered, its tuning dial soldered so that it can receive only the transmissions of the North Korean state. There is no access to the Internet except for a tiny, select few. Cell phones are confiscated from visitors upon arrival, though the very senior elite are believed to possess and use them. The newspapers are comically constipated accounts of speeches by the Dear Leader, long-ago angling contests, and uninteresting visits by junior dignitaries from countries ruled by dubious governments, which you would struggle to find on a map.

It may well be even worse than it looks. Pyongyang is a show city, inhabited by a favored layer of privileged and chosen people, who know that misbehavior of any kind could lead to exile to places we cannot even imagine. I have seen the miserable coal towns of China, which are open to visitors and have at least been touched by the prosperity flowing through the People’s Republic. They look like 19th-century pit villages in Britain. But even I cannot conceive of the dreariness and overpowering gloom of their North Korean equivalents, hidden away in the northern mountains, which no Westerner ever sees.

"Prisoners in Camp Kim: Strange, secretive, and desperately poor, North Korea tests the limits of social control." By Peter Hitchens, The American Conservative, November 19, 2007

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November 06, 2007

Rock and radicalism

Doggett argues that the fraught relationship between rock and radicalism is the story of utopianism betrayed by commerce.

"Talkin' bout a revolution," Telegraph.co.uk, October 27, 2007

It could also be argued that the relationship between rock and radicalism is the story of nihilism rescued by commerce....

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November 03, 2007

"From the H-Bomb to the Human Bomb"

When the naive, the falsely naive, and the downright evil blur categories in support of their ideological prejudices and christen the killer of innocents a “resistance fighter,” more lucid minds disclose a different landscape. Consider an editorial published in a Lebanese paper on August 20, 2003, the day after a bomb-laden cement truck destroyed the United Nations’ center of operations in Baghdad: “Yesterday’s operation against the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations exemplifies this mentality of destruction. Expel all mediators. Banish every international organization. Let things collapse. Let electricity and water be cut off, and the pumping of oil cease. Let theft prevail. Let universities and schools close. Let businesses fail. Let civic life cease. And at the end of the day the occupation will fail. ‘No!’ protests Joseph Samara, ‘at the end of the road, there will be a catastrophe for Iraq. . . . The attack against the United Nations’ headquarters in Baghdad belongs to another world: it is a form of nihilism, of absurdity, and of chaos hiding behind fallacious slogans, which proves the convergence among those responsible for this action, their intellectual limitation and their criminal behavior.’ ”

We have entered another world. The threat of a new Ground Zero, small or great, advances behind a mask. The human bomb claims the power to strike anywhere, by any means, at any time, spreading his nocturnal threat over the globe, invisible and thus unpredictable, clandestine and thus untraceable. The terrorist without borders makes us think about him always, everywhere. Without an accidental delay on the tracks--just a few minutes--the pulverization of two trains in Madrid, at the Atocha station, would have claimed 10,000 victims, three times more than in Manhattan. Then there was London. Whose turn is next? Each of us waits for the next explosion.

The business of terrorists, after all, is to terrorize--so said Lenin, an uncontested master in the field. The ultimate refinement lies in the inversion of responsibility. Operating instructions: I take hostages, I cut off their heads, I show them on video; those who beg for mercy must address themselves to their governments, who alone are to blame for my crimes: my hubris is their problem. The less the terrorist’s restraint, the more he causes fear and the sooner you will yield in tears, or so he believes.

Recall the cries of hostage Nick Berg, agonizing as his torturers persisted laboriously over his bent body. “You know, when we behead someone, we enjoy it,” one of them informs us. “We did not kidnap to frighten those we hold,” another corrects him, “but to put pressure on the countries that help or might help the Americans. . . . It is not a good thing to decapitate, but it is a method that works. In a fight, Americans tremble. . . . Besides, I tried to negotiate an exchange of prisoners for Nick Berg. It was the Americans who refused. They are the ones truly responsible for his death.” Terrorist hubris bases its arguments on uncontrollable drives: I can’t help myself--give up! A similar strategy shows up on playgrounds: Stop me or I’ll do something terrible! The terrorist refines this rationale; he draws out his pleasure, prolongs death, cuts the throat slowly, goes beyond physical torture.

"From the H-Bomb to the Human Bomb," by André Glucksmann, City Journal, Autumn 2007

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September 01, 2007

Kerouac spent most of his life living at home with his mother....

In fact, it is the extreme banality of On the Road, combined with a glamorous aura of anarchy (in the midst of a society in which there is always enough gasoline for the anarchists to resume their journey, of course), which has made it perennially attractive to youth--an age of man always tempted by bad taste--ever since its publication. If Dean’s utterances are profound and worthy of record, then anything that any of us says is likewise profound and worthy of record; if Dean is a philosopher, we are all philosophers. In this respect, the book is like a soap opera that reassures untold millions that the day-to-day flux of their existence is not without significance, or else why would something so closely resembling it be on television?

I mentioned the banality of the book to a young man who told me that he had thought it wonderful when he had read it a few years previously. I devised a test. He would open it and point to a passage at random, and I would read the passage out loud. He would then tell me whether he thought it was banal. Here is the passage:

The drizzle increased and Eddie got cold; he had very little clothing. I fished a wool plaid shirt from my canvas bag and he put it on. I had a cold. I bought cough drops in a rickety Indian store of some kind. I went to the little two-by-four Post office and wrote my aunt a penny postcard. We went back to the gray road. There she was in front of us, Shelton, written on the watertank. The Rock Island balled by. We saw the faces of Pullman passengers go by in a blur. The train howled off across the plains in the direction of our desires. It started to rain harder.

A passage such as this, appearing in an alleged literary classic, must encourage and delude many an adolescent keeper of a diary that his entries will one day find the appreciative audience that their immanent genius deserves. The popularity of On the Road is a manifestation of the propensity in a demotic age of mediocrity to worship itself. But the young man who had so appreciated the book only a few years previously was honest enough to accept that my point was made.

Of course, it might be said that my test was an unfair one. It is possible, after all, for an artistic whole to be greater than the sum of its parts. I do not think, however, that this can really be said in the case of Kerouac’s book, and this for a very good reason: neither Sal nor Dean are very interested in anything at all apart from themselves, and even in themselves only in the shallowest, most inconsequential possible way. They travel across America four times, but they express only the most cursory interest in the people they meet, and often no interest in them at all if they cannot use them in some dishonest way or other; the history of the country does not arouse their curiosity or enthusiasm; neither do questions of politics or economics; nature, in the form of landscape, flora, and fauna, entirely escapes their notice. If On the Road is a Bildungsroman, it is one that is very short on the Bildung.
. . .
He led a tormented life, and I cannot help but feel sadness for a would-be rebel who spent most of his life, as did Kerouac, living at home with his mother. He also drank himself to a horrible death. But while it is true that most great writers were tormented souls, it does not follow that most tormented souls were great writers. To call Kerouac’s writing mediocre is to do it too much honor: its significance is sociological rather than literary. The fact that his work is now being subjected to near-biblical levels of reverential scholarship is a sign of very debased literary and academic standards.

I have seen some of the most mediocre minds of my generation destroyed by too great an interest in the Beats.

"Another side of Paradise," by Anthony Daniels, The New Criterion, September 2007

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August 18, 2007

Apocalyptic environmentalism

So why do so many people in the developed world believe in apocalyptic environmentalism? The attraction of apocalyptic thinking is strong. One self-described survivor of millenarian environmentalism, novelist Eric Zencey, recalled in his 1988 essay, “Apocalypse and Ecology”:

"There is seduction in apocalyptic thinking. If one lives in the Last Days, one’s actions, one’s very life, take on historical meaning and no small measure of poignance … Apocalypticism fulfills a desire to escape the flow of real and ordinary time, to fix the flow of history into a single moment of overwhelming importance.”

Daniel Cohen, author of the 1973 Waiting for the Apocalypse, believes that every generation grows up convinced that it is the last generation in history. However, the method by which the end brought about changes. For Cohen’s generation nuclear war was the agent of the apocalypse.

“We believed passionately that there would be such a war, and like the early Christians we were sure that this Judgment Day would come within our lifetimes.”

Interestingly, unlike the Millerites, when prophesies of environmental doom fail, ecological millenarians do not experience a "Great Disappointment." As Daniel Cohen noted,

"One clearly wrong prophecy, or even a whole string of them, rarely discredits the prophet in the eyes of those who believe in prophecy."

As DiCaprio's new film shows, a lot people still want to think of themselves as living at the hinge of history in which their lives will make all the heroic difference for all the time to come.

But the truth is that our ancestors bequeathed to our generation a world that is immeasurably richer, cleaner and healthier than the one they lived in. I haven't seen The 11th Hour yet, but I suspect that it is not going to recommend those policies that have in fact improved the state of humanity for the last two centuries. Of course, it must be admitted that along the way there were some mostly unavoidable side effects on the natural world that arose as hundreds of millions of people clawed their way out of poverty. That being said, I will be happily surprised if The 11th Hour comes out in favor of strengthened property rights, expanding globalization, increasing urbanization, and spreading modern farming techniques. It is exactly those trends abetted by democratic capitalism that are improving humanity's estate and will help preserve nature.

"DiCaprio's The 11th Hour: We are the Most Important Generation in History," by Ronald Bailey, Hit & Run, August 16, 2007

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July 13, 2007

"Disapproval of the freedom of the West"

So. Two failed terrorist plots within a week. A packed nightclub on a Friday night and a busy airport full of holiday-makers. Not very pointed as a political statement, and both failed to hurt anyone but the terrorists.

The question that provides the puzzle is, why? They didn't attack the Houses of Parliament or a major political institution or any national political figures. They intended to kill thousands of people in a nightclub and an airport, and it is beginning to look increasingly as though Islamic terrorism in Britain seems now to be provoked by disapproval of the Western lifestyle. Earlier, equally inept, Keystone Terrorists, who were apprehended even before they had managed to assemble their bombs, had been secretly recorded as wishing to bomb a nightclub to punish "the slags" (sluts) dancing and drinking the night away in stiletto heels and mini-dresses.

Disapproval of the freedom of the West, in which they had so eagerly sought jobs, seems to be the motivator. Punish the slags. Punish families for going away to foreign shores, intending to loll on sunny beaches in little bikinis sipping rum punches.

"'Those Who Cure You Will Kill You'," by Val MacQueen, TCS, July 9, 2007

Sounds familiar....

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June 27, 2007

"more nails in the coffin of Palestine"

When Palestinians voted for Hamas, they chose war over statehood; resistance over peaceful coexistence; and self-destruction over progress. And why did they do that? Maybe Golda Meier was right: Maybe these people simply hate the Jews more than they love anything, even their own children. In any case, the dream of Palestinian statehood is dying; and the Palestinians themselves are killing it.

And one more thing: Whenever you hear terrorist-sympathizers blame it all on Israel, know that they are putting more nails in the coffin of Palestine. Nothing has been more debilitating and dehumanizing to Palestine than the world's legitimatizing the very terrorists who are destroying it.

"Is the Dream of Palestine Dead?" by Mario Loyola, NRO, June 26, 2007

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June 22, 2007

Episcopalian priest says, "I could not not be a Muslim..."

"I could not not be a Muslim..."
. . .
With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been obvious that the first female imam would be an Episcopalian...

Read the whole thing.

As Chesterton said, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything."

And as Oscar Wilde said, "The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people the Anglican Church will do."

Also see:

The situation in Malaysia clearly illustrates how poorly the West, especially its media, understands the world beyond its insular borders. While Western human rights advocates and transnationalists speak grandly about the "UN Charter" and "international law" and the universality of the Geneva Conventions, in reality much of the world merely pays lip-service to them. Or invoke them to bludgeon the United States without any intention of applying these so-called "international standards" to themselves. CAIR, for example, can rise indignantly to claim rights and freedoms in the United States that are not reciprocally granted in Saudi Arabia or Malaysia. That would not surprise those who believe laws and customs vary according to country. But it would publicly astonish -- emphasis on publicly -- those who claim that "international standards" are universally valid and accepted, even though they are manufactured in the small city of Brussels, whose delusions vary proportionately to its insularity.

"Oh Joy," The Belmont Club, June 19, 2007

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January 31, 2007

Environmentalism = Imperialism + Elitism?

Hundreds of years after we have become rich and comfortable by removing our forests and exploiting our natural resources such as coal, oil, and gold we are now going to the poorest countries on the planet to prevent them from doing what we did and having what we have. We want them to stay as 'traditional peasants' forgetting all the while that the poor people desperately want progress and desperately want to enjoy the good, healthy and long life we in the west take for granted.

"Mine Your Own Business" will make a lot of comfortable western people very uncomfortable indeed. It will show them the consequences of their blind faith in our new religion-the religion of environmentalism.

Phelim McAleer
July 2006

"Mine Your Own Business," a film by Phelim McAleer

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October 10, 2006

Free Speech at Columbia? Uh, no.

"These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border," Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. "They have no right to be able to speak here."

"At Columbia, Students Attack Minuteman Founder," by Eliana Johnson, The New York Sun, October 5, 2006

This appears to be the result of a liberal arts education today: Idiots declaring that some one has no right to speak.

The epitome of Columbia's intellectual nadir came from Ryan Fukumori, a junior at the university who told Johnson that Gilchrist and others who spoke at the event "had no right to be able to speak here." Apparently Columbia doesn't teach students about the Constitution, especially the First Amendment, any more. The College Republicans have a right to invite anyone they want to speak at their events, and the speakers have the right to speak without being physically attacked. Bear in mind that this university houses the most prestigious school of journalism in the nation, which should indicate a particular interest in supporting free speech.

"Mob Rule at Columbia," by Captain'sQuartersBlog.com, October 6, 2006

I'm willing to bet 3 things: 1) Ryan Fukimori is involved in some campus group that wants rights for some minority, 2) he has been told most of his life how special he is, and 3) he has a bit too much "self-esteem". Oh, and I'll bet he's self-righteous, too.

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September 20, 2006

"The way we all want a big-screen TV, and would keep it in the box once we bought it."

Today two important speeches were made at the UN: one was a sack of lies dumped out by a religious simpleton bent on heralding the apocalypse, and the other was by the President of Iran. At least that’s how a Fark headline might put it, depending on the IQ level of the submitter. There were various desultory FARK threads on the speeches. My favorite concluded thus: there was the usual debate about whether Ahmadinejad had actually called for the destruction of Israel. (It’s a matter of faith among some that Bush personally blamed Saddam for 9/11, but a matter of debate as to the Mullah’s true feelings about the Jews.)
. . .
Make us among his followers. This would be akin to President Bush concluding his speech with an appeal for everyone to follow Jesus. The commentariat would fall off their chairs en masse: he’s outPoped the Pope! But Ahmadinejad, I suspect, will get a pass. Not because his kumbaya blather and deliciously naughty anti-empire rhetoric chubbed up the lads at AP and Reuters, but because he’s seen as a vaguely absurd figure. He says the most colorful things. Nice smile, too! Always good for a quote, that one.

There’s something else behind the indifferent reaction, though. Everyone has already accepted the idea of Iranian nukes. I think it’s been factored into our subconscious calculations, where they lie as great red glowing things whose threat is somehow still abstract. They won’t use them. They just want them. The way we all want a big-screen TV, and would keep it in the box once we bought it.

I frequently hear people remark that Iran would not be stupid enough to use a nuke, since they know it would bring about retaliation. But MAD only works if the other guy’s SANE. If the Administration regularly made remarks like Ahmadinejad and the other top-tier leaders, critics in the West would have long ago been dissolved in a puddle of corrosive urine. Imagine the President of the United States addressing a group of supporters and leading them in a chant of “Death to Iran.” Imagine what that might mean.

"Cold. Again." by James Lileks, The Bleat, September 20, 2006

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August 17, 2006

"Bleeding-heart ignoramuses"

All across the board, Lebanese civilians are referred to as "civilians" where Israeli civilians are referred to as "Israelis" - an eerie and sinister difference pointed out by the non-Jewish stand-up comic genius Natalie Haynes, and one which very few people appear to have noticed - even me, until then.
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Personally, I'd far prefer the Jews to be angry, aggressive and alive than meek, mild and dead - and that's what makes me and a minority like me feel so much like strangers in our own country, now more than ever. I've always loved being a hack, but now even that feels weird, as though I'm living among a bunch of snatched-body zombies who look like journalists but believe and say the most inhuman, evil things.

"Bleeding-heart ignoramuses," by Julie Burchill, HAARETZ, August 2006

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August 16, 2006

Post-Modernism = Neo-Luddites

Aside from the massive waste of public monies on professorships and student loans for useless degrees, I guess that is what bothers me most about Post-Modernism - it gives neo-luddites an Academic gloss for their idiocy.

"True, False, or Bloody Stupid?" by John Jay, Chicago Boyz, August 6, 2006

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August 06, 2006

Grievances of ... seeing unveiled women ... the Jewish people ... the heresy of democracy ... a work of fiction ... the existence of black African Muslim farmers ... etc., ad nauseum

It's a long, and nauseating, list of grievances ....

We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are. The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

For a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.

"We Cannot Surrender: States which shelter these killers will know no peace," by Christopher Hitchens, Mirror.co.uk, July 8, 2005

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August 01, 2006

Anti-semites dressed up as pseudo-intellectuals

It takes a certain kind of person to see a liberal free society attacked by Islamicists, and find himself wondering: what are those crafty Jews up to now?

"Friday night," James Lileks, The Bleat, July 17, 2006

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June 17, 2006

The left's fascination with the propaganda of murderous tyrants

The anti-western left has, over the course of history, fallen time after time for the propaganda of murderous tyrants who offered a handy platform for bashing the home society by providing the alibi of conscience. The investment of personal, political and moral identity that this represents is so immense that after a short while such gullible dupes are simply incapable of recognising reality even when it stares them in the face. Hence their stupefaction when confronted with the enormities of Robespierre, Stalin or Mao. To that list must now be added the Islamic jihad and Saddam Hussein. The difference is that this time these useful idiots have taken the middling people of Britain and Europe – and increasingly, it seems, of America – with them into the land of deluded wishful thinking. The result could be that this war against the jihadi terror could be lost -- at home.

"The big lie," by Melanie Phillips, June 30, 2005

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June 08, 2006

"Any student of Marxism is perforce a student of intellectual and political pathology...."

But what impresses one about Main Currents of Marxism is not only Kolakowski’s breadth or learning but also his economy. This is a book from which the reader benefits from the author’s great powers of distillation. It is a long book. In the hands of most writers, it would have been much longer. Kolakowski has an uncanny ability to seize upon and express the essential features of the doctrines he discusses. No doubt this is partly a matter of talent. It is also a testament to the huge labor, not only of reading but also of sifting and synthesizing, that went into the book. Kolakowski gives us not his first thoughts but his considered judgments, honed of the superfluous. Anyone who reads these sobering volumes will come away with not only an understanding of the intellectual and spiritual precursors of Marxism, but also a good grasp of the essentials of “classical” Marxist doctrine and its hybridization in the Soviet Union, the Frankfurt School, and other left-wing impulses. Writing about the amorphous New Left of the 1960s, for example, Kolakowski notes that although

the ideological fantasies of this movement … were no more than a nonsensical expression of the whims of spoilt middle-class children, and while the extremists among them were virtually indistinguishable from Fascist thugs, the movement did without doubt express a profound crisis of faith in the values that had inspired democratic societies for many decades. … The New Left explosion of academic youth was an aggressive movement born of frustration, which easily created a vocabulary for itself out of Marxist slogans … : liberation, revolution, alienation, etc. Apart from this, its ideology really has little in common with Marxism. It consists of “revolution” without the working class; hatred of modern technology as such; … the cult of primitive societies … as the source of progress; hatred of education and specialized knowledge.

Sound familiar?

Any student of Marxism is perforce a student of intellectual and political pathology, and Main Currents of Marxism, in addition to its other accomplishments, is a pathologist’s scrapbook, a catalogue of brutal, often phantasmagoric, deformations. Kolakowski’s approach is generally more descriptive and diagnostic than polemical, but he can wax polemical to deadly effect when the occasion arises. The title essay of My Correct Views on Everything is Kolakowski’s devastating response to a 100-page “Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski” published by E. P. Thompson in the Socialist Review in 1973. Thompson is the author of The Making of the English Working Class (1963), an object of pious veneration among the Marxist and socialist brotherhood. His “Letter” is an expression, by turns righteously indignant and cloyingly sentimental, of his feelings of “injury and betrayal” at Kolakowski’s criticisms of Communism. “We were both voices of the Communist revisionism of 1956,” Thompson sniffed, “we both sought to rehabilitate the utopian energies within the socialist tradition.” What happened?

Kolakowski’s response is a salvo that would have made Cato the Elder proud. Recalling Thompson’s refusal to sit down at a table with Robert Cecil because he once worked in the British diplomatic service: “O blessed Innocence! You and I, we were both active in our respective Communist Parties in the ’40s and ’50s, which means that, whatever our noble intentions and our charming ignorance (or refusal to get rid of ignorance) were, we supported, within our modest means, a regime based on mass slave labor and police terror of the worst kind in human history. Do you think that there are many people who could refuse to sit at the same table with us on these grounds?” Kolakowski quotes this effusion, reminiscent of the more utopian passages of Marx’s German Ideology: “My own utopia,” Thompson wrote,

two hundred years ahead, would not be like Morris’s “epoch of rest.” It would be a world (as D. H. Lawrence would have it) where the “money values” give way before the “life values,” or (as Blake would have it) “corporeal” will give way to “mental” war. With sources of power easily available, some men and women might choose to live in unified communities, sited, like Cistercian monasteries, in centres of great natural beauty, where agricultural, industrial and intellectual pursuits might be combined. Others might prefer the variety and pace of an urban life which rediscovers some of the qualities of the city-state. Others will prefer a life of seclusion, and many will pass between all three. Scholars would follow the disputes of different schools, in Paris, Jakarta or Bogota.

As Kolakowski notes, “This is a very good sample of socialist writing. It amounts to saying that the world should be good, and not bad.” Nice work if you can get it! But of course, Thompson cannot get it, and neither can anyone else. It is just unadulterated hokum, nauseating in its sentimentality, dangerous in its appeal to the credulous. Thompson dreams of a world in which “corporeal” war gives way to merely “mental” war (Lawrence and Blake would be among his heroes), but Kolakowski is right that this dream is thoroughly utopian “We do not know how to harmonize the contradictory tasks contemporary society imposes upon us. We can only try to reach an uncertain balance between these tasks because we have no blueprint for a conflictless and secure society.”

"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005

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May 20, 2006

"Sadism" or "fascism" or "nihilism"

It must have been infernal underneath King's Cross, but above ground no panic, no screaming, no wailing and beating the air, no yells for vengeance.

I'm writing this in the early aftermath, but I would be willing to bet there will have been little or no bloody foolishness, either: no random attacks on mosques or shops or individuals. After all, devices on our buses and tubes are an open proclamation that the perpetrators don't care if they kill Muslims. Which, of course, is part of the point. When we use the weak and vague word "terrorism" we imply indiscriminate cruelty directed at civilians.

"Sadism" or "fascism" or "nihilism" would do just as nicely: all the venom that lurks just on the sub-human level of the human species.

In a tightly interwoven society, all that this poison has to do is ally itself with a certain low cunning.

"We Cannot Surrender: States which shelter these killers will know no peace," by Christopher Hitchens, Mirror.co.uk, July 8, 2005

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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

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March 19, 2006

Demanding the "cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian vision."

The grievances I listed above are unappeasable, one of many reasons why the jihadists will lose.

They demand the impossible - the cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian vision. Plainly, we cannot surrender. There is no one with whom to negotiate, let alone capitulate.

We shall track down those responsible. States that shelter them will know no peace. Communities that shelter them do not take forever to discover their mistake. And their sordid love of death is as nothing compared to our love of London, which we will defend as always, and which will survive this with ease.

"We Cannot Surrender: States which shelter these killers will know no peace," by Christopher Hitchens, Mirror.co.uk, July 8, 2005

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March 14, 2006

Equality of outcomes ... watch your thoughts

These days the postmodern left demands that government and private institutions guarantee equality of outcomes. Any racial or gender "disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill. This goal is neither liberal nor progressive; but it is what the left has chosen. In a very real sense it may be the last card held by a movement increasingly ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this: pathetic.

I smile when friends tell me I've "moved right." I laugh out loud at what now passes for progressive on the main lines of the cultural left.

In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).

"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

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March 12, 2006

The Taliban and prostitutes

Joking how the prophet Mohammed is running out of virgins because so many suicide bombers are standing at the gates of paradise is dark and mean. And, given the reality of global attacks, lamentably effective (just as a side note). But I did not find it especially funny that the misogynous Taliban availed themselves regularly of prostitutes. Or publicly "executed" video recorders and televisions in order to watch pornos in privacy.

"'What next, bearded one?' Our traditional values have been trampled on and we are offended. A wake-up call," by Sonia Mikich, signandsight, February 7, 2006

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March 08, 2006

Marxism: The "greatest fantasy" of the 20th Century

Marxism also spoke powerfully to mankind’s unsatisfied utopian impulses. How imperfect a construct is capitalist society: how much conflict does it abet, how many desires does it leave unsatisfied! Can we not imagine a world beyond those tensions and conflicts in which we could realize our full human potential without competition, without scarcity, without want? Sure, we can imagine it, but there is a reason that "utopia" means "nowhere." Kolakowski shows how Marxism speaks powerfully to those unrealized, and unrealizable, utopian dreams. Marxism, he wrote, was the "greatest fantasy" of the twentieth century, not because it offered a better life but because it appealed to apparently ineradicable spiritual cravings.

The influence that Marxism has achieved, far from being the result or proof of its scientific character, is almost entirely due to its prophetic, fantastic, and irrational elements. Marxism is a doctrine of blind confidence that a paradise of universal satisfaction is awaiting us just around the corner. Almost all the prophecies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful, any more than it did in the case of chiliastic sects. ... In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.

"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005

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February 28, 2006

"We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics"

[I]f Muslims do not want their alleged prophet identified with barbaric acts or adolescent fantasies, they should say publicly that random murder for virgins is not in their religion. And here one runs up against a curious reluctance. … In fact, Sunni Muslim leaders can't even seem to condemn the blowing-up of Shiite mosques and funeral processions, which even I would describe as sacrilege. Of course there are many millions of Muslims who do worry about this, and another reason for condemning the idiots at Foggy Bottom is their assumption, dangerous in many ways, that the first lynch mob on the scene is actually the genuine voice of the people. There's an insult to Islam, if you like.

The question of "offensiveness" is easy to decide. First: Suppose that we all agreed to comport ourselves in order to avoid offending the believers? How could we ever be sure that we had taken enough precautions? On Saturday, I appeared on CNN, which was so terrified of reprisal that it "pixilated" the very cartoons that its viewers needed to see. And this ignoble fear in Atlanta, Ga., arose because of an illustration in a small Scandinavian newspaper of which nobody had ever heard before! Is it not clear, then, that those who are determined to be "offended" will discover a provocation somewhere? We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.

"Cartoon Debate: The case for mocking religion," by Christopher Hitchens, Slate, February 4, 2006

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February 20, 2006

"Islamic truths" - 1

Another week, another Muslim country burns in rage over months-old Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in an unflattering light. On Friday it was Libya, and earlier in the week it was my father's homeland, Pakistan, where violent protests were scattered across the nation. Some Muslims have decided that burning cities in defense of a prophet's teachings, which none of them seem willing to practice, is preferable to participating in rational debate about the myths and realities of a religion whose worst enemies are increasingly its own adherents.

This week's events should compel those of us who claim Islam as our system of philosophical guidance to ask hard questions of ourselves in order to revive the religion's essential foundation: justice, peaceful and tolerant coexistence, compassion, the search for knowledge and unwavering faith in the unity of God.

"Islamic truths," by Mansoor Ijaz, Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2006

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February 15, 2006

"Offensive"

Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive" become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization. I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. But I will not be told I can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object.

"Cartoon Debate: The case for mocking religion," by Christopher Hitchens, Slate, February 4, 2006

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February 11, 2006

"The struggle for Islam's soul"

While most Muslims abhor violence, some terrorists are a product of a specific mindset with deep roots in Islamic history. If Muslims everywhere refuse to confront this, we will all be prey to more terror.
. . .
Within hours of the London atrocity, Muslim groups throughout Britain condemned the bombing, declaring in unequivocal terms that such acts had nothing to do with Islam.

"Religious precepts," declared the Muslim Council of Britain, "cannot be used to justify such crimes, which are completely contrary to our teaching and practice." The eminently sensible Imam Abdul Jalil Sajid, chairman of the Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony U.K., announced: "No school of Islam allows the targeting of civilians or the killing of innocents. Indiscriminate, senseless and targeted killing has no justification in Islam."

The tenor of these statements is: These are the acts of pathologically mad people; Islam has nothing to do with it.

But Islam has everything to do with it. As Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute, points out: "The terrorists are using Islamic sources to justify their actions. How can one then say it has nothing to do with Islam?"

"The struggle for Islam's soul," by Ziauddin Sardar, Toronto Star, July 22, 2005

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February 10, 2006

Evil in the modern world

A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.

When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.

I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon-like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

"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

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February 09, 2006

Marxism appeals to mankind's inherent thuggishness

Of course, it is not just to mankind’s spiritual cravings that Marxism appeals. It also speaks to its inherent thuggishness. This cannot be emphasized too much. These days, Stalin and Stalinism are in bad odor. We forget the romance that Western intellectuals indulged for this mass murderer. We also tend to overlook the fact that thuggishness is an integral, not an accidental, feature of Marxism. Marx spoke of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." What did he mean by "dictatorship"? Lenin explained. "Dictatorship," he wrote in 1906, "means unlimited power based on force, and not on law." In case that was not sufficiently compelling, Lenin added the word "scientific": "The scientific term 'dictatorship' means nothing more nor less than authority untrammelled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on violence." In 1917, Lenin got the chance to show the world what this theory would look like when put into action. "He created a system," Kolakowski observes, "in which, depending on the whim of a local party or police authority, any criticism might be regarded as counter-revolutionary and expose its author to imprisonment or death." Hence the importance of terror, an essential ingredient in the revolutionary’s utopian program at least since Robespierre spoke of "virtue and its emanation, terror." "The courts," Lenin wrote in 1922, "must not ban terror … but must formulate the motives underlying it, legalize it as a principle, plainly, without any make-believe."

The crucial thing to bear in mind, however, is not the brutality of Communist rule—what we might call really existing Marxism—but its spuriousness and contempt for law. This is what distinguishes ordinary despotism from its totalitarian counterpart. "A law," Kolakowski notes, "may provide draconic penalties for small offenses without being specifically totalitarian; what is characteristic of totalitarian law is the use of such formulas as Lenin’s: people may be executed for expressing views that may 'objectively serve the interests of the bourgeoisie.' This means that the government can put to death anyone it chooses; there is no such thing as law; it is not that the criminal code is severe, but that it has no existence except in name."

In other words, the very arbitrariness of Communist rule is a coefficient of its ambition to total control of life. Lenin said that what socialism implies above all is "keeping account of everything." Everything was subject to regulation from above because nothing had significance apart from the diktats of the Party. In this sense, Marxism is a solution in which the idea of intrinsic value dissolves into absolute expediency. For the Communist there is no such thing as impartiality or disinterestedness because there is no such thing as an independent object of value. Nothing has inherent significance because everything acquires value from its function in the impersonal engine of utopia.

"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005

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February 03, 2006

Hitler wins ... nothing to see here, move along ...

If the election proves anything, it’s that Hitler can win and people still won’t see the parallels to the last big batch of professional Jew-haters – no matter how crazy they get. The election was barely over, and the celebratory bullets hadn’t all pattered to earth, when the demands began. Israeli National News quoted Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar on the key issue of the day: the insulting affront presented by the Israeli flag. "Israel must remove the two blue stripes from its national flag", said Zahar. “The stripes on the flag are symbols of occupation. They signify Israel's borders stretching from the River Euphrates to the River Nile."

Yes, indeed. And the fifty stars on the American flag symbolize this nation’s desire to occupy and annex the Milky Way. European diplomats will shrug off Zahar’s demands, just as the Iranian president’s pearls of wisdom are dismissed: he’s only playing to his base. Perhaps, but what does that say about the base? Nothing! They elected Hamas because they were fed up with the corruption of Fatah, just as Americans, tired of Nixon’s skullduggery, voted in the Birch-Klan-Commie Axis in ’74. Or something like that.

In any case, Hamas will have to govern now, the apologists say. Collect the trash. Or, more like, blame Zionist jets for strafing the garbage trucks. They might well “improve” the schools, but since they’ve already announced they’ll will impose Sharia, this might not sit well with secular Palestinians. (Helpful note to angry emailers: this is where you point out that some Christians want to teach Intelligent Design in Kansas, which of course is exactly the same thing as segregating students by sex and teaching the girls why driving is a sin.)

"Hitler," Screedblog, by James Lileks, February 3, 2006

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"Offensive" cartoons

"Militants Surround EU Offices in Gaza Over 'Offensive' Cartoons," AP, February 2, 2006

During the Cold War, it was suggested that to defeat Russia all the US had to do was drop JC Penney and Sears catalogs all over the country ... maybe to defeat Islamic fascism, we just need to drop "offensive" cartoons all over the Middle East ... in Chinese ... or maybe French and German ... or send over some of Robert Mapplethorpe's acolytes ...

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January 30, 2006

Danish products

From the burning of its flag to a boycott of its brands of butter and cookies, Denmark is feeling Islamic outrage over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
. . .
"In (the West) it is considered freedom of speech if they insult Islam and Muslims," Mohammed al-Shaibani, a columnist, wrote in Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily Monday. "But such freedom becomes racism and a breach of human rights and anti-Semitism if Arabs and Muslims criticize their religion and religious laws."
. . .
In two West Bank towns Sunday, Palestinians burned Danish flags and demanded an apology. Several Islamist groups, including the Palestinian militant Hamas party and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, called for a worldwide boycott of Danish products.
. . .
President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon condemned the cartoon, saying his country "cannot accept any insult to any religion."

"Outrage Builds in Mideast Over Cartoons," by Donna Abu-Nasr, Forbes, January 30, 2006

we love that last quote ....

"Al Qaida's Jihad against Lebanese Christians," Jihad Watch, November 15, 2003

"The Forgotten Christians of Lebanon: Once free and equal, Lebanon's Christians now struggle against tremendous odds in a country dominated by Syrian politics and an increasingly Islamized culture," by Habib C. Malik, The Offical Lebanese Forces web site

"Lebanon's Christians," Center for Religious Freedom

Christians in the Middle East are fast disappearing from the area. The Lebanese Christians, who constitute the only influential Christian community in the Middle East, are fast declining in numbers and power.

"The Rise and Fall of Christian Minorities in Lebanon," by Fouad Abi-Esber BA MA, Encyclopedia Phoeniciana

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January 23, 2006

Communism

Stalin once remarked that the death of an individual is a tragedy, but the death of a million is a statistic. What he neglected to add is that, for the Communist, there is no such thing as the individual. By the same token, there is no such thing as independent judgment—scholarly, judicial, or even aesthetic judgment. Our postmodern literary critics are fond of declaring that "there is no such thing as"—take your pick: intrinsic value, objectivity, disinterestedness, impartiality, even truth. It landed them in a cloud-cuckoo-land of self-contradictory nihilism. But Marx and Lenin got there before them. For the Marxist, art and literature are not human pursuits guided by their own rules of achievement but rather instruments to be used for the shifting and arbitrary ends of the Party. "Down with non-partisan writers!," Lenin wrote in 1905, "Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, ‘a cog and a screw’ of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically conscious vanguard of the entire working class!"

"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005

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January 10, 2006

Leaving the American cultural left

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

"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

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December 27, 2005

Viciousness

What are we to make of scenes from the eighth-century in Fallujah? Random murder, mutilation of the dead, dismemberment, televised gore, and pride in stringing up the charred corpses of those who sought to bring food to the hungry? Perhaps we can shrug and say all this is the wage of Saddam Hussein and the thirty years of brutality of his Baathists that institutionalized such barbarity? Or was the carnage the dying scream of Baathist hold-outs intent on shocking the Western world at home watching it live? We could speculate for hours.

Yet I fear that we have not seen anything new. Flip through the newspaper and the stories are as depressing as they are monotonous: bombs in Spain; fiery clerics promising death in England, even as explosive devices are uncovered in France. In-between accounts of bombings in Iraq, we get the normal murdering in Israel, and daily assassination in Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, and Chechnya. Murder, dismemberment, torture—these all seem to be the acceptable tools of Islamic fundamentalism and condoned as part of justifiable Middle East rage. Sheik Yassin is called a poor crippled "holy man" who ordered the deaths of hundreds, as revered in the Arab World for his mass murder as Jerry Falwell is condemned in the West for his occasional slipshod slur about Muslims.

Yet the hourly killing is perhaps not merely the wages of autocracy, but part of a larger grotesquery of Islamic fundamentalism on display. The Taliban strung up infidels from construction cranes and watched, like Romans of old, gory stoning and decapitations in soccer stadiums built with UN largess. In the last two years, Palestinian mobs have torn apart Israeli soldiers, lynched their own, wired children with suicide bombing vests, and machine-gunned down women and children—between sickening scenes of smearing themselves with the blood of "martyrs." Very few Arab intellectuals or holy men have condemned such viciousness.

"The Mirror of Fallujah: No More Passes and Excuses for the Middle East," by Victor Davis Hansen, Jewish World Review, April 4, 2004

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December 18, 2005

Islamofascism

Despite their rhetoric of annihilation and the glories of death, the leadership of al Qaeda and other Islamofascist groups seem to have little stomach for actually partaking of such glories. This is hardly surprising. Their agenda involves remaking the world to suit their desires, and as such they naturally want to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

"Unfortunate Rendition," by Andrew Olmstead, December 5, 2005

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December 06, 2005

Tolerance of how much intolerance?

To be an anatomist of totalitarianism is also to be a connoisseur of freedom, its many beguiling counterfeits as well as its genuine aspirations. The question—the lure, the never fulfilled but inescapable promise—of freedom stands at the center of much of Kolakowski’s work. In "The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society," reprinted in Modernity on Endless Trial (1990), Kolakowski dilates on an antinomy of liberalism that beset Western societies during the Cold War and is, if anything, even more pressing today as we negotiate what amounts to a moral war with fundamentalist Islam. The antinomy is this: liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even (it would seem) those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. Tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. Intolerance betrays the fundamental premise of liberalism, i.e. openness.

Kolakowski is surely right that our liberal, pluralist democracy depends for its survival not only on the continued existence of its institutions, but also "on a belief in their value and a widespread will to defend them."

Do we, as a society, enjoy that belief? Do we possess the requisite will? The jury is still out on those questions. A good test is the extent to which we can resolve the antinomy of liberalism. And a good start on that problem is the extent to which we realize that the antinomy is, in the business of everyday life, illusory. The "openness" that liberal society rightly cherishes is not a vacuous openness to all points of view: it is not "value neutral." It need not, indeed it cannot, say Yes to all comers. American democracy, for example, affords its citizens great latitude, but great latitude is not synonymous with the proposition that "anything goes." Our society, like every society, is founded on particular positive values—the rule of law, for example, respect for the individual, religious freedom, the separation of church and state. Western democratic society, that is to say, is rooted in what Kolakowski calls a "vision of the world." Part of that vision is a commitment to openness, but openness is not the same as indifference.

"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005

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November 26, 2005

"Don't let your daughter dress like a hooker"

Don't want your teenage or pre-teen daughter to dress like a prostitute-in-training? Then tell her she can't.

I heard about it in my kitchen before I read about it in the newspaper: After visiting the expanded Tysons Corner Center this fall, my 23-year-old daughter said, "You won't believe how weird Victoria's Secret's gotten: It's all red and black with a bunch of mannequins that look like porn stars." Some shoppers were so outraged at the raunchy lingerie display that they threatened to boycott the store; others just yawned.

I've been hearing a variation on this theme with increasing frequency in my office. Mothers voice distress over the suggestive clothing their teen and preteen daughters are wearing, inside and outside the house. In fact, conflict over clothing is what prompts them to come in for family therapy. The daughters themselves may be imperious or sullen, but almost all employ the everyone-is-doing-it excuse. And an awful lot of girls are doing it.
. . .
The girls who dress the most outrageously are often those most starved for adult male attention, first and foremost from their fathers. This happens most commonly with girls whose fathers have disappeared from their lives, perhaps following a divorce, or because their workaholic schedules leave them little time for their children. Children who are raised with attention and affection tend to identify with and admire their parents. This identification is the basis for both discipline and the transmission of values. Without it, parents can't do their job.

I often recommend that fathers be the parent to take the lead in setting limits on their daughters' dress, because opposite sex offspring typically cut that parent more slack. Fathers can say, "Honey, you can't wear that. I know teenage boys -- I was one!" A dad like this is looking out for his daughter and treating her as someone special.

While talk and reality shows and tell-all memoirs thrive and a majority of teenagers today say that they would like to be famous, there are still girls and women who value privacy and modesty. They reveal a quiet confidence, a different kind ofglamour. Even famous people can be modest. They don't have to be Britney Spears. Take Audrey Hepburn, who has no counterpart today. Part of her allure lay in the way she embodied humility and modesty. Yet she also conveyed spirit and originality and a strong sense of self.

Even though she worked in an industry that often promotes commonness, she was an uncommon woman. Even though our daughters live in a culture that clearly promotes coarseness, they can be uncommon, too.

"What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?" by Patricia Dalton. The Washington Post, November 20, 2005

I now see teenaged girls and women regularly dressing in ways that remind me of the prostitutes I used to see when I drove a cab.

via Joanne Jacobs

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November 23, 2005

Take Derrida at his word

No, it is much better to do Derrida the courtesy of taking him at his word. And then what? For our part, we think that the English philosopher Roger Scruton had it right when he observed that "A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don’t."

"Derrida declawed," Notes & Comments, The New Criterion, November 2004

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November 19, 2005

The main event associated with abortion

Where to begin:

"Death is such a rare event associated with medical abortion that it's startling," Cullins said. "But this is a way for the anti-choice extremists to push the agenda of banning all abortions."

"rare event"? Death is the main event associated with abortion, medical or otherwise.

(Dr. Vanessa Cullins is vice president of medical affairs for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.)

"Teen Death Steers RU-486 Bill to Congress," by Rebecca Vesely, Women's enews, November 15, 2004

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November 06, 2005

"You Have To Break A Few Humans To Prevent An Omelette"

Incredible ...

Dafydd at Big Lizards notes this Robert Novak column blurb about an exchange regarding ecoterrorism at the US Senate last week. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) interrogated ecological activist Dr. Jerry Vlasak about the aims of the radical environmental movement. Novak has the key, chilling exchange that reveals the utter lack of perspective that produces ecoterrorists:

Dr. Jerry Vlasak of North American Animal Liberation was quoted as saying at an animal rights convention: "I don't think you'd have to kill, assassinate too many. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, or 10 million non-human lives."

Questioned by Inhofe whether he was "advocating the murder of individuals," Vlasak replied: "I made that statement, and I stand by that statement."

That, however, gives only part of the story. Americans for Medical Progress has more of the transcript, which oddly does not appear readily accessible on the Senate's website. (Animal Crackers has the entire exchange archived, along with pungent and dead-on commentary.) Inhofe only got the ball rolling. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) becomes more and more disgusted with Vlasak as the hearing progresses, finally demanding that the witness be removed from his presence. But first, Inhofe makes sure that Vlasak hasn't been misunderstood:

Read the whole incredible thing ... "You Have To Break A Few Humans To Prevent An Omelette," Captain's Quarters, November 6, 2005

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November 04, 2005

Prom "culture" and decadence

It takes Catholic moralists, not therapists, to put parents back in touch with their anti-materialist and nonconformist adolescent impulses, that old Puritan streak that ran through their otherwise hedonist youth. If they can't fight their teens' dissipation with fervor, they've got better ground to stand on in denouncing precocious conspicuous consumption. And if high-rolling parents can't pull it off, a screed from bold school administrators can give kids a defiant model to follow. Amy Best salutes youths for such subversive gestures as wearing Doc Martens with their tuxes or sticking radishes in their lapels ("using irony as a rhetorical tactic to disrupt, expose and resist the adult meaning systems through which the prom is defined"). But if kids are looking for a truly radical way to assert their power and signal that they've finally grown up, they can tell their parents to take their lavish prom-night clothing allowances, liquor-stocked limos, and condos, and go to hell.

"Take Back the Prom: How, and why, one school called it all off—and you can, too," by Ann Hulbert, slate, November 3, 2005

We posted about this last month, and have a link to the letter sent to a parent of a student at Kellenberg Memorial High School: "The lust for money is the root of all evil - Prom Culture," Ishkabible, October 18, 2005

Posted at 08:22 AM   ·  Comments (0)   ·  Categories: Nihilism

"A fuse that's been lit all over Europe"

I'm actually thinking of going to Paris. I went to one of these suburbs that's currently ablaze three years ago. And what was interesting to me is I had to bribe a taxi driver a considerable amount of money just to take me out there. They're miserable places. But what was interesting to me is that after that, I then flew on to the Middle East, and I was in Yemen, and a couple of other places. And what was interesting to me was that I found more menace in the suburbs of Paris than I did in some pretty scary places in the Middle East. I mean, there is a real...this, I think, is the start of a long Eurabian civil war we're witnessing here. . . . you know, we kept hearing all this stuff ever since September 11th, you know, the Muslim street is going to explode in anger. Well, it finally did, and it was in Paris, not in the Middle East. . . . You know, the Europeans have been tolerant of, for example, Palestinian terrorism for years, and of the intifada that's been going on in France against synagogues and Jewish schools and Kosher butchers and all the rest. And now, it's moved on to more general targets. They're suddenly finding it's kind of harder to appease these people.

"Mark Steyn on the Euroarabian war currently happening in the suburbs of France," transcript of Mark Steyn interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Radioblogger, November 3, 2005

As I see it, the religion of Islam is inherently incompatible with the concept of individual liberty, a crucial component of western countries.

"Paris Riots: Coming to an American Street Near You," La Shawn Barber, November 3, 2005

And Americans should take no satisfaction in the French predicament, for there are close parallels here to all these phenomena. We learned the hard way that, first of all, our cities need law and order and that talk and dialog must wait until riots have been suppressed. We have learned, also the hard way, that welfare corrupts those who receive it. But we have still to grasp the danger of that combination of Islam and crime that afflicts France — and is beginning to appear here.

"The Ongoing Muslim Riots In France," Pseudo-Random Thoughts, November 2, 2005

Posted at 07:48 AM   ·  Comments (0)   ·  Categories: Gynephobes , Nihilism , Terrorism

October 30, 2005

"Onward, Muslim Soldiers!"

SULAWESI, Indonesia -- Muslim warriors scored yet another heroic military victory, this time against a well-trained trio of special-ops teenaged girls from a Christian school.

"Allah be praised for delivering us this magnificent triumph," an unknown brave warrior in a face-obscuring mask announced. "Those 105-pound teenaged girls fought like tigers, using all the weapons and trickery they learned at a Special Forces clinic at the 4-H Club. They also employed advanced martial arts techiques from the legendary fighting form known as 'Jazzercize.'"

The glorious Islamic heroes stated that they identified the co-ed covert operatives by their open display of the famous credo of SOCOM (the special operations command), "N'SYNC = N'STINK."

Having captured the dangerous commandos, the Muslim warriors afforded them with the full panoply of rights granted to them by the Geneva Protocols, including the invioble rights of POW's to have their heads sawed from their still-living bodies, a right which applies only upon capture by Muslims. WARNING: Extremely Graphic Pictures of the International Red Cross-approved treatment of Western prisoners.

The gay-panic murder-cultists of the Muslim world rejoiced that the three operatives had been captured while carrying the weapon most feared in the Muslim world-- vaginas.

"Onward, Muslim Soldiers!" Ace of Spades HQ, October 30, 2005

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October 23, 2005

"Christianity was established in Iraq 1,300 years before Henry VIII separated the Church of England from Rome"

Christianity is not some recent Western import whose proselytizing activities are causing resentment among traditional Muslims. Christianity was established in Iraq 500 years before Britain converted and 1,300 years before Henry VIII separated the Church of England from Rome. Pre-Islamic Iraq was actually predominantly Jewish and Christian. They were reduced to a minority by their conquerors entirely without reference to the West. Yet so strong is the idea of the West speaking for Christianity that "Church of England bishops are calling for Christian leaders to apologize publicly, at a gathering attended by senior Muslims, for the war in Iraq", without a trace of self-conciousness. The call was contained in a 101 page report prepared by the bishops.

In a preface, one of the four authors, Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries, writes that for many people in the world today, "It is not terrorism, but American foreign policy and what they perceive as American expansionism which constitutes the major threat to peace." Like all major powers in history, he says, America seeks to expand economic, political and military influence. "What distinguishes it from many other empires in history is its strong sense of moral righteousness. In this there is both sincere conviction and dangerous illusion," Harries says. "This sense of moral righteousness is fed by the major influence of the 'Christian Right' on present United States policy."

Within this ostensibly progressive message is a remarkably Edwardian conceit: one which might do justice to a Viceroy of India; the assumption that individuals like Bishop Richard Harries can authoritatively frame the Iraqi debate from the central perspective of a European Christianity. This is probably why the Copts are at pains to emphasize that they are "indigenous" and "pre-Arab". They are fighting for a faith which Western church leaders have no authority to surrender.

"Ex Oriente Lux," The Belmont Club, October 23, 2005

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October 22, 2005

"Media utters nonsense, won't call enemy out"

I underestimated multiculturalism. After 9/11, I assumed the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition would be made plain: that a cult of "tolerance" would in the end founder against a demographic so cheerfully upfront in their intolerance. Instead, Islamic "militants" have become the highest repository of multicultural pieties. So you're nice about gays and Native Americans? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti- masochists. And so Islamists who murder non-Muslims in pursuit of explicitly Islamic goals are airbrushed into vague, generic "rebel forces."
. . .
I'm aware the very concept of "the enemy" is alien to the non-judgment multicultural mind: There are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated. But the media's sensitivity police apparently want this to be the first war we lose without even knowing who it is we've lost to. C'mon, guys, next time something happens in the Caucasus, why not blame the "Caucasians"? At least that way, we'll figure it must have been right-wing buddies of Timothy McVeigh.

"Media utters nonsense, won't call enemy out," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun Times, October 16, 2005

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October 19, 2005

Abortion and Disabled Children

If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?

I have struggled with this question almost since our daughter Margaret was born, since she opened her big blue eyes and we got our first inkling that there was a full-fledged person behind them.

Whenever I am out with Margaret, I'm conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don't know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.

Imagine. As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here in the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed. I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living.
. . .
In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same.
. . .
What I don't understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value. I'd like to think that it's time to put that particular piece of baggage on the table and talk about it, but I'm not optimistic. People want what they want: a perfect baby, a perfect life. To which I say: Good luck. Or maybe, dream on.

And here's one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what's driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman's right to choose whether to have a baby; it's also about a woman's right to choose which baby she wants to have.

"The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have: Prenatal testing is making your right to abort a disabled child more like "your duty" to abort a disabled child," by Patricia E. Bauer, The Washington Post, October 18, 2005, page A25

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October 12, 2005

"Dead Man Laughing"

Perhaps one day historians will discover that the phrase 'War on Terror' was a misnomer after all; that in retrospect September 11 was not an insurrectionary act, as the Left often pretends it is, but the last attempt of a fading aristocracy to preserve its prerogatives. Then Ground Zero will look to Statue of Liberty with a matching message of its own.

Arise you tired,
you poor,
you huddled masses
and breathe free.

"Dead Man Laughing," Belmont Club, October 12, 2005

Islmaofacism is not revolutionary, it is reactionary ... see Sasha Abramsky ...

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October 09, 2005

"Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End"

People's Cube has a great post ... "Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End" ...

"My cabinet and I had long discussions about world troubles, and we concluded that our critics are right - all the troubles can be traced back to us. So, in order to resolve these issues, we felt it would be best to extend our withdrawal beyond Gaza to include the West Bank and Israel proper," Sharon said. "The Gaza pullout was only a test, and the ensuing waves of peace and brotherhood it had triggered in Palestine and beyond, encouraged us to disband altogether. Without us here, people of the world will finally be able, once again, to live in permanent harmony and understanding - just like they all did before Israel's founding nearly sixty years ago."

From Russia to Morocco to Yemen to France, countries are anticipating the arrival of Israelis. In Moscow, an enormous banner was erected that read "Welcome Home, Jews." and erstwhile presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky exclaimed, "I'm going to bake a huge batch of cookies for this homecoming!" And in cities throughout Germany, joyous "Judenfests" were ubiquitous, as local citizens were arranging festivals to celebrate the Jewish arrival.

Read the whole thing ...

Posted at 06:00 PM   ·  Categories: Nihilism

October 08, 2005

"Fear Entrepreneurs"

Throughout history human beings have had to deal with the emotion of fear. But the way we fear and what we fear changes all the time. During the past 2,000 years we mainly feared supernatural forces. In medieval times volcanic eruptions and solar eclipses were a special focus of fear since they were interpreted as symptoms of divine retribution. In Victorian times many people's fears were focused on unemployment.

Today, however, we appear to fear just about everything. One reason why we fear so much is because life is dominated by competing groups of fear entrepreneurs who promote their cause, stake their claims, or sell their products through fear. Politicians, the media, businesses, environmental organisations, public health officials and advocacy groups are continually warning us about something new to fear.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

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October 02, 2005

Velvet Revolutions and Suicide Bombers

Part of our difficulty in dealing with global terror directed against civilian populations is that we have not, I believe, understood what it was designed to attack. Some see it as a war between cultural blocs, others as a religious war against infidels, others as a traditionalist reaction to the social, economic, and cultural disruptions caused by globalism, others as a continuation of the liberation of oppressed peoples from colonial imperialism. There may be a grain of truth in some of these explanations, but the counter-examples to each of them are glaring.

. . .

Thirty years ago it looked as if the totalitarian state was solidly established, successful and immortal. Democratic capitalism had been stopped in its tracks. The nuclear-armed socialist dictatorship could not be attacked or defeated; it could at best be contained, and none of its incremental marginal conquests could be rolled back. Marvelously, however, a new strategy emerged, invented by the world's middle-class populations, that could bring down the totalitarian state: the velvet revolution. Totalitarian governments rely on elites to govern and control the people and defend themselves against outside ideas. Those elites must reproduce themselves, creating a property-owning educated class with great power but without the revolutionary ideology of their parents; and to remain economically viable the state must produce a skilled artisan class, like the shipbuilders of Gdansk, with the capacity to unionize. Out of these materials, generated by totalitarianism itself, comes the velvet revolution.

The velvet revolution (also named the orange revolution, the purple finger, the rose revolution, the cedar revolution) has swept the world. In different ways, nonviolent, non-ideological middle-class and skilled-worker mass movements have unseated tyrants and established democracies in an amazing range of countries: Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Bangladesh, South Korea, Indonesia, the Baltic states, Mexico, Serbia, Albania, Georgia, the Ukraine, the Philippines, Lebanon, even Palestine, all fell to the regimes of popular sovereignty. China nearly fell in 1989, with the Tiananmen protest, and will become a democracy some time in the next twenty years. If there is one defining event that characterizes the end of twentieth century political modernism, it is this one.

"Velvet Revolutions and the Logic of Terrorism," by Frederick Turner, TCS, September 20, 2005

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September 30, 2005

Anti-war rally turns into "Drive the Jews out of Israel" rally ...

International ANSWER has gone out of their way to demonstrate why UPFJ is spineless and why no sensible activist wants anything to do with them.

read the whole thing, including the comments ...

"San Diego Rally Gets Ugly," jewschool, September 29, 2005

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September 25, 2005

Imagine that Jesus had raised armies, raided caravans, beheaded hostages ....

Imagine that Jesus had raised armies, raided caravans, beheaded hostages, ordered the murders of poets whose verses displeased him, and engaged in what we would today term statutory rape. Christianity would be a far different religion than the one that has come down to us, and the Imitation of Christ would be a far different enterprise. One dares even to say that, under this imaginary scenario, Osama bin Laden would be more Christlike than Mother Theresa.

If you change the name Christ to Mohammed, however, the scenario is no longer imaginary. Which is why we find it so distburbing that the Council on American Islamic Relations has successfully intimidated National Review's book service into removing The Life and Religion of Mohammed from its inventory. (The book now available at the Human Events book service.)

CAIR was angered by the ad's assertions that Mohammed's llife was "marked by innumerable marriages; and great licentiousness, deeds of rapine, warfare, conquests, unmerciful butcheries...."

"The Life of Mohammed," by The Republican Party Reptile, September 4, 2005

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"From Torah to Qassam"

The Politburo Diktat has a post about the "People of the Rocket" converting a synagogue to a weapons museum ... the follow up quote from lgf is spot on:

Newsweek prints a false rumor that a Koran was dunked in a toilet, and the entire planet goes nuts. Hamas announces that they’re going to turn a Jewish house of worship into a memorial to mass murder … and the silence is absolutely deafening.

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September 19, 2005

Fatwa ... Burger King lids ... formidable foes ...

protein wisdom ... "We commend the sensitive and prompt action that Burger King has taken."

The fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.

We like this comment ... "All your words/symbols/lives are belong to us!"

my response to Burger King's decision ... goodbye Whopper ... goodbye BK fries ... goodbye BK ... hope appeasing idiots works out for you ...

What's next ... "This ad is CAIR approved" ... hajibs on all women in ads? ... displayed on products? ... instant hajib! ...

and you thought the study of medievalism was only for historians! ... "The medieval age was tyrannized by a demand for spiritual perfectionism, making it hard to accomplish anything practical."

during the Cold War, many suggested dropping JC Penney or Sears catalogs behind the Iron Curtain ... why use bombs on gynephobic wankers ... drop Victoria's Secret catalogs ... they might spontaneously combust ...

and note the hyper sensitivity of these wankers ... compared with the response of a Catholic guy to images of the Blessed Virgin Mary with dung and crucifixes in urine ... kind of makes you wonder how formidable such sensitive types are ...

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September 17, 2005

"Burning Synagogues"

From Evan Coyne Maloney:

Desecration of religious symbols is acceptable--and sometimes even funded by the government!--as long as certain groups don't get offended.

Burning Synagogues, September 13, 2005

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September 14, 2005

Eating the seed corn ...

From The Belmont Club, we learn that "greenhouses that were left behind by withdrawing Israelis for use by impoverished Palestinians" in Gaza were looted ... quotes an article from Khaleej Times Online: "The greenhouses provide jobs for 3,500 Palestinians and had been a lucrative market for fresh produces for Jewish settlers."

Ai yi yi yi yi ...

As one of the commenters said,

They build nothing and destroy whatever windfalls come their way; it takes talent to get funded billions and still be worse off than the year before.

But of course, it is the Israelis' fault that the greenhouses were looted, that the synagogues left in Gaza were burned, etc., etc., etc.

The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of cynically leaving the synagogues standing to make Palestinians look bad for demolishing them.

"Gaza looters settle old scores," by Stephen Farrell and Ian MacKinnon, The (London) Times, September 13, 2005

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August 17, 2005

Multiculturalism - based on a lie

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures all morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties, and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures but in certain specific times and places--mostly in Britain and America but also in other parts of Europe.

In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swaths of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America though it has existed in many societies, and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians.

"Cultures Aren't Equal," by Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report, August 15, 2005

Other Resources

• "Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report," U.S. State Department, 2005
• "Saudis Import Slaves to America," by Daniel Pipes, New York Sun, June 16, 2005
• "Slavery in 2005 – Chann's story," DanChurchAid
• "What is modern slavery?," DanChurchAid
• "Rescued From Sex Slavery," 48 Hours, CBS News, July 22, 2005

. . . . . . . . .

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August 13, 2005

Communism as ... hypnotism

The landscape of Communism from East Germany to Cambodia, from North Korea to Cuba deserves to preserved as a monument to the greatest act of hypnotism in history. Piers Brendon, writing in the Dark Valley, described the pilgrimage of Western intellectuals to this palace of horrors, intent upon discovering paradise. And discover it they did.

"On a Weekend," The Belmont Club, August 6, 2005

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July 25, 2005

"Moral Poseurdom"

European countries now have attitudes in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their acting upon them. They're like my hippy-dippy Vermont neighbours who drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers. Every couple of years, they trade in the Volvo for a Subaru, and painstakingly paste a new "Free Tibet" sticker on the back.

What are they doing to free Tibet? Nothing. Tibet is as unfree now as it was when they started advertising their commitment to a free Tibet. And it will be just as unfree when they buy their next car and slap on the old sticker one mo' time. If Don Rumsfeld were to say, 'Free Tibet'? That's a great idea! The Third Infantry Division goes in on Thursday', all the 'Free Tibet' crowd would be driving around with 'War is not the answer' stickers. When entire nations embrace self-congratulatory holier-than-thou moral poseurdom as a way of life, it's even less attractive. The Belgians weren't half as insufferable when they were the German army's preferred shortcut to France.

"Do you want to sing Waterloo or fight it?" by Mark Steyn, August 17, 2004

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July 18, 2005

"honor" killings - 2

Meanwhile, Muslim apologists in European countries continue to loftily inform shocked Westerners that, while being perfectly understandable, "honor killing" isn't "the real Islam" and the police and doctors tread lightly for fear of being accused of "racism" (although, obviously, Islam isn't a race).

Former British Home Minister Mike O'Brien described multiculturalism as an excuse for "moral blindness", while Britain's Dhimmi-in-Chief, foreign secretary Jack Straw, praising the progress made by Turkey (population 70 million) in working towards joining the European Union (where it would shortly thereafter become the largest member), which is estimated to have at least 200 honor killings per year, is quoted as saying, "Turkey has undergone remarkable changes over the last few years, putting in place the extensive reforms the EU asked of it. The EU must now deliver its side of the bargain."

In return, Turkey has graciously temporarily shelved a proposal to criminalize adultery.

[For a horrific story of the experience of a young Palestinian girl whose family decided to murder her (she overheard them, including her mother, planning it) for becoming pregnant although not married, and who was rescued and brought to the West while her body was still so charred that the other airline passengers complained of the smell, follow this link.]

"Honor Thy Father -- Or Else," by Val MacQueen, Tech Central Station, February 2, 2005

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July 15, 2005

The Economics of Woody Allen

If you read Woody Allen very charitably, he seems have a perfectly reasonable desire to live longer. But his real complaint is that the time he has is meaningless because he only has a finite amount. And his conclusion resonates with a lot of people, and has for a long time.

I've never understood the appeal of this argument. If a finite quantity of life is worthless, how can an infinite quantity be desirable? Sure, you could trot out mathematical structures with this property, but come on. If an infinite span of days is so great, what's stopping you from enjoying today? In fact, by the law of diminishing marginal utility, the average value of a year in a finite lifespan should be more valuable than the average value of a year in an infinite lifespan.

It would be exceedingly interesting to see how Woody Allen would react to immortality. Frankly, I suspect he'd be complaining about it in a week. Well, actually, I don't have to just suspect. He tells us:

Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again. God - I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.

This illustrates one of the main lessons of personality psychology: Contrary to appearances, perennially unhappy people aren't unhappy about anything. They are just unhappy, and project their feelings onto the world.

"The Economics of Woody Allen," by Bryan Caplan, EconLog, June 29, 2005

Other Resources

Nihilsm - from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Wikipedia

"You're Really Nothing at All," - from the American Nihilism Association

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May 18, 2005

"honor" killings - 1

The suicide rate among Asian women in Britain is four times that of the indigenous population and other immigrant groups. Being so tightly controlled and abused, suicide is often perceived as the only escape. Rosie Cowan, The Guardian's crime correspondent, writes, "While killings [are] more often carried out by men, women were sometimes involved. In some cases mothers and grandmothers handed a daughter over to her murderers." She quotes Commander Andy Baker, head of Scotland Yard's homicide squad, as saying, "Those who come to police are, without question, the tip of the iceberg." London police have been advised by a behavioral psychologist to listen carefully to any young girl or woman who gets up the nerve to walk into a police station, and not to inform the families and not to try to mediate.

The fingers of "honor" killings snake through the EU, with its great masses of unassimilated Muslims living in self-imposed ghettoes and seething with contempt for their host societies. In Holland, 60 percent of women in women's shelters are Muslim. In Berlin, there is a safehouse for young Turkish women to hide to escape family violence. In the vast social housing estates of Paris and other northern cities in France, violence, including rape, is perpetrated for such minor infractions as running out to the grocery store without wearing a headscarf. In Sweden, a female Muslim campaigner against "honor" killings was herself shot dead by her father for having a relationship with a Swedish man.

Kathleen Knox, for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, writes that in Prague, a 14-year-old Turkish girl was on her way to the supermarket when she was kidnapped and raped. When she was rescued, her father allegedly murdered her and buried her in a forest. The 14-year-old had "stained the family honor" by being overpowered by an adult male and raped.

The United Nations estimates that at least 5,000 women and girls worldwide are murdered every year by way of cleansing some primitive sense of family honor, many of them, like the girl above, having "dishonored" the family by having the temerity to be rape victims.

"Honor Thy Father -- Or Else," by Val MacQueen, Tech Central Station, February 2, 2005

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May 09, 2005

"A rational sensible kindly peaceable world where evil can be regulated by pieces of paper and General Assembly votes."

Again, to repeat the point I’ve made in the last 3 years again and again: it’s not the dissent. It’s the thin, meretricious, self-satisfied quality of the dissent. This is like Tom Selleck giving an interview and saying, “Well, Americans are too stupid to see Clinton for what he is, and they can’t find Bosnia on a map, and the ones who can are all gay atheists, you know.” He'd be held up as a parochial idiot, but Maher's drivel resonates, because he is vibrating on the moonbat frequency. He's one step removed from the people who would see a mushroom cloud over Manhattan and blame it on Abu Ghraib. Ah well. These people will either have to prosper and live unmolested in a world they hate, or get the world they keenly seek. A rational sensible kindly peaceable world where evil can be regulated by pieces of paper and General Assembly votes. A world where "hope is on the way!" means that Kofi Annan has entered his private elevator.

The Bleat, by James Lileks, October 25, 2004

Posted at 06:03 PM   ·  Comments (0)   ·  TrackBack (0)   ·  Categories: Nihilism , Pundits