Quick Roundup 55

War Pictures

Grant Jones shows some pictures sent to him by a soldier serving in Afghanistan.

He says that such photos are deemed too shocking by the MSM to get much coverage. It's either that, or they find such things as signs that read, "Thank you very much, Mr. Bush" to be about as offensive as drawings of Mohammed (justice be upon his minions).

Tort Reform Case Study

Following up on a recent post about the upcoming vote on medical tort reform in the U.S. Senate, I note an editorial, "Prodigal State: Tort Reform Brings Doctors Back to Texas", about medical tort reform in the Lone Star State (HT: Thrutch)

I didn't realize ...

... that RealClear Politics is registered as a blog in the TTLB Ecosystem until this morning.

Same Excuse, Minus the Word "Israel"

D. Eastbrook, in a comment, recommended this interesting article on America's first encounter with peoples who practice the "religion of peace", its war with the Barbary States. The below is from a report to the Continental Congress by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, which records the explanation from the Tripolitan Ambassador to Britain for his people's unprovoked predations against the Americans.

[This animus] was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

The article later notes that:

[T]hese jihad depredations targeting America antedated the earliest vestiges of the Zionist movement by a century, and the formal creation of Israel by 162 years -- exploding the ahistorical canard that American support for the modern Jewish state is a prerequisite for jihadist attacks on the United States.

And I agree with Eastbrook. Joshua London's Victory in Tripoli looks like it would be good reading.

On the Shelf Life of Nathaniel Branden's Gratitude

Craig Ceely -- and I have to apologize right now for having inserted an "r" into his last name since blogrolling him -- has posted the results a bit of sleuthing he did after reading James Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, a book I may yet read one day....

Ceely made a line-by-line comparison of two versions (the original from Who is Ayn Rand? and a later pamphlet version) of Nathaniel Branden's essay "The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged" and found the following, among other things.

Most of the editorial changes were very minor: italics removed in many cases, and quite a number of instances of changing "Ayn Rand" to "Rand." But change # 31 (by my count) is not minor:

In the May, 1964 Paperback Library edition of Who Is Ayn Rand?, we read, on page 27:

The concept of an ethics based on man's metaphysical nature is not, as such, new. Many philosophers of antiquity, as well as many of the post-Renaissance system builders, claimed to have derived their systems of ethics from such a base. In their attempts logically to connect the specific values they advocated with their descriptions of man's metaphysical nature, one may discern two major trends.*

The note at the bottom of the page reads: "I am indebted to my associate Leonard Peikoff for the identification of these two trends."

The same paragraph appears on page 19 of the pamphlet version, but -- surprise, surprise -- the note of indebtedness to Leonard Peikoff appears nowhere.

So in 1962 Branden is "indebted" to Peikoff for this "identification," but by 1971 he's repudiated it all, and by 2000, it is "superfluous," and is edited out of existence. One item of acknowledgment, see, is apparently not of "historical interest" to students of Ayn Rand's work. Oh no. Nor is it an example of Nathaniel Branden taking credit for Leonard Peikoff's work and thought. Nope. It is now "superfluous." Sheesh.

Quite the journey, that. Perhaps some would call it "growth." Probably take some toleration to see it, though.

Read the whole thing!

Fellow Soccer Fans Take Note

I think the Commissar did a good job handicapping the United States National Team for this edition of the World Cup.

-- CAV